This version of the Last Supper story from John is centered not on a satisfying meal of bread and wine, but on the action and example shown by a servant. This is the command we are given. We are not called to possess or own anything for our own sake. We are being asked, actually commanded and given a mandate (“mandatum”), to follow and divest ourselves of all that keeps us from loving.
At the heart of this mandate is more than merely inconveniencing ourselves to bend down to wash feet. It is a command to bend more than our knee, but also our hearts - our very lives - to touch the most vulnerable places in one another; to help to make clean those places and bruises that are in most need of washing and purifying. It is to decrease so that others may increase; it is to be as loving as Jesus with a liberating and radical love that makes us all as full, complete, and holy as he is.
This washing of the feet is transubstantiation made real – a true change and transformation not brought about by magic, but made concrete by radical love.
--D. Haas, Facebook,
April 18, 2019
April 18, 2019
Image source: Sieger Koder, Jesus Washes Peter’s Feet, https://camandstinchcombe.wordpress.com/2020/04/09/the-washing-of-feet-by-sieger-koder/
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