Before the Festival of Passover, Jesus knew that his time had come to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them fully. 2 Jesus and his disciples were sharing the evening meal. The devil had already provoked Judas, Simon Iscariot’s son, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew the Father had given everything into his hands and that he had come from God and was returning to God. 4 So he got up from the table and took off his robes. Picking up a linen towel, he tied it around his waist. 5 Then he poured water into a washbasin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he was wearing. 6 When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7 Jesus replied, “You don’t understand what I’m doing now, but you will understand later.” 8 “No!” Peter said. “You will never wash my feet!” Jesus replied, “Unless I wash you, you won’t have a place with me.” 9 Simon Peter said, “Lord, not only my feet but also my hands and my head!” (Common English Bible)
“Reconnecting with a
Loving God: Healing Spiritual Wounds,” Week Six
Christopher
Reeve was one of my childhood idols. His quartet of Superman movies were before
my time, but what that meant was that I came of age with him simply being known
as Superman, not Dean Cain or Brandon Routh or Henry Cavill or any of the other
actors to play that role. Christopher Reeve was, and will always be, Superman
to me, and when he passed away thirteen years ago, I was genuinely crushed.
Reeve’s
Superman status made—not just for me, but for so many people—his horse riding
accident that severed his C1/C2 vertebra and left him a quadriplegic so
traumatic to witness. It communicated to us that the Man of Steel was still,
well, a man. Flesh and blood.
Reeve
wrote extensively about his rehabilitation process from that accident in his
autobiography Still Me, which is a
profound reflection on the nature, limitations, and value of our bodies. He
writes so poignantly of having to accept care that to us would be an outright
invasion, a complete stripping of dignity, but which also kept him alive. He wrote:
The process of undressing
me…I have finally come to accept; I used to have to control my anger with
myself for having ended up in this situation. Often I listen to music or watch
TV so I don’t have to think about being taken care of like a baby…
Unfortunately, this (stretching and flexing
regimen) is immediately followed by one
of the low points: the bowel program. I often joke that it’s one of my favorite
shows, right after NYPD Blue and Law
and Order.
I’m turned on my side,
and the aide pushes on my stomach with his fist in order to force stool down
through the intestines and out onto plastic sheets placed underneath me…Again,
this is a time when I let my mind drift far away. The nurses and aides are
always extremely professional, but all of us recognize what a personal invasion
this is, and what an indignity. Sometimes it can take nearly an hour to
complete the bowel program, and it seems like an eternity. When I’m unable to
detach myself mentally, I still can’t help agonizing over the accident and the
twist of fate that caused me to end up this way.
What
an uncomfortable thing to think about, that amount of intimacy. Yet we must, to
reclaim our bodies from the shame we hang upon them as easily as we do our
clothes and fashion.
This
is a sermon series for the autumn season of our church calendar that takes us
all the way to Advent. Earlier this year, my friend and role model, the pastor
and author Carol Howard Merritt, released her latest book, entitled Healing Spiritual Wounds. She wrote it
from a place of vulnerability that I rarely see from any writer—Christian or
otherwise—in print, and she did so, I think, in order to give her readers
permission to be vulnerable to the singular reality that sometimes, church
hurts.
If
that sounds like a depressing premise upon which to base a book, much less a
sermon series, it ought not be. As Jesus says in John 8, you shall know the
truth, and the truth shall set you free. The truth is that the church can do a
better job caring for, and ministering to, each other and the vulnerable, yet
so often, we choose not to. Acknowledging that fact ought to be liberating to
us because it means that a) we do not have to pretend otherwise, and b) we can
actually get down to the sacred work of doing church better than we have
before. Which is what we should have been doing from the off—always working on
being better and doing church together.
We
began this series with a passage from Carol’s first chapter, “A Tree Grows in
My Bedroom,” and then we heard passages from the following chapters: “Finding
Shalom,” “Healing Our Image of God,” “Recovering Our Emotions,” and “Redeeming
Our Broken Selves.” Today, we come to the sixth chapter of the book,
“Reclaiming Our Bodies,” in which Carol conveys what might be the most moving
story for me a book that is filled with them—a story of her mother driving her
to the home of their pastor and his wife after it was discovered that the
pastor had been having an affair:
When we pulled up to the
driveway, the house was dark. My determined mom still gathered the basin and
towels and rang the doorbell. I didn’t remember being let in. I just remembered
entering and seeing Margaret, our pastor’s wife, sitting on a chair in her
living room. She remained motionless in the dark room, in her beautiful home,
staring at her spotless, plush white carpet, breathing deeply.
My mother took the basin,
walked into her friend’s kitchen, and filled it with warm water. She carried it
to Margaret’s feet. Taking off Margaret’s shoes, she cradled her soles as if
they were the most precious thing in the world. Without a word, mom put them in
the water and washed them.
Margaret began to cry,
and it didn’t take long before the tears smeared all of our faces. Mom took
Margaret’s feet out and dried them on the soft towels. Throughout the entire
ritual, we didn’t talk much, but we know what was being said. As a teenager, I
understood the depth of it. Margaret was about to face some of the worst public
betrayal as people began to pick apart the indiscretions of her husband.
Meeting
someone where they are at, in need of tremendously intimate care just in order
to survive, and being able to provide that care and friendship even when it
would otherwise make you—or anyone else who happened to be there—uncomfortable?
That’s called ministry. And it is what reclaiming these broken-but-beautiful
vessels that God has placed us into looks like.
Jesus
is about to die, but before He does, He takes on a menial task ordinarily
reserved for the lowest of household slaves: washing His disciples’ feet. It
was reserved for the lowest of the slaves because streets and roads didn’t have
our modern-day drainage and sewage infrastructure, and so were typically
absolutely filthy.
To
perform that task is to demonstrate how low your status really is in the world,
which is what Jesus’s ultimate message is—as I have served you (as a slave) so
too should we serve one another. That is how radical Christian servitude and
humility is meant to be. It also explains the vehement nature of Peter’s
initial reaction to the news that his Savior would be washing his feet—he categorically
refuses on spec.
Jesus
scolds Peter for his resistance, and Peter not only acquiesces to having his
feet washed, but he insists that Jesus wash his hands and head as well. There
is a reason why I end the story on this particular exclamation from Peter—he is
implying that the rest of him is as dirty as his feet, and that all of him is
in just as much a need to be washed by Christ as the filthiest part of him.
It
is a profoundly humiliating view that Peter takes of his own flesh, which
remains in character for him; after all, when he first encounters Jesus, he
pleads with the Lord, “Away from me, for I am a sinful man.” Peter, as was
common in that time, thought his sinfulness could be passed on or be
contagious, as it was seen (and still is, even if at times unconsciously) as
the reason for misfortune.
That
is a dramatic shift for Peter, then, to go from pleading with Jesus to move
away from him to pleading with Jesus to wash every extremity of his body, in a
way that Peter is likely fully accustomed to doing himself. After all, as a
fisherman, he almost certainly would have been unable to afford a household
slave to do that job for him.
But
now, Jesus approaches him with the sort of humility that shocks Peter—and, if
we are completely honest with ourselves, shocks us as well. I know it surprised
me to read this particular story from Carol about her mother washing the feet
of their pastor’s wife, just as it surprised me to hear that for his first ever
Maundy Thursday service as pope, Francis chose to wash the feet not of priests,
but of juvenile prison inmates, including women—which had never been done
before.
Yet
there is an additional dimension to Carol’s story, that comes from Christopher
Reeve’s story. Him requiring other people to help him produce normal bodily
functions is terribly undignified, but so too is having to see people produce
the same excrement, but spiritually, about your marriage.
That
is why Carol’s story matters so much. As a cheated-upon woman braces herself
for the emotional *crap* that is about to overwhelm her marriage, a marriage
that plenty of judgmental people would unhelpfully describe as polluted, dirty,
or filthy, Carol’s mother takes the time and care to send the exact opposite
message: you are still beautiful. You are still valued. You still matter.
Imagine
all of the victims of Harvey Weinstein, or Bill Cosby before him, or Woody
Allen, or Mel Gibson, or, frankly, our own president—any number of men who were
and are insulated from the repercussions of their violent actions towards women
because of who they are. Their victims were denigrated, disbelieved, and cast
aside. The physical violence was compounded by spiritual violence.
When
I came out two years ago about my own episode of being sexual abused as a
child, I was fortunate enough to be believed, loved, and supported. How many
people are not? How many people are violated spiritually as well as physically
in the wake of their abuse? What was done to this pastor’s wife’s marriage was
an act of spiritual violence. Yet here, she is told that she was still loved.
Do
we dare send the same message to victims of such violence today? Do we dare to
wash their feet in response to their stories of abuse and assault and
harassment of their bodies?
If
we are to reclaim our own bodies—and, in so doing, reclaim the body of Christ,
the same Christ who washed Peter’s body and would just as surely wash our
own—that has to be our starting point.
And
with each pour of water, each wipe of the washcloth, and the warmth of each dry
towel, may we communicate to ourselves that we do indeed still matter—to one
another and to God.
Before
that singular, monumental truth, all other truths pale in comparison.
May it be
so. Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
Longview, Washington
October
22, 2017
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