Lord, do you wash my feet?

Having one’s feet washed by one’s parish priest is a cold and ticklish experience.  At the appointed moment the twelve men, having been sought out quietly before Mass, make their way into the Sacristy in a dignified fashion.  There they lurch and stumble around in a very undignified fashion, stifling cries of woe, tugging helplessly at their shoes and socks.  Nevertheless, great care is taken to dissimulate any reaction to the freezing wooden floor.  A reminder is given that both shoes and socks should be removed, since “this is the Washing of the Feet, not the Washing of the Foot’.  Then the signal is made to go back into church and find a place on the chairs arranged before the altar.  The floor of the sanctuary is marble, and this really is freezing.  Again, none must falter: the disciples might as well be walking around in their bedroom-slippers.  Then the priests (my parish has three) get slowly down on their knees and, assisted by a pair of altar-servers each, pour surprisingly warm water over their parishioners’ feet, and dry them with a white stole.  The ticklish set their jaws against giggles.

It all seems rather comical.  To Simon Peter, too, it seemed rather comical.  I think there is a laugh of disbelief in the words “Lord, do you wash my feet?”.  Likewise, when Our Lord, insisting on washing Peter’s feet, tells him that “If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me,” the answer (“Then, Lord, not only my feet but my hands and my head as well!”) reveals both Peter’s characteristically impulsive missing of the point (which is always heartening for us), and also his strong suspicion that, as his feet are being washed, his leg is being pulled.

It is true that the comic often relies on ordinary things being turned upside-down, but if the supposed comedian’s face is straight as he turns to his disciples and asks them: 

Do you understand what I have done to you?  You call me Master and Lord, and rightly: so I am.  If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet.  I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.

John 13:12–15

then here is a funny kind of comedian indeed, particularly if He is also God.  Well might the twenty-first century parishioner think it ridiculous for his priest to kneel down and wash his feet.   Two thousand years later the joke is not old yet: it is both indeed very ridiculous and also a serious duty, and so yet another resounding Christian paradox.

There is also something to be said about the aiming of this lesson squarely at men in particular.  I cannot quite grasp it, still less articulate it, but two thoughts occur to me.  The first is that it is more of an effort than might be imagined for men, who have always stridden around priding themselves on their strength, to let someone else serve them in this way.  The second is the particular manner of this small vocation, to have one’s feet washed on Maundy Thursday.  It may be for men only, but is not so in a jealous or triumphant way, but in the same mysterious, and mysteriously correct way that some things are for women only.  The twelve men have been taught a lesson this evening about manhood: not merely about manly forbearance of chilly tiles, but about the heeding of callings.