Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Bad Feet, Good Lord!” John 13:1-5, 12-15
“Ouch!” Too late, I sidestep the bench and heel hobble to the foot of the bed. I hoist my leg up and look at my toe. A bloody, purple blush balloons around the base of the nailbed. When probed, the nail wobbles ominously, back forth, up down, like an unmoored dinghy bobbing in an eddy. Duane pushes the bench back into place. He does not want to look at my toe, but I make him.
“Check it out,” I say, wobble wobbling the nail.
Overcoming revulsion, he musters what passes for concerned interest, looking at the toe, the nail, the foot. He shakes his head.
I’ve got bad feet. Imagine that said with the mix of frustration and disappointment that a not-very-patient dog owner might use to say, “Bad dog,” to the new puppy who has, yet again, soiled the fake Persian carpet in the Pastor’s Study. Bad feet! Bad feet!
I blame it on Nana. My maternal great grandmother had feet that we christened “Nana’s Beauties.” Shaped by years of hairdressing in Brooklyn, Nana’s Beauties were a hideous amalgam of hammer toes, bunions, and thick calluses that came to an unnatural point, as if still poured into the fashionable kitten-heeled pumps, adorned with black velvet bows, that she wore in the 1920s. As a small child, I watched those feet with uncomfortable fear and fascination, as if the Beauties might, in any moment, become cognizant of my attention and demand to be touched, or even worse, rubbed. Avert thine eyes!
My Beauties might rival Nana’s. Bunions, bunion-ettes, seed corns, tendonitis, occasional plantar fasciitis, and a few curiously thickened nails that my podiatrist assures me are NOT fungal but symptomatic of feet that regularly take a beating on roadways and trails. Beyond the genetics of low arches and skinny heels, I earned my Beauties, not while flashing a sassy flapper smile and shaping the crimped waves and swingy bobs that Nana crafted at the Flatbush Beauty Emporium, but rather while logging miles, miles, and more miles of walks and hikes in the Adirondacks and beyond. And, of course, with the occasional catastrophically stubbed toe. The nail would blacken, work its way loose, and cast me off one morning to escape down the shower drain.
There’s money to be made in foot beauty. [1] Indeed, those with lovely feet can capitalize on them. Foot models, born with a perfect size six and ideal squoval nails can earn six figures by donning shoes or smearing on pharmaceuticals while the camera clicks. A pedicure, with toenails trimmed and filed, calluses softened, and polish artfully applied, can set you back $60. And if you want your feet to be beautifully and fashionably clad, a pair of smoky blue, patent leather Jimmy Choo mules with a crystal strap will cost $1,095.
But we with Beauties learn early that ours is not the world of nail salons and high fashion footwear. It’s never a good feeling when your nail tech calls in a consultant to determine the best way to shave the callosity on your heels. We hide our thorny feet within thick athletic socks in the girl’s locker room. We look for pool shoes that hide our deformity. In our youth, we don’t boogie barefoot on the frat house lawn. Later in life, we won’t parade our naked dogs in the health club sauna. Our feet have their own costs: a $45 co-pay at the podiatrist; $5,560 for a bunionectomy that may or may not help; $200 for your Hoka CarbonX3 runners. There are other costs, like the shame we feel at the snicker of fellow campers on the beach at Silver Bay.
Even the biblical authors seemed to think that feet were an appropriate metaphor for that which is illicit, embarrassing, or must be hidden away. When I translated the Book of Ruth from Hebrew to English, my professor Brenda Shaver, in her edgy shicksa-turned-rabbi perkiness, told me with a wink that when Ruth slipped into the granary to spend the night with Boaz, the Hebrew text may say that she uncovered his feet, but she was actually intent on uncovering something else, due north and much more likely to get the attention of the sleeping patriarch. If Ruth had lifted the blanket and seen that Boaz’s feet rivaled Nana’s Beauties—or mine, there might never have been an Obed, Jesse, or David. Maybe no Jesus.
I bet Jesus had Beauties. The man walked a lot. He walked along the Via Maritima from the black basalt jetty at Capernaum up to the rabbit warren of bureaucratic offices at Caesarea Philippi. He walked from the radium-infused Roman baths of Tiberias down the increasingly arid Jordan Valley to the palm-treed oasis of Jericho. He climbed the red eroded hills of the Judean Wilderness and walked the dangerous, narrow path through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He walked the Via Dolorosa. Jesus didn’t have the benefit of my Keen trail shoes or my real leather, European-made hiking boots. He did it in sandals, the first century kind, not much more than a slab of foot-shaped leather, held on with straps and ties. I bet Jesus had calluses, corns, nicks, scars, and soles made thick by walking. From time to time, he, too, may have been missing a toenail or two. I’m sure the feet of his disciples were no better, especially the fishermen, who spent half their time barefoot, wading in water or sitting in the slime left behind in the bottom of the boat by the dragnet. Jesus, my brother, of the bad, bad feet.
The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) tell us that on the night of his arrest, Jesus shared a final Passover meal with his friends and instituted a tradition, a shared meal of bread and wine in remembrance of him. John remembers differently. According to John, in the last meal that Jesus shared with his disciples, he rose from the table, took off his outer robe, wrapped an apron around his waist, and knelt at his friends’ feet to do the work of the most menial servant in the household. Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, all of them, even those of Judas, who was already counting the silver coins that would soon grease his palm. I like to think that Jesus washed the feet of their wives and children, too.
One by one, Jesus cradled the disciples’ feet. He held their hammer toes and bunionettes, their fallen arches, plantar warts, and ingrown toenails. He poured out water to wash away the grime accrued in a long day of walking on cobbles and unpaved paths in an arid land where dust lifts and swirls with every step. After the washing, he dried their feet, shrouding them in the towel, pressing, rubbing, squeezing, letting go.
John saw this foot washing, and not the Lord’s Supper, as the rite that Jesus used to call us into a community of people committed to his way. Jesus told the twelve, “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Faithful people have long heard in Jesus’ words the calling to a life of humble service, of falling to our knees in prayer and rising to bless others with simple acts of self-giving love. We help out at the Food Pantry or roll up our sleeves at the Community Garden. We clean apartments in public housing or fly off to Malawi to teach kids to read.
But what if Jesus wants more?
In holding those feet, in embracing that which society deems unworthy, unlovely, and unclean in us, Jesus sets another sort of example. It’s an example that we with Beauties can perhaps most fully appreciate. Jesus chooses to be lovingly present to that which we—and others—little love about ourselves. He does so patiently, insistently, relentlessly, without judgment, comment, or snark. It’s an act of inclusion and acceptance that humbles and heals.
It’s an act that also inspires, calling us to hold for one another all that we fear is ugly and unlovable: our misshapen feet and scaley psoriatic skin, our receding hairlines and jiggly bellies, our bad grades and lack of athleticism, our misspent youth and crabby age, our failed marriages and poor parenting, our fragile mental health and compulsive addictions. In truly following Jesus, we could find the humility to gently hold and simply care, to cherish and even love, that which others have learned to hate in themselves. We could choose to move past discomfort, judgment, and even revulsion to love. Are you with me?
The last Christmas that Nana came to our house, before she broke her hip and moved to the nursing home, was a snowy one. A big storm dumped two feet of snow, so heavy and wet that my grandparents couldn’t navigate our street with their big Buick. In those days before SUVs and cell phones, they parked at the top of the hill, a mile away, and everyone got out to walk, even Nana, who, true to form, had worn completely unsuitable shoes that were soaked by the time she reached our front door. When the doorbell rang, we welcomed everyone with hugs and great rejoicing, but it was my Grandmommie White, a retired nurse and Presbyterian Deaconess, who did the most fitting thing.
“Here, Betty,” she said to my Nana, taking her by the elbow and easing her into a chair.
Then she removed Nana’s soggy shoes and washed her beautiful feet. Amen.
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This message is part of a longer essay that I worked on this past week during my DMin residency for Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s Creative Writing and Public Theology Program.
[1] The Egyptian foot, with the big toe longer than the others, is considered the most beautiful foot shape, followed by the Roman foot (big toe and next two toes of equal length). The least appealing foot shape is purported to be the Greek, with the second toe longer than the first. The only possible advantage of the Egyptian foot is that it is less likely to suffer from ingrown toenails.
John 13:1-5, 12-15
Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 The devil had already decided that Judas son of Simon Iscariot would betray Jesus. And during supper 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4 got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 12 After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had reclined again, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am. 14 So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.