I have a confession to make [remove move my shoes and socks] I have some pretty ugly feet. Yea, oh they are wide and wrinkly; this one had bunion surgery and I’m not sure what that toe is doing. Whoa . . . they’re just ugly. Actually, I don’t know too many people who have outstanding looking feet. And if any of you are blest to have a teenager in your home . . . you have the added feature of “teen-age smelly feet.” Golly.
Maybe some of you are blest with nice feet. You’d think that of all the body parts Jesus wanted to focus on, he could have picked something less embarrassing . . . for example, elbows. Why didn’t he instruct us to wash each other’s elbows? I could handle that.
But the fact is Jesus washed the disciples’ feet because that was a common practice of his day. You see, everyone wore sandals back then and the roads/paths were all dusty. Hence, feet were always dusty (and ugly) and a courtesy to extend toward a guest was to wash their feet when they came over to your house. However, it was never the head of the house who did the washing . . . it would be a slave or servant.
This day today has an alternative name. Not only do we call it Holy Thursday, but it is also known as Mandy Thursday. The word “mandy” comes from the Latin “mandatum” which means command. That’s where our word “mandate” comes from. So Jesus isn’t asking us to do this ritual, he is commanding us to do it. But it is not that we are to leave here and keep washing feet all day long. This is the ritual so that we understand what we are to do.
That command is to go serve one another. And it’s easy to go serve when the other person is appreciative and kind to us, but I believe our command is to go out into those ugly situations and serve. To go out of our comfort zone and be Christ . . . even to that jerk at the office who is never nice to you, or that neighbor who is still mad at you for that incident last year, or that mean girl in your class. Those are the ugly situations we are to go into.
And it is uglier than that . . . because it also includes people who keep begging for money and the criminal in prison and the family who doesn’t have a home.
And what do you know . . . our parish is hosting homeless people starting on Sunday and we still need people to stay overnight, bring a meal and drive. You can sign up at the back of Church after the service.
Remember last year, our good Pope Francis shocked us all by going to a juvenile prison and washing the feet of several women and even a Muslim? It was shocking because Popes usually stay within the safe confines of a Church and nicely dribble a little water over the clean feet of 12 priests who probably used Dr. Scholl’s foot odor spray. But Francis imitates what Jesus was all about . . . it is not so much the foot washing, but the act of getting out there (into the ugly situations) and rolling up your sleeves.
Pope Francis spoke to the inmates at that prison last year just before he washed their feet. He said:
Help one another: help one another always...
In this way, by helping one another, we will do some good.
Now we will perform this ceremony of washing feet, and let us think,
let each one of us think: “Am I really willing, willing to serve, to help others?”
Let us think about this, just this.
And let us think that this sign is a caress of Jesus, which Jesus gives,
because this is the real reason why Jesus came: to serve, to help us.