The service of feet-washing shows Jesus demonstrating the continuous outpouring of God for creation. It is a tangible liturgy of incarnation, in which God chooses to paradoxically fulfill God’s character and nature by engaging in the practice of self-limitation and self-giving (Stutzman calls these emphases submission and sacrifice).[1] In John 13, Jesus portrays God’s intention for the cosmos by defining boundaries and providing for humanity symbolic rituals that visualize the necessary return from boundary distortion.[2] Jesus’ act of feet-washing ritually extends and re-imagines for the disciples the liturgies of creation and re-creation as explored in the Pentateuch.
Liturgy of Creation. The accounts in Genesis 1-2 are a liturgy of creation[3], in that the ritualized and dramatic nature of imagery, repetition, and resolve demonstrate the author’s desire to “theologically interpret the relationship between God and the human world.”[4] The process of creation begins with the establishment of boundaries between order and chaos, in which “God confines chaos” rather than destroying it.[5] This ordered approach to the expansion of the cosmos is a vital component in understanding the ritual actions in tabernacle, which will be explored below.
God’s outpouring toward humanity begins in these creative acts, in which chaos is restrained and order is fully realized as the appropriate creative space for God’s image-bearers. Creation exists to realize the fullest potential of humanity in God’s design.[6] In this way, humanity as the pinnacle to God’s ordered cosmos represents the beginning of God’s intention for the world: the expansion of God’s order. It is for this reason that we see the first biblical demonstration of God’s self-limitation (Genesis 2:15, 19-20), in which God forfeits to Adam the right to assign names and identities to the lesser creatures.[7]
Liturgies of Re-creation. The boundary between order and chaos is breached with the actions of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. From there, the downward spiral of humanity into self-gratification and violence progresses exponentially. God’s actions in the flood narrative of Genesis 6-9 represent the natural consequence of breaching the boundary between order and chaos. The flood waters cleanse the world of its impurity, with Noah and his family emerging from the purification ritual of water-submersion and enacting a covenant ritual with God. Rather than interpreting Noah’s post-flood ritual as appeasement, Balentine asserts that the covenant liturgy demonstrates Noah’s gratitude for renewal and God’s unilateral commitment, visualizing an ordered creation and a restored humanity: “envisioned here is a cosmic promise that endows in perpetuity God’s creational intentions for every living creature.”[8] This narrative, including the covenant, visualizes an image that is carried by Jesus and his followers. Just as the waters of the flood restored the boundary between order and chaos, so the act of baptism (or bath) symbolizes the restored boundary of self-limitation and openness to God’s self-giving. The water in feet-washing is, by extension, a ritual of maintenance and repair to boundary distortion as a re-ordering and remembering of the baptismal event.
Balentine asserts that the Sinai experience for the people of Israel is the centerpiece of the Pentateuch. It is to be understood not as an earthly place but a divine act.[9] Following the exodus from Egypt, God engages God’s people with directives for moving toward the full potential of humanity envisioned from the beginning. It is in these dialogues between God and the people that a covenant ritual is enacted and highly specific instructions for the manifestation of God’s presence beyond Sinai are given. Balentine connects the covenant rituals of Sinai and creation, noting that “God’s inauguration of covenant…finds its ultimate goal in Israel’s empowerment to join God in a relationship of creaturely partnership.”[10] In this way, “the Torah understands that covenant-making, from God’s perspective, is an act comparable to world-making.”[11] God visualizes for the people a renewed creation, wherein the boundary between order and chaos is restored, allowing humanity to move forward in fulfilling its creative potential. The Pentateuchal commands can be interpreted as an orientation framework for the Israelites in the ways of divine-human partnership (a Hebrew catechism).
The regimen of ritual from Sinai onward finds its residence in the form of tabernacle, where God demonstrates God’s geographic self-limitation. The presence of God as encountered at Sinai will continue in the midst of the Israelite pilgrimage toward the Promised Land. The beauty and luxury of the tabernacle (Exodus 25:3-7) is a visual liturgy of creativity, rather than an appeal to God’s aesthetic standards.[12] Further, the architectural parallels between the tabernacle and the ark in Genesis 6:15 “suggest a floating house rather than a boat, in symbolic terms an inverted temple bearing its passengers safely to shore.”[13] The connection presents the tabernacle as a tangible symbol of renewal and boundary restoration, with its central location in the Israelite camp. It is the visual liturgy of God’s order, serving as the symbolic center of a re-created world in the midst of the disordered world of desert-chaos.[14]
If the tabernacle is the visual symbol of God’s presence and commitment to boundary renewal and expansion, the ritual-sacrificial actions of the tabernacle can be understood as boundary restoration rather than atonement.[15] As God’s people, now embodying God’s order in the disordered world, the ritual of cleansing and renewal experienced at Sinai necessitated ritual preservation. The continued breaching of order/chaos boundaries from humanity’s self-interest resulted in disorder, which was then carried into the sanctuary where God’s self-limited nature dwelled. The actions of ethical and moral self-interest resulted in a disordered center of the cosmos. Following the example of God’s character in the covenant rituals of Noah and Abraham, the pattern of God’s self-giving and self-limiting suggests that the purification rituals were not required for God to be able to sustain God’s presence among the Israelites. Instead, it can be argued that the imperative to purify the tabernacle space with blood represents divine attention to normative cultural values.
The ancient near-eastern practice of animal sacrificial-rites pre-dates the Israelite experience near Sinai.[16] This cultural practice is divinely redeemed by applying special significance to the blood of the sacrificial animal: “the reservation of blood to God because it was life and so divine is specifically Israelite” (see Leviticus 17:11).[17] God does not call the Israelites to abandon those elements of culture that can be redeemed. However, there is an expectation of human responsibility, wherein the actions and practices of creative expression in a disordered culture are renewed toward divine use. In this way, the Israelites recognize God’s commitment to covenant by sustaining a self-limited presence among them. The renewed human population recognizes the breach in boundary and participates in a ritual act of boundary restoration that is culturally meaningful and communally formative.
These acts of self-limitation and self-giving are vividly portrayed by Jesus in the act of washing the disciples’ feet. Since Jesus is the full manifestation of God to humanity, this God-in-flesh is inherently self-limited by forfeiting the divine rights to omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. God restricts God’s own power and movement by becoming human, with its susceptibilities toward boundary distortion (and distortions’ natural consequence – death).[18] The first-century cultural practice of feet-washing by slaves or relatives is redeemed by Jesus into new meaning: he stoops to his disciples’ feet in the ritual act of boundary restoration. The intensely personal act of killing an animal is re-imagined in the intensely intimate act of bearing one’s feet to be washed by the incarnation of God.[19]
The boundary between order and chaos is breached, symbolized not in a polluted sanctuary, but in dirty and cracked feet. With this self-giving, Jesus’ demonstrates world-renewal and re-creation, where forgiveness is heralded and order is visualized. His call to follow in his example echoes the Israelites’ movement, bringing God’s order from Sinai to Canaan: the world restored and re-created through the renewal of order should leave the upper room and spread.[20] It is both self-giving (visualizing the ritual for his disciples) and self-limiting (giving the responsibility to his disciples).
© 2011 Christopher J. Montgomery
[2] God’s work in boundary creation and renewal from boundary distortion is the primary thesis put forward by Balentine.
[4] Gary Edward Schnittjer, The Torah Story: An Apprenticeship on the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 56.
[6] Chan, 23. By Chan’s argument, then, the Church is the fullest realization of humanity’s potential. The Church is not a corrective measure so much as it is a growing realization of full human potential.
[12] Charles L. Feinberg, “The Tabernacle of Moses,” in The Biblical Foundations of Christian Worship, vol. 1 of The Complete Library of Christian Worship, ed. Robert E. Webber (Nashville, TN: Starsong Publishing Group, 1994), 118. Feinberg asserts that the aesthetics of the tabernacle “reveals the perfection and harmony of the Lord’s character.” Given the self-limiting nature of God in empowering the creativity of humanity, it seems more likely that the aesthetic is less a required standard than an example of creative potential.
[14] Ibid., 150. Balentine asserts that “the center of the created order is a ritual order.”
[15] Ibid., 163-4. The use of “atonement” here implies a ritual that is necessary for divine appeasement. For this section, Jesus’ example of peace and nonviolence is applied to the Old Testament portrayal of God’s character. This is consistent with the Church of the Brethren’s peace theology.
[16] See Dennis J. McCarthy, “Symbolism of Blood and Sacrifice,” Journal of Biblical Literature 88 (1969): 166-176.
[18] This is evidenced in the hymn-recitation of Philippians 2:5-11. Here, the author exhorts the hearers to assume the same character and nature of Christ: self-limitation and self-giving for the expansion of God’s order in the world.
[19] This view of cultural re-imagination can be seen within the book of Hebrews, presenting Christ’s death as sacrifice. Contextually, Hebrews articulates a theology of martyrdom, calling the Church to see the suffering of Jesus in continued self-giving as a model for its own suffering. Jesus’ carrying of himself into the heavenly spaces for sanctuary renewal represents the movement of God’s order beyond the earthly realms of creation. The act of self-sacrifice is intimate and personal, revealing the nature of divine-human interplay: God self-gives to a disordered humanity to expand the boundary of order, and a renewed humanity self-gives to God to expand the boundary of order. In this paper, Eucharistic practice will be explored as communion-theosis, not in terms of sacrificial language.
[20] The implications for such boundary restoration reach into the realms of social justice (cf. minor prophets), impacting such areas as environmental stewardship and medical research.