Jesus Loves Your Stinky Feet

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Maundy Thursday

The Rev. Jim Keat (he/him)

Minister of Digital Worship and Education, The Riverside Church (New York, NY)

Allied Christian

I still remember the day, coming home from Junior High basketball practice, and my mom hands me a bottle of Febreze. “Here,” she said. “Spray this on your shoes.

And your socks. And your feet.”

Not entirely understanding why, I took the bottle to do as I was told. But before I could my older sister walked by, held her nose, and said, “Ewwww, you stink.”

Apparently, my adolescent body was exerting some new abilities, specifically stinky feet.

I always think of this moment every year as we make our way through Holy Week, landing on Maundy Thursday, the night we hear Jesus giving a new commandment (or mandate): love one another. This seemingly simple command goes deeper than just three words, because offers this challenge immediately after washing his disciple’s feet. Their stinky feet.

The image, here, is that the one in authority kneels down to serve, modeling what love in action looks like in practice and not just in theory, giving up your power and privilege to serve those around you, especially those most marginalized by society. But did Jesus really need to wash their feet to make his point?

If my post-basketball practice adolescent feet carried a particular odor, a dozen grown men living in sandals and walking on dusty roads are not going to be any cleaner or smell much better. And yet this is the act that Jesus takes, this is the way he embodies his command, this is the method that is his message: even the parts that you might want to hide or cover or spray with Febreze, Jesus embraces. There is nothing too stinky, no matter what my older sister might say, that can cause Jesus to turn away.

Jesus loves your stinky feet. And Jesus commands us to do the same: “Just as I have loved you, you

should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

Who are the people that are hardest for you to love? What does it mean to love someone, even if they have stinky feet? Or stinky theology? Or stinky political views? And what does it mean to love our own stinky feet, the parts of ourselves that we would rather sanitize or keep out view? If Jesus can wash the feet of his disciples, even the one who would betray him, perhaps we can do the same.

Now, to be clear, this does not mean we allow those with harmful theologies and worldviews to

continue without any confrontation. After all, “justice is what love looks like in public,” Dr. Cornel West reminds us. And the love of God is so radical that it is extended even to those for whom we might want to withhold.

God loves the people who don’t deserve it. Which, by the way, is also you.

Reflection

What does it mean for your love to be bold?

What does it mean for love to move from theory to practice, from idea to action?

What does it look like to follow a Jesus who commands us to love one another, stinky feet and all?