A pastor-friend called me just before Easter. “We’re having a joint Maundy Thursday service with the church down the street,” he told me. “Their minister said he’d rather not have the foot washing, because feet are gross. He wants to wash hands instead.”
“Hands?!” I erupted. “That’s Pilate!”
“What?”
“Pilate! That’s Pilate, washing his hands of Jesus. That’s denying Jesus, not identifying with him.”
I sputtered some more while my friend said, “Well, it is easier. And cleaner. And the minister has a point: feet are gross.”
I sensed my heated discourse on all the reasons I felt this was so wrong would accomplish nothing, so I left it there rather than risk our friendship. But I fumed about this concept for several days—settling for the easier thing because the hard thing was gross, and in the process demonstrating the opposite of the servant role Jesus showed his disciples in the Upper Room.
True, Peter at first refused to allow Jesus to wash his feet when the Lord took the towel and basin to the travelers’ stinky feet. Peter might have said feet are gross. Peter did say their leader shouldn’t be stooping so low. But his objection was overcome by Jesus’ statement, “If I don’t wash your feet, then you have no part in me.”
Suddenly, Peter was all in.
Identification with Christ in salvation requires accepting his work on our behalf, his whole work. And subsequently identifying with his servant nature requires us to follow his humble, lowly, sometimes stinky work on behalf of others—not only selecting the parts we don’t find repugnant.
Still sputtering days later, I found YouTube had sent me a video from a Maundy Thursday service at a great cathedral. “They’re washing feet!” I said aloud. Not hands, I mumbled, feeling vindicated.
Then I noticed something odd. The people coming forward for the pastors to wash their feet were removing the right shoe. Only the right shoe. The pastors were pouring water over one foot and dabbing a towel at the one foot. I guess it was quicker than washing both feet, but after my agitated conversation about substituting hands for feet, this seemed only moderately better—sort of a half-step.
At the first foot-washing service I remember attending, I decided I would rather be one of the washers than subject someone else to my feet. It was my own half-step. And later as a pastor, when I led an Upper Room service with foot-washing, I recall dear Jessie Campbell telling me at the door, “I would have come forward, but I’m wearing hose.” Following Jesus is sometimes inconvenient.
While all this was going on, I was editing a sermon for an upcoming issue of the newspaper. (We’re able to get less half of most 2,500-word sermons into the space available.) Pastor Maurice Gaiter of Chicago preached on complete commitment to Christ. Gaiter pointed out Paul’s instructions to his pastoral protégé Timothy to endure suffering and hardship for the sake of the gospel—to be wholly committed to his calling. Following Christ means going the distance. It means not cutting corners.
If I may apply a term from the jazz world here, there’s no half-stepping for committed disciples.
Gaiter told the following story, among several personal illustrations of commitment: A missionary society wrote to David Livingstone in Africa and asked, “Have you found a good road to where you are? If so, we want to know how to send other men to join you.”
Livingstone wrote back, “If you have men who will come only if they know there is a good road, I don’t want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.”
So, in the end, all this is rather convicting. Beyond my critique of hand towels and right-foot washing, how have I taken half steps for Jesus? How have I taken the road more travelled, and avoided those places where there is no road?
In the face of Calvary, I confess that whatever I may do is nothing in light of what the Lord has done for us. But with his example ever before us, Jesus’ call total commitment rings loudly today.
“If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you… A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:14-15, 35).
No half-stepping there.
Eric Reed is editor of Illinois Baptist media.