For many of us, we don’t like to be told what we need to do or even what we should do.  It can feel like an imposition, and indeed it very well can be just that – a force of someone else’s will over my own.  Manipulative willfulness almost always elicits a response of like willfulness.  So, a battle of the will ensues.  There is also the case where we may be told or directed to do something that we just don’t want to do or that we don’t understand.  Here, it is not so much that the agent giving us the instruction is forcefully manipulating, but our response is that, for one reason or another, we don’t want to do it, we don’t understand it, and often we simply refuse to do it.

There seems to be a little bit of this going on in today’s Gospel of Holy Thursday, when Jesus tells Peter he is going to wash his feet (JN 13: 1-15)

“Master, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“What I am doing, you do not understand now,
but you will understand later.”
Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered him,
“Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”
Simon Peter said to him,
“Master, then not only my feet, but my hands and head as well.”

Peter seems to respond initially, not because he doesn’t trust Jesus, but rather because it seems quite preposterous that someone whom he holds in high esteem would stoop to such a level.  It only takes Jesus to hint at disinheritance for Peter to set his need to understand the situation aside and indeed request for a full bath!  What was initially indignation almost turns into greed.  There is an understanding going on in Peter that prevents him from seeing beyond his perception of his own needs and preferences.

There are also instances or experiences when our lack of understanding coincides with a lack of control.  Rather than defiance or indignation, we find ourselves to be quite without willfulness.  We may be depressed or listless due to exhaustion and grief over uncontrollable circumstances in our lives, which seem to have taken over and rendered us incapacitated.  It can be so extreme at times that it is almost a feeling of castration.  We are so overwhelmed and so lost in our own perceptions and reactions to whatever the oppressive circumstances be, such that we feel we cannot even muster the energy to move – at all.  We feel paralyzed, perhaps fearful, lonely, and even suspicious.  As a very relevant example, think of how we are presently experiencing the lack of containment, uncertainty and anxiety of the pandemic Covid19.

In these paralyzing experiences, many times we are told by those around us that what we should do is make ourselves go through the motions – get out of bed even if you don’t’ want to and do something, expend some energy, distract, engage something.  Without discussing the value of this as a recommendation, I will only say that I am convinced that gesture and movement play a tremendous role in the quality of our lives.  We are embodied humans and one of the ways that we can become fully present to ourselves is to move our bodies.

Without realizing it every moment, we rely so heavily upon sensation.  Though we have many times, unfortunately, marginalized some body sensations, we need them in order to be human.  We need to touch and be touched in order to live.  There is no wonder that the social distancing and the radical sanitation that we are currently employing is exhausting and for many of us quite unappealing and depressive.   However, it is not just touch that is important, but movement itself – gesture.  And here, I would include stillness as a movement as well – perhaps one of the most important movements of all. Awareness of sensation and movement is the only way we can begin to be present.

At one time or another, we can all probably recall a specific experience wherein we were unable to – or had no desire to try – articulate any words at all.  Yet, there was movement and meaning, without description.  We were in our bodies communicating and interacting – communion.  The sacraments of the church are intended to be such, but there are so many everyday sacraments of gesture and movement that carry significance, which pass over us without our recognizing much less acknowledging their presence and meaning.  We just go through the motions, without allowing the movements and gestures themselves to embody us.

Jesus knew that his hour had come
to pass from this world to the Father.
He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end…
So, …he rose from supper and took off his outer garments.
He took a towel and tied it around his waist.
Then he poured water into a basin
and began to wash the disciples’ feet
and dry them with the towel around his waist.

Jesus motions and gestures themselves seem to cry out that we pay attention!  The WAY of Christ, requires a passing from one world to another –a passing that is consciously transformative and requires that we take off our outer garments, i.e., our normal operating system for perceiving and reacting to our circumstances, and move in closer – the head moving into the heart and within the body.  This closeness is a movement of depth, going down and descending, making contact with the ground – where our feet stand.  This is a most intimate place, where we actually touch and are touched by the source of our lives – hands touching feet.  The water at this depth moves and enlivens us and strangely embodies us as a flow of communion.

Without words, we are present together and moving, really going through the motions – the divine motions of what it means to be human in Christ!

So when he had washed their feet
and put his garments back on and reclined at table again,
he said to them, “Do you realize what I have done for you?