Stinky Feet

After bearing the weight of seven children, my mother’s legs and feet were laced with purple varicose veins.  I remember as a child admiring my mom’s legs and thinking they were pretty and this was not by recognizing the symbolism in those veins that bore the sacrifice of my life.  They were the legs of my mother and as many young girls do, we look to our mothers to understand beauty, and to me, her legs were beautiful simply because they were mom’s.  I’m not sure when this world’s influence swayed me to the side of admiring smooth and tan legs, despite what I knew in my heart as a little girl.  Sadly it happened.

Like most girls struggling with self-image at the age of 13, I was mortified when one of my best friends exclaimed on a bright and sunny morning that I had ugly feet.  I had never considered that one might have ugly feet.  Feet were feet… until I looked at her small, smooth skinned feet and her darling painted toes next to my wide and veined, un-manicured clods.  Suddenly I became very aware of feet; my own with shame, others with disgust or envy.

Perhaps it was this heightened awareness that led to a general aversion to feet- unless they are the piggies of one of my precious little pumpkins- otherwise, keep your dirty, smelly, scaly, sweaty hooves away from me.

Can you imagine why I get a little squeamish when considering what Jesus did at the Last Supper?  He and the disciples are dining together and Jesus starts washing their feet with a basin of water and a towel tied at his waist.  To put this in perspective, He wasn’t removing a pair of Nikes and cushiony socks before starting in on the job.  He was most likely faced with a layer of grime that would turn your stomach, mingled with blisters and callouses and cracks.  Those feet had done some serious walking.  This is why there was often a servant in the household who would wash the feet of those that entered.  So when Jesus took it on Himself to fill this humble position, Peter was aghast.

Quite frankly, it catches me by surprise every time, too.  I have to resist the urge to exclaim, “Yuck!”  We’re talking about Jesus who touched Lepers, but I’m turned off by a little foot-washing.  And maybe that’s the point.  Because every time I hear the story, I am humbled by my vanity.  (Does that sound like an oxy-moron to anybody else?)

Jesus wasn’t just washing those feet.  He was loving those feet.  They were feet that had been following Him around for three years, and were ripe with the sacrifice of it.  And He knew where those feet would be going when He left this earth.  They would be the feet that would carry the Gospel to many nations.  Those feet had a story.  They belonged to someone.  He humanized those feet and that’s why He could lovingly wash them.  It’s why my mother’s legs were beautiful to me, because my mother was beautiful to me regardless of how the world would define her.

Despite the grime of our life, Jesus loves us.  He looks beyond what disgusts others- the callouses of  greed, hate, envy, pride and anger; the painful blistering of alcoholism, addiction, prostitution, and murder- and sees what He created to be beautiful.  And when He’s done washing away the ugliness, He reveals the new life hiding underneath all of those layers of dead skin.  

Isaiah 52:7 proclaims, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!'”  Those feet that had travelled mountain terrain would be anything but beautiful to the average eye, but to the one who sought the message, one might even kiss those feet.  I suppose it could be said that each of our feet has a story to tell, not so much where we have been, but what message we bring.

I’ve never had a pedicure- as much as I don’t like other people’s feet, I’m certainly not going to subject someone to mine.  But I think it’s time for a weekly, Godly pedicure, because I’m pretty sure there’s some work that needs to be done to these toes.  The message they bring is too often not one that brings a smile to the beholder.  And while I’m at it, I’m going to stop judging a foot by its callouses, and consider instead its Maker.  No panicking if tonight’s Maundy Thursday service requires a little dirty work ;).