ON FOOTWASHING SUNDAY

Mary Alice Hostetter

When I was thirteen, my parents were called, they said, to a remote mission outpost of our Mennonite congregation. It was off in the mountains, a small gray-shingled church on a treeless hilltop. It was almost an hour’s drive to get there, past carefully painted barns and fertile fields and pastures, flower and vegetable gardens, then up the mountain and past fallen-down shacks, rusted trailers, and yards littered with discarded appliances and car parts.

My parents were called, they said, to bring Jesus to these people, to show them his love. We, their children, went along, Sunday after Sunday, to worship with people who in every other area of our lives we avoided.

Every few months, on Communion Sunday, we had footwashing. It was a sacrament whose symbolic significance was perhaps lost on some adolescents, and I was one of them. I knew that Jesus had washed his disciples’ feet and instructed them and all of his followers to go by his example. Nevertheless, I dreaded footwashing Sunday.

As always, the women sat on one side, the men on the other. On footwashing Sunday I tried to choose my seat carefully to avoid the feet I did not want to wash, but that made little difference. There was no predicting who the bishop’s wife might pair me with as she went down the rows of women, quietly directing who should go next into the back room where coats were hung, where two white basins sat on the floor in front of a wooden bench, a stack of white towels in the corner.

When I was thirteen, the feet I most wanted to avoid were Sarah’s. It seemed to me the bishop’s wife must have known that and paired me with her far too often, as if God were giving me some special challenge.

Sarah was an older, almost-blind woman, who smelled of coal oil and too-few baths. At the direction of the bishop’s wife, who touched her arm and helped her up, Sarah shuffled into the back room, and the bishop’s wife signaled for me to follow, which I did. Feeling for the end of the bench in the back room, Sarah sat down. With shaking hands, she unlaced her shoes, peeled down her stockings.

I knelt and slid the basin of water under her feet. I tried not to look at the lumpy bunions, the calluses, the black toenails. Taking one foot at a time, I splashed the water over and around, being careful not to touch her. I picked up a towel and dried her feet quickly, not gently as the bishop’s wife had done the time she washed my feet. She had wrapped the towel around, caressing my foot, drying each toe around and between.

When I finished hurriedly splashing the water over her feet, I stood and said, "God bless you, Sarah," as we were supposed to, but I did not embrace her. Because Sarah could not bend down or see to wash my feet, I did not take off my shoes and stockings but hurried back to where I’d been sitting, leaving Sarah to struggle, pulling on her stockings over still-damp feet, standing up and feeling her way back to her bench.

I might have tried to soothe Sarah’s feet, to help her with her stockings. I might have helped her up and led her to her seat. I might have said, "God bless you, sister," and meant it. But I didn’t.

—Mary Alice Hostetter, Charlottesville, Virginia, after a career in teaching and human services, has now chosen to devote more time to her lifelong passion for writing. Among the themes she has explored are reflections on growing up Mennonite in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, during the 1950s and 1960s.