He does not seize power. He does not fortify himself, nor does he rally armed resistance. Instead, Jesus removes his robe. And another, another scripture rings in my mind:
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea.” Psalm 46
Two scenes. One kneeling in an upper room. One where mountains are sliding into water and both ask the same question: What holds firm when what is normally reliable does not?
We are living in a time when the mountains feel unstable. Climate disruption. Political whiplash. Technological acceleration. Institutional fragility. Our national nervous system never quite resets when the background hum of instability lives in our bodies. We experience a shortening of patience and outrage that flare and fade into exhaustion. We are trained to expect continuity. Now we live inside re-calibration.
Psalm 46 does not deny the shaking. It names it. Mountains move. Waters roar. Kingdoms totter. And yet: “God is our refuge.” Not an escape from history. A presence inside it.
John tells us Jesus loved his own “to the end.” Not sentimentally, but to the edge of humiliation and what some might see as betrayal. In the Roman world, foot washing belonged to enslaved people. It was work for the lowest body in the room. When Jesus kneels, this is not etiquette. It is a dismantling of hierarchy. The one called Lord chooses the posture of the servant.
Peter resists: “You will never wash my feet.” His protest sounds devout, but it protects order. It protects a Messiah who remains elevated. Jesus refuses that distance.
“You do not understand now.” Of course not. We rarely understand a love that gives up status. In some religious imaginations, holiness is separation, clean from unclean, worthy from unworthy. But here, holiness touches dirt. The dust on those feet is road dust from occupied Palestine. Sweat from anxious bodies. The grime of complicity and denial.
Last Sunday, Pastor Emillie added a cross to the children's Lent in a bag. As you scrubbed it colors were revealed. Again, holiness was not portrayed as avoidance. Holiness is portrayed as intimately interacting with the real. Psalm 46 imagines stability as refuge. John imagines stability as kneeling. These are not opposites. They are the same center described differently.
Thomas Aquinas described virtue as a stable disposition formed over time. Fortitude is endurance in pursuit of the good when circumstances press hard. Prudence is disciplined judgment in complexity. Resilience is not toughness. It is a trained orientation.
Jesus with a towel. Aquinas with disciplined thought. Both of them lowered their center of gravity. When the waters rise, what stands is not what is rigid. It is what is rooted low. In a world structured by domination, Caesar’s empire then, anxious systems now, Jesus performs a counter-liturgy.
“If I, your Lord and Teacher, wash your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s.”
And here is the new insight: The towel is not only a symbol of humility. It is a strategy for surviving instability.
When the ground shifts, hierarchy cracks. Control falters. Systems strain. What remains viable is not domination but interdependence. Foot washing creates a community that can withstand shaking because no one remains permanently on top. Stability is relational, and refuge becomes embodied. The question for the church is not whether we admire the gesture. It is whether we surrender our robes in a time of trembling. What do we cling to?
Psalm 46 says do not fear, though the earth gives way. John 13 shows us how.
Foot washing is not a ritual once a year. It is a posture that keeps us from tipping over. On the night before the crucifixion, Jesus does not offer a theory of atonement; He offers a posture. Psalm 46 does not promise the water will be still. It promises presence in the roar.
Perhaps the quiet subversion of the gospel is this: When the mountains fall into the sea, when empires tremble, when systems fracture, the reign of God looks like kneeling. And the people who learn to kneel together are the ones who do not lose themselves when the earth shakes.
No comments:
Post a Comment