Liturgies for Lent: The Upper Room

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.  On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
-Arundhati Roy

Image by Whitney Leigh Carlson. This image is from a series of Holy Week Art cards for sale here.

Scripture for reflection

"Jesus knew that the night before Passover would be his last night on earth before leaving this world to return to the Father’s side. All throughout his time with his disciples, Jesus had demonstrated a deep and tender love for them. And now he longed to show them the full measure of his love.  Before their evening meal had begun, the accuser had already planted betrayal into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.

Now Jesus was fully aware that the Father had placed all things under his control, for he had come from God and was about to go back to be with him. So he got up from the meal and took off his outer robe, and took a towel and wrapped it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ dirty feet and dry them with his towel.

But when Jesus got to Simon Peter, he objected and said, “I can’t let you wash my dirty feet—you’re my Lord!”

Jesus replied, “You don’t understand yet the meaning of what I’m doing, but soon it will be clear to you.”

Peter looked at Jesus and said, “You’ll never wash my dirty feet—never!”

“But Peter, if you don’t allow me to wash your feet,” Jesus responded, “then you will not be able to share life with me.”

So Peter said, “Lord, in that case, don’t just wash my feet, wash my hands and my head too!”

Jesus said to him, “You are already clean. You’ve been washed completely and you just need your feet to be cleansed—but that can’t be said of all of you.” For Jesus knew which one was about to betray him, and that’s why he told them that not all of them were clean.

After washing their feet, he put his robe on and returned to his place at the table. “Do you understand what I just did?” Jesus said. “You’ve called me your teacher and lord, and you’re right, for that’s who I am. So if I’m your teacher and lord and have just washed your dirty feet, then you should follow the example that I’ve set for you and wash one another’s dirty feet. Now do for each other what I have just done for you."
-John 13: 1-15 (The Passion)

"Blessed are the spiritually poor—the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
Blessed are those who mourn—they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek and gentle—they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness—they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful—they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are those who are pure in heart—they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers—they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness—the kingdom of heaven is theirs."
-Matthew 5: 3-10

Meditation: The Upper Room

What is poverty?

I was asked this question in a job interview once and there are a million ways to answer.  I said, poverty is perpetual hopelessness, stuckness, a dream deferred.  People who live in survival mode have little capacity to think about tomorrow, or believe that it might be brighter than today.

We live in a culture of more; we love upward mobility, promotions, more pay, more power, more comfort, more influence.  Many of us have no need for a God who bends low, a God of the counter-cultural, the counter-intuitive.  The view from the top is great so long as you don't hear the cries of those crushed below.  Because the ladder I've climbed so easily has people pinned down beneath.  We've created a system where the ones on the top wonder why people living in poverty can't get to the first wrung.  Why they can't reach the bootstraps that were stolen.  One that blames them for the choices made in captivity, when we refuse to see the ladder and whose back it is built on.  The cross, like Jesus' life, is a joining with everyone, but particularly the overlooked and excluded ones.

Nearly a decade ago now, I spent a summer in India and Nepal, between my junior and senior year of college.  I wish I had taken a crash course of this culture's relationship to feet before my own touched the soil of New Delhi.  In a particularly long church meeting, my legs were sore from being curled up, sitting pretzel style on the floor, in an oppressively hot and overcrowded room.  I extended my feet out, apparently pointed at a leader, an elder of the faith community, and I came to find out, he was very upset with me.  In many places throughout East Asia, the head is the most sacred part of the body, the feet, the lowliest, the basest.  In effect, I was saying: You are as base as my feet.  Interestingly enough, in India, the young greet their elders by touching their feet, a sign of respect, of honor.

Which was why our team attracted a crowd one day, as we walked through the Red Light District.  It is not uncommon to share the road with holy cows, ones that will bulldoze you right down if you're in their way (this has totally happened to me).  And so, it is also commonplace to share the street with their dung.  As we were walking, my friend Suzy noticed a barefoot little boy step in a pile of it.  Without thinking, she took her water bottle and started cleaning the boy's feet.  A crowd gathered in disbelief, watching intently, astonished.  An elder touching the feet of a child.  The wealthy and poor becoming one, in embodied mutuality.  An image of the Kingdom of God.

Rick Love, in his book Peace Catalysts writes, "The kingdom of God has been launched on earth.  There is no disease in heaven. So we work toward the elimination of disease here on earth through hospitals and medicine.  There is no slavery in heaven, so we work to abolish it on earth.  There is no war or injustice in heaven, so we work toward shalom in the here and now."  These inklings and whisperings on earth as in heaven should confound and delight us together.

My college professor once said in her lecture: "If your version of the Kingdom of God smells like stale coffee in a church basement, you need a new vision."  This new vision is described beautifully in the Beatitudes, where the meek and the mourners, the merciful and the peacemakers, the poor in spirit and pure in heart, bring about the Kingdom within and around us, the not-yet crackling into the right-now.  We are called to be salt, like a preservative slowing down the forces of injustice and corruption, the patterns of this world.  And like peppering, like sprinkling, "bringing out the God-flavors of this earth," the fruit of love, joy, peace, of daring to believe that shalom will have the last word.

The Kingdom of God is upside down and backward; the last are first, the first, last, the humble lifted, the proud, humbled, debts are cancelled, strangers welcomed, enemies loved.  It is a shelter wherein the ostracized are humanized, the untouchables touched, the rich sent away empty, the widow giving everything, justice rolling down like waters.  A King washing the feet of his disciples.  The bread cracked open and wine poured out, more seats pulled up to tables in the wilderness, that we might feast together.

“The genius of Communion, of bread and wine, is that bread is the food of the poor and wine the drink of the privileged, and that every time we see those two together, we are reminded of what we share instead of what divides us," Shauna Niequist writes in Bread and Wine.

Maybe foot-washing is just a metaphor for all the ordinary, sacred work we create in this bad news world.  The stories we tell, the gardens we plant, the poems we write, the wells we dig, the protests and prayers we speak, the nurses who sing to their patients dying of COVID, the landlords paying the rent of the laid-off, the prisoners being released, the year of Jubilee, the blind with now opened eyes, the glorious and restorative things made in our dust-to-dust life.  Oil overflowing in abundance.  Feet that touch holy ground.  A ladder toppling down.  All of it lasting.  All of it mattering.

Whose feet are we invited to wash?