Mysterious Theologian: Clare Josef-Maier, a diaconal minister and pastoral counselor at Lutheran Counseling Network in Seattle, WA.

This challenge comes from Ryan Josef-Maier to his wife (how well we know our partners): “Look at these travel-sore, wrinkled toes. Be glad you can’t smell them (the website I took this from assures us that they smelled awful). This foot, and another quite like it, has been stuffed in a sweaty sock and shoe for 13 hours, and in constant friction for that time, writhing against its fetid cocoon. Where, oh where is God in this foot?”

Prayer to the God Revealed in Feet… Really Gross Feet

Dear God,

In Christ, You tended the (undoubtedly repulsive) feet of your disciples. I wish you had not done that, because now I have to avoid church on Maundy Thursday. (Especially when one is in ministry, people expect you to get excited about foot washing. Why? I am a servant to Your people in plenty of other ways – we needn’t get so literal when it comes to foot washing being the thing we all do now.)

But I wonder sometimes… if I claim You as the Ground of my being, how am I accordingly transformed?

If we are Your hands and feet in this world, surely you love your feet more than I love mine. Would You ever think of me the way I do of others’ feet? Or treat us, your hands, the way we abuse the labor of our own hands?

I seek You, revealed here in these most abused of feet. And I ask that You remind me of love. I claim you as my Ground, and you love feet (and the people whose feet they are, including me), so… it must be somewhere in me to love feet, too. Maybe not as well. But when I fail, you are there to remind me.

Sincerely, Clare

P.S. Really though. You could’ve baked your disciples cookies.