Foot Washing

by Dave Wilkinson

John 13:1-17

February 17, 2002

I want to talk to you this morning about feet -- dirty, dusty, smelly feet -- feet that have walked through mud and cow dung wearing only sandals. Do you recognize these feet? They're the feet of Jesus' disciples.

The roads of Israel were unsurfaced and unclean. In dry weather they were inches deep in dust and in wet they were liquid mud. The shoes ordinary people wore were sandals -- simply soled shoes held on to the foot by a few straps. They didn't give much protection against the dust or the mud of the roads.

This is why there were always great water pots at the door of a house. Often a servant was posted there with a pitcher and towel to wash the soiled feet of the guests as they came in.

But there was no servant at the door of the house where Jesus went to eat the Last Supper with His disciples. So they all troop into the room with dirty feet. No one is willing to lower himself to wash the feet of the others. They are tough competitors in a competitive world and competitive people don't wash feet.

Luke is the one who tells us the mood of the disciples as they enter the Upper Room. They have been arguing about which one of them is the greatest. They do not sense the danger of this moment as Jesus does. They sense victory. They are getting ready to cut up the Kingdom of God like a pecan pie and argue about who deserves the biggest piece. They are in no mood to serve each other.

Now foot washing is voluntary. It's not required by either law or by custom. So they aren't doing anything technically wrong. They are just behaving toward each other and even their teacher in a minimal way. Each one walks past the water pitcher and pretends not to see it. No one wants to compromise his claim to position.

It's interesting that in John's gospel we don't find an account of the Last Supper. Instead, John focuses on another event in the Upper Room -- the example of servanthood.

John says that two things have already happened before Jesus kneels to wash the feet of His disciples. First, Judas Iscariot who is there with Him, has already decided to betray Him. Second, Jesus knows that His hour has come to return to the Father.

Jesus knows that the Father had given "all things" into His hand. So the thing He takes into His hand is the most humble thing of all -- a pitcher of water for washing dirty feet.

Love is that way. When we love someone and that person is injured or ill, no task is too menial. Love bathes broken bodies and empties bed pans.

Jesus' great awareness that His hour of fulfillment has arrived might have filled Him with tremendous pride the kind of pride which leads us to say "don't bother me with that, I'm doing important things." But Jesus' moment when He might have had supreme pride is turned to great humility. Jesus knows that He is Lord of all and yet He washes His disciple's feet.

But Jesus does not wash His disciple's feet in spite of His knowledge of who He is but because of that knowledge. In Luke 22:27, which is another account of the Upper Room, Jesus describes Himself as "the One who is among you as the One who serves." No act of love is foreign to Jesus. He washes His disciple's feet because, as John declares in verse 1, "Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end" not just to the end of time but to the final degree of service.

Each of the disciples must have felt something as Jesus knelt to wash His feet -- guilt, confusion, maybe anger. But only Peter expresses what is going on in his mind. He says, "Lord, do You wash my feet?" Jesus answers, "What I do you do not realize now; but you will understand later." But Peter is emphatic, "You shall never wash my feet!"

Peter says this, no doubt loudly, with all of the great firmness he can muster. He was with Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration. Later, in his first letter, he writes of seeing Jesus in the form of His heavenly glory. Now here is his Lord preparing to do something that Peter should have done himself.

Peter can see what's going on and yet Jesus tells him that he doesn’t really understand what was happening. Well whatever it is, it is too shameful. Peter wants nothing to do with it.

But Jesus won't be put off by Peter's loud words. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who knows His sheep. And He knows that Peter, more than anything else, more than his loudness or his pretensions to greatness, really wants to belong to Him. So He spells it out for Peter in strong, simple words: "If I do not wash you, you have no part in Me."

These words flatten Peter's defenses. "Lord, if this is what it takes to belong to You, then give me a full bath." He goes from one extreme to the other. He still doesn't understand what Jesus is doing but he is now willing to submit himself to whatever Jesus thinks is necessary -- no matter how improper it seems to Peter.

This is a great step of faith for Peter because Peter has seen it as his role to protect Jesus from His own self. Once he had told Jesus that Jesus didn't know what He was talking about when He spoke of going to Jerusalem in order to die. Peter saw himself as the man who looked out for Jesus' best interests -- the hard, practical, man of the world who would protect the idealistic Jesus from His own vulnerable impulsiveness. You can only imagine the hurt that Peter felt when Jesus told him, "Get behind me, Satan" when all Peter was trying to do was restrain Jesus from what he saw as a foolish course of action. "I was just trying to be a friend and help Jesus out," Peter might well have said to the other disciples. "And did you hear what He called me? He's obviously under a lot of stress. Maybe we should make Him take a vacation."

But finally, here, Peter opens himself to Jesus doing things His own way. For Peter that is a great step of faith.

Now it is true that Peter's faith will lie in ruins in just a few hours as the cock crows and Peter has denied three times that he ever knew Jesus. But afterwards, after the resurrection Peter will finally understand what Jesus has done for him.

After washing the feet of His disciples, Jesus goes back to His place at the table. Then He speaks to them: "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right. That's who I am. If I, then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. Truly, truly I say to you, a slave is not greater than the one who sends him."

Jesus is stating what He has demonstrated by His entire life -- that the life of obedience to God is the life of service to others -- that the life of obedience is the life which counts the needs of others as more important than one's own needs. Jesus spoke of loving our neighbor as ourselves. We are willing to accept that even if we have a hard time living it. But Jesus also spoke of going the extra mile -- of meeting the minimum requirements of human relationships and then far exceeding them. Paul writes that our only competition should be one of trying to outdo one another in giving away first place. Jesus says, "The one who would be great among you must become the servant of all."

Some years ago, I was quoted in the local newspaper for one of those flip comments I’ve been known to make from time to time. You probably didn’t know that sometimes I talk faster than I think. Or maybe you know that very well.

In any case, I was asked to speak before the City Council on behalf of Shiloh Community Church while it was still located on Park Lane off of L.A. Avenue. The City Staff had approved a car wash to go in there with no restrictions on hours of operation and no sound barrier between the car wash and the church. As part of my short speech I had the inspiration of suggesting that this was a time when cleanliness should not be next to godliness. I said a lot of really insightful things as well but that’s the one that made the papers.

Well, in washing His disciple's feet, Jesus is not stressing the value of cleanliness. The phrase "cleanliness is next to Godliness" is from John Wesley. It's not from the Bible. Instead, Jesus demonstrates a cleanliness of life -- a cleanliness that comes through servanthood. Jesus takes the usual priorities of the world nice guys finish last, look out for number one, charity begins at home, and turns them upside down. Jesus says: "The first shall be last and the last shall be first." "Look out for everyone else and God will take care of you." "Charity begins with you enemy." A Christian life that does not honestly wrestle with the difference between God's ways and the world’s ways -- a Christian life that feels perfectly at home with the priorities and goals of the world -- can only be described as spiritually dwarfed.

There is a special book by a special writer named Frederick Buechner. It is called Wishful Thinking, a Theological ABC. Here is a gem from it. Listen real close. It will make you think.

"The wisdom of men," Buechner writes, "is the kind of worldly wisdom that more or less all people have been living since the cave man. It is best exemplified by such homely utterances as 'you've got your own life to lead, business is business, charity begins at home, don't get involved, God helps those who help themselves, safety first, and so forth.

"Although this wisdom can lead on occasion to ruthlessness and indifference, it is by no means incompatible with niceness as a way of life. A person may be interested in nothing so much as feathering his own nest and still give generously to the cancer fund, be on the board of deacons, run for town office, and have a soft spot in his heart for children and animals.

"It is in contrast to all this that what Paul calls 'the foolishness of God' looks so foolish. Inspection stickers used to have printed on the back 'drive carefully the life you save may be your own.' That is the wisdom of men in a nutshell.

"What God says on the other hand is 'the life you save is the life you lose.' In other words, the life you clutch, hoard, guard and play safe with is in the end a life worth little to anybody, including yourself and only a life given away for love's sake is a life worth living. To bring his point home, God shows us a man who gave His life away to the extent of dying a national disgrace without a penny in the bank or a friend to His name. In terms of man's wisdom, Jesus was a perfect fool and anybody who thinks he can follow Him without making something like the same kind of fool of himself is laboring, not under a cross but under a delusion.

"There are two kinds of fools in the world," Buechner concludes: "What Paul calls 'fools for Christ' sake' and damned fools." Makes you think.

Sometimes we only learn about servanthood through a dramatic act reminiscent of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. During the Korean War, a newspaper reporter watched a Catholic nun mop the gangrenous wounds of a Chinese soldier. "I wouldn't do that for a million dollars," he said. "Neither would I," she quietly replied, and went on mopping. That nun knew and taught servanthood.

That is a lesson that would be hard to forget almost as hard to forget as having Jesus Christ wash your feet. And yet there is another dimension of the text that is just as profound -- the tremendous vulnerability Jesus demonstrates in the Upper Room.

Did Jesus wash the feet of Judas? Verse two tells us that "Satan had already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot the plan to betray him." Jesus knew what was in a person. Jesus knew what was in Judas. And verse 27 tells us when Judas left the Upper Room. Judas was in the room when Jesus washed His disciples feet. And Jesus, knowing that Judas was going to betray Him, washed his feet as well. Jesus didn't just talk about loving enemies, He lived it.

It is hard to say exactly where Judas was in his thinking. Apparently he has already made his bargain with the chief priest, has received his thirty pieces of silver, and is waiting for a good opportunity to betray the One who has been his friend. But until he does the deed, it is not too late to turn back.

Perhaps a key part of Jesus washing His disciple's feet is an appeal to Judas to turn away from his self-destructive course. Judas has lain the groundwork for betrayal. His feet are dirty but his soul is far dirtier. So Jesus, as he washes Judas' feet, makes a final offer of cleansing. It is not too late to turn back. And as Jesus stands up, he knows that the offer has been refused. In sadness He says, "You are clean, but not all of you" for He knew the one who was betraying Him.

What did Judas feel as Jesus washed his feet?

Probably nothing. His heart had become too hardened. He treated Jesus' action as a stupid gesture another example of the weakness that Judas so despised. What did all of this garbage about servanthood have to do with real life? Jesus could was Judas' feet but He could not penetrate his hardened heart.

Judas learned nothing from having Jesus wash his feet. But that is not true of the other disciples. For example, later in his life, Peter comes to a church in turmoil and counsels the people. "Put on the apron of humility." Quite obviously, as he writes these words, Peter is mentally back in the Upper Room among that angry group of irritated men, seeing Christ rise and gird Himself with a towel beginning with a reddening face to recognize what Jesus was going to do -- watching Him draw nearer and nearer -- feeling the gentle touch on his soiled feet, hearing the quiet voice, "I have given you an example that you should do what I have done to you."

Paul's great theme is faith. John's great theme is love. But Peter's great theme is "remembrance" remember what Christ has done for you and live the same way.

Jesus gave His church a model for a servant ministry in the Upper Room which has continued to this day. When Jesus knelt to wash His disciple's feet, He was founding hospitals, orphanages, homes for unwed mothers, Habitat for Humanity, soup kitchens, mission trips to Kenya, our youth trip to Mexico, hunger programs, literacy training, and hundreds of other aspects of Christian ministry in the world. He set in motion a river of compassion that has flowed through the centuries.

Finally, in verse 17 Jesus says, "If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them." Jesus is saying that the secret of happiness in life is found in service to others because it is rewarded by God and because it is rewarding in itself. It is the same thing as Jesus said earlier "If anyone holds on to his life, he will lose it. But the one who gives his life away for others will find it." Jesus is saying that our fulfillment as human beings does not come from holding on but from letting go.

We may not be able to give our lives away in a clinic in Africa as Albert Sweitzer did. But towels are inexpensive and water is plentiful and there are people in this church and in this community who need to be washed with hands of love.

Two incidents took place in the Upper Room on the night before Jesus was crucified. In the first, Jesus took bread and wine, symbols of His coming death, and handed them to His disciples. In the second incident, Jesus took a towel and basin in the role of a servant, and washed the travel stained feet of His people.

Jesus gives the church two principles of life: Bread and wine, towel and basin. In an amazing balance of ministry, He ties them together. Worship and work, receiving and giving, withdrawal and involvement, communion and service are presented at one and the same time. Jesus has put them together.

The bread and the wine point to the fact that we have been saved by grace through faith. The towel and basin point to the fact, as Paul declares in Ephesians, that we have been saved for good works. We cannot separate the bread from the water or the towel from the wine and still be His faithful church.

"I have washed your feet," Jesus says to us. "You also ought to wash one another's feet."