God’s grace, peace
and mercy to you. My theme for today’s sermon is Jesus Came to Humbly Serve. To
reinforce that theme, you will receive a small towel to place inside the cross
you received at the beginning of Lent. My text is John 13:1-17.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father,
the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the
Lord.’”[1]
Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we
listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply
as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
I dare say that
when some people read the 13th chapter of John, they see Jesus as a
humble servant, perhaps forgetting He is the Second Person of the Trinity; but even
in an act of hospitality often executed by servants, His glory shines forth. Some
might imagine Jesus resembling a Mother Teresa cradling the dying of Calcutta,
a dedicated social worker or even a faithful volunteer handing out hot dogs to
the homeless. To see Jesus in that way – forgetting his divinity – diminishes
the deed and the message John delivers. Remembering His divinity, as He
executes this act, exponentially multiplies His humility. Imagine God – the
all-powerful – washing your feet!
With a reminder
that His divinity never disappeared even when He was engaged as a humble
servant, let us examine what John said in chapter 13 about Jesus and His
disciples, what it meant for his community and what it means for us today.
The washing of one’s
feet is a common cultural practice in the ancient Near East. In Genesis 18,
Abraham said to his guests, “Let a little water be brought, and wash
your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread,
that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on — since you
have come to your servant.”[2]
Scripture records God commanded Moses to remove his sandals before setting foot
on holy ground.[3] In Exodus
30, we read, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘You shall also make a basin of bronze, with
its stand of bronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tent of meeting
and the altar, and you shall put water in it, with which Aaron and his sons shall
wash their hands and their feet. When they go into the tent of meeting, or when
they come near the altar to minister, to burn a food offering to the Lord, they
shall wash with water, so that they may not die. They shall wash their hands
and their feet, so that they may not die. It shall be a statute forever to
them, even to him and to his offspring throughout their generations.’”[4]
During Jesus’ day, Temple priests walked in bare feet because the ground was
sacred, and wearing sandals would have profaned their ministry. Therefore, the
practice of washing feet had significant cultural and religious meaning to Jews
of Jesus’ day.
What did it mean
for John? How did his community see Jesus and His disciples? John divided his
Gospel into two books – the Book of Signs and the Book of Glory. Chapters 1 –
12 make up the Book of Signs where Jesus performed miracles that caused others
to believe in Him. Read what happened after He turned water into wine, healed
the son of a royal official or the man born blind, fed 5,000 and raised Lazarus
from the dead. People came to believe in Jesus.
Chapters 13 – 20
(or 13 – 21) make up the Book of Glory or the Book of Exaltation where Jesus was
exalted on the Cross. The beginning of that Book illustrates that the footwashing
was not merely an act of hospitality, but the foreshadowing of Jesus’ death on
the Cross, his exaltation.
The meaning of the
footwashing is originally lost on the disciples, and recognized only after the
Resurrection. In fact, in response to Peter’s protest, Jesus answered, “What
I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”[5]
Just as the disciples did not understand why Jesus had to be crucified, they did
not understand why He had to wash their feet … for the moment. After the Resurrection,
the Spirit enlightened them and they understood. Only then could they correctly
interpret Jesus’ signs, His death on the Cross and this humble act of washing
their feet.
After washing
their feet, Jesus asked His disciples, “Do you understand what I have done to you?
You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, 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 to you.”[6]
Meaning what?
Meaning Jesus mandated that His disciples engage in acts of humble service
because He did. Because John included the footwashing in his Book of Glory, we
understand that we engage in acts of humble service not simply because Jesus
said so, but because we cannot imitate what Jesus did later on the Cross. We
can only do what Jesus did at the beginning of the Book of Glory, not the end
of it. We cannot reconcile sinful humanity to the Father, but we can humbly
serve our Father.
That is how John
understood Jesus’ humble act of washing His disciples’ feet – an act they could
imitate because they could not imitate what it foreshadowed – His Crucifixion.
What else did this
passage mean for John’s community? … That is revealed in verse 1: “Before
the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out
of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he
loved them to the end.”
The passage meant
Jesus embraced His crucifixion and this humble act with love.
Imagine Jesus washing their feet lovingly, gracefully – the way He washes your
feet and my size 13’s. John’s Church is commonly known as the Community of the
Beloved Disciple. His members could never imitate Jesus’ love on the Cross but
they could imitate His humble service of washing others’ feet.
They could only do
this, however, if they were humble enough to allow their Lord and Master to
wash their feet. … Dare I ask, are we?
A colleague of
mine once wrote, “Many of us find it hard
to receive undeserved love from another. For some reason it is very humiliating
to the ego. We want to think we have earned any love that we get by our
worthiness or attractiveness. So Jesus has to insist on being the servant
lover. Thank God Peter surrendered, but it probably took him the rest of his
life to understand what happened.”[7]
It may take us the
rest of our lives to understand what happened. What happened is that God loved
us. Take a moment now and recall the person who loved you the most in your life
– and know that God loves you at least that much – and that God calls you to
love at least that much.
Each of us loves
and humbly serves in some unique way. Each of us possesses different gifts and
interests, various talents and skills, as well as the ability to humbly and
lovingly serve our Father. God poured forth into our hearts the ability to love
as God loves,[8] and each
of us has the potential to imitate Jesus’ love as humble servants. Whether we
visit incarcerated mothers or serve hot dogs to the homeless, spend a year as
our mother’s primary caregiver or an hour a week tutoring inner city elementary
students, whether we cook meals at Cooks Night Out or teach others how to make
Easter baskets, we serve others as Jesus served His disciples, and we love as
Jesus loved.
I close with a few
words of Prayer for the Increase of
Humility from Johann Gerhard, the premier Lutheran theologian of the early
17th century. “Omnipotent and
merciful God, You bitterly hate all arrogance. Help me to be a rose of charity
and a violet of humility so that I may spread a fragrant aroma through works of
love and think humbly of myself. What am I in your sight, O Lord? Dust, ashes,
a shadow, nothing. Therefore, because I am nothing in your sight, grant that I
consider myself nothing in my own eyes. Push back the inborn swelling of my
heart so that I may receive the dew of heavenly grace.”[9]
As God’s humble
servants, may we live that prayer and may the peace of Christ, which surpasses
all human understanding, keep our minds and hearts in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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