COLLEEN TINKER
I was twelve years old, and my best friend whom I’ll call Lynn was a few months older. It was Thirteenth Sabbath, and she and I paired up to do foot washing before the Lord’s Supper. Our parents had both joined a conference-sponsored “church spawn” movement, and we were meeting temporarily in an old Methodist church situated near two sawmills that were still operating in the rural town of Boring, Oregon.
I remember kneeling in front of my friend with a basin of water, the smell of the old wooden building enveloping me, and the murmur of women’s voices floating in the warm summer breeze moving in through the double-hung windows.
Lynn put one foot into the shallow water in the basin, and I noticed the streaks of dirt on her leg. Embarrassed, she explained as I splashed warm water over her foot: “I didn’t get a chance to take a shower before sundown last night.” After all, Ellen White said our shoes were to be shined and our baths taken before the sacred hours began.
We finished washing each other’s feet, and the rest of the Lord’s Supper is lost from my memory. Yet all these years later, I remember Lynn’s dirty legs and her shame that they were not clean for the Ordnance of Humility which was the “mini-baptism” required before taking the “emblems”. Foot-washing was the part of the service in which we were to remember our sins and confess so that we would be worthy to eat the bread and the juice. I realized that Lynn at least did not have to regret breaking the Sabbath to bathe the night before—yet coming dirty to the service also seemed wrong.
“I think God would rather have us clean to meet Him on Sabbath than to have us in His presence dirty.”
Discomfited by that encounter, I told my mother about it after church. Her judgment was swift: “I think God would rather have us clean to meet Him on Sabbath than to have us in His presence dirty.”
Her answer didn’t surprise me; it was the same answer she would give me as she finished washing the kitchen floor ten minutes after sundown on Friday as well. Lynn’s family would have honored the “edges of the Sabbath” had their floor-washing not been finished; our family honored what my mother believed God would want as He entered our holy time. After all, if my mother wanted that floor clean in order to meet God, He would honor that intention and endorse her work done to honor Him during His Sabbath hours. Furthermore, we routinely showered after sundown on Friday.
I pondered these opposing viewpoints, and while I felt more comfortable with my mother’s pragmatic approach, I felt confusion. Which was the more sinful decision? Lynn’s family was actually honoring the Sabbath even as they dishonored foot-washing by coming with dirty legs.
What was the right thing to do?
Disconnected stories
I lived with a certain dread of Thirteenth Sabbath until I left Adventism. I knew the rest of Christianity did not practice foot-washing before communion, but I believed we had a fuller revelation of truth because we were obeying the WHOLE Bible as we washed the feet of “strangers” four times a year. After all, the service was supposed to make us feel unworthy; we were supposed to confess our sins and humble ourselves, denying our egos and pride to touch the gnarled or dirty feet of fellow Adventists. After all, Jesus had instituted this humiliating service, and we had no business accepting the symbols of being “safe to save” without preparing our hearts and confessing every sin. It was one more moment when we were to remember our forgotten transgressions so they would not be held against us in the heavenly investigative judgment.
As I have studied the book Seventh-day Adventists Believe in preparation for Nikki Stevenson’s and my discussions in our Former Adventist Podcast series on the organization’s Fundamental Beliefs, I remembered again the cringing discomfort of foot-washing before the gloomy service of Adventist communion. Indeed, on this side of my former religion, I have wondered at the irreverence of practicing communion when one doesn’t believe in a completed atonement that assures salvation when one believes!
Significantly, the story of Jesus giving the disciples the supper commemorating His death and the new covenant in His blood occurs in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but the story of His foot washing does not occur in those gospels at all. That story appears only in the gospel of John in chapter 13, and John does not give the account of Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper. The fact that these stories are never told together and that none of the gospel writers included both of them in their accounts suggests that they are not meant to be understood as conjoined rituals.
What, then, does each service actually mean?
Foot washing
In John 13 when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet and told the reluctant Peter that unless he allowed Him to wash his feet, he had no part with Him, Jesus was not saying Peter was either unclean or out of relationship with his Lord if he didn’t have the dirt washed from his feet. Further, when Peter responded by asking Jesus not to wash only his feet but also his head and his hands, Jesus responded: “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you” (Jn. 13:10).
In other words, Jesus was telling Peter that because he believed in Him, he was “already clean”. He didn’t have to washed again in order to become clean again. Adventism, however, teaches that foot washing is necessary as a sort of “mini baptism” during which members receive cleansing from all their confessed sins committed since the last foot washing. Since Adventism also teaches that baptism is the time when people receive cleansing from their sins (since they don’t understand spiritually being born again through believing in the finished work of Jesus), it makes sense that they would incorporate foot washing as another time of cleansing in preparation for eating communion—the symbols of Jesus’ body and blood.
…Adventism’s foot washing is startlingly similar to Catholicism’s confession required before a member can take communion. In both cases, taking communion without confession and cleansing would mean eating God’s judgment on themselves.
In fact, Adventism’s foot washing is startlingly similar to Catholicism’s confession required before a member can take communion. In both cases, taking communion without confession and cleansing would mean eating God’s judgment on themselves.
This understanding signifies the reality that neither religion sees Jesus’ blood as completely cleansing the believer once and for all. Unlike Jesus said in John 5:24—that he who believes passes from death to life and does not come into judgment—Adventism (and Catholicism) believe the member must continually be cleansed from sin. Communion, then, becomes a means of grace—an act that grants absolution and cleansing to the believer who has previously confessed his sins.
Thus, in Adventism, foot washing is a requirement before eating the emblems. Sins have accumulated, and they must be confessed so Jesus’ blood can cover them.
This belief is utterly anti-gospel.
So what was Jesus doing?
Jesus was demonstrating to His disciples that His legacy to His followers is servant leadership. If He, their Master, was willing to wash their feet, doing the lowliest task to serve those He loved, they, too, were to serve those to whom they would carry the gospel. They were about to be launched into a unique assignment: planting the church. The work would be grueling, and they would suffer—and yet they were to serve in Jesus’ name.
Even more, Jesus was saying that they were to submit to Him. Jesus is the head of the church, as Paul explains in Ephesians 5:22–33. When Jesus said to Peter, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me” prior to saying “you are clean”, He was telling Peter, “I am your Master. I am your Head. I am serving you, and I am asking you to submit to me. If you hold yourself aloof, you have no part with Me. Submit to Me and allow Me to serve and care for you.”
Indeed, we cannot serve one another as the Lord asks us to serve if we are not submitted to Him, allowing Him to serve us in our most needy and mundane moments.
The Lord’s Supper
Paul gives us perhaps the most comprehensive discussion of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:17–34. Paul takes the Corinthians to task for refusing to respect one another as they ate the Lord’s Supper together. Some of them had more influence and more money than others, and they were pushy and demanding as they met for their communal meal. Paul tells them that each one of them was taking his own supper first, ignoring those who couldn’t push their way to the table. “One is hungry and another is drunk,” Paul chastised them. “Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing?”
In fact, Paul finally tells them that because they are unwilling to examine themselves and do not “judge the body rightly”—and that body may be understood both as the fellow believers who are the body of Christ and the actual body and blood of the Lord—for that reason many of them are “weak and sick and a number sleep”.
So why is our attitude towards communion so serious?
Paul explains in verses 23–26:
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (ESV)
The Lord’s Supper is Jesus’ new command to us to “remember”. He has completed every shadow of the old covenant; He has become our sin and our sacrifice and our new high priest and our Sabbath rest. When we eat and drink the Lord’s Supper, we are publicly proclaiming His finished work of atonement. We are publicly thanking Him for saving us and making us part of His body.
The Lord’s Supper is the physical sign of our being in the new covenant. We no longer have to work to try to be right with God. Now, having believed, we are forgiven and cleansed, and we eat the bread and drink the wine as an act of submission and gratitude and trust and proclamation of our Savior.
Furthermore, in Matthew 26:29 Jesus said,
I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.
Jesus gave us His supper to remind us that we are His because of His death on our behalf—and He also is remembering us by NOT eating and drinking this supper until He “drinks it new” with us in His Father’s kingdom! In other words, the Lord’s supper points two directions. It points back to Jesus’ “It Is Finished!” as He died on the cross, and it points forward to that day when He comes and gets us to be with Him for eternity. We will eat the marriage supper of the Lamb together with Him (Rev. 19:9), and because of His finished work of atonement, we will never again be separated from Him!
Conclusion
As a born again believer who worships in a church that celebrates the Lord’s Supper every Sunday, I have come to treasure remembering Jesus’ death and resurrection with my fellow brothers and sisters in Jesus. The privilege of belonging to Him changes reality and makes us citizens of a new kingdom: the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Col 1:13). Nothing can ever take us from His hand!
When I remember that summer day kneeling before my friend’s dirty legs with a foot washing basin between us, I realize that her shame and my confusion were both fruit of a false gospel. We both believed that we had to be worthy of Jesus; she expressed her worthiness by honoring the edges of Sabbath, and I expressed it by bathing but trampling Sabbath’s edge. Neither of us understood the power of Jesus’ example of washing His disciples’ feet, and neither of us had any idea that the Lord’s Supper was a proclamation of His worthiness!
Jesus is Lord! When we remember Him and proclaim His death and resurrection, we are honoring Him and submitting to His headship over us and His forgiveness of our sin. We are His, and He is ours—and we look forward together to being physically united with Him for eternity! †
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