In yesterday’s first reading (Acts 12:24-13:5) we read how Saul and Barnabas were “set apart” by the Holy Spirit and sent from Antioch on their first missionary journey. Today, we continue reading (Acts 13:13-25).
Paul stands up in the Temple and begins to remind the congregation of their shared history. He reminds them of the many years they suffered together and triumphed together. Paul reminds them that God, who now has come in the form of man, took care to organize them as a people by providing wise judges and outstanding Kings. Paul reminds the congregation, gathered in the Temple, about David and David’s special relationship with God. “I have found in David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart.” A man after God’s own heart! What an astonishing statement: David somehow was “one with” the heart of God! A man who committed adultery and murdered his mistress’ husband by proxy. Even so he was chosen by God for great things. And here stands Paul, himself a murderer by proxy of Christians, also is chosen by God for great things. Paul continues, “From this man’s descendants, God, according to his promise, has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus.”
Our Psalm today (Psalm 89), in turn, reveals a promise made by God to David: “My faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him.” Faithfulness and mercy—two of the most important words in all of scripture, words that describe the very heart of God. In faithfulness God pledges: I will never let you down. In mercy God pledges: I will love you no matter what happens. God pledges to send his own Son to be our savior.
Finally, the Gospel reading today (John 13:16-20) encourages us to find God in other people and in our life experiences. We can even find Him in, of all things, feet. Underappreciated, overlooked. In a time when travel was almost exclusively on foot, a sign of respect and reverence and of hospitality, was to wash the feet of visitors. Even today, washing feet or rubbing them with lotion is a sign of care and concern. Ask anyone who has spent time in a hospital or a nursing home.
As we age our feet show the travails of our lives. Infants have innocent and almost perfectly formed feet, yet they also are soft and weak, incapable of holding their weight or transporting them. Children, teens, young adults have feet that become progressively stronger, more capable and supportive, more able to move in a willed direction. Before too long, these feet also start to develop signs of age, signs of toughening, of callousing and callousness to the forces around them. Think of how calloused the feet of Jesus and His disciples must have been – tough as leather, reflecting the many miles that they had traveled. Even later in life feet show more of the stress that they have received – bunions, and aches, and pains that only increase as they are used.
Jesus, by His act of washing the calloused, dirty, tough soles of the disciples’ feet, clearly sends the message that, as He reminds them and us, that ultimately the master is here to serve the disciple. I think there are other possible messages here, though. Jesus chose to humble Himself by washing feet, the means by which people move in a willed direction. We can ask ourselves, in what willed direction are we moving? What is the direction we feel called by God to follow? Is Jesus reminding us to ask if our feet are moving us closer to God? And what of our feet themselves? Are they innocent like the infant’s or calloused and world-weary like the aged man? Doesn’t Jesus rejuvenate our feet, and our spirits, by His washing and refreshing, His message of hope and salvation? And can we accept His washing, as did the apostles, by surrendering to the act of charity that He provides with a grateful heart? When we are aware of Jesus washing our feet, do our eyes shine with the gratitude of an old woman whose feet are caressed and rubbed with lotion?
My prayer today is that I can be conscious of Jesus being there to wash my world-weary feet as I journey through life, and that in my consciousness I can be grateful for His sacrifice for me.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!