Foot-Washing Shames Clergy

There’s a discussion on servant leadership and Christ’s foot-washing scene on Dalrock’s that has gone so far awry that commenting is pointless. So…

The setting was the Last Supper. Christ’s betrayal and Crucifixion was imminent. He used his final opportunity to prepare His disciples for succeeding Him. That was when He did the foot-washing, a chore reserved for the shit-listed of the household in an age when people walked everywhere in sandals on dusty/muddy roads. Christ & disciples being guests, it would have been exceptionally bad manners to make them clean themselves. Hence Peter’s complaint of Christ’s doing it. Christ was too important to get dirty!

Christ got dirty. His explanation in John 13:14-16: “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him.”

He quickly emphasized the point in 13:34: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

That was the purpose of the foot-washing and the sermon of the Last Supper. Those who would lead the Church in Christ’s absence were to be the servants of the Church, not its beneficiaries like the Levites and Pharisees.

Judas sold out to the devil on the spot. Apparently, he’d been on Team Jesus for the status and promise of fat pickings. The instant Christ said & demonstrated that he’d be doing the Church’s scut work was the instant the Pharisees’ counter-offer of 30 silver became the smart move.

The foot-washing scene had nothing to do with marriage. It’s out of context and inconsistent with plainly stated marital commands. It does have everything to do with… projection.

Modern clergy are modern Judases and here’s the proof: they do not love us, the Church’s Joes and Janes. Oh, they say all the right words and do all the right rituals… but they shun the non-academic, increasingly hard lives we must live. They aren’t concerned for the welfare of the falsely accused. They poison their own daughters to never trust a husband. And if little Timmy now has to use the girl’s bathroom at the local school, well, just enroll your kids in my parochial school. We have a special exemption!

Consequently, modern clergy project Christ’s principle of servant-leadership onto other men that Christ didn’t teach it to because they’re constantly aware of their own guilt.

Pharisees. Judases. On a good day, Levites. Christ found them all unfit and replaced all formal Church authority with “give a damn about your fellow man”. That is, after all, the reason Christ accepted Crucifixion.