Foot Washing: A Model for Spiritual Purification | Rt. Rev. David H. Lindrooth

And welcome to the Bernathan Church's family service.

I'm Bishop David Lindruth, and it's my privilege to be able to worship with you today.

A special welcome to those who are joining us online.

Our first lesson comes from a portion of the Gospel of John.

This is from the 13th chapter.

Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come, that he should depart from this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

And supper being ended, the devil already put it in the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son to betray him.

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given him all things, given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from the supper, laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself.

After that he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with a linen towel with which he was girded.

Then he came to Simon Peter, and Peter said to him, Lord, are you washing my feet?

Jesus answered and said to him, What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this.

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 is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean, and you are clean, but not all of you.

For he knew who would betray him, therefore he said, You are not all clean.

So when he had washed their feet, taken his garments, and sat down again, he said to them, Do you know what I have done to you?

You call me teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am.

If then I was your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet, for I have given you an example that you should do as I have done to you.

Most assuredly I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent greater than the one who sent him.

If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

Amen.

Our second lesson comes from a portion of the Gospel of Matthew, part of the twenty third chapter.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self indulgence.

Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautifully outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanliness.

Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been per partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.

Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

Amen.

Our final lesson is a passage from the Divine Providence, which also can be found in the brochure.

The inner self is not reformed simply by knowing, understanding, and becoming wise, consequently, not by thinking only, but by willing what its knowledge, understanding, and wisdom teach.

When a person knows and perceives that there is a heaven and a hell, and that all evil originates from hell and all good from heaven, if he then does not will evil because it originates from hell, but wills good instead because it originates from heaven, he is then in the first stage of his reformation and at the and at the threshold of going from hell into heaven.

When the person progresses farther and resolves to desist from evils, he is in the second stage of his reformation, and then is out of hell, but not yet in heaven.

Heaven is something he sees above him.

This must be the inner character for a person to be reformed.

However, unless his outer self, as well as his inner self, is reformed, the person has not been reformed.

Amen.

Here end our lessons, and blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.

Amen.

Jesus laid aside his garments, took a linen towel and girded himself.

After that, 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.

The heavenly doctrines teach that there is a false but unfortunately attractive idea that it doesn't matter what a person does while they live on earth, since they leave their earthly body and their earthly actions behind when they die.

The thought is that only that which is of the spirit or the mind matters, because it is what follows with a person after death.

While it is certainly true that mistakes or actions done out of ignorance or by accident do not determine the quality of a person's life after death, one's earthly choices matter because they have important spiritual implications.

It's helpful to remember that if one's natural life were meaningless, then the Lord wouldn't have needed to put us on earth in the first place.

Instead, we could have been directly inserted into heaven without spending any time at all on earth.

But that wasn't the Lord's plan.

He created us to live in the natural world because our experiences here in this external life are necessary to provide the foundation that we will use for eternal life in heaven.

Our memories of all of the experiences of this life provide us with our spiritual flesh and bones that we will need in our angelic bodies.

In addition to our actions here and our choices in the physical world, in addition, our actions and choices form us and shape us into either angels in heaven who are open to receiving the Lord's eternal life, or evil spirits who have chosen to reject that life in favor of pursuing self-interest.

Our life, our experiences, and the choices that we make here on earth matter.

A colleague of mine recently stated, at some point we must all realize that we actually do need the Lord in our lives.

This simple statement struck me as an illustration of the importance of the story of foot washing.

The Lord said to Peter, unless I wash your feet, you can have no part in me.

Like Peter, we must come to understand that we need to partner with the Lord in the ins and outs of our daily, physical, worldly lives and turn to Him for help as we purify our external life in preparation for the next.

As an overarching principle, the Arcana Celestia teaches that footwashing represents the Lord coming to us in the most earthly external aspects of life.

He was born into a physical body.

He walked the earth, breathed the air, and beheld the beauty of a star-studded sky.

And through his life on earth, he was able to defeat and reject hell as it appeared and attacked him in these lowest aspects of life.

And because he defended himself against the hells in these outermost levels, he also is available to help and protect us today and in those times when we most need him.

Specifically, the story focuses on partnering with the Lord for our spiritual washing or our purification.

The feet represent the outermost aspects of human life.

Well, washing is an ancient symbol meaning the cleansing of evils.

In the ancient world, people walked the streets that were dusty, dirty, and sometimes muddy in sandals.

As a result, they would get filthy feet, feet that needed washing as soon as one came indoors.

And typically, in a wealthy home, one's slave would wash the feet of the person who is entering the house.

We start to see the significance of this story when we reflect that a person stands and walks on their feet, supporting their entire physical body.

One needs to care for their feet.

Similarly, our spiritual bodies are entirely supported by the experiences of external life represented here by our feet.

The choices that we make while here living on earth form that spiritual foundation.

Everything we do forms the feet of our angelic bodies.

Like the feet of the ancients who have been walking in dirty streets, our spiritual feet, that life which supports the interior life, need care and cleansing.

The Lord telling Peter that he needs to allow him to wash his feet is in part a reference to our need for faith to be present and useful in our external worldly life and not just in our internal reflections.

We are taught that a faith is not only present in one's interior thoughts, and if it is only present there and doesn't manifest itself in our actions, it really isn't a faith that would support our regeneration.

But why are our choices in this world so important if we are going to one day leave this world and take up life in the spiritual world?

The heavenly doctrines explain that if we allow evil behaviors justified by false thinking to be present in our actions, then as the Lord's love and wisdom flow into us and descend, that life is perverted when it comes into contact with those external behaviors.

The Lord's life flowing into us is then perverted and destroyed, and we lose its benefit.

This might be compared to a person allowing his feet to become so dirty and smelly that they infect and make the person himself and those around him sick.

The heavenly doctrines point out that the effects of external disorders in our lives are also described in another Old Testament story, specifically described by the negative effects or describing the negative effects of an unclean external life and comparing that life to the plague of flies that descended on the Egyptians in the Exodus story.

We're told that this plague of flies was not just a cloud of ordinary house flies, but it was an endless swarm of noxious, biting flies that were poisonous.

The imagery is important because it describes the relentless spiritual chaos and misery that's caused by living a life that indulges in and justifies evil external behaviors.

Like a plague of flies, compulsive thoughts generated by a corrupt external life constantly distract us.

They make it practically impossible to focus on a life of use.

They rob us from our rest by keeping us up at night.

They focus us on our own pains and dissatisfactions, making it impossible to pay attention to others.

And they are truly endless.

Like a plague of flies, we can try to swat at them, but millions more instantly replace them.

We can see an example of this in the commandment, you shall not murder.

While it is generally recognized that we should not murder our neighbors, a teaching that is well known in every civilized nation, we are also warned not to harbor forms of hatred that mirror murder.

The thoughts that arise from that hatred are endless, and they are a form of this same plague that envelops us and immerses us in selfish thoughts, which drive us away from those whom we love.

And because these thoughts are produced by hordes of evil spirits in hell, we are actually overwhelmed when we try to swat them away on our own.

The same can be true for simple, seemingly harmless obsessions that while relatively benign, they constantly suck up all of our attention that we might be able to give to others.

We might be addicted to some substance or some drug, or we might be obsessed with some distracting habit, which, though relatively harmless, draws us away from those around us.

The heavenly doctrines describe these external obsessions as a plague because their falsities behave exactly like the noxious flies, making it impossible to live a heavenly life.

The biggest problem is that they don't go away on their own.

To think of ourselves that we have the power to control these plagues is to think that we have the strength to stand against all the forces of hell.

In the story of the disciples washing Jesus' feet, he's telling us that with the right engagement with him, he can remove these plagues in our lives and replace them with his own sense of peace.

So let's go back to that story.

One has to love Peter's enthusiasm.

But the real power of this story is its inner meaning as a story about how the Lord changes us in preparation for heaven.

If you listen closely to the story, it speaks of two parts of our spiritual change.

First, there is the notion that one who is already bathed needs only to wash his feet.

This is a reference to the internal work that comes prior to the life of regeneration.

One needs to begin repentance by examining the quality of one's thoughts and intentions.

The Lord emphasizes the importance of this in his dialogue with the Pharisees in the lesson that we read from Matthew.

If we, like the cup mentioned there, have filthy interiors full of extortion and self-indulgence, even if we appear to be clean, we are closed off from being able to receive the Lord's life.

The heavenly doctrines state it this way: the spiritual part of a person is shut unless the natural part is regenerated.

And then that spiritual part is, as it were, blind to the truths and goods of faith and love.

So the Lord is.

Asking us to identify and shun our impure thoughts as the first step in our repentance.

But the Lord insists that we take this further by partnering with him to proof to purify our actions in our external life as well.

This external is what is meant by the Lord allowing or is meant by Peter allowing the Lord to figuratively wash his feet.

By this, the Lord reassures us that when we turn to him in his word and take the teachings that we find there to apply them to our lives, by living according to those teachings, he then removes the evils clinging to us that plague us.

This is very tenderly pictured in the story, in the way that the Lord removed his own garments, girding himself with a linen cloth, and washing the disciples' feet with water and wiping them with the cloth.

The relationship that is expressed here is extraordinarily intimate, with the Lord being directly and fully present with his loving desire to care for us when we are in spiritual need.

This is pictured by him girding himself with the light the white linen cloth.

It is a statement of the power of love that exists within the truths that the Lord offers our lives.

When we turn to him directly in his word and invite him to show us how his truths help us love others with a willingness to live in ways that reflect those truths, the Lord is powerfully and closely present.

We can be moved and strengthened by the love that He offers us, and we can use the power of that love to stand against the powers of hell.

The story is surprisingly complete in the description of how to follow the Lord.

While purification is the focus, the Lord also says, If I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you should also wash one another's feet, for I have given you an example that you should do as I have done to you.

The teaching is reminiscent of the golden rule that whatever you want men to do to you, do also for them, for this is the law and the prophets.

Here the Lord deepens his partnership with us, helping us with our purification, helping us to live a heavenly life within the community of the church.

Note here that the purpose of our turning away from the disorders of evil is to be able to live usefully with others, to be able to share the qualities of heaven with those around us so that they too can see and enjoy the beauty of a heavenly life.

And this requires our interactions with others from a platform of the community that we call church.

The story of footwashing in the New Testament shows how we ground ourselves in a relationship with the Lord so that we can make full use of his heavenly life.

It is a story that helps us understand how to open ourselves to the incredible power of the Lord and to allow that power to repel the plagues of obsessive falsehoods and bad habits in our lives.

And it is also a story that invites us to peace and to the humanity of heaven, that it may be present even in the outermost parts of our lives.

So let us close with one final powerful image from the Lord's word describing this grounding relationship with him, recognizing that he offers this life to all who are willing to follow him.

In Genesis, Jacob is walking alone in the desert at night.

He is tired.

He finds a stone and lays down with his head on the stone and sleeps.

That night he dreams that the Lord has placed a ladder by his side, actually by his head, with steps that go up to heaven.

There are angels traveling down from the Lord to him and then back up.

Jacob represents the people of the Lord's church, who even in the wastelands of life turn to him for peace and consolation.

And they know that he is there leading, watching, protecting, healing, offering his love to all who are willing to receive it.

So when Jacob awakes in the desert, he says, Surely, surely the Lord is in this place.

And I did not know it.

How awesome is this place.

It is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.