Jesus teaches us through foot washing that God loves our bodies, and we are to love others’ bodies as well.

Foot washing is about bodies. Jesus takes the feet of those who gathered with him, those lowliest members of our bodies. He strips down to servant’s clothes, takes a basin and pitcher and, bowing down to the ground, he takes each of their feet in his hands, pours water and dries them …

In a quiet office park off Evans Road sits a two-story red-brick building with tinted glass windows and shades. There’s no sign outside; no U.S. flag nearby. But some 40 protesters bearing wooden crosses drove there Thursday morning to inform its tenants they know what goes on inside, and they’re outraged. The building, at 140 Centrewest Court, is one of many unmarked Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices where illegal immigrants are detained. … Using familiar civil rights tactics, the protesters sought to bring attention to the building and demand transparency, including a list of the people being detained and access to attorneys and family members for those arrested. … The timing of the protest came during Holy Week on the day Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, prior to his crucifixion.—Yonat Shimron, The News & Observer, April 1, 2010. To see the full article, go to www.newsobserver.com/2010/04/01/417012/protesters-hold-demonstration.html

Foot washing is about bodies. Jesus takes the feet of those who gathered with him, those lowliest members of our bodies. He strips down to servant’s clothes, takes a basin and pitcher and, bowing down to the ground, he takes each of their feet in his hands, pours water and dries them. Jesus pours out his love for human beings with a pitcher, with this water. For Jesus, bodies matter. He shows his love for us by washing feet, by taking our bodies into his hands. And he commands us to go and do likewise: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

That’s why we are here this morning, gathered outside this detention center, witnessing to the love of Christ. “For God so loved the world,” and that means everybody. We are gathered to proclaim God’s love and to show that love through this worship service. The church, the body of Christ, is brought together through this intimate and holy act of foot washing, where God’s love flows with this water. Foot washing binds us together as the body of Christ. Foot washing is about bodies—about the way the love of Jesus makes us care for bodies.

As you can see, there are two chairs behind me. If you want your feet washed, please come forward and sit in this chair, and I will wash your feet. But this other chair up here will remain empty as a sign of all the bodies that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has hidden from us, the bodies that law enforcement officers have torn from our communities and our families in the middle of the night, the bodies they have ripped away from our churches. By refusing to let us wash the feet of the people hidden in their detention centers, the federal government has dismembered the body of Christ, they have torn apart the church, they have pierced and severed the body of Jesus.
May this service of holy foot washing be a sign of God’s love for those bodies who have been torn from us, leaving us wounded, with holes in our sides and in our hands, the dismembered body of Christ.

The protesters, many of whom are Christians, came with a washbasin and several gallons of water. As people chanted Psalms and read Scripture passages, the Rev. Isaac Villegas managed to wash about five people’s feet before an unmarked white van rolled in, dispersing the protesters. A handcuffed Hispanic-looking man was then let out of the car and escorted into the building. The protesters quickly hung yellow crime scene tape on the black metal gates in the rear of the building. “By our yellow crime scene tape, we’ve identified this as a crime scene,” said Patrick O’Neill, one of the protesters.—Yonat Shimron, The News & Observer, April 1, 2010

This sermon is titled “Bodies Matter, Part 2” because I preached “Bodies Matter, Part 1” this morning in the town of Cary. Some of us held a foot washing service at a detention center operated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. I was there trying to wash the feet of the detainees, but they wouldn’t let me. Ministers have been refused access to prisoners at the detention centers throughout North Carolina.
But both sermons are about the same thing: that God cares for our bodies, no matter who we are, no matter what we’ve done, no matter where we’re from. The act of foot washing is about how our bodies matter to God; this holy practice is how God’s love flows over us and through us as the water washes over our feet. Listen to these words from the Gospel of John: “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and wipe them with the towel that was tied around him” (13:3-5).

Later in the evening, after Jesus washed their feet, Jesus tells the disciples to go and do likewise: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (v. 34).

This is why in a few minutes you will walk up here and stand in line, waiting your turn to wash feet and have your feet washed. Through this practice we are invited into discovering how our bodies matter to God; foot washing is how God’s love flows through us and into one another—through our hands and with the water. As we all know, each foot is ultimately attached to a face, the face of someone we love and someone who loves us—someone God loves. When we wash the feet of one another, we open ourselves to learn what it means to love each other’s lives.

This humble service is what love looks like; it’s what love feels like—a foot in your hand, a hand on your foot. Love isn’t simply some flighty emotion that comes and goes depending on your mood. Love happens when you pour water on someone’s foot and wash it and dry it and send that beloved person on his or her way to love and serve God. We can easily wash our own feet. Yet here we wash feet in order to give and receive God’s love. Here we learn how to let go of ourselves, to let someone take our bare feet—dirty and vulnerable. And we feel how being loved—receiving love—takes work. Waiting, letting go, becoming vulnerable—all of that is the labor of accepting love. Yet it’s holy work because with those hands, with this water, with that bowed body, comes the love of God—Christ’s love poured out for the world, poured out for you.

The mystery of God is the love that happens when you let someone take your dirty feet in his or her hands; the mystery of God is the love that happens when you take her or his feet in your hands. That’s what love feels like; that’s what God feels like. We usually fail, writes Sebastian Moore, “to look forward to the point when the whole mystery of God will be known in the clasp of your brother’s [and sister’s] hand” (God Is a New Language (Newman Press, 1967)).

God is a presence that passes through our lives—a presence who envelops our lives—with sustaining grace. And foot washing gives us a window to see what that grace looks like, to watch God’s grace unfold before our eyes. Grace is the way someone takes our feet and washes them. This grace comes to us through bodies that want to serve us, care for us and prepare us to show that same grace to whoever we may encounter as we go about our lives. Through foot washing we are invited to feel how bodies matter to our faith.

Bodies matter, even the bodies of our enemies. The scandalous part of the foot washing story in John’s Gospel is that Jesus washes the feet of Judas as well, the betrayer, the one who hands over Jesus’ body to be crucified.

Jesus washes the feet of his enemies. Jesus offers grace to the one he knows will betray him. The love and grace of Jesus knows no boundaries. What would it mean for you to wash the feet of your enemy? What would it mean for his or her body to matter to you?

This article is an excerpt from the book Presence: Giving and Receiving God (forthcoming) by Alex Sider and Isaac Villegas, used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers (www.wipfandstock.com)