Foot Washing Gains in Popularity

Ever since I became a member at age 12 of my home Church of the Brethren congregation in Pennsylvania, I have participated in the yearly ritual of foot-washing. The Church of the Brethren always took literally and seriously the passage in the Gospel of John where Jesus commanded the disciples to wash one another's feet as he had washed theirs. I can't say it is a ritual I have ever come to enjoy, but that is precisely the point. Spiritual practice and spiritual growth calls us to enter into uncomfortable territory, and in particular it calls us to move beyond superficial ways of relating to our friends and neighbors. Washing a person's feet certainly does that.

In today's Washington Post there is a lengthy article about the growing interest in footwashing among Christian congregations and service ministries:

As they prepared for the holy ritual, the churchgoers had all the essential items: latex gloves, nail clippers, chlorine and antibacterial soap. The only things missing were the feet, and soon enough they poured into the church by the dozen.

Many were callused and cracked from cold nights spent on the streets. Some were sore and infected. What they needed was some old-school -- we're talking centuries here -- Christian doctrine in action. So volunteers at Centenary United Methodist Church in Richmond got down on their knees and scrubbed.

The practice of foot-washing, rooted in the biblical account of what Jesus did for his disciples, has ebbed and flowed throughout church history, abandoned at various times for reasons of dogma or embarrassment. But in recent years it has grown in popularity as an act of submission, both at Easter season services and in many other settings.

Homeless shelters from Berkeley, Calif., to Atlanta to Virginia Beach have added foot-washing to their services for the poor. Men and women wash each other's feet in wedding ceremonies and marriage counseling. In Congress, a U.S. senator once washed the feet of an aide in a show of gratitude.

The action is as soul-wrenching and relevant in today's culture as ever, theologians say, especially in a place such as Washington, where a good dose of humility couldn't hurt.

Modern-day foot-washers, however, still must overcome age-old issues of awkwardness, hygiene and, occasionally, odor.

"There are a lot of things you don't think about at first, like the logistics," said Polly Chamberlain, 51, who began the foot-washing ministry in Richmond last year.

...

According to the Gospel of John, Jesus shocked his disciples at the Last Supper by getting up from the dinner table, wrapping a towel around his waist and washing their feet in a basin. "I have set you an example," he said, "that you should do as I have done for you."

Ever since, scholars have debated whether he meant it literally.

In the Catholic Church, the ritual fell out of favor until it was restored in 1955 by Pope Pius XII, who said it should be practiced on Maundy Thursday, three days before Easter. In most other Christian denominations, foot-washing was similarly sporadic and never achieved the sacred status of such rites as communion and baptism....

Except for mine.