#basinandtowel — Public Fediverse posts

Wet Feet

There is something almost comical about it at first. I took the dog to the park because I knew I would be away for pastors’ Bible study. The grass was wet. My sneakers got soaked. I went home, changed my socks, and thought I had solved the problem. Then on the hour drive I realized my feet were getting wet again, because of course the shoes themselves were still wet. So now, during Bible study, my feet have been wet. Damp. Cool. Probably getting more shriveled by the hour.

Yet somehow it feels fitting.

Not dramatic. Not grand. Just fitting.

I think of the phrase “getting my feet wet,” as though ministry, faith, and discipleship are things I ease into gradually, carefully, at a manageable depth. But some days it doesn’t feel like that. Some days it feels more like simply having wet feet and carrying on. Not preparation for service, not a metaphor about a faithful beginning, but the thing itself. Wet feet. A small discomfort that stays with me. A quiet bodily reminder that I am not moving through the day untouched.

And sitting here, I cannot help but think of Jesus washing feet.

Not the polished image of it. Not the sentimental church painting version. But the actual strangeness of it. Wet feet. Dirty feet. Vulnerable feet. Tired feet. The feet that carried dust, ache, story, and status. The Lord kneeling with basin and towel. The Most High God attending to what is lowest. Not avoiding the human mess, but stooping into it.

Maybe there is something right about reflecting on servant life while sitting in damp shoes.

Because service is rarely abstract. It is seldom dry and comfortable. It does not usually happen in pristine conditions, after everything has been neatly changed and arranged. Often it is inconvenient. Often it lingers. Often I think I have addressed the problem, only to discover the wetness has seeped through again. I change the socks, but the shoes are still soaked. I try to reset myself, but the deeper discomfort remains.

That, too, may be part of ministry.

I carry wetness with me. The sorrows of others. The unfinished conversations. The burdens that seep through. The humble tasks nobody notices. The little irritations that become, strangely, occasions of grace. And maybe part of following Jesus is not always finding a way to stay dry, but learning how to keep loving with wet feet.

Jesus washed feet not because feet are noble, but because they are ordinary. Necessary. Exposed. Human. He met his friends there, at ground level. And then he told them to do likewise.

So perhaps wet feet are not the worst thing.

Perhaps they are a reminder.

A reminder that I am not above the ground.
A reminder that discipleship is tactile.
A reminder that love kneels.
A reminder that service is not clean.
A reminder that holiness may sometimes smell like damp shoes and feel like wrinkled skin.

In some ways, it seems fitting to go through this day with wet feet.
Maybe, in some ways, it seems right to go through life that way too.

Not just getting my feet wet,
but having them wet—
as one who follows the Christ
who washed feet,
and who still seems to meet me there,
down low,
with basin,
with towel,
with love.

Maundy Night, in Fragments

It was night already—
and the room was close,
low-beamed, breath-warmed,
troubled by the nearness of departure.
The lamp did not so much shine
as shudder.

There are nights
that seem to know.

The basin waited.
The towel waited.
The water, in its shallow little vessel,
held a silence deeper than the sea.

And He—
O strange reversal!—
He whose hands had lifted dust to life,
whose fingers had written mercy
upon the infirm flesh of the world,
stooped.

Stooped.

I cannot loose myself
from that word.

For there are stoopings more terrible than thunder.
There are bendings low
that break the spine of pride
more surely than the sword breaks bone.

And one by one—
sandaled, ashamed, confused—
they drew near Him.
The feet of fishermen,
the feet of zealots,
the feet that had wandered,
the feet still crusted with the stale earth
of empire and fatigue.

And He washed them.

Not as a servant washes, perhaps—
hurriedly, dutifully, with half-averted eye—
but with that unbearable tenderness
which makes the beloved wish to flee.

For who can bear
to be known at the heel,
at the dustiest place,
at the place where the road clings?

Peter recoiled, of course—
dear violent Peter—
as men recoil from love
when it approaches too nearly
the wound.

“No—”

Ah, but all our souls are fashioned of that syllable.
No, not there.
No, not this filth.
No, not the part of me
that has walked where I ought not.

Yet still the water spoke
in its soft and ruinous language.

If I wash thee not—

And then the air itself seemed to splinter,
for one may resist majesty,
but to be excluded from such sorrowful intimacy—
that is a horror no disciple can endure.

So the feet were given.
So the heart, for a moment, trembled open.

And somewhere in the room
sat the other one.

He too had feet.
He too received bread.
He too was near enough
to hear the pulse in the Master’s throat,
to see the shadows gather
beneath His eyes
like birds before a storm.

How dreadful,
that one may sit so near the Holy
and yet prefer the kiss of silver.

Thirty pieces—
thin moons of metal,
cold as the underside of a grave-stone,
small little hosts of another kingdom.

I think they rang already
in the secret chambers of his mind.

The bread was broken.
No—more than broken.
Offered.
Which is the crueler word.

Take, eat—

And all the centuries leaned inward.

The cup passed.
Darkness trembled in it
like an omen,
like a red remembering,
like the heart’s own interior
made visible.

Drink ye all—

All.

Even now the word accuses me.

For the table was long,
and the shadows longer,
and love, longest of all,
stretching even toward betrayal,
even toward denial,
even toward scattering.

Outside, the city breathed
with the heavy lungs of feast and politics.
Inside, eternity had knelt upon the floor
and wrapped itself in linen.

What church can bear this memory?
What soul can keep it
without cracking?

The clink of cup.
The rustle of garment.
A hand withdrawing too quickly.
A glance no one could quite endure.
And beneath all things,
like a distant drumbeat under the earth:

going,
going,
going.

To the garden.
To the dark.
To the lanterns and the cudgels.
To the mouths of false witnesses.
To the rooster’s cry.
To the nails.
To the forsakenness immense and measureless.

Yet here—
here first—
before the torches,
before the thorns,
before the torn veil and the opened side—
here was the kingdom:

A basin.
A towel.
Bread in broken hands.
A cup not refused.
Love stooping lower
than any disciple could imagine,
lower perhaps than hell itself,
that it might fill even the lowest place
with the rumor of God.

And I, remembering it,
can scarcely speak except in shards.

A splash of water.
A morsel of bread.
A traitor’s mouth.
A beloved breast leaning near.
The night at the window, listening.
The floorboards aching under the tread of doom.
And Christ—
dear Christ—
moving among them still
with the calm of One
who has already entered death
and found it, too,
washable.

Then out they went.

Into olives.
Into moon-pallor.
Into that hour which still has not ended.

And the towel lay folded.
And the basin held
the last disturbed water.
And somewhere, perhaps,
one drop remained upon the floor—
bright, unnoticed,
like a tear
or like the first small glimmer
of the strange and terrible mercy
by which the world
shall yet be undone.