God's Last Words

MAUNDY THURSDAY MESSAGE:

“What would it be like…”

John 13: 1-15 (HCSB)

      Jesus is preparing for a big weekend, yet He takes time out to eat and become a servant to His disciples and followers. What would it have been like to be there that night? Have you ever considered that question?

      As a mother and daughter walked out of church one Sunday morning, the mother said, “That was a nice service. I really liked the soft piano music during the prayer.” The little girl turned and asked her mother, “That was a piano?”
     The mother nodded, and the little girl said, “Oh. I thought God had put us on hold.”
     We never need to fear that God will put us on hold even on the evening before the greatest sacrifice God could ever make. Our God reaches down and enters our trials and struggles and teaches us His ways.
     I am convinced that’s why the story of foot washing is here in John’s Gospel. John’s chapters 13-17, are called the farewell discourses of Jesus and have been compared to Moses’ farewell to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 31-33.
     In John 13 we have two things happening: the physical cleansing through foot washing in verses 1-17; and the figurative cleansing by removing the betrayer from the group in verses 18-30.

Before the Passover Festival, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.

Now by the time of supper, the Devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, Simon Iscariot’s son, to betray Him. Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into His hands, that he had come from God, and that He was going back to God.

So He got up from supper, laid aside His robe, took a towel, and tied it around Himself. Next, He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel tied around Him.

He came to Simon Peter, who asked Him, “Lord, are You going to wash my feet?” 

Jesus answered him, “What I’m doing you don’t understand now, but afterwards you will know.” “You will never wash my feet –ever!” Peter said.

Jesus replied, “If I don’t wash you, you have no part with Me.” Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.” 

“One who has bathed,” Jesus told him, “doesn’t need to wash anything except his feet, but he is completely clean.  You are clean, but not all of you.” For He knew who would betray Him. This is why He said, “You are not all clean.”

When Jesus had washed their feet and put on His robe. He reclined again and said to them, “Do you know what I have done for you? You call Me Teacher and Lord. This is well said, for I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done for you.” 

     From the beginning of life, foot washing among the Jews is a welcoming event and a commitment to being with that person from then on in spirit and in prayer. It is a ritual. It should be a reminder of how Jesus reaches out to us in humbleness.

     The foot washing related here in John’s Gospel is an example that we cannot attain cleanliness or goodness from our own acts or our rituals, but rather through our desire to allow Christ to touch and teach us a better way. Foot washing becomes a highly significant event.
      In a small Jewish town in Russia, a rabbi disappeared each Friday morning for several hours. His devoted disciples boasted that during those hours their rabbi went to heaven and talked to God.
      A stranger who moved into town was skeptical, so he decided to check things out.
      He hid and watched the rabbi. The rabbi got up in the morning, said his prayers, then dressed in peasant clothes. He grabbed an ax, went into the woods, and cut some firewood, which he then hauled to a shack on the outskirts of the village, where an old woman and her sick son lived. The rabbi left them the wood and went home.
     The newcomer became the rabbi’s disciple.
     Now, whenever he hears a villager say, “On Friday morning our rabbi ascends to heaven,” the newcomer quietly adds, “if not higher.”
     Foot washing teaches us service, humility, and a lifelong example of priorities.
     An 11 year old boy was invited along on his father’s yearly fishing trip for the first time. It was important for the boy to show his father how happy he was to be felt mature enough to go along.
     But two nights into the trip the boy awoke, sick to his stomach. He feared he might throw up. He needed to get to the bathroom. But the cabin was cold and dark, and he would have to climb out of a warm top bunk. Suddenly, the boy threw up over the side of the bunk.
      The father heard the awful splatter and came running in, flicked on the light, and surveyed the mess. “Couldn’t you have gotten to the bathroom?” he asked the boy.
       “I’m sorry,” the boy replied, knowing he deserved every angry comment that would come. The boy had done something foolish, messy, embarrassing — and worst of all, childish.
       The father shook his head a little, then left. He came back with a bucket of sudsy hot water and a scrub brush. The boy watched, amazed, as he got on hands and knees and began scrubbing each pine board clean again.
       It became the defining moment of the boy’s understanding of who his father was, the goal he should set for his own life, and what Christ did for us on the Cross.
       As Christians, we face many awful and embarrassing messes. Our friends and family may often let us down and we frequently let Jesus down. Jesus has already shown us what we must do in those situations: “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” (John 13:14).
       A young boy going to see his grandfather was traveling by train. He took a seat beside a man who happened to be a seminary professor. The boy was reading a Sunday school take home paper, and the professor thought he would have some fun with the boy.
      The professor said, “Young man, if you can tell me something that God can do, I’ll give you a big shiny apple.” Thoughtfully, the boy replied, “Mister, if you can tell me something God can’t do, I’ll give you a whole barrel of apples.”
      Redemption of humanity by Jesus’ sacrificial ministry is something God did!

That’s what we would have learned by being with Jesus that night. Amen