Blessed are the feet: A sermon on John 12:1–8; 13:1–4

Following the death of President Jimmy Carter, the congregation of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, confronted the liminal space of grief after decades of welcoming visitors who came each Sunday from around the world to be part of the president’s Sunday School teaching. On the Sunday following Carter’s funeral and interment on January 9, 2025, this guest sermon, here revised, drew upon John’s text of Mary’s anointing of Jesus’s feet and his subsequent washing of the disciples’ feet as both a recognition of the radical bridge-building between life, death, and new life in which Carter and the congregation participated, and the image of love as the new “currency” that enables the Christian community to co-create new dwelling spaces of connection and healing for the community. Continuing on a Johannine theme of the Word becoming flesh, the sermon concludes with an invitation to the congregation to come forward for an anointing of their feet with water for the journey before them.