Footwashing

Footwashing

(Jesus) wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. – The Gospel of John 13.5-6

The lawsuit was the last thing Larry wanted,

but his lawyer said he had no choice.

Larry trusts his lawyer, knows that suing people is

just another tool, not evil. But never before

has he had to sue a fellow member of the church. His church.

The congregation that celebrated his children’s births

and stood with him and his wife as the kids grew through

adolescent prank stunts and bad first marriages.

Larry is suing Herb, an old church stalwart, and

Sunday school was strained for a few weeks afterwards.

“It’s only business,” Larry tells Herb, pouring oil on troubled waters.

Herb is a good guy, his grandfather was a bishop,

but he is new to the world of contracts, negotiations,

and fungible loyalties. He knows the Bible,

that Paul warned the Corinthians that lawsuits were a sign

of defeat, that it’s better to be cheated than to go to law.¹

Herb doesn’t want to be cheated or to cheat anyone,

let alone Larry, his friend and brother.

Larry knows the Bible, too, but says that Jesus never had to make a payroll.

He says it lightheartedly but means it, believes

that Jesus might have said some things differently if he

were here in an era of hypercompetitive business.

Soon it is Maundy Thursday, time for footwashing and communion,

and the resolution of the suit is so far in the distance that it looks like

a pinpoint on a Northern Plains highway. Herb ends up seated

next to Larry on children’s Sunday school room chairs,

cradling his feet in the room where half the men

are seated with shoes and socks off and pants rolled up, the other half

kneeling with not a little difficulty to wash their brothers’ feet.

Once Larry has rinsed Herb’s feet, they embrace and, since they

are each of a certain age, don’t even hesitate to exchange a holy kiss,

as Paul directs so often. Both weep. The lawsuit won’t stop,

for more than brotherhood rides along with these crying barefoot men.

Yet something bigger is here, cloaked in a strange little ceremony.

What the lawsuit can’t bring, reconciliation in pain, forgiveness

in the middle of brokenness, happens now.

¹1 Corinthians 6.1-6