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Many worship practices that meet us in the pages of the New Testament and early Christianity are tantalizingly obscure: Why were Christians being baptized for the dead? Why were women required to wear coverings on their heads? Why did believers wash one another’s feet?

What do we make today of these and other practices? Should we continue them?

Many are clearly mandated, or fully described and valued, in the New Testament. Yet we find many of them difficult to fit into our contemporary worship.

Sometimes our problem is lack of knowledge. Much description of worship in the New Testament gives the impression that worship practices were developed ad hoc—occasioned by the needs of the hour. Sometimes we do not know the intended significance of various worship settings and occasions.

But often we can read the texts only too clearly. The question is, what principle is being illustrated and enforced? So we continue genuinely to puzzle over why early Christians practiced certain rites—and whether and how we should follow their lead.

We might take as a helpful case study the practice of foot washing. The practice is prescribed in the New Testament and was observed in the early Christian communities. Yet it has been both practiced and neglected by churches in our day. Should foot washing be part of our worship?

The New Testament support for foot washing is found in John 13:4–5, 12–15: [Jesus] got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.…

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. ”

Washing the disciples’ feet reflects a civilization that knew only unpaved roads, open-toed sandals or bare feet, and a hot climate to tax the weary foot traveler. Bathing feet was a mark of hospitality for visitors in both Israel and Greco-Roman society (Luke 7:44; 1 Tim 5:10).

Early Christians preserved the practice as part of baptism or even as the manner of baptism itself. Ambrose, bishop of Milan (about A.D. 380), taught that just as a person’s sins were washed away in baptism, so foot washing removed the hereditary sins from Adam. The Roman Catholic church (with other liturgical churches) has preserved foot washing, with modified meaning, in its observance of Maundy Thursday.

Though Protestants reject a sacramental reasoning, foot washing has continued among German Pietist groups and Anabaptist denominations like the Church of the Brethren, as well as some Adventist, Holiness, and Pentecostal churches. These take their stand on the plain directive of the Lord: “I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” Foot washing to them is both obedience and a lesson in humility.

What is puzzling, though, is not that many Christians continue this practice but that it has never become as prominent in the church as has Communion. Foot washing is commanded by the Lord, perhaps even more strongly than is Communion. On grounds of logic and clarity the case is apparently irrefutable. Why then do the majority of Christians observe the command to break bread and take the cup in the Supper, yet regard the foot-washing directive as nonbinding?

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