John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Once upon a time, a white straight Christian minister invited a Black gay actor to cool his feet in a wading pool on a hot day. After sharing a few moments of relaxation together, their feet side by side in a small plastic pool, the white man shared his towel with the Black man, so that he could dry his feet and return to work. The minister then used the same towel to dry his own feet, and the two sang a song about love. The scene took place on a beloved children’s television program called Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, and it was 1969. What the Reverend Fred McFeely Rogers and Francois Clemmons dared to do that day, on camera, was radical. For two men of differing skin colors to share a pool, to use the same towel, was a scandal and a horror to much of polite white society in this country at the time. Although the Civil Rights Movement had made legal headway toward a more equitable and integrated society, it was still the case that many public places, including swimming pools, were battlegrounds and unsafe places for people of color to occupy.
Mister Rogers knew what he was doing. In fact, if you watch the clip of the scene, you will see Fred Rogers look directly at the camera while speaking gently about what a gift it is to share space with his neighbor. This was a time when people of color were being beaten, arrested, and having acid thrown at them for entering swimming pools, including in the Lynchburg area where pools were filled in rather than being allowed to integrate. White adults were verbally abusing and physically assaulting Black youth who attempted to access public pools, and Mister Rogers was inviting a Black man to rest his feet in a pool with him in full view of our nation’s TV-watching children and their parents. When the powers that be taught children to be afraid of one another, when junk science insisted that Black bodies carried disease, when even the Church made accommodations so that white communicants could avoid sharing a cup with their Black siblings in Christ, Fred Rogers washed the feet of a Black man on national television. Francois Clemmons, the actor playing Officer Clemmons, a Black police officer in Mister Rogers Neighborhood, did not miss the parallels with the actions and words of Christ. Many years later, shortly before Reverend Rogers’ death, they recreated the scene, only this time Rogers dried Clemmons’ feet himself. Mister Rogers knew what he was doing.
Jesus did it first, and he knew what he was doing too. The washing of feet is an intimate, vulnerable thing for all involved. To sit in a chair while someone runs water over your feet and dries them with a towel can be as uncomfortable as it is moving. To be the one kneeling, touching the rough callouses and raised veins of another person, is humbling and even intimidating. Those of us who have gotten pedicures or seen podiatrists can attest to the level of trust involved in allowing another person to get that close to you, even if that person is a professional. For Jesus to wash the feet of every one of his disciples, the people with whom he spent the most significant days of his life, his closest confidants and friends, was to cross a threshold many of them did not want him to cross. Peter resisted, and I’m sure he was not alone. In Mister Rogers’ neighborhood, Officer Clemmons is at first reluctant to accept Mister Rogers’ invitation, because he does not have his own towel. “You can share mine” is Rogers’ response, and only then does Officer Clemmons remove his boots and socks and place his feet in the water. Only when Clemmons sees the lengths to which Rogers will go to show him solidarity and hospitality will Clemmons take the risk of meeting him in the water. Like Jesus, Fred Rogers had to take the risk first.
The commandment to love one another comes after Jesus has knelt at the feet of every disciple at the dinner table, tenderly and meticulously cleaning and drying their feet with his own towel. We know that the kind of company that Jesus kept did not win him any favors with the powerful and the socially concerned. We know that he shared meals with sinners and outcasts, with tax collectors and women and Pharisees and lepers. Even on the night before his execution, Jesus shared a meal and prayer with the person who had already agreed to betray him, as well as with the person who would deny even knowing him and with all the people who fled rather than standing up for him at his trial. The people in the room at that Last Supper, the people around the table for that first Eucharist, were not all famous or well-liked or pious. They had pasts, sins, prejudices, grudges, rivalries. They argued with one another and judged one another, they misunderstood Jesus and tried to appoint themselves his gatekeepers, tried to control who could have encounters with him. When Jesus tells them to love one another the way he has loved them, he is asking them to do a hard thing, a dangerous thing. To love is risky, and Jesus commands the kind of love that takes that risk boldly.
That is the commandment given to all of us, to love one another by throwing our lot in with our fellow sinners and outcasts. To love one another by standing closer to the people at whom the rocks and threats and bombs are being thrown. To love one another by not just washing the feet of the person next to us, but by putting our feet in the pool with them. Sometimes we will get hit, sometimes we will have to make sacrifices. But we have been given our marching orders, and they are worth the risk. Love one another, just as Christ has loved you. By this everyone will know we are his disciples.
Mother A Writes 