Mark 6.1-13: Clean Feet, Dusty Feet

Jesus goes home in the gospel reading for Proper 9 (14)B/Pentecost+7B (Mark 6:1-13). Home...but it doesn't go well. Jesus then calls the disciples and sends them out with instructions for what they can do if they visit a town and things don't go well. The directions are clear: shake the dust from your feet.

Dusty feet - and making them un-dusty - is a subject that bubbles up in Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Abraham offers water to the three visitors that they may wash the dust from their feet (Genesis 18:4). David instructs Uriah (Bathsheba's husband) to wash his feet when he returns home (2 Samuel 11:8). Several different stories relate when Jesus' feet were washed (Luke 7). And, of course, Jesus washes the disciples' feet (John 13).

The intention of those clean feet is the opposite of the instruction from Jesus in Mark 6. Washing the feet of guests is a sign of hospitality and welcome. What Jesus instructs the disciples to do is to not look back, to take nothing from the town that would not offer them welcome. They are to completely disassociate themselves - and by extension Jesus - with those places.

We are not provided with a list of places on the disciples' "dust-free" towns, but we can imagine that if Jesus' hometown didn't receive him well there would be places where his disciples would be unwelcome. Jesus' experience would give them a guide. Though Jesus didn't literally shake the dust from his sandals as he left Nazareth, he could do no "deeds of power" among them other than curing a few sick people. He took little to nothing of the townspeople with him, and he left way less of himself than he had hoped. As is always the case, Jesus went ahead as the pioneer and then spoke back to the disciples following him.

The painting here is actually an interpretation of the story of the travelers returning to Emmaus. The composition (both of the painting and the story) are not unlike the Mark 6 text: two travelers, the presence (if not the visible person) of Jesus, and a very dusty landscape. There appears to be a structure and an open door through which shines a light warmer in tone than the landscape. It is, perhaps, a light of welcome for Jesus and these two who believe he is the One.

Janet Brooks-Gerloff. On the Way to Emmaus. 1992. Bienenberg Mennonite Study Center, Bienenberg, Switzerland.