When Jesus had washed the disciples' feet, he said to them:
"Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master
nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him.
Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but humbled himself taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men (see Philippians 2:6-7). The Word through whom and for all were made did not despise drawing near to his creatures to heal their wounded nature. He did not consider himself to great to stoop down to us, nor so pure as to hold aloof from the dirtiness of the sinful reality. But he did not do all of this for us so that we could smugly sit back and enjoy ourselves, enjoy being served, while growing in our expectation of the obligation of others to serve us. Just the opposite, in fact. Jesus desired to teach us how to humble ourselves as he did, to follow in his footsteps as washers of feet. We tend to see ourselves as too great for these tasks, and the tasks themselves as beneath us. To that Jesus told us that if he himself, the Lord of Creation, did such things then how could we imagine ourselves as too important to do them?
If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it.
Our ability to love others if often limited by our beliefs about them and about ourselves. We sometimes somehow come to imagine that we are masters of our domain and that certain acts of love are beneath us. Many of us tend to find the real nitty-gritty of foot washing love to be too distasteful, too intimate, and too messy, and as a consequence refuse to be involved. But Jesus, by washing his disciples feet helped stand limited beliefs such as these on their head. When we recognize this we can grasp that what we have in the example of Jesus is not just an burdensome obligation, but rather a surefire path to blessing.
But so that the Scripture might be fulfilled,
The one who ate my food has raised his heel against me.
From now on I am telling you before it happens,
so that when it happens you may believe that I AM.
The fact that Jesus came as a foot washer, that he came not to be served but to serve and to offer his life as a ransom for many (see Matthew 20:28) did not imply that he was an expendable extra, did not, in fact, in any way diminish his claim to be God incarnate. Rather, he revealed that our own merely human conceptions about God were often based on the folly of human pride, and human ideas of greatness writ large. He demonstrated his divinity not in strength, but in a weakness that was stronger than human strength, not in rigid dictatorial rule, but in service that was more powerful than coercion.
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send
receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
It seems to us that the world is still building on the model of human greatness and pride, that it still demeans the ideas of service and humility even if it sometimes pays lip service to these concepts. It is still somewhat embarrassed to receive anyone who comes with nothing to show for herself but that she came in the name of Jesus and is ready and willing go to work washing feet. If we were just more willing to be and to receive these servants in our world how things might change for the better!
Jesus himself is the one whose sandals we are not worthy to unfasten. Yet he himself stooped down to wash our feet. Let us relinquish our cherished illusions about our own greatness and entitlement and follow the example of our master. In washing the feet of others we recognize the image of God within them, and the presence, actual or potential, of Jesus himself. The same goes for when we receive this gift of service from others. Let us not miss the ways in which Jesus himself desires to be present to us simply because we are too proud to participate.
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