Reflection
You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am.
-John 13:13-15
If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet.
I have given you a model to follow,
so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”
Our parish on the eastside of Detroit was smaller and poorer than most Catholic churches, having recently lost more than half of our members to the suburbs just north of us. So, when a parishioner named Joe came to Parish Council and challenged us to host 100 men, women, and children in our grade school gym during Holy Week, he was met with skepticism. Joe explained that Detroit’s rotating shelter had a hard time finding a community to house and feed people experiencing homelessness in the week before Easter, and these people would end up on the streets. After discussion, prayer, and much trepidation, we said “Yes”.
To stretch funds, we asked other churches to provide the evening meal. Then Joe came up with another challenge that would better involve our own parishioners: why not have our parish’s traditional Holy Thursday potluck dinner in the gym with our guests? And we did. After we shared a potluck dinner, most of our guests also accepted our invitation to participate in the Holy Thursday liturgy in church.
Instead of designating a few people beforehand, our pastor opened up feet washing to everyone. Many of our guests came and sat on the chairs in front of the altar alongside our parishioners. After their feet had been washed, they insisted on washing the feet of those who had washed their feet, including the pastor and myself, the pastoral associate. We had to get more water and more towels! We were “washing one another’s feet” as Jesus taught us to do.
In today’s Gospel, Peter likely spoke for all the disciples when he objected to Jesus getting down on the floor and using his hands to wash each person’s feet.
In those days, washing feet was the work of slaves, and sometimes the work of women and children, but never the work of grown, free men. Peter thought Jesus was demeaning himself. In fact, he was humbling himself, something all servants need to do.
For our parish, this intense experience of service during Holy Week was our turning point, when we humbly re-dedicated ourselves to service not only with each other, but with our neighborhood. We worried less about our own survival and our ability to serve.
And for many years after that, we welcomed our guests from the rotating shelter on Palm Sunday afternoon, and bid them farewell after a big breakfast on Easter Sunday morning.
And on Holy Thursday, we washed each other’s feet.
What a beautiful parish family. Would that all of us would do this as Jesus asked…