April 5, 2020
Norwalk First United Methodist Church
Holy Week
Palm Sunday
Humility, Hospitality, Hope
John 13:1-17, 34-35
Many times, on a Palm Sunday, the message will focus on Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem after the followers of Christ discover that Jesus raised his good friend Lazarus from the dead. It is an exciting time in Jerusalem as the people see Jesus as the Messiah sent by God to deliver them from the oppression of the Roman occupying forces. They shout as Jesus enters, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel!” Remember, “Hosanna,” means “save us.”
However today, I want to lead us beyond this scene to a few days later at the time of the Passover Feast. Our scripture reads, “It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.”
It is during this Passover Feast that Jesus’ character is so openly revealed. He has a great love for his disciples and for humankind in general. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, William Barclay writes this. “Jesus knew all things had been given into his hands. He knew that his hour of humiliation was near, but he knew that his hour of glory was also near. Such a consciousness might well have filled him with pride; and yet, with the knowledge of the power and the glory that were his, he washed his disciples’ feet. At that moment when he might have had supreme pride, he had supreme humility. Love is always like that.”
Jesus knew that he had come from God and that he was going to God. Knowing this, he could have had contempt for the men and women and the things of this world. He could have thought that he was finished with the world now since he was on his way to God. Fortunately for us, he did not. Would you pray with me?
PRAYER
“The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”
If we look at Chapter 22 in the Gospel of Luke, there is a little more background to this scripture I just read. Verse 24 of Luke 22 says, “A dispute also arose among [the disciples], which of them was to be regarded as greatest.” Even within the sight of the Cross the very next day, the disciples were still arguing at the Passover Feast about matters of precedence and prestige. Perhaps this very argument produced the situation which made Jesus act as he did, to get up and wash their feet.
Folks, the roads of Palestine were unsurfaced and uncleaned. In dry weather they were inches deep in dust and in wet they were liquid mud. The shoes ordinary people wore were sandals, which were simply soles held on to the foot by a few straps. The shoes gave very little protection against the dust or the mud of the roads. And so, when guests came to a house, there were usually water pots at the door and a servant was posted with pot and towel to wash people’s feet before they entered. But Jesus’ little company of friends had no such servant.
Among a slave’s most menial responsibilities in antiquity was washing the master’s feet. A Jew was never required to wash anyone’s feet. It was beneath him. Other ethnic slaves, the lowest of the low, were given this responsibility. And so, you can imagine Peter’s horror as Jesus, their master, rose from the table to perform this menial task, a task which none of the disciples even thought about.
As Jesus rises from the meal, he takes off his outer clothing and wraps a towel around his waist. Now this is significant. Jesus is going to model the radically subservient love that his followers should express toward one another. In fact, later, Jesus tells them this. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all [people] will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Many scenes in the Gospel of John have an underlying meaning other than the literal. Jesus removing his outer clothing harkens back to the prologue in Chapter 1 of John. Jesus is removing the outer robe of his glory and wrapping around himself a towel of human flesh. He suffers and dies for the sake of the world and then reclothes himself with glory and resumes his rightful place in the bosom of the Creator.
But in this sacred time, what Jesus does is also pastoral. The disciples need to have their feet washed. No one else has volunteered to do it. The disciples have been arguing about who is the greatest, so for one of them to get up and wash the other’s feet would be to lose the argument. So, Jesus does it, shocking them all by his disregard for social and cultural convention. This is why Peter objects to strongly. Foot washing is slave labor.
I like what William Barclay writes in his commentary about this situation. “So often, even in churches, trouble arises because someone does not get his place…. Here is the lesson that there is only one kind of greatness, the greatness of service. The world is full of people who are standing on their dignity when they ought to be kneeling at the feet of their brethren. In every sphere of life desire for prominence and unwillingness to take a subordinate place wreck the scheme of things.”
Barclay continues, “A player is one day omitted from the team and refuses to play any more. An aspiring politician is passed over for some office to which he thought he had a right and refuses to accept any subordinate office. A member of a choir is not given a solo and will not sing any more. In any society it may happen that someone is given a quite unintentional slight and either explodes in anger or broods in sulkiness for days afterwards.”
Barclay concludes, “When we are tempted to think of our dignity, our prestige, our rights, let us see again the picture of the Son of God, girt with a towel, kneeling at his disciples’ feet.”
At first, Peter refuses to allow Jesus to wash his feet. Jesus tells him that unless he accepts this washing, he will have no part with him. Peter then begs that not only his feet, but his hands and his head should also be washed. Listen to our scripture again.
8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” 9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!” 10 Jesus answered, “A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.”
The passage “A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean” is a somewhat difficult one. It was the custom at this time that people would bath before they came to a feast. So when they came to the house of their host, they did not need to be bathed again, but only have their feet washed. The washing of the feet was the ceremony which preceded entry into the house. So, Jesus says to Peter: “It is not the bathing of your body that you require. That you can do for yourself. What you need is the washing which marks entry into the household of the faith.”
Folks, in the early Church, and still today, the way in to the household of faith is the way of baptism; baptism is what we might call the washing of entry. Peter was too proud at first to let Jesus perform such a menial task. This is not to say that you cannot be saved unless you are baptized. But it does mean that if you are able to be baptized and are too proud to enter by that gate, your pride shuts you out from the family of faith. Washing, that is baptism, is our entry into the Church and into a relationship with Jesus and our family of faith.
As I bring this message to a close, I think we can take away three lessons from this scene of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. Our first is a lesson in humility, learning to receive. When Jesus first approaches Peter, Peter protests; “you will never wash my feet.” I think Peter is embarrassed by what Jesus is doing. While Peter’s resistance initially sounds like modesty, it really is a form of pride. Like Peter, many of us resist vulnerability, preferring to remain in control, to choose what gifts we will gratefully accept.
Mary Louise Bringle writes in the book, Feasting on the Word, “Yet a fundamental fact of our humanness is our dependency: as infants, we all submitted to being wiped clean by someone else; in illness or old age, many of us will confront such dependency again. Jesus points out that those who cannot with grace receive the gift of physical cleaning are scarcely in a position to receive the even more humbling cleansing of sin that occurs in his even more humiliating death on a cross.” So, what gifts are you too proud to let yourself be given?
Our second is a lesson in hospitality, learning to serve. Mary Bringle says this: “Before Jesus commands the disciples to follow his example in washing one another’s feet, he first insists that they experience what it is like to be on the receiving end of service. Unless we are aware of our own vulnerability, our care for others is in danger of coming across as condescension.” So many times, we neglect the small, exhausting, inelegant demands of service while seeking out instead the spectacular and showy.
There are many of you out there who are care givers, who help with the hourly and daily needs of the individual you are caring for without need for praise and reward. This is the service Jesus was doing for his disciples with the towel and basin. My ministerial stole has its origins in the towel and in the yoke over the neck of a beast of burden. So, I ask you this, how are you being called to the towel and the yoke of extending God’s hospitality to the world?
And lastly, the third lesson is one of hope, learning to reconcile. Please notice that Jesus does not simply wash the feet of the faithful disciples, but in full knowledge of the impending betrayal, he washes Judas’s feet as well. Jesus told his disciples, “You are clean, though not every one of you.” And the scripture continues, “For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.”
Mary Bringle writes this: “Those who embrace the dual humility of being served and of reaching out to serve others are those with the suppleness to act as agents of reconciliation.” Folks, before coming to Christ’s Table for a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, as we are today, we should give careful thought to those in our world who need reconciling, including ourselves.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, as Jesus rises from the meal, lifts off his outer garments, wraps a towel around his waist, and proceeds on all fours around the table washing his disciples’ dirt-encrusted feet, let us remember how he taught us humility and learning to receive. How he taught us hospitality in learning to serve, and how he taught us hope in learning to reconcile. Hosanna! Jesus. Save us.