Washing Feet

Before Jesus was nailed to a wooden cross, He wrapped a towel around His waist, filled a bucket with water, knelt, and washed His disciples’ feet.

The ultimate act of sacrificial love prefaced by an ostensibly unnecessary act of servitude. What good is a brief session of feet washing when Jesus is about to save sinners for all eternity?

Jesus explains that His service is a lesson in humility that His disciples must emulate. “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

And so we must follow Jesus in His kneeling and His washing, taking our neighbor’s literal or figurative feet with our bare hands, rubbing off the dirt and dead skin, breathing in the smells, removing any gunk from between the toes.

Perhaps hidden here too is another message which Jesus’ disciples have always needed. The message that while the Cross guarantees our reception at the great banquet of God’s kingdom, Jesus washing our feet assures us that we are invited—wanted.

When Peter denied Jesus three times and began to be tortured by shame, one can imagine that he considered himself utterly unworthy of the Christ who hung on the Cross, estranged and forever lost from the man he revered above all. And yet, perhaps somewhere in that engulfing darkness he glimpsed a flicker of Jesus kneeling before him, washing his feet, looking him affectionately in his eyes.

The Cross proclaims the love of God in all its magnitude, but Jesus shows us that great acts of love must be made accessible by little ones for people like you and me.

And so too we must follow Him.