foot washing

Quick note: Our hearts and prayers are with those devastated by the massive earthquake in Haiti. Over the next few days, as aid organizations make public their plans for recovery, we will post them on this site.

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Washing someone’s feet is a Biblical act of servanthood – a visceral example of what real servanthood looks like and a model for how we should serve other people.

Of course our problem comes in when we stop with the idea of foot-washing as an example and fail to practice it as a model.

I have been part of a few foot-washing ceremonies. We would all take off our shoes, pick someone in the room and wash their feet. It was challenging to push past the awkwardness and touch someone else’s feet, and we were told that’s what servanthood looks like. However, pushing past the awkwardness is only the beginning of what servanthood looks like.

If we were really serious about serving one another in sacrificial ways, we wouldn’t need foot-washing ceremonies. They are facade’s at best.

In our culture we don’t wear sandals (like they did in Jesus time), we have sewage and animals live in different places that humans (so we’re not stepping in feces) and hygiene is (generally) a standard practiced by the people in our culture.

So what good is it to someone to wash their feet in the modern west?

None.

There are, however, needs all over the earth that desperately need to be met… and meeting those needs will take true sacrifice, true servanthood.

On top of that, there are also needs right where we are. If you gathered a group of people together now, someone would be in deep financial need. Someone else would be struggling with infertility. Anther with cancer. Another with an oppressive boss. And all of these needs could be met by the people in the room, all of these people served – if we were willing to sacrifice by living lives that wash people’s feet.

So maybe the church should stop literally washing feet and start washing the feet of the world.