“Jesus said, If I don’t wash you, you can’t be part of what I’m doing.” {John 13:8}
Love one another. Wash each other’s feet. Simple instructions. We still don’t have it right. Not completely. It was on a Thursday evening, a day we now call Maundy Thursday. It just happens I’m writing this chapter on Maundy Thursday, 2019. It was on the particular Thursday evening that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper as we now call it and the sacrament of foot washing.
When they were gathered, Jesus removed his robe and donned what we might call an apron. He then assumed the position with a basin filled with water and began to wash his disciples feet. He moved purposefully from one to the other. Washing the feet and drying them with his apron.
The feet that Jesus washed that Thursday on his way to the cross were not nearly so dainty and manicured as the ones we present in worship these days.
When he got to Peter, Peter protested mightily. But Jesus prevailed, instructing that if Peter didn’t submit to what seemed to him an unjust act of humility, he would have no part with Jesus. Peter got it, being the quick study that he was. Then by all means, he replied. Wash not only my feet but my head and my hands also.
Jesus did wash the feet of those who’d served with him for three years- those who’d left their families, their ideals, their life’s work – to become fishers of men. The disciples who’d walked with him from town to town proclaiming a gospel they were growing into day by day…a message they would be mandated to proclaim until the end of their days.
