EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2017 I began a new venture as a synodically authorized minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. The ride over the past 2.5 years has been an amazing journey of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on March 27, 2018.
“Do you know what I have done to you?” … That bewildering question is what Jesus asks Peter after he has finished tenderly washing and then toweling off the disciple’s feet.
What an intriguing question coming from Jesus, considering his position. … After all, this is the Son of God. … The very God who loved us so much that he became incarnate here on earth. … The same living Lord who knows his unenviable fate, and also knows that the disciple’s feet whom he just finished washing belong to one whom will deny knowing him and abandon Jesus in his darkest hour.
A strange question indeed. … But did you catch Jesus’s slight twist on his words? ... Jesus didn’t ask Peter if he knew what he had done FOR him. … Jesus asked Peter if he knew what he had done TO him!
Jesus, thankfully, doesn’t leave poor Peter -- and also us -- in limbo. … He quickly explains to Peter that: “You call me Teacher and Lord -- and you are right, for that is what 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 set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”
Please dwell on that scene with me for a moment. … There you have Jesus, our Lord and Savior, who has just finished his last meal with his disciples. He has gathered them there because he knows his fate … that his time here on earth is drawing to a close.
But rather than run and hide, as most would do, he hunkers down with his disciples and spends what little time he has left in his earthly body serving them. … In other words, the master is doing the servant’s work.
After supper is where the story really turns radical, as Jesus gets down on his knees to wash the feet of his disciples. And let me tell you, in Jesus’ time, there was nothing pretty about feet. Most people’s feet were gnarled and beat up from walking in sandals on rough ground every day. ... And so the washing of feet wasn’t a glorious act. … In fact, the work was so lowly, that it was considered a servant’s job to wash off the master’s feet.
But, of course, to the disciples’ surprise, Jesus turns that conventional thinking -- that earthly thinking -- on its head. … This King … this Son of God … topples the notion of what is fit for a king and what is fit for a servant. … What kind of king would do such a thing?
Unbelievably radical, this act of Jesus’s. … So radical, in fact, the feet washing story isn’t told anywhere else in the Bible. … Only here in the book of John. So it’s important to understand that when John set about to write his story of Jesus, he wanted to stress something in particular about the nature of our Lord. And that is that the one who came to save us acts in radically different ways that are diametrically opposed to what this world values. … Very radical.
This foot washing is additionally radical because Jesus does this humble act for people he fully knows will betray him … and deny him. We know from our scriptures that before Judas takes off into the night from the last supper, and separates himself from his relationship with Christ, that Jesus dines with him, all the while knowing that Judas will later betray him.
And then later, after a brief protest, Peter allows Jesus to wash his feet, and all the while Jesus does so even though he knows that Peter will be the one to deny him. We also know that story well.
But yet here is Jesus eating with and washing the feet of both Judas and Peter. … Is there any greater symbol of sacrifice than washing the feet of another? … Is there any greater symbol of humbling oneself? … After all, if our Lord isn’t too good to be down on his knees, cleansing the dirty feet of his disciples, what’s that mean for us?
I have a story involving feet washing I will never forget. ....
It was July 2011, and I was an adult leader on a mission trip with our oldest son, Garrett, to Green Bay, Wisconsin. This was at the very beginning of my leadership role at Christ the King Church, and the senior pastor had asked me to join the youth director on the trip.
We spent a week in Green Bay. ... Living out of a big, brick Lutheran church in the center of town. … We’d get up in the morning, and head out to multiple sites around the city. We worked in a massive St. Paul de Vincent intake warehouse, where people sorted donations of household items that were brought in. That was tough and dirty work.
... We worked in a soup kitchen, where the kids got to help cook, serve and clean up for lunch and supper. Now, that was emotionally gut-wrenching work. … And we went into homes that had seen much better times and did cleaning and painting. And our fairly privileged kids saw things they weren’t prepared for. ... And then at night we’d all come back to the church for food, fellowship and devotions.
Each of us adults had a small work detail that we were in charge of. Mine was a mix of seven or eight boys from a church in Michigan and our church, one of them being our son. … And this work went on all week. We worked hard.
On Thursday night of the trip -- our last night in Green Bay -- we all gathered in the church’s large fellowship room for a send-off ceremony. .. And you guessed it: Part of that ceremony was a ceremonial foot washing. As we gathered together in our small groups, the mission trip staff dimmed the lights and the room was lit only with candles. … A worship band began to softly play powerful worship songs. ... And then we leaders took a water basin and began to wash the feet of our young charges. These same kids that all week we had worked alongside in some very dramatic situations. … Then, after washing their feet, we were to pull them in close and say a blessing over them.
As I worked my way around the circle, I finally came to our son, Garrett. He was about 13 at the time, about the time our youth start to gain some sense of independence from us parents. And that week, I’m sure that our son wasn’t thrilled that he had to spend it with his father while many of the other kids were on a parent-free week.
But as I began washing his feet in the basin, a powerful emotion swept over me and him. ... In that moment, our roles reversed, and master, dad and group leader became servant. ... And teenage boy, son and worker became the master. … So much emotion pent up in a single act. … The moment still stops me in my tracks.
By the time I leaned in close to his ear to bless him, I was a mess. But he was too. And it was a defining moment for both of us.
… Even with that experience though, I can only imagine how Peter must have felt after our Lord finished washing his feet.
But that is what is so symbolic of Jesus’s radical act of servitude! … Not only is the feet washing contrary to what we expect of the powerful in our world, but in this act of radical servitude, not only is the leader transformed, but the disciple is transformed as well. … Just as Jesus told Peter: The act isn’t done FOR them; it’s done TO them. … That is what is so radical in this story. … This is the life that Jesus wants us to live. The live of becoming the servant. … The very example Jesus lays down for us.
In fact, this is so radical, that Jesus declares after washing the disciples’ feet that this servitude that turns the tables on power and authority in this world, creates a new commandment for how it is that we are supposed to live. … And in this he is unequivocal to his disciples: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
But are you ready? … Even that’s not the most radical aspect of Jesus’s awe-inspiring act. … The most radical part about his washing of the disciples’ feet is that he demonstrates that you don’t get to just love the ones you love. … For instance, you do not get to only love your true and faithful disciples ... or in our case, our closest family members and friends, and maybe the coworkers we like.
No, that’s not what Jesus instructs the disciples -- and us -- to do. … When Jesus goes about his audacious act of taking off his robe, wrapping a towel around himself, bending to his knees, washing the feet and then toweling them off of each of the disciples, he didn’t stop short with the ones he liked, or maybe the ones who deserved it. … Absolutely, not. What he showed us is that if you are going to live true to his commandment, you must love those who not only love you … but also … those who betray you … and even those who deny you.
Even today, let alone in the 1st century, this is such a radical departure from what the world tells us about being a leader, about being a parent, about being powerful. … This is a radical departure from what the conventional, earthly idea of what being a God is about, that even as Christ’s followers we have a hard time understanding and accepting this commandment.
But there’s no mistaking it. … Remember what he said? ... “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
And so this is what we need to understand about Jesus washing the feet of the disciples: That when Christ washes your feet -- as he has with all of us in our baptism -- it changes us. He does not do this act FOR us. … He does this act TO us. … And thus he brings us into such a new and radical relationship with him and with others -- with all others -- that we can’t help but be transformed.
“Do you know what I have done for you?” … And by you, he really means us.
Do you understand what it means that our savior … our King of Kings … gets down on his knees and first picks up one foot and carefully cleanses it and then puts it down. Then picks up the other foot, cleanses it and puts it down. And then takes the towel wrapped around him and dries those cracked and gnarled and awful feet of ours. … After all of that, how can that not change us?
“Do you know what I have done to you?” Jesus asks. ... Yes, and that is he’s given us a new commandment, and that commandment is to love one another, just as Jesus has loved each of us.
And that is the Good News for this Sunday. ... Amen.
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