John 13:1-20

04/11/10
John 13:1-20
Hudson UMC

Today is the first Sunday in the season after Easter. As we celebrate the newness of life that is given to us because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, we enter into an extended reflection on the events of Holy Week. In John, chapters thirteen through twenty-one all take place in about a week. Everything else that John has to tell us is about Holy Week, the crucifixion, resurrection, and the time that the resurrected Christ spends with His disciples. You might think it is odd to focus so intensely on Holy Week right when we have just celebrated Easter, but nothing could be more natural, especially in John. Throughout the Gospel according to John, we hear Jesus and the narrator explain that nobody understood the significance of these events until after the resurrection. It is only when we look at these stories on this side of the resurrection that we can make heads or tails of them. There is no better time to think about John’s account of Holy Week than right after Easter.

Our passage for this week is the beginning of five chapters that are nearly entirely Jesus teaching His disciples. If you have a red-letter edition of the Bible, you will see that almost everything is in red for a while. It is significant that, right before Jesus takes on the role of teacher more fully than ever before, He serves His disciples. Jesus, knowing that He was about to be arrested and killed, knowing that the one who was going to betray Him was sitting at the table with Him, and knowing that, though He was the fullness of God in the midst of humanity and His disciples would be so unfaithful that they would turn and run when the going got tough, washed their feet.

It is extremely important that we understand how serious this is because it has drastic implications for the way you and I live our lives. Jesus, the leader, the teacher, the powerful one, washed the feet of His disciples. In order to understand this, we need to understand the culture at the time. At that time and place, people walked a lot on dirt roads wearing sandals. By the end of the day, their feet would have been caked with dust and anything else they managed to step in. It was common practice for a person to provide water for people to wash their own feet. Under the Israelite system, nobody could be forced to wash someone else’s feet. Not even slaves were required to wash the feet of their masters. Sometimes, a disciple would wash the feet of their teacher or Rabbi as a sign of humble love and admiration, but, according to the custom at the time, the greater person never served the lesser.

This is what makes the actions of Jesus so incredibly important. Jesus takes off His outer garment, that is, basically stripping down to His underwear with all the humiliation that goes along with it, ties a towel around Himself as an apron and went to His disciples, ordinary men, many of whom were lowly fishermen before they met Him, and began to wash their feet.

I can imagine the intense awkwardness that must have consumed the disciples at that moment. Here is their lord, their teacher, their master, washing their feet. What are they to make of that? What should they do when Jesus does this? What is the appropriate response to this blatant disregard for “the way things are done?”

This tension comes out into the open when Jesus approaches Peter. Peter says, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” He can’t believe that his master would actually do that. He wanted to make absolutely sure that this is what Jesus was doing. For all he knew, He might have another plan in mind and it just looks like He is going to wash his feet, but if that is actually his plan, Peter would want to put a stop to it. “Jesus answered, ‘You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Listen to what Peter says here. “Peter said to him, ‘You will never wash my feet.’” Peter is saying, “No, Jesus, I simply will not allow you to humiliate yourself like this. I will not allow you to so flagrantly overturn our social customs. I know myself far too well to allow you to wash my feet. By washing my feet, you are taking on the role of my servant and I can not allow that.”

What does Jesus do in response? Does He come to His senses, as it were, and say, “You’re right. What was I thinking? I’ll let you wash your own feet.” No, He does not. He says, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” This is incredible. If Peter did not allow Jesus to wash him, he could not be a disciple. What kind of situation is this to put someone in? “If you want to be my disciple and my follower, you need to allow me to debase myself, get on my knees, and be your servant.” If you want to follow Jesus and serve Him, you have to let Him serve you. As awkward and paradoxical as it might seem, this is the beauty of the Gospel. If we want to be a part of what Jesus is doing, if we want to follow Jesus, we have to allow Him to do the work. We can’t stand up and say, “No thank you, Jesus, I can take care of this.” Even if it is something like washing your feet. If Jesus wants to wash your feet, you cannot do the washing and still be His follower. To follow Jesus requires total commitment. Jesus is either everything, or else we have nothing to do with Him.

So, when Peter finds out that his status as a disciple is at stake here, he completely turns around. He says, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” He says, “If I’ve got to be washed by you, then wash all of me!” This seems great, but Jesus does not do it. He says, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” This is extremely important. Jesus does not allow Peter to call the shots. Even when Peter’s exclamation seems to make perfect sense to us, Jesus remains in control and the one who decides what needs to be done. Over and over again, throughout the entire Bible, we see God saying to humanity, “You have your ideas of what needs to be done. However, you are stuck in your limited context with misperceptions and confusion. I know what you need and I will give it to you, even if you think you need something different.

At the end of this event, after washing the feet of His disciples, Jesus begins to explain the full extent of how radical what He has just done is. We read, “After he had washed their feet, had put in his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Now Jesus starts meddling. He is not satisfied with the fact that He has decisively demonstrated service to His disciples; He has taken His example and turned it into a command for all who follow Him to observe. He doesn’t leave us any alternative but to follow in His footsteps.

In fact, He goes so far as to say, “For I have set you as an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.” Jesus is saying something here that everyone in the ancient world would agree with. The disciples saw themselves as Jesus’ servants. They also would be sent out into the world, so they are the messengers of Jesus. They would agree with the statement that they are not greater than their master and the one who sends them. But what does Jesus mean in this context? What does He mean by saying this right after He washed the feet of His disciples? He means, quite simply, that if their master takes the lowliest place, the place of a servant, and waits on others, making Himself low, even washing feet in His undergarments and a towel, we, that is, you and I, should be willing to do the same.

This radically overturns the way that we normally look at service. We think of Christian service to be something that is completely voluntary, but Jesus tells us that it is mandatory, that we cannot be His followers if we refuse to serve like He has done. We see that, if we hope to live our lives without serving others, or even having others serve us, we are trying to be greater than our master, which Jesus says cannot be. If the God of the universe was willing to humble Himself to the dust and wash the dirt and dust off of ordinary people’s feet, surely we must be even more willing to take the degrading jobs and give of ourselves.

Perhaps the single most radical thing that Jesus is saying here has to do with the reward that we should expect for service: there isn’t one. The service that Jesus models is one that does not count the cost, that does not consider if it is a good investment, but one that gives selflessly and does not expect any thanks, any compensation, or any reward. I want you to think about a mighty king, sitting on his throne, the mightiest man in the country. This mighty king calls to have one of his servants come and wash his feet. The servant comes and does just that, washing the dirt and nastiness off of his master’s feet. Does the king say “thank you” to the servant? Does he offer to return the favor? Of course not! In the world, masters do not thank their servants; they simply command them. Servants serve their masters, but do not serve in order to get thanks or to enjoy the deep personal satisfaction they get from washing the king’s feet, but because they are ordered to.

Jesus puts it this way. He tells a story about a servant working all day in the fields, laboring away for his master. When the day is over and the servant comes in from the fields, what happens? Does the master say, “Boy, you’ve sure been working hard. Here, sit down, make yourself comfortable. I’ll make you some supper. You’ve had such a long day, just relax. You’ve earned it.” No, the master doesn’t say that at all. Instead, the master says, “Now that you are done in the fields, make me some supper and change into some nice clothes so you can wait on me while I eat and drink and only when I am done can you go and get something to eat.” He finishes up His story by saying, “So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.’”

If we were slaves and we had to wash the feet of the king, we would not expect any thanks or anything else like that, because we are a slave and he is the king. If we were a servant or a follower of a leader and we did what we were told, we would not expect any thanks or generous response because we are the servant or follower and they are the leader. If we are working at a job, we don’t expect our bosses to say “thank you” every time we fulfill our job description, all we expect is the paycheck that is coming to us. In fact, any time we serve someone or something that we think is more important than we are, we have no problem serving just because it is what we are supposed to do. The difficulty comes when we engage in serving someone or something that we think is not worthy of us, that we somehow believe is beneath us. The more I think about it and reflect on the nature of service, the more I am convinced that the only way we can expect to get thanks for our work and service is if we think that, somehow, we are better than the one we are serving. All of our selfishness that we usually keep hidden away so that nobody can see it comes rushing out, all of a sudden, and is exposed. We want people to recognize our work because we think that we are pretty special and, by golly, the people should be grateful that I took time out of my busy schedule and made room for them.

So long as we are working for someone or something that we think is greater than ourselves, we have no problems working and serving and giving of ourselves without any thanks. We see the job as intrinsically important and we feel honored just to be allowed to serve. However, if we are serving someone or something that we think is beneath us, we want to make sure that the person or cause knows just how lucky it is to have someone like us serving them. We expect them to marvel at our dedication, at our willingness to serve. However, we do not see this in Jesus when He served.

In fact, we see the opposite. We do not see a Jesus who expected His disciples to return the favor and wash His feet. We do not see a Jesus who waited for His disciples to thank Him for His service and then become upset when it never came. We do not see a Jesus who, while on the cross, lamented that He had shown so much kindness to people who didn’t appreciate it. Instead, we see a Jesus who says, “I know that you are fickle and unreliable people. I know that, within a matter of hours, you are going to scatter all over the place, that you are going to join the crowd of mockers, that you are going to pretend that you don’t even know me. I know that you are going to run and hide when the going gets tough. In short, I know that you are completely unworthy of me, but I serve you anyway, without reserve, without hesitation, and without expecting anything in return.” When Christ is on the cross, we hear Him cry out, not that we have been ungrateful and undeserving, but rather we hear, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Now, this does not mean that we should not honor people who serve the church, who give sacrificially of themselves to help others. When we lift up such service, we can encourage them to keep going because their work makes a difference and is appreciated. However, it is a caution and even a warning to us that we must not approach service as if we are doing people favors. Like Jesus said, after we have done everything in our power to do, we should say, “We are unworthy slaves and we only did what we ought to have done.” We follow a Lord who gave of Himself, washing the feet of His disciples, even washing the feet of the one who was about to betray Him to death. If Jesus is willing to wash and even die for the one who is directly responsible for His arrest, and we have been given the Spirit of Christ, surely we can give and not count the cost, we can rejoice in service, we can be overwhelmed in the midst of our service that we are joined in the servant ministry of Jesus and the job is intrinsically worth doing because it is God’s work.

So we all are called to serve, and to serve without thanks, even though thanks may be given from time to time. We do not serve human beings but God, who sees whatever we do in secret and rewards us. Jesus is our model, Jesus is our example, Jesus is the one we serve, even when it looks like we are serving our brothers and sisters in Christ. To follow Jesus is to be a servant, to be reduced to nothing in ourselves and raised up to unthinkable heights in Christ. We are called to serve the servant Lord. Let us do so with joy and amazement, that we might be allowed the privilege to serve the least of society. Let us pray.

AMEN