The thirteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel relates the story of the Last Supper in the Upper Room. However, where the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) take this opportunity to record the details of the Supper itself, along with the Words of Institution and the offering of Jesus Christ under the species of bread and wine, the Fourth Gospel does not record these events. Instead, St. John records the story of Jesus washing the feet of His disciples.
What did St. John see in this event that was so important that he felt it necessary to record these actions over and above the actions surrounding the First Mass itself? It will be my contention in this essay that the footwashing recorded in St. John's Gospel is in fact a veiled allusion to the Sacrament of Holy Orders, and that the washing of the disciples' feet symbolically marks their transition from being mere disciples to being priests of the New Covenant.
The text itself lends several clues that lead us to this conclusion. Although St. John does not record the typical details of the Last Supper (as the Synoptics do), having exported the substance of those words and actions into the "Bread of Life" discourse in John 6, still the narrative of John 13 contains several links to the Passion/Eucharist content of the Last Supper. This connection with the Synoptic accounts of the Last Supper will provide us insight into the meaning of the footwashing later on.
The narrative begins in this way:
Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. (John 13:1)
The Beloved Disciple makes the feast of Passover the liturgical backdrop for this account, just as he did for the multiplication of the loaves and the Bread of Life Discourse in John 6. He also makes mention of the "hour" of Jesus, which in St. John is a shorthand way of referring to the Passion of Christ (c.f. John 12:23-26). Thus it can be said that the Passover and the Passion are the underlying theme of this narrative.
The narrative details are also given a more immediate context in time when St. John says next, "during supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him." (John 13:2)
The footwashing event, then, takes place "during supper" — the Last Supper — and at a point in time "when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas … to betray him." This harkens back to John 6 again:
Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?" He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was to betray him. (John 6:70-71)
The scene is familiar then: the "hour" of the Passion has come, Our Lord and His disciples are in the Upper Room at "supper," and the devil has provoked Judas to the betrayal of Christ. Adding to this overall picture, the text next says:
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded. (John 13:3-5)
The word translated as "laid aside [his garments]" is tithemin, a word which is used repeatedly in St. John's Gospel with one particular meaning: to lay down one's life (see John 10:11, 15, 17, 18; 13:37, 38; 15:13). That Jesus is here "laying aside" His garments is a cryptic allusion to His act of laying down His mortal body in sacrifice. The Eucharist is still very much close at hand in this narrative, even though the outward action is one of ritual washing, not distributing bread and wine.
As He begins to wash the feet of the disciples, Jesus meets some resistance from St. Peter:
He came to Simon Peter; and Peter said to him, "Lord, do you wash my feet?" Jesus answered him, "What I am doing you do not know now, but afterward you will understand." Peter said to him, "You shall never wash my feet." Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you have no part in me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus said to him, "He who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but he is clean all over; and you are clean, but not every one of you." For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, "You are not all clean." (John 13:6-11)
St. Peter's resistance here mirrors his resistance to Jesus' prediction of His Passion in St. Matthew's Gospel (Matt. 16:21-13). He cannot come to grips (yet) with a Messiah who humbles Himself in such a way as this, performing the menial task of the lowliest servant.
But Jesus' words are clear: if St. Peter is not "washed," then he can have "no part" in Jesus. St. Peter's response is typically overstated and melodramatic: "not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus' answer to this is curious in itself: "He who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but he is clean all over; and you are clean, but not every one of you."
What does all of this mean? The easy interpretive option here, and the one chosen by most commentators, is to see the footwashing almost entirely as a social gesture – something humanitarian. Jesus humbles Himself and serves the needs of others, and this is the moral/social lesson He wishes us to learn from His good example.
I do not deny that this kind of interpretation can be extracted from the text, if it is the moral sense of Scripture that is being looked for. But this is almost too simplistic an understanding to find a proper place in St. John's Gospel. St. John is mystical and sacramental, and there is often more going on underneath the textual surface than is obvious at first. It would be unlike him to relate a narrative like this simply for the purpose of communicating to future Christians a platitudinous message, such as, "be servants to one another."
The words of Our Lord, in fact, seem to point beyond this meaning: "What I am doing you do not know now, but afterward you will understand." (vs. 7) After what? As R. Brown points out, most likely this refers to the same thing as it did in the previous chapter:
Literally, "after these things [tauta]." In itself the phrase is vague … but the meaning is probably the same as in xii 16: "At first the disciples did not understand these things; but when Jesus had been glorified, then they recalled that it was precisely these things that had been written about him and these things they had done to him." (Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John, Anchor Bible Vol. 29A [Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1970], p. 552)
Jesus hints that what He has done in the footwashing will not be understood by the disciples until after His glorification, a mysterious statement that tends to make one think that the true meaning of the footwashing is somewhat deeper than simply, "love one another and serve one another." The disciples could have figured that out, it would seem, apart from any extra grace given after Jesus' glorification. No, there is something about the aftermath of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection that will shed light on this footwashing ritual.
In a scholarly article entitled "The Foot Washing in John 13:6-11; Transformation Ritual or Ceremony?", Jerome H. Neyrey, S.J., argues that the footwashing was actually a "status transformation ritual." (source) He rightly points out that the weighty words passed between Our Lord and St. Peter point to a meaning that goes beyond mere meal etiquette — this is not just an act wherein Jesus cleanses some dirt from the feet of the disciples so that they can properly eat the meal.
Rather, this is something of great importance, so much so that, Jesus says, if St. Peter refuses to be a participant in the ritual, he can have "no part" in Jesus.
Neyrey also points out a significant fact about the words used by Jesus to communicate this ultimatum to St. Peter: the presence of the keyword "unless," a presentation of the Divine "if/then."
This kind of ultimatum has been used in St. John's Gospel before, in similar "status transformation" situations. In John 3:3-5, unless a man is born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter heaven. The reception of the ritual changes his status from that of "outsider" to "insider." Likewise, in John 6, unless a man eats the flesh of Christ and drinks His blood, he has no life in him. Again, participation in the ritual brings about a change of status — the one who once had "no life" in him now has eternal life.
Similar uses of the word can be found in 8:24 ("you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he") and 15:4 ("the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me"). In this light, consider again what Our Lord says to St. Peter:
Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you have no part in me." (13:8)
In the Greek, the words are exactly the same in all cases: ean me, a conjunction that means "unless" or "except." This suggests to us, given the way the word has been used by St. John thus far, that what is taking place in the footwashing ceremony is some kind of status transformation ritual — a ritual that will find the disciples at their current status, but will elevate them to a new status.
At this point, it is worth going on a brief excursion to examine the meaning of foot washing in the Old Testament. Although the washing of one's feet in the Old Testament is normally done for practical purposes (i.e., cleanliness), there is one striking example where foot washing is a metaphor for something quite different:
Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house, and wash your feet." And Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, "Uriah did not go down to his house," David said to Uriah, "Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?" Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing." (2 Sam. 11:8-11)
Uriah understood the metaphor quite readily when King David sent him to his own house, to his own wife, with the words "wash your feet." What David intended for Uriah to do was to embrace his wife in the marital way, and thus to sire a child (or rather, in this case, to cover the fact that David had already sired a child with her).
Similarly, in the Song of Solomon we find the male lover pursuing his bride, coming to her at night to knock on her door. She responds by saying, "I had put off my garment, how could I put it on? I had bathed my feet, how could I soil them?" (Songs 5:3) Notice here not only the mention of footwashing as a prelude to marital love, but also the mention of laying down one's garment, just as Jesus did in the Upper Room.
It would appear that footwashing can be a metaphor for the marital embrace, which is to say, it is a ritual that is performed when one is preparing to reproduce — preparing to become a father.
Also of interest is the Levitical instruction concerning the Day of Atonement sacrifice (which the epistle to the Hebrews takes for granted as the kind of sacrifice which Jesus offered on the Cross). In Leviticus 16, we read:
Then Aaron shall come into the tent of meeting, and shall put off the linen garments which he put on when he went into the holy place, and shall leave them there; and he shall bathe his body in water in a holy place, and put on his garments, and come forth, and offer his burnt offering and the burnt offering of the people, and make atonement for himself and for the people. (Lev. 16:23-24)
The High Priest was constrained by the Law to wash himself in water before making the atoning sacrifice, and it is interesting to note the order: he takes off his garments, performs the washing ritual, puts the garments back on again, then makes the sacrifice. In St. John's narrative, Our Lord follows this exact order: He takes off His garments (vs. 4), performs the washing ritual (vv. 5-11), puts the garments back on (v. 12), and then goes on to endure His Passion. It is odd that St. John would have included the details of Jesus taking off His garments and putting them back on again, if he did not have Leviticus 16 in the back of his mind.
There are only two differences between the Levitical ritual and the ritual performed in the Upper Room: in Levitical Law, the High Priest washed not only his feet, but his entire body, whereas in the Upper Room Jesus makes a point of only washing the disciples' feet; and in Levitical Law it was the High Priest who washed himself, whereas in the Upper Room Jesus does not wash Himself, but His disciples.
The first point of difference can be explained by an appeal to the elaboration of the laws in the Talmud, particularly in Tract Yomah, which is concerned precisely with the Day of Atonement rituals. There, the rabbis argued, as Jesus does in the Upper Room, that once the priest has taken his full bath, he need only be concerned with the cleanliness of his hands and feet.
The second point of difference comes closer to explaining the significance of the footwashing in John 13. It was the High Priest who was to wash Himself before the sacrifice; the fact that it is not Jesus who is washed, but rather His disciples, strongly encourages the interpretation that it is by having their feet washed that they come to share in the priesthood of Christ.
Finally, we may look again at Christ's words to St. Peter: "If I do not wash you, you have no part [meros] in me." (v. 8) This word used by Jesus is reminiscent of what St. Peter said to Simon Magus when the latter attempted to purchase the power of the Apostolic office:
Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying, "Give me also this power, that any one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit." But Peter said to him, "Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part [meris] nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. (Acts 8:18-21)
Could it be that what Jesus says to St. Peter, "you have no part in me," refers to the office of the priesthood? The word parallels in the two texts strongly suggests this.
Finally, a word must be said about the natural objection that a well-read Catholic might raise to this interpretation of the footwashing ritual. The Catholic Church teaches us specifically when the disciples were raised to the priesthood, and it makes no mention of John 13 or of the footwashing ritual. Rather, the Council of Trent identifies that moment as follows:
… declaring Himself constituted a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchisedech, He offered up to God the Father His own body and blood under the species of bread and wine; and, under the symbols of those same things, He delivered (His own body and blood) to be received by His apostles, whom He then constituted priests of the New Testament; and by those words, Do this in commemoration of me, He commanded them and their successors in the priesthood, to offer (them). (Council of Trent, Session XXII, Doctrine on the Sacrifice of the Mass, cap. 1)
This is spelled out again by the Council of Trent in the same session, in the second Canon: "If any one saith, that by those words, Do this for the commemoration of me (Luke xxii. 19), Christ did not institute the apostles priests; or, did not ordain that they, and other priests should offer His own body and blood; let him be anathema."
Are we not then going against the teaching of the Church to suggest that the ordination of the disciples as priests took place during the footwashing ritual, as opposed to when Jesus commanded them to "do this" in memory of Him?
The resolution to this apparent conflict lies in recalling that St. John does not relate the details of the Last Supper in the same way that the Synoptics do. In his Upper Room narrative, there are no words of institution, and Jesus never uses the phrase "do this for the commemoration of me."
Rather, St. John tells the same story from a different angle, using the ritual of the footwashing as a kind of stand-in for the Last Supper narrative.
F. J. Moloney ("A Sacramental Reading of John 13:1-38," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 53 [1991], pp. 242-48) sheds some significant light on this matter. He points out that "to 'have part with Jesus' through washing also means to be part of the act of self-giving love which Jesus revealed in his death." (Moloney, p. 245) That is to say, by being washed, the disciples did come to "have part with Jesus," but this sharing in His ministry means — specifically in the context of John 13 — a sharing in His ministry of sacrifice.
Moloney also catches a subtle use of words on the part of St. John that link this narrative of the footwashing to the Eucharist. Immediately after the footwashing, Our Lord speaks of the betrayal of Judas, but He does so by way of reference to Psalm 41 (LXX): "I am not speaking of you all; I know whom I have chosen; it is that the scripture may be fulfilled, 'He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.'" (v. 18)
The mention of bread at this point in the narrative would be enough to get us thinking in a Eucharistic direction, but St. John adds one bit of detail by altering slightly the quote from the Psalms. The original Greek of the LXX Psalm uses the word esthion for "ate [my bread]." St. John does not use this word, however. Instead, he inserts the word trogein, which still refers to eating, but to a much more graphic form of eating: the word means "to crunch."
Why does St. John switch the words instead of simply quoting verbatim from the LXX? Quite simply, because he has used this same graphic word for eating elsewhere in his gospel — in the Bread of Life discourse, with all of its Eucharistic meaning:
… he who eats [trogon] my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats [trogon] my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats [trogon] me will live because of me. (John 6:54-57)
Three times in quick succession St. John uses this graphic word, trogon; the fact that he spontaneously inserts this word in his quote from Psalm 41, precisely in a Passover/Last Supper context, no doubt means that he intends to evoke the Bread of Life discourse and its direct link to the Eucharist.
With all of this in mind, we are a step closer to solving the problem of how the footwashing can be understood as a Johannine description of sacramental ordination, while not violating the teaching of the Church concerning when exactly this sacrament of ordination was conferred.
The final clue comes at the end of the footwashing narrative:
You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. (John 13:13-17)
Recall that the Council of Trent taught that the disciples were made priests by the words of Christ, "do this for a commemoration of me." This command to do the very thing that He has just done in offering up His Body and Blood in the Eucharist finds it complementary parallel here: after the footwashing ceremony, Jesus tells the disciples to do as He has done.
It could, then, be understood that St. John's "do this" in relation to the footwashing is the mystical and Johannine counterpart to the "do this" of the Synoptic Gospels in relation to the actual offering of the Eucharist.
In summary, then, we have seen that the footwashing ritual is, in all probability, a "status transformation ritual," which in this case underscores the disciples' changing of status as they are elevated to the priesthood. We saw how footwashing in the Old Testament is a prelude to fatherhood, which can be understood in this instance as the disciples' preparation for spiritual fatherhood via the priesthood. We also examined how the ritual of washing was practiced by the High Priest just prior to his offering of the atoning sacrifice, and how Jesus' washing of the disciples feet just prior to His offering of the sacrifice signifies their inclusion and participation in His own priesthood.
It may be added, as a point of confirmation, that the Church has certainly underscored the link between the footwashing ritual and the sacrament of Holy Orders, and this is precisely why, when the Church re-enacts this ritual on Holy Thursday, the rubrics prohibit women from taking part in the ceremony. Men alone are to be symbolic stand-ins for the disciples, not just because the original disciples were men (after all, women can be disciples of Christ as well, if that were all that this liturgical action intended to convey), but because only men can be priests. Thus the Church sees that allowing women to have their feet washed in the Holy Thursday liturgical ceremony would constitute an attack upon the male-only priesthood.
This could only be the case if, as we have argued here, the footwashing ceremony in John 13 is intimately related to the sacrament of Holy Orders. By having their feet washed, the disciples entered into a participation of Jesus' priestly ministry, became spiritual fathers, and were elevated to the priesthood itself.
