A UMNS Commentary
By Bishop Sally Dyck*
March 13, 2007

I missed Ash Wednesday.

I missed attending an Ash Wednesday service and saying the prayers, hearing Psalm 51 and receiving the ashes.

Yet I think I experienced what the day is all about.

On Ash Wednesday, I was on my return trip home to the United States after traveling abroad during February. Part of the time I was in Africa to preach at the Liberia Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.

Visiting Liberia gave me a new appreciation for what happened at the Last Supper in the Gospel of John. John 13 doesn't mention that Jesus broke bread and shared the cup with the disciples. Perhaps the tradition was so strong by the time this Gospel was written that the writer didn't think it necessary to mention. What this Gospel does emphasize is the washing of the disciples’ feet.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The infrastructures of Liberia are so deteriorated that dust, mud and dirt cover everything, especially the roads and walkways. Several times a day in Liberia I would try to wash my feet and looked forward to the ritual. (At least once a day I even took off my shoes and poured water on them to clean them up!) My feet were hot, sweaty and swollen by the humidity. The cool refreshing water from a bucket (which was also used for bathing) was an immense relief, restoring and renewing my whole body.

Some religious groups have taken Jesus’ foot washing functionally, as Peter initially did. They have missed that it was an act of relationship with Jesus, not a hygiene concern. Dust, dirt and grime remind us that we are sinners in need of “grace, grace that pardons and cleanses within,” as the hymn puts it.

I find many churches no longer include prayers of confession and (importantly) words of assurance in their worship services. Yet people in our culture need to confess their sins and receive the good news that they are forgiven. We all live in the pressure cooker of expectations and demands, where nothing is ever good enough for us or from us, and where our perfectionism, excuses and need to control take over. Confession and words of assurance bring the exquisite relief, restoration and renewal to our spirits that the water brought to my feet.

Foot washing was usually assigned to the lowliest servant, or guests did it themselves after being offered the means to perform the task. I wonder if usually the disciples washed their own feet, having no assigned servant to do so for them. Self-service, if you will. Take care of yourself and don’t be bothered by others’ needs.

Here Jesus offers another model of being in community: serving each other even in the most humble, common and personal ways. Our intensified, heightened and determined self-sufficiency and privatization keep us from true community in Jesus Christ as modeled in Jesus’ service to the disciples.

A recent Gallup poll indicated that more than half of highly religious Americans believe they do not need to change society or the world around them in order to be faithful to their beliefs. Yet in the Bible, Jesus tells his followers about their role in bringing about the realm of God on earth. Those “highly religious Americans” who believe they do not have to change society are disregarding Jesus' teaching.

“Lent is a spiritual pilgrimage toward God, but it’s also a journey toward others and into community, including the global community.”
–Bishop Sally Dyck

Jesus served his disciples so that they would learn to serve each other and take that service out into the world, thereby changing the world. Rather than self-service, we’re called to bother with each other, to be concerned and caring about the lives and conditions in which others live.

As a result of my travels, I’m bothered and I care that teenagers in Liberia walked up to me and ask if I would take them home with me so that they could get a better education, have a hot shower, study by electric light instead of kerosene and not have to beg for shoes.

I’ve never been more proud of my country than the morning that John G. Innis, the United Methodist bishop of Liberia, announced to his annual conference that the United States had forgiven significant debt to the nation of Liberia. The annual conference members cheered with hope that roads, electricity, running water and education would replace debt retirement as the national priorities. This is a different kind of forgiveness, but nonetheless a forgiveness that brings relief, restoration and renewal.

Liberian United Methodists believe they can be an energy and catalyst for transforming their country. I believe they will be a light of hope to all of Africa and the world as they rebuild their nation. They don't seem to think that caring about these things is too political. It is survival for one and all, and it’s their faith that will make them instruments of transformation.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Lent is a spiritual pilgrimage toward God, but it’s also a journey toward others and into community, including the global community. Forgiveness brings relief, restoration and renewal as well as transformation in our personal lives and in our relationships with others, even those in faraway places like Liberia. In Liberia's dust, I walked where Jesus walks.

*Dyck is bishop of the Minnesota Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.

News media contact: Linda Green, (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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Council of Bishops

Minnesota Conference Information