The church’s telos, imposed by God is to bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is neither a set of ideas or a system of belief, but the grace (both judgment and redemption) of God made known in human lives. ~ From: Why Church Matters, by Jonathan R. Wilson
*Behest: an urgent prompting <called at the behest of my friends>
Middle English, promise, command, from Old English behǣs promise, from behātan to promise, from be- + hātan to command, promise (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)
Does your church practice footwashing? And if so, how and how often?
I’ve recently taken part in one or two animated discussions on this subject. (Really, the animation was exclusively on my side.) Reading the account of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, I was struck by the force of Jesus’ charge:
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 just as I have done to you. (John 13: 1-5, 12-17)
Contrast that with Jesus’ words at the Lord’s Supper:
(H)e took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. (Luke 22: 17-20)
It seems to me the imperative force of these statements is semantically equivalent.
Why then is communion considered an ordinance, but footwashing is not?
The answer is that in some churches it is indeed considered an ordinance. However, it seems that in the majority of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox denominations, footwashing is hardly ever observed, if it’s even mentioned at all.
But my purpose today isn’t to debate the status of footwashing in the church, however interesting I think that may be. Instead, I’d like to look at footwashing as worthy of being incorporated within the larger practice of discipleship.
First, though, we need to get clearer on what we mean by “practice.”
It turns out this is a bit more complicated than a first glance might indicate. There are several senses in which we use the term “practice.”
Most commonly in our sports-saturated culture, “practice” is used in the sense of a repetitious rehearsal. A football player rehearses blocking and tackling. A ballet dancer practices the pas de chat.
The point being to so train the mind and body during practice, that when the performance happens, virtually no conscious thought has to be exerted over the muscles in order to execute the correct movement.
Practice is also commonly used to mean the exercise or pursuit of a profession, such as a legal or medical practice.
But that’s not quite what we’re aiming for here.
Instead we’re searching for a more comprehensive definition, which while incorporating some of the features of the more common definitions, situates the term “practice” within the telos of the church.
And of course, for that, we will turn to Alasdair MacIntyre. (Those of you familiar with MacIntyre may know where this is headed, for the rest, I ask your forgiveness and at least a few moment’s indulgence.)
For MacIntyre, a practice is:
any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended. ~ From After Virtue, by Alasdair MacIntyre (pg 187)
We’ll try to unpack that rather infolded definition using examples outside the church.
For brevity’s sake, let’s take it as given that discipleship is a “coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity.”
But what do we mean by “goods internal to that form of activity”?
This is not an easy concept, and MacIntyre himself has spent considerable time expanding and extending it. But again turning to sports, a quick approximation of “internal goods” would be the goods one may realize in the course of attempting to “play the game the way it’s meant to be played.”
In the case of American football, that would include the joy experienced in a well completed pass, the camaraderie of great line-play, devising and properly executing a new defensive strategy, etc.
Or if one is a craftsman, the excellence of a beautifully turned out piece of furniture. It is in the doing itself that one realizes these goods. Notice also that one cannot realize these goods in isolation.
Playing great football presumes the contemporaneous presence of others. It also presumes the previous activities of those who have gone before and made their own contributions to how the game is played. In other words, it presumes a tradition, and institutions (clubs, schools, universities, etc.) which preserve and transmit the tradition.
MacIntyre opposes these internal goods to external goods, or goods that are realized as a by-product of the activity, the most obvious ones being financial reward and accolades.
As Jesus’ disciples we are commanded to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20 ESV)
From the above, I hope it has become clear that discipleship does involve the realization of internal goods.
I also take it as a given that the practice of discipleship involves standards of excellence.
We may evaluate our discipleship practices by various criteria, and those criteria may differ from church to church. Nonetheless, the standards are there, and much like standards in any art, they are given their fullest formulation not by external critics but by those who are most passionately involved in upholding and extending them. (It may be that worship is the paradigmatic case of art, but let’s leave that aside, for now.)
It would take quite a bit more effort to fully unpack MacIntyre’s notion of a practice. But here I also want to briefly draw attention to a key distinction MacIntyre does not make, but that must be inserted if we are to make full use of the concept of practice.
It’s a distinction made by Jonathan R. Wilson in Why Church Matters.
Wilson makes the point that MacIntyre’s formulation (at least as quoted above) depends solely on human ability to achieve. So Wilson modifies the concept by saying, “practices enable us to participate in the good,” instead of “achieve the good.”
But Wilson takes the notion of practice every bit as seriously as MacIntyre intends.
“Practices,” Wilson says, “constitute a community.” He goes even further, though:
The church does not exist apart from the practices that embody its good and constitute it as a community. There is no identity for the church other than its practices—the first of which is discipleship.
And it’s in this context, that I’d like to consider footwashing as a discipline that has the potential to more greatly enable our capacity to participate in the goods internal to, and extend our conception of the ends resulting from, the practice of discipleship.
We’ll be exploring that potential in our next post.
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