John 13:1-15

Beloved of God,

This evening’s Bible passage is John 13:1-15:

¹ Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. ² During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, ³ Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, ⁴ rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. ⁵ Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. ⁶ He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” ⁷ Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” ⁸ Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹ Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰ Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” ¹¹ For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.” ¹² When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you?¹³ You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. ¹⁴ If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵ For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”

When we read this passage, we tend to stop at the feet. Jesus washed their dirty, dusty feet! What an act of humility! Perhaps, though, we would do well to look beyond the feet at the men to whom the feet belonged.

There’s Peter for a start. Peter tries to take control of the whole episode, first telling Jesus not to dare to wash his (Peter’s) feet, then telling him to wash not only his feet but his hands and head as well. This is the same Peter who, a little later, swears he’ll lay down his life for Jesus (13:37) and in the early hours of the next morning denies three times that ever knew Jesus (18:15-18, 25-27).

Then there are James and John, who on the way to Jerusalem had asked Jesus if they might “sit one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (Mk 10:37), an ambition right at the other end of the arrogance/humility spectrum from that of Jesus’s washing of their feet. Peter, James, and John also slept when Jesus asked them three times in the Garden of Gethsemane to stay awake and pray with and for him (Mk 14:32-42).

And there are eight more who, along with Peter, James, and John, “all left [Jesus] and fled,” after Jesus was arrested (Mk 14:50).

Finally, there’s Judas, who will betray Christ for thirty pieces of silver. Judas is still there for the foot-washing: he doesn’t leave until Jn. 13:30. Jesus washes Judas’s feet, too.

These are the men whose feet Jesus washes. They’re not super-heroes. They’re not spiritual giants. They’re not even above-average. They’re weak, broken, and sometimes faithless, just like the rest of us.

I take great comfort in this. If Jesus is willing to love and serve even these, then he’s willing to love and serve even me. If I’d been there, he’d have washed my feet. Yours, too. None of us can fail so badly that Jesus will discard us as unworthy of his love. We fit right into this group of followers whose feet Jesus washed.

I’m challenged, too, by Jesus’s example. After he’s washed their feet, he tells the disciples, “I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (13:15). We are called to love one another not so much by serving those who are better or who rank higher than ourselves, nor even those whom we kindly regard as our equals. If we follow Jesus’s example, we’ll also love and serve those we might be tempted to regard as beneath us, undeserving, beyond help.

Unless we’re Mother Teresa, we all fail at this. We may aim to move in that direction, but we all fall short. Which takes us to the cross, where our sins and failures and flaws are forgiven. It takes us to the righteousness of Christ imputed to us (2 Cor. 5:21), which means that all Christ’s perfect goodness is credited to us in the Book of Life. If Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, then we who are in Christ are also regarded by God as having done so. In the person of Christ, even you and I have loved and served others as we should. Now, in the power of the Spirit of Christ, we are free to try again in practice to live each day more like Christ, to follow his example, to love and serve not just the best but all of those whom God places in our way.

And, as we try and fail and try again to do better, we can rest in the assurance that Christ washed the feet of Peter, James, John, and Judas, and the rest of the gang. God’s love for us in Christ is not a response to our goodness; our goodness, as the Spirit bears his fruit in us, is a response to God’s love for us in Christ.

Your brother in Christ,

Max