Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect. [Romans 12:2, NRSV]
Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples, by Tintoretto, c. 1575–1580
The Kingdom Call to Change
Readers of the Gospel of Mark know that the very first words Jesus speaks are contained in 1:15 – “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” These words set the tone for the entire Gospel and for what the Christian life is fundamentally about. Mark sounds the clarion call: we are to repent. Its original Greek word metanoiete, made up of meta (beyond) and nous (mind), points to the call to reform, to go beyond the mind that you have, and to change.
One year into his papacy, Pope Francis’s work and aim is described by a keen observer, Robert Mickens of the UK Tablet, as “reform, rebuild and renew”. Linking the three R’s is the operative word “change” – change of mentality and change of attitude, so that change in structures and systems can follow, in keeping with the good news brought by Jesus Christ.
There can be neither change nor reformation without admission of wrong. It must come from the heart. The world knows it when real change happens; the converse is true, however the spin-machine may handle the publicity. That is why the Chinese and the Koreans so deeply distrust the Japanese who, despite the massive historical evidence of their war time atrocities, are still bent on manufacturing a massive historical cover-up. The word of God spoken through prophet Joel echoes through a time line of nearly three millennia: “Let your heart be broken, not your garment torn” [Joel 2:13]. But nothing happens, if people are not honest with themselves.
No wonder the late theologian Monika Hellwig would write about the Christian Message in the future tense precisely on account of its orientation to change. The good news of Jesus Christ, while it is a message of salvation that has every bit to do with the past, the present and the future, is primarily concerned with the future.
Why?
Because it is a message that things have to change.
- Not only our inner attitude, but our behaviour, our relationships and our situation must change.
- Not only our personal affairs, but those of the world and its structures and laws and the distribution of basic goods, and then wealth, must change.
But why must all these things change?
Because God saw the death-bound destiny of humanity if things did not change, so God willed that changes be made. Christianity brings together three fundamental truths: that this world was created good and pleasing to the Creator; that this world is fallen; and that this world is redeemed. The God of redemption wills that we return to Him, with all our hearts. We must change. And He sent His Son to show us how to change. The Word of God, the Wisdom of God, took flesh and lived, before It was reduced in writing and preached. The Son of God lived, taught, and died a suffering death, to show us why humanity needed to change and how every individual, every generation, every faith community, can change. Christ took the trouble and absorbed the suffering because we need to change, we must change, we can change, and we will change. Sinful human ways are destructive – of self and others. He preached the kingdom of God in his great sermon on one mountain, and he lived it to the full on another mountain, Calvary. Jesus has already turned the tide of the destructive forces by living out his human response in the heart of the human situation. He gives us the transformative power of the Kingdom-values of God that include and not exclude people in our daily lives – values that are considerate of others and not just of oneself. To strengthen our human resolve to change, to make our willing response to the call to God’s reign, Christ has sent the Holy Spirit as our Helper [John 14:26].
What is the central message from Jesus?
- Jesus’ message is grander and more inclusive than most of us have thought. His call for change is nothing less than a call for spiritual revolution! Emerging from the wilderness to begin his public ministry, Jesus said to all: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is close at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” [Mark 1:15]. This “repentance” is not primarily about feeling guilty about our sins, or about doing penance. The biblical meanings of repenting are primarily twofold: to “return” to God, to “reconnect” with God; and “to go beyond the mind that we have”, minds that have been shaped by unthinking “tradition” or blind “culture”.
- The most striking, resented, and dangerous of Jesus’ activities was his opposition to “religion”. It led to his death. Religion, not God, killed Jesus. Jesus considered authentic only the religion of the heart, for that is where a genuine faith resides. He detested empty rituals; they are only for show. Liturgical rubrics and church rules are designed to serve the good of souls. But, when rules become all-important and we miss their aim, rules become vulgar, and we reduce worship to a kind of ideological statement, not listening to what God says.
Jesus Teaching Change by Foot-Washing
The Gospels are replete with examples of Jesus’ teaching and enacting this kingdom message, but one memorable place is the Last Supper. According to St John, Jesus, to the astonishment of his disciples, wraps a towel round his waist and, like a servant, washes their feet. By a most striking symbol of service, Jesus demonstrates how the kingdom is to be established [John 13:12-17]. He insists on nothing short of a change in mentality and a change in attitude to be able to get into his command to wash each other’s feet.
So, against Peter’s objection, “No, you will never wash my feet,” Jesus knows he has to change Peter’s serious misunderstanding on hierarchical importance. Adamantly insistent, “If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me,” Jesus is set on teaching Peter and the rest of the disciples present at the Upper Room three lessons of substance which they must learn for their work of Kingdom-advancement. These are crucial lessons for our instructions today:
- A lesson on humility which can properly begin only with a healthy mentality on human relationship that is not based on self-importance and looking down on others, a leadership that is servant-leadership, and a relational order that is a reversal of hierarchical importance. The central point of Jesus’ message is that we all need to love our neighbours as ourselves not just in thoughts and words, but in concrete deeds.
- A lesson on service which entails the voluntary lowering of oneself, of actually doing menial work, and of committing to “faceless” service, instead of engineering public recognition.
- A deep lesson on forgiveness, reconciliation and mutual acceptance. It is difficult to expose our weakest and smelliest selves to others. We are fearful of rejection and we are hesitant in accepting others. It is difficult to love and to accept love, to forgive and to accept forgiveness. There is need everywhere for mutual forgiveness, reconciliation and mutual acceptance.
In Jesus’ foot-washing episode, the Word-of-God-made-flesh has spoken in profound human words and in radical human action. For a year now, Pope Francis too, has shown in words and actions that Christ’s disciples need to learn all this before they can properly minister to others. “O that today you would listen to his voice! Do not harden your hearts…” [Psalm 95:7-8].
[L] The Washing of Feet by Fr. Seiger Koder. [M] On 24 March 2005, the future Pope Francis washed the feet of a woman on Holy Thursday at the Buenos Aires’ Sarda maternity hospital. [R] Pope Francis washing feet of interns at a youth detention centre.
Pope Francis Living Jesus’ Teaching
Pope Francis has understood Jesus’ Message well. He warns that the church has been stuck in a place where Jesus’ mission is used for exaggerated misunderstandings. In His own time, when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, the Pharisees could not celebrate and rejoice that a wondrous thing had just happened. Instead of joy, their only concern was that the Sabbath rest had been violated, and Jesus had to be destroyed. In stark contrast, Jesus’ only concern was to love and help the needy; He did not care for superficial interpretations of the law that rendered God’s wishes vacuous, just as He cared naught for empty rituals. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” [Mark 2:27]. Laws are meant to enhance life, and therefore are in service of humanity; never the other way around.
And so, in words and gestures, Pope Francis repeatedly draws us beyond those common misunderstandings. He knows that the Gospel of Christ cannot be contained or confined in male prejudices any more than new wine can be contained or confined in old wineskins. Long before he became Pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was already known for washing women’s feet.
On Holy Thursday, 28 March 2013, two weeks after his election to the papacy, Pope Francis washed feet at the juvenile detention centre in Rome. When news broke of the Pope’s itinerary, conservative Catholics used scathing words on the Pope to warn him of his potential “heresy”. Fired by a pharisaic mindset, they openly warned the Pope that if he washed women’s feet, he would not only be a bad pope, but one who broke church-rules and tradition, set bad example to young clergy who would be confused by his actions, and committed sacrilegious acts.
In this past one year, Pope Francis has persistently shown that he is not one who bows to legalistic and ritually empty arguments. By washing the feet of twelve young offenders, two of whom were women, the current Holy Father is leading the Church on a path of solid gospel values:
- With healthy understanding of Jesus’ message, the Pope does not mind to “break” rules and “depart” from tradition. He washed 12 prisoners’ feet, including 2 women.
- Holy Thursday was always celebrated by the pope at St. Peter’s in the Vatican. Breaking tradition and celebrating in a prison, he set the tone for his papacy that, rather than emphasizing authority and power, leaders in the Roman Catholic Church could seriously use a simple lesson of humility. The Catholic clerical lifestyle has been [and still is] in many places scandalously characterized by way too much pomposity and arrogance, high-living and untouchability.
- By his prophetic action, he demonstrated that God rejects none, but loves everyone.
- His washing of feet was a symbolic re-enactment and actualizing of our commission from Jesus to put “justice and mercy and faith” first in all things.
- By washing the feet of women, which previous popes had not done or dared to do, Francis had tilted in a different way. He went further yet, by washing the feet of a Muslim girl. Unprecedented and bold, it was completely original, and a broadly inclusive moment, a “God-moment”. By his actions, he was declaring that Christ is for everyone in the world, and that there is room for everyone.
- He was behaving like Christ in a literal fashion, rendering in action Christ’s teaching on humbleness and service. And, like Christ teaching the disciples in the Upper Room, he asked the young offenders to learn to serve others.
- In the way of mission and evangelization, the Pope’s prophetic action in washing women’s feet proclaims the Word of God that men and women have equal need of Christ.
When the young offenders at the juvenile detention facility in Los Angeles heard about what the Pope did, they wrote to “Dear Pope Francis”, four of which are excerpted here:
- Thank you for washing the feet of youth like us in Italy. We also are young and made mistakes.
Society has given up on us, thank you that you have not given up on us. - I am writing this letter because you give me hope.
- We have been victims of violence.
It is hard to be young and surrounded by darkness.
Pray for me that one day I will be free and be able to help other youth like you do. - The families of people we have hurt need healing.
Our families need healing. We are all in pain.
Let us feel Jesus’ healing tonight.
Pope Francis’s teachings are very incarnational: live out the graces we receive as members of Christ’s body in our relationships with others. We need to realize that we receive God’s grace in our intimacy with Him and we need to act out these graces in loving and helping others. In Evangelii Gaudium [The Joy of the Gospel] #49, the Pope wrote:
- … I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.
- I do not want a Church concerned with being at the centre and which then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures.
- If something should rightly disturb us and trouble our consciences, it is the fact that so many of our brothers and sisters are living without the strength, light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, without a community of faith to support them, without meaning and a goal in life.
- More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: “Give them something to eat” (Mk 6:37).
Now, why do you think Pope Francis washed women’s feet?
He is one of those people who see clearly the utter, tragic absurdity of all rationalizations and justifications on behalf of any system that makes some people less than others (especially those who make the rules of the system and profit from them), on account of colour or creed, gender or status, in Church or in society. Things must change.
This is not a mere romantic ideal. This is the truth Jesus came to teach by His very life, His words and His deeds: We are all brothers and sisters. That’s the bottom line. That’s the vision of Christ – the Christian vision. If you can’t take it from there, you can’t take it at all in the authentic Christian sense.
God-Moments in Genuine Services
Jeremy Langford calls our glimpses of God the “God moments”. They come and go, but we know in our souls when they happen. The problem is, we too easily forget those God-moments and turn lethargic in our search for God. A recent touching real life story gave us a strong God-moment which we hope we will not forget any time soon.
- Two teenage school girls in Taipei city came upon an elderly man at a bus stop. Incontinent, his excretion flowed down his trousers. As he sat immobile, the stench kept other waiting passengers clear. The two girls searched their souls as they deliberated. “If we don’t help him now, we will regret it when we get home.” So they approached the old man and gave him a packet of tissue paper. He said a soft “thank you”, but with his hands quivering and his body limp, he could not even open the packet, let alone bend down to wipe himself. The two girls, amidst the disbelieving glare of the waiting crowd, squatted down and helped him to clean up. These young school girls cleaned the faeces of a complete stranger in public, because he was an old man who could use some serious help! The old man said, “I am sorry, I have fallen sick.” Seeing all this, others began to offer more tissue paper and mineral water to wash his feet-area. Then, seeing that the old man could not move fast enough to catch his bus – he would be too smelly to be allowed on a bus anyway – the two girls put their pocket money together – money they made from after-school part-time jobs – and put him on a taxi, asking the driver to take him home. Before leaving, the old man held the two girls hands, thanking these two angels through tearful eyes. There is not a hint in the newspaper report that the two girls are Christians. But they gave us a “God-moment”, and we gave thanks for the love of God in these two girls whose spirit of solidarity and co-humanity shown through in their genuine service – the kind that Christians can learn from. Once again, we are pointedly reminded that we find ourselves in the prison of selfishness every time we miss the chance to show God’s love.
Stories like this point to the beauty in this world that God created. The world may be full of evil, but there is beauty, real beauty, in the world as well. Our present Holy Father, Pope Francis, is a real deal. Across the globe, all people of good will can see and can acknowledge that he represents the part that is good and beautiful in the world. But, as we must know, it is not enough that we recognize the goodness and beauty in what Pope Francis preaches and does. As Christians, our duty is to do good and to live that which is noble and beautiful in our every respective station in life.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, April 2014. All rights reserved.
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