Maundy Thursday is the day when we remember Jesus’s last supper with his disciples. The name “maundy” comes from the same root word as “mandate,” and it refers to Jesus’s command to love others, exhibited through his washing the disciples’ feet and teaching them the communion meal. Many Christians still honor Maundy Thursday by washing one another’s feet, and while I love the thought behind this ritual, I really struggle with how we do it nowadays. When Jesus washed feet, his disciples had been trudging around Jerusalem’s dusty, dungy streets for five days, so cleaning their feet took incredible dedication and humility. These conditions don’t exactly translate to most modern church settings. In fact, if anything, such public displays of service can feel more like pride.

Back in divinity school, I attended a foot washing at a fairly well off church (please note: not a church where I was on staff), and the whole thing completely turned me off to the ritual. Well dressed people walked to the front of the room, popped off their shoes, and poured a little trickle of water from a glass pitcher onto each other’s feet before padding them dry with brand new, perfectly white towels. As Grandmama Chappell once remarked, it was “the most ostentatious display of humility I’ve ever seen.” Given the original context for Jesus’s foot washing, this modern version felt comical at best and sacrilegious at worst. I walked away from it with one thought: “Wow, I would have to be really full of myself to wash someone else’s feet.” That was five years ago.

Yesterday, I went to Church Without Walls’ Maundy Thursday foot washing— the first one I’ve attended since that previous bad experience. Many members of Church Without Walls are homeless, and foot health is a big issue. Our friends walk most places with inadequate shoes, and many don’t have access to necessary health and sanitation resources, so taking the time to address toenails, blisters, and calluses is a big deal. Still, I had that previous experience with foot washing rattling around in my mind, so I did my best to serve in every other way possible: I greeted at the gate, I passed out water bottles, I carried clean water for those washing feet, etc. But then Mother Beth called me over. I couldn’t avoid it; it was my turn to wash.

There was a young woman with badly blistered feet, so I draped a towel over my shoulder and started scrubbing. This was totally unlike my previous foot washing experience. There was no kneeling in front of everyone; we sat in chairs opposite one another. There was no sanctimonious silence, no melodramatic piano melodies to set the mood; we talked and shared stories as I soaped and scrubbed and rinsed and rubbed. It wasn’t a lavish display of humility; it was just meeting a need.

When she put her shoes back on and departed, another of our members sat down across from me and said two words that caught me off guard: “Your turn.” As directed, I slid my feet out of my flip-flops and experienced for myself the care I had just given, after which I washed the feet of the man who had just washed mine. There was something different about that reciprocal washing. Both of us had performed the service, so neither of us could take pride in the act. Maybe this is how to do foot washing right. Don’t just wash feet; let someone wash yours. Don’t kneel for a crowd to see; just serve someone, and let them serve you in return. This is the spirit with which we ought to approach Maundy Thursday and every other day of the year:

Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you…. A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:14-15, 34-35)