As One Who Serves

Graffiti on the Kitchen Wall

Daisy Bonner would have easily been forgotten if she had not scribbled some graffiti on the kitchen wall of a white frame house in Warm Springs, Georgia. “The Little White House” was the place Franklin Delano Roosevelt went to escape the pressure of the Presidency. It was where he died.  April 12, 1945.

Daisy was FDR’s cook when he was in Georgia. She was preparing his favorite soufflé when the brain hemorrhage struck that ended his life on April 12, 1945. It was his last supper, eighty years ago this week. As the expression of her grief, she wrote on the wall: “Daisy Bonner cook the 1^st meal and the last one in this cottage for the President Roosevelt.”

Daisy Bonner’s words are the continuing witness to her love and service to the President.  

To most folks, Daisy was just another black servant, like so many black women at the time, doing the mundane work of cooking and cleaning. But when I saw her words scrawled on the wall, I heard the voice of a woman who had found her identity in what others would call “the ministry of the mundane.” She did seemingly small things in a significant way because they made a difference in the life of a person she loved and who was also one of the world’s greatest leaders. She knew who she was in relation to who he was.

We do not know the names of the people like Daisy Bonner who cooked and served Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. We know that when Jesus got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist and knelt down to wash the disciples’ feet, he was taking the role of the lowest servant in the house; the kind of servant who would have easily been forgotten and who hardly seems to leave a trace of their presence.

Breaking Barriers

By washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus was breaking the racial, religious, and social barriers that separated people then, and continue to separate us today.

People of my generation remember the surprising way Mr. Rogers reenacted the foot washing scene in 1969 when he invited Officer Clemmons, a Black police officer on the show, to join him and cool his feet in a small plastic wading pool. When they put their feet in the water, they were breaking what was still a well-known racial barrier around swimming pools in our country. Mr. Rogers even invited Officer Clemmons to use his towel to dry his feet.

They recreated the scene in 1993, when Clemmons made his last appearance on the show. But this time Clemmons didn’t just use Rogers’ towel — Rogers (a Presbyterian minister) took the towel and dried Clemmons’ feet himself. Clearly moved by it, Clemmons simply said, “I am a Black gay man and Fred washed my feet.”

When we gather at Jesus’ table on Maundy Thursday we hear again his new commandment to love others as he loved and to serve as he served. We may not scrawl any graffiti on the wall or create a memorable TV scene, but in a time when we are surrounded by the loud voices of self-serving, authoritarian leaders who continue to erect the barriers of race, nationality and status, we need to hear the voice of the One who came among us as one who served. Rising from his table, we can find our own way to leave a mark of love on the lives of people we serve.

(Adapted from Easter Earthquake: How Resurrection Shakes Our World, with permission from Upper Room Books, 2017).

Grace and peace,

Jim