I wrote about Jesus washing the feet of the lowliest working woman, not the disciples…this he did in the temple, as a way of subverting the religious order and the hierarchy of the priest class.
The washer women washed the feet of those who entered the temple, and they washed those people’s feet with their long hair. Their long hair was what got them the job, AND they had to be born into the caste of people used in this way, the lowest class who worked inside the temple walls.
In those days, a person had to be born into a family of priests in order to be a priest, like with royalty blood and pedigree were required.
The priests were among the most wealthy people of the community. To these priests, Jesus said…:”you have it all backwards… the people do not serve you, you serve the people! YOU should be washing HER feet“! and then HE did. This was the act of a religious/cultural revolutionary. For this act, and for throwing the money changers out, for protesting the removal of women from the inner sanctum, and for teaching kabballah to non jewish women, an act considered more profane than the others mentioned here, he was branded a dangerous threat, and became a marked man.
I said wear your best clothes because that is what people wear to church to attend holy ceremonies, and to very important events of cultural significance. For any of us to care for a homeless person physically, to touch them with our own hands, to soothe them personally is our chance to channel the mind of christ and to protest the beliefs of the george bushes and dick cheneys of our own “temple culture“. There is nothing more holy for any of us to do now, unless we were to personally go to Iraq and do it there, to those made homeless in our names by our demented secular priest class who sit in the white house and congress today.
