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This chapter analyzes the Scriptures in several hymns prescribed for Holy Thursday, whose central theme is Wisdom’s offering and freely sharing a life-sustaining banquet with those searching for her (Prov 9:1–6). God’s begotten Wisdom (Prov 8:22–31) mixes a bowl of ambrosia (i.e., Eucharist, Matt 26:26–29). But prior to Wisdom’s banquet (i.e., Last Supper), Jesus, the incarnate Wisdom, the one who bows the heavens and controls the terrestrial and upper waters (Ps 114 [113]), bows himself before the servants and washes his disciples’ feet as an example of serving leadership (John 13:3–17). However, Jesus’s foot washing is also the expression of divine synkatabasis (condescension), which was possible due to the “mighty love of his [God’s] strength” proclaimed by Habakkuk (3:4 [LXX]). Wisdom’s banquet provides her followers with a “new,” “spiritual drink” (1 Cor 10:4) and makes Jesus be with his disciples forever as “God among gods” (Ps 82 [81]:1–2, 6).

Based on Ambrose’s explanation of the elements of the sacrament of Christian initiation practiced in Milan in De sacramentis and De mysteriis, the prolegomena reconstructs Augustine’s baptism. Thus Augustine’s baptism functions heuristically to give the reader a picture of the elements of the baptismal ritual to which Ambrose alludes or explicitly refers in his catechetical homilies and other soteriological writings.

This chapter discusses the love feast, or agape, of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Brethren in Christ Church. The love feast represents a central movement and site of pious practice, sacred eating, theological discussion, and evangelization by gastronomy. For the Brethren in Christ, the love feast once required each of its host churches many months of planning, which includes food enough for two days of feasting by hundreds of church members and visitors, and overnight housing. The typical event includes a time of personal testimonies for most of a Saturday; Saturday evening with feet washing ceremony, fellowship dinner, and subsequent sharing of a communion (Eucharistic) meal; Sunday morning with a church service, and afternoon with sharing, preaching, and religious instruction. Today, most Brethren love feasts consist primarily of feet washing and one potluck meal for local congregants, as well as a time of sharing, church services, and sometimes baptisms.

This brief concluding chapter includes a summary of the book’s main points, chapter by chapter. It also includes a brief meditation on the portion of John’s gospel, John 13:1–17, in which Jesus serves his disciples by washing their feet. The act itself expresses humility, a fact that is underscored by the reversal of social roles that it exemplifies. It is especially striking that Jesus washes the feet of Judas, who would soon betray him. This reversal of social roles not only exemplifies the moral virtue of humility, it also provides a model for followers of Christ to imitate in daily life. The foot washing can also serve as a reminder to those who seek to exemplify the Christian virtue of humility, namely, that there are opportunities to do so in small, everyday situations.

This chapter presents the text of Lamed Shapiro's short fiction titled The Kiss. It explains that the story is about a pogromist who kills a Jew because of his refusal to kiss the pogromist's feet. It suggests that the pogromist's act is a mockery of Christ's humility in washing the feet of John the Baptist.

This chapter offers a glimpse into how value is articulated and performed in the multilayeredness of a distinctive service from Passion Week, the Washing of the Feet. The chapter is essentially an interpretive narrative description of the event that combines reference to written sources and to living practice. It underlines the constant processes of negotiation, juxtaposition, and ordering that bring together the various elements of an ecclesiastical service. In the liturgical reenactment of a biblical story in which Jesus washed the feet of his twelve disciples, the various modes of value conception and construction in Hayy al-Suryan merge and mediate the conception and performance of the music event. Liturgical structures, chant sequences, textual choices, musical decisions, role distribution, and choir administration are enmeshed with issues of music preservation and development, emotional significance, aesthetic preference, matters of faith, and existing structures of ecclesiastical governance.

Holy Week, celebrated with rich liturgical actions that enhance and reinforce the biblical texts,does not emphasize chronology, but instead a more comprehensive contemplation of the Passion of Christ. The dramatic procession with branches on Passion (Palm) Sunday anticipates the ultimate victory of Christ’s death;the liturgy itself is marked by the reading of the two-chapter passion account from a synoptic Gospel. The passage through death to life unfolds throughout the week: Monday presents Mary anointing the feet of Jesus in anticipation of his burial; Tuesday calls for glorying in the cross; Wednesday recalls the plotting against Jesus. The Triduum, one day made of three, begins Maundy Thursday evening: the washing of feet occurs, and after the Eucharist the altar is stripped; Good Friday has as its theme the complex meanings of the cross as set forth in St. John’s Passion, the solemn prayers, the veneration of the wood of the cross, and the distribution of Holy Communion;the Great Sabbath is liturgically empty until after sundown the Great Vigil begins with the service of fire, followed by the readings detailing the history of salvation, Holy Baptism, and the first Eucharist of Easter with the return of Alleluia.

This chapter examines the ways in which the incarnation of Jesus Christ is specifically represented as an outworking of divine humility. Importantly, this is rendered using imagery borrowed from biblical descriptions of wisdom, something that is suggestive for reflection on intellectual humility. Particular attention is paid to Philippians 2:1–11, which presents Christ’s ‘humility of mind’ as exemplary for Christian life and conduct. The humility in question is not associated with limitation or deficiency, and far less with sin, but rather with ‘selflessness’ and ‘servanthood’. Participation in Christ’s wisdom entails a preparedness to make sacrifices intended for the flourishing of others or for the glory of God. The chapter will also consider 1 Corinthians 1:18–2:10, where the ‘wisdom of God’ is contrasted with human wisdom, and Matthew 11:25–30, where Jesus is represented as the embodiment of divine wisdom.