Kügler, Politics of Feedinga spiritual interpretation. The other reason most certainly is that foot-
washing was linked to the Eucharist conflicts the redactor wanted to
react to. Footwashing in antiquity was the lowest work a person could be
made to do. Usually, slaves were used to perform this act or individuals
washed their own feet. Inviting guests to a banquet usually meant hav-
ing a servant deliver this service to arriving guests. How did Christian
communities solve this problem? Did they also use slaves? Did the most
humble members of the community serve higher ranking Christians?
Or did everybody wash his or her own feet before the meal began? We
do not really know, but as the Johannine community is usually seen as
an egalitarian association without much hierarchy,^33 they definitely
practiced footwashing in a way that did not display or produce any hier-
archical order within the community. As already indicated above (see
footnote 25), the social model for the Johannine community was obvi-
ously the peer group of the Hellenistic king. This elitist group of
„friends“ who were at court with the king shared entertainment as well
as cultural and political life with him and could talk freely to him. As
Philo calls Moses a “friend of God,” (Mos 1:156) the religious use of this
topic seems to be quite closely related to upper class theology. It is rather
improbable that the Johannine community as a whole was ever socially
located in the upper class.^34 But perhaps we have to imagine the group,
which is criticised by the Johannine redactor as a rather small, elitist
group of peers, as belonging more or less to the same social stratum.
This group within the community might have had problems integrating
fully into a socially mixed community. Perhaps they did not have the
slightest problem with accepting their social peers as theologically equal,
but the challenge to accept persons of lower social status as equals would
have been too great for them.
As the Eucharistic meeting was the most concrete manifestation of
Christians’ corporate identity, it was also the biggest challenge for the
rich, mighty, and noble. As we learned from 1.Cor, they had to share
their food with the poor and came into contact with the needs of their
poorer fellow Christians in general. These problems may have been
aggravated even more by the problem of footwashing. This was certainly
(^33) Cf. H.-J. KLAUCK, Gemeinde ohne Amt? Erfahrungen mit der Kirche in den
johanneischen Schriften, in: BZ 29 (1985) 193-220.
(^34) Under the influence of 1.Cor 1:26 (“not many mighty, not many noble”) early Christi-
anity is conceived as dominantly lower class phenomenon by most scholars.