I imagine that most of you are familiar with the popular show, “Call the Midwife” which is based on the real-life memoirs of a young nurse working with Anglican Sisters in the early 1950’s. Together they make every effort to bring health care to the poorest of the poor in London’s East End. Traversing their neighborhoods to make home visits to those in need, just as home health and hospice caregivers do every day.
In an especially moving episode midwife Jenny and Sister Evangeline attempt to help an elderly destitute woman, who is covered with fleas and open skin sores, and is behaving miserably towards everyone. The nurses gently loosen her filthy boots that are stuck to her feet. As they delicately wash this creature – a human no one wants to be near, let alone touch and with extreme tenderness, they bath her and wash her blackened feet, they apply soothing lotions, and, through their tender, welcoming care, help her to be re-born into humankind.
This intimate and loving scene of Sister Evangeline and Jenny washing the feet of one the least of these, one who is lost and broken, we are reminded of the One who would come to wash the disciples’ feet, our feet.
“On the night that Jesus takes up his basin and towel and begins to wash the feet of his disciples, Simon Peter learns how difficult and how wondrous it can be to “take a blessing,” and he resists it. He resists, then allows himself to receive, the grace of it dripping from his toes.” (Jan Richardson)
“This blessing will indeed require something of Simon Peter and of his fellow disciples. When Jesus has finished the washing, put on his robe, put away his towel and bowl, he turns to them and says, “Do you know what I have done to you? If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” (Jan Richardson)
Jesus expands our understanding when he says, “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.”
You are Blessed if you do them.
In the foot washing, Jesus challenges his disciples to do the same for each other, and to see that all are equal friends in the kingdom; nobody is above or below in any way but rather it is an invitation to equality, a mutual service of friendship and a communal sharing of gifts. ( Sandra Sneiders
, a New Testament scholar)
Jan Richardson offers these wonderful insights.
“A blessing is not complete until we let it do its work within us and then pass it along, an offering grounded in the love that Jesus goes on to speak of this night. Yet we cannot do this—as the disciples could not do this—until we first allow ourselves to simply receive the blessing as it is offered: as gift, as promise, as sign of a world made whole.” (Jan Richardson)
“Have you ever noticed that it is much easier to give a gift than to receive one?
Sometimes it can be daunting to receive a blessing because it requires something of us. It does not leave us unchanged. A blessing offers us a glimpse of the wholeness that God desires for us and for the world, and it beckons us to move in the direction of this wholeness. It calls us to let go of what hinders us, to cease clinging to the habits and ways of being that may have become comfortable but that keep us less than whole.
This can take some work.
Part of the challenge involved with a blessing is that receiving it actually places us for a time in the position of doing no work—of simply allowing it to come. For those who are accustomed to constantly doing and giving and serving, being asked to stop and receive can cause great discomfort. To receive a blessing, we have to give up some of our control. We cannot direct how the blessing will come, and we cannot define where the blessing will take us. We have to let it do its own work in us, beyond our ability to chart its course.” (Jan Richardson)
Receive the gift of a blessing (by Jan Richardson)
For Holy Thursday
As if you could
stop this blessing
from washing
over you.
As if you could
turn it back,
could return it
from your body
to the bowl,
from the bowl
to the pitcher,
from the pitcher
to the hand
that set this blessing
on its way.
As if you could
change the course
by which this blessing
flows.
As if you could
control how it
pours over you—
unbidden,
unsought,
unasked,
yet startling
in the way
it matches the need
you did not know
you had.
As if you could
become undrenched.
As if you could
resist gathering it up
in your two hands
and letting your body
follow the arc
this blessing makes.
—Jan Richardson
We respect the diversity of all people of various backgrounds and faiths… and those of us who are not part of a faith tradition can connect with a purpose greater than ourselves. Together, we can experience in an all-inclusive love that informs the way we live and work, and care for one another. For Christians commemorating the Passion of Jesus takes place between Palm Sunday and Easter. Holy week is indeed a very sacred time of year as we remember and honor the last week of Jesus life on earth.
Blessings upon all of us as we journey through Holy Week.
Liz Sorensen Wessel
Painting-artist unknown
