What Everyone is Missing About the Foot Washing

One spring night in Jerusalem, a famed prophet and leader was preparing to eat a traditional Passover meal with his closest friends. Unexpectedly, he approached one of the servants. This servant had drawn the short straw that night and was in charge of cleaning the grimy feet of the men before they ate. Then, the prophet extended his hand to the servant and gestured towards the water basin.  “Give me your towel and wash bowl,” he said. The servant balked, stuttered out assent, and handed the greatest man in Jerusalem his towel and water basin. The leader walked over to the rest of his friends, and began to wash each one of their feet, taking the role of the lowest servant or slave.  

Service is something that everyone can get behind, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, or Atheist. Everyone likes a bit of altruism in their month. I have heard many people teach that in this moment, Jesus was teaching us about service–that a Christian leader is someone who serves. But is that truly what Jesus was doing? The answer is not exactly.

The deeper reading of Christ’s actions is significantly more radical, more challenging, and more difficult to palate. Recasting the leader as a servant was part of His intention. But once we ask the deeper question “why?”, the answer will shake us to the core of our humanity, and for the Christian, it turns the world upside down.

The truth lingers beneath the surface of all of Jesus’ actions during Holy Week. We begin to see it with Passion Sunday and, then as we continue to ask why, we slowly see the golden thread of teaching develop and run through Christ’s death and resurrection. The point of His entire life answered in these final moments: Why does the Messiah enter into Jerusalem on a donkey instead of a charger? Why does the king wrap a towel around his waist and perform a task fit only for the lowliest of slaves? Why does the God-man take upon his head a crown of thorns and mockery and die, stripped naked, the death of the thief and the alien?

He answers these questions during His last meal with His best friends, the last moment of intimacy He would have with them before His death.

These twelve men have followed Christ across deserts, share the dust of harsh roads on their sandals, have seen the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the dead raised. At first, Christ was the rising star, an upstart teacher who was sure to have an impact in his day, but the crowds were fickle, they came and went. One moment they loved Him, the next they plotted his death. These men had stayed with Him through it all. They were His brothers, but they still didn’t get it.

In Luke’s gospel, at the Last supper, an argument broke out about “who among them was to be regarded as the greatest.”

This is the setting in which Christ wrapped Himself in a towel and bent down to wash the same dirt from their feet as caked His own. It is in this context that He tells them why. He says “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called Lord. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the least, and the leader like one who serves” (Lk 22:25-26).

It isn’t just the service of the washing that is so unbelievable, so earth shattering. No, it is that He is turning a very law of nature on its head: “survival of the fittest.” The law that defined our most painful middle school experiences, and the one that still directs so much of our life choices today. It is the zero sum game of ladder climbing. “There are only so many rungs, and come hell or high water I’m going to climb faster and higher than you.”

This new way that Christ gives here is a new way: He simply throws out this competition all together. What if when you are slapped on the right cheek, you offer the other, and when someone curses you, instead of cursing back you offer prayers on their behalf instead?

Christ is instituting a new kingdom at the last supper. A kingdom in which the lion lies down with the lamb. His kingdom is the end of enmity. It is the end of defensiveness; the end of the need to be a winner. Jesus is the greatest contradiction the world has ever known.

But again, we must ask “why?” Why end the competition? Why choose weakness? Because the only way to end endless war is to stop fighting. Paul writes: “Together as one body, Christ reconciled both to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death” (Eph 2:16). Christ’s last wish was for the kingdom He was founding here with these twelve men, be undivided. He spoke: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:34-35). He goes on to command His disciples to love one another three more times in this final discourse. Love is binding, love unifies. Love is to be the definitive mark of a Christian, and love cannot coexist with competition.

Christ’s last prayer before the Garden is this: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me” (Jn 17:20-23). Jesus’ intention, the deep desire of His heart in this moment is that we be one with one another. He did not leave us with this desire without showing us how. He placed himself below His disciples, below all of us. He took the beating, He took the mocking, he took the lowliest place, and he did not fight back.

This should lead us to ask ourselves now, in what ways am I trying very hard to be right? Who am I trying to impress? Who am I striking back against? How am I clamoring for the highest place like the disciples? Let’s let Christ’s example lead us to lay down our swords. Let’s chose the lowest place together.

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Marcellino J D’Ambrosio is a creative mind who loves innovative and fresh ways of sharing the gospel. These days, that is through media. He’s the Creative Director at the Crossroads Initiative and is one of the founders of the Catholic Creatives movement, a movement to return beauty to its central place in the life of the Church.