Part With One Another
In the upper room, in his final moments with his friends, Jesus decided that he would wash their feet. This was a gesture full of symbolism. He, having been their teacher and leader, would take the position of a servant. In doing so, Jesus worked to continue to undermine the stereotypical ideas of teachers and leaders that would often come to mind for his friends. The recounting of this moment, found in the book of John is often used for this purpose – to help us rethink the nature of leadership. However, I’d like to think about another aspect of the story.
As Jesus was preparing to wash his friends’ feet one of them protested when initially approached. The exchange went something like this:
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
“No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
One might infer from this exchange that Peter had an idea in mind of what someone washing his feet meant – for both the person doing the washing and the person being washed. Maybe there was the idea that the person doing the washing was somehow “lesser than” the person being washed. Maybe there was the idea that no leader or teacher could ever be caught in such a demeaning position. Maybe Peter thought he was protecting Jesus’s reputation somehow by refusing to have his feet washed. This all says something about Peter’s perception of the world.
What I’m most interested in, and have been thinking about a lot lately, is found in Jesus’s response to Peter’s initial refusal. “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” Jesus sets up the washing of feet as a way of intimately connecting with his friends – of being with one another – of partaking of one another’s lives. “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” The one whom his friends were trained to learn from and follow, was now honoring them, even bringing them closer together. Peter gives language to the discomfort that may have come up for some of them. You aren’t supposed to be doing this. That’s not your role in my mind. How can I let this happen? “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” Notably, Jesus doesn’t say, “You have no part of me.” That was taken care of earlier with the time spent together on the road, and more specifically with the bread and the wine. Here Jesus is going deeper. Jesus recognizes with immense clarity that there is a difference in partaking of one’s character and partaking with one’s work. Of course, they are related, and the order of operations is important, but they are separate choices and require different kinds of knowledge, experience, and formation. What about us? What roles have we placed ourselves or others in that prevent us from really partaking in our lives with one another?
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we connect with one another lately. There are of course a multitude of kinds of connections – from the momentary to the consistent, the superficial to the intimate. Some connections seem common, like the momentary and superficial ones – a passing hello, for example – or the consistent and intimate – likes those with family and some friends. There are also those kinds of connections that are surprising, such as the momentary and intimate, or the consistent yet superficial.
In Tap Dance Land we practice for a kind of togetherness that is quite intense. Mediated by a shared imagination – a communal sense of time, space, and context – we can dance together without much prior discussion or need for direction. We are together, discovering what we are making, as our individual choices interact with and compound upon one another, moment by moment. We trust that our choices are coming from deep connection with our own personality, and so we are seeing each other in our actions. We are holding each other accountable to our shared imagination and encouraging each other to keep exploring what might come to life through our shared choices. This all adds up to quite an intimate interaction. There is often a time limit here. When the dancing is done, the interaction is over.
In the best of interactions, however, we have partaken with one another’s lives for the time that we danced together. There is a lingering connection. We have shared in each other’s views of the world. We have interacted with each other’s imaginations and choices, deeply and quickly. We have encouraged and been encouraged. We have checked and been checked. We have made something that would not have been available to us if we had been alone. We have learned, experienced, and been formed in a way on account of the interaction.
Outside of Tap Dance Land I’m thinking about what kind of activities allow us to partake with one another’s lives in similar ways. There are celebrations for birthdays, holidays, and other life moments. There are other formal gatherings of the more somber type. These are all big things. There are the intimate conversations and shared meals. There are the seemingly superficial yet consistent greetings and partings. These are much smaller yet add up to quite significant things. All of these are our partaking of life with one another.
If we dig a little deeper, we may begin to think about the way these activities point towards a particular kind of work. The proposition of Jesus to his friends is that upon partaking of who he is, they might also partake of what he is doing. His “withness.” This idea of withness is not new. The entire arch of the testimony of God as recounted in the books and letters compiled in the Bible point to a God who desires withness. Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us…
What does it mean to greet someone as a signal of being with them?
What does it mean to have a conversation with someone as a way of sharing life with them?
What does it mean to share a meal with someone as a way of being human with them?
What does it mean to celebrate or mourn with someone, not just bear witness to them in their celebration or pain?
These are the questions I’m holding right now. I don’t have a precise answer to each. I suspect answers will be different for different people in different contexts. Maybe it begins with shifting the dynamic of our relationships. By doing things that are outside of the expectation of our position or standing in our community – maybe washing someone else’s feet. Maybe it starts by having something happen to us – perhaps even having our feet washed.