Jesus (49 page)

Jesus gives Peter an opaque answer: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Scripture scholars suggest that this comment may relate to baptism, a practice that had already taken hold in the community for whom John wrote. If you are not cleansed from your sins, then you cannot be disciples.
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More to the point, Jesus seems to be telling Peter that service is a way his disciples can take part in him, in his ministry of total self-giving. Or perhaps it is a way of saying that to love other people you must first accept love—in whatever form it comes. And notice that Jesus calmly continues his symbolic action in the midst of confusion and doubt among the disciples. It does not trouble him that people don't understand his gift. They will.

Peter—confused, anguished, impetuous—leaps to the challenge. As it often is, it's all or nothing for the fisherman from Galilee. “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” he says. Jesus may have smiled inwardly, touched by Peter's enthusiasm: Anything for you, Lord! But Jesus gently tells him that this is not necessary: “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean.” The word used for “who has bathed” is
ho leloumenos
and implies a total immersion, perhaps another nod to baptism.

There is a magnificent rendition of this precise moment by the English Pre-Raphaelite artist Ford Madox Brown, who painted “Jesus Washing Peter's Feet” (1852–56). Jesus kneels on the floor, clad in a grasshopper-green robe, a dun-colored towel tightly gathered around his waist. He firmly grasps the right foot of Peter, who is seated higher than Jesus, head sunk onto his chest, looking intently at his master. Peter's left foot dangles in a basin of water. The look on Peter's face perfectly illustrates the Gospel: at once embarrassed, downcast, and uncomfortable. Behind them, at table, sit the disciples: one loosens the thongs of his sandals, readying for his washing; another peers over Peter to see what is going on; another holds his anguished face in his hands. Some disciples are easily seen; others recede into the gloom of the space. Brown painted several of his friends into the scene, adding to the tenderness of the moment.

What captivates me about this image is the force with which Jesus holds onto Peter's foot. This is not a merely
symbolic
washing; he takes a firm grip, vigorously wiping off the fisherman's dirty foot. Peter is clearly appalled by what Jesus is doing.

A preliminary version painted by Brown, still seen in an extant watercolor, depicts Jesus only partially clad, with a bare torso, wearing a loincloth, and with the towel tied around his waist. The display of the painting caused an outcry, and Brown later clothed his Jesus. Besides the usual Victorian proprieties, the idea of an utterly human Jesus washing feet still may have been too much for viewers to accept.

Once finished with the ablutions, Jesus clothes himself and resumes his place with the disciples. And now he explains things to them, in case there is any doubt. Rather than summarizing let me share what he says in John's Gospel in full:

May I ask you to read that last sentence again? Jesus asks them to move from knowledge to action. It takes the form of a command; Jesus is speaking as Teacher and Lord, from a position of authority. So the disciples are expected to heed his message: It's not enough to have knowledge of Christ, you must let it inform your life's decisions. Blessedness comes not only from words and thoughts, but also from deeds. Or as St. Ignatius Loyola wrote, “Love shows itself more in actions than in words.”

Whenever I hear this reading proclaimed on Holy Thursday, I never fail to think how different Christian churches would be if, in addition to our weekly celebrations of the Eucharist, we celebrated the Foot Washing. It may sound crazy, and it would be terribly complicated to arrange every Sunday—all those basins of water and towels and shoes and socks! But imagine the symbolism if every week the presider laid aside his vestments and got down on his hands and knees to scrub the feet of his parishioners. What a reminder it would be to all of us—priests included—that this is what Christ asked us to do in addition to the celebration of the Eucharist. After all, what he says about the Eucharist, “Do this in memory of me” at the Last Supper in the Synoptics, he also says about the Foot Washing in John: “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

Seen every Sunday, over and over, the washing of the feet might help us see how power is more intimately linked to service.

How different would our churches be if we modeled a ministry of humble service on Sundays—or at critical moments when forgiveness is demanded? At the beginning of the sexual-abuse crisis that rocked the Catholic Church, someone suggested to me that in addition to removing priests from ministry, holding bishops accountable, making restitution to victims, and implementing programs to prevent abuse from happening, a foot washing of victims might be a powerful symbol of humility. Several bishops did this, in fact, but more would have been better.

Early in Pope Francis's pontificate, when it was announced that he would spend Holy Thursday not in the great St. Peter's Basilica or the grand Basilica of St. John Lateran, as was the custom, but at a juvenile detention center, people responded with surprise and admiration. How striking it seemed that this pope, the first to take the name of Francis, the apostle of humility, was getting down on his hands and knees to minister to poor and troubled youth.

How striking yet how appropriate. A chord was struck in many people's hearts because they knew instinctively that it represented what Jesus meant when he asked us to do precisely these things—in memory of him.

J
ESUS
W
ASHES THE
D
ISCIPLES
' F
EET

John 13:1–17

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. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 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. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

C
HAPTER
20

Gethsemane

“He threw himself on the ground and prayed.”

A
FTER THE
F
OOT
W
ASHING
, says the Gospel of John, Jesus spoke at length to his disciples in what is usually called the Last Discourse. It is a passage of preaching that runs for several pages in most Bibles. The discourse runs so long that I often wonder if John is recording something that he heard firsthand (some scholars identify John as the “Beloved Disciple” who appears in the Gospel), if he is reporting the talk as it was passed down in oral tradition, or if he pulled together various talks given by Jesus for his purposes here. (The Synoptics do not include this material.)
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The discourse begins after Jesus acknowledges Judas as his betrayer, by dipping a piece of bread in wine and offering it to Judas. Judas departs, and as the Gospel says, “It was night.”
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Suddenly we are closer to death.

Jesus tells the probably terrified and alarmed disciples that he will soon be “glorified” (on the cross, as a symbol of his obedience, and at his resurrection) and offers them a new commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Over the next two chapters, he will refer to himself as the vine, with the disciples as the branches, and he will try to comfort them over his coming departure. How will they survive without him? First, the Father will send the “Advocate,” the Holy Spirit, to guide them. Second, they are to keep the commandments as he has taught them and thus follow his way. Finally, Jesus offers a prayer for all of them and all who believe in him.

Then it is time to move. John's Gospel has the disciples walk to the Kidron Valley, just outside Jerusalem, to “a garden.” Luke has them at the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Kidron Valley, and then at a place “a stone's throw” away. But Matthew and Mark are more specific. Jesus and his friends go to the Mount of Olives, then to “the place called Gethsemane.”

S
INCE THE TIME OF
Jesus, the location of the Garden of Gethsemane has been more or less fixed. In an aside, the Gospel of John tells us that a garden near the city was known to Judas, “because Jesus often met there with his disciples.” It may have been owned by a friend who permitted Jesus and his companions to meet there often.

Here was one advantage of visiting the Holy Land: seeing the landscape made it easy to read the Gospels and say, “That makes sense.” Gethsemane lies in the valley between Jerusalem and the very steep Mount of Olives. (
Gethsemane
means “oil press” in Hebrew and Aramaic, a natural function for a place on a hillside covered with olive trees.) On the other side of the Mount of Olives is Bethany, the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. During times of pilgrimage the population of Jerusalem tripled, so the cost of lodging would likely have been steep. Jesus and his disciples may have spent time in Bethany to be with their friends, but also out of economic necessity. So Gethsemane would have been a natural place for Jesus to rest and reflect.

One morning early in our stay, George and I set out on what he later called our “Death March,” which referred not to the fact that we walked the Via Dolorosa, the traditional path that Jesus used en route to his crucifixion, but that it was about ten million degrees outside, and our route took us up and down the hills of Jerusalem.

Walking out of the Lion's Gate at the eastern part of the Old City, we saw spread before us the vista that so many pilgrims have beheld over the centuries: the Mount of Olives, which stands between Jerusalem and Bethany. At the bottom of the hill was the Garden of Gethsemane, a green patch of land amid the dry landscape, marked by a large basilica with a multiple-domed roof. Slightly to the right was the Church of Dominus Flevit (“The Lord Wept”), where Christ is said to have paused and grieved over Jerusalem for its hard-heartedness.
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Farther to the right, in the Kidron Valley, are the Jewish cemeteries, which were in use during Jesus's time. Their location was determined by the Jewish belief that this is where God's judgment of the world would begin, based on passages in the prophets Joel and Zechariah.
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Every time Jesus passed this way, he would have been reminded of death. As he made his way out of the room of the Last Supper, he would have seen these tombs shining in the moonlight.

We tramped down a road and then climbed the sharp incline to the Basilica of Gethsemane. It's an ungainly building, constructed in 1924 by the Franciscans, who funded its construction with donations from around the world. Thus the official name, the Church of All Nations. The architect was Antonio Barluzzi, who also designed the Church of the Beatitudes by the Sea of Galilee. The long stone structure at Gethsemane is capped with twelve gray domes. Over the doorway is a colorful mosaic of Christ in the Garden, surrounded by lamenting men and women.

Inside is the Holy Stone on which Christ is said to have sweated “drops of blood,” though we were not allowed to touch it since there was a Mass in progress. Over the stone is a mosaic of Christ slumped in prayer atop the stone, under a deep blue background, the primary color used for the ceilings of the church: “It was night.”

The Church of All Nations (also known as the Church of the Agony or the Basilica of Gethsemane, depending on which map you consult) is the third church on this site. The first dated from the fourth century, commemorating the place where the early Christian community gathered to remember Christ at prayer in the Garden. During the twelfth century the Crusaders erected a “new” church on top of the original. A portion of the Byzantine floor is visible, and remnants of the Crusader church were incorporated into the current structure.

Thus the site seems authentic. Murphy-O'Connor, with his usual resistance to award a seal of 100 percent certainty, notes, “No one can be sure of the exact spot at which he prayed, but this limited area was certainly close to the natural route leading from the Temple to the summit of the Mount of Olives and the ridge leading to Bethany.”
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So, once again: if not here, then nearby.