Before He Stood Up

Maundy Thursday

He knows everything.

That is where John begins. Not with the basin. Not with the towel. With what Jesus knows before he stands up from the table.

He knows Judas.

Not just his name. Not just the man across the table. He knows what Judas has already decided. What he will do before morning. The price he has already agreed to. Jesus has known it long enough that John does not treat it as a surprise, only a fact in the room, sitting among them like a thirteenth guest, quiet and inevitable.

He knows Peter.

Not the Peter speaking now. The Peter who will stand outside in the cold a few hours from now and say three times to three different people that he has never heard of him. Jesus knows that Peter. He can already see the firelight on his face.

He knows the others too. That they will fade. That they will find reasons to be elsewhere when the cost becomes real. Not villains. Not enemies. Just men who love him and will not be able to stay.

He knows all of it.

This is the man who stands up from the table. Takes off his outer robe. Ties a towel around his waist. Pours water into a basin. And kneels.

Not in spite of what he knows. With it.

He holds all of it.

And lifts the first foot.

He comes to Peter.

Peter looks down and recoils. The whole order of the world gives way at once. The Lord at his feet. The master kneeling. The Holy One doing the work of a servant.

You will never wash my feet.

He means it as loyalty. It is loyalty. The only kind he knows.

Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.

Peter does not understand it. But he understands this much: he cannot bear to be without him. If he is to remain with Jesus, he will have to let Jesus wash him.

Not my feet only but also my hands and my head.

Jesus does not ask Peter to do more. He asks Peter to stop. And let him.

Peter does.

And he goes on.

Every foot.

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

Then he puts his robe back on. He returns to the table. Sits back down among them. The betrayer. The denier. The ones who will run. He knows what is coming for every one of them. They are still finishing their bread.

Do you know what I have done to you?

They do not. Not yet.

Love one another as I have loved you.

As I have loved you.

What he does in the upper room with water he will do on the hill with blood. For the same men. Knowing the same things.

The basin was more than a lesson.
It was a preview.

We are in that room.

He is making his way toward us with a basin and a towel, and he already knows everything. Not the version of us we have managed to arrange and present. The whole of it.

He saw it before he stood up.

He stood up anyway.

He does not ask for your strength.
He does not ask for your composure.
He asks for what you would rather hide.

Do not hurry to become worthy.

Let him wash you.

Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.

He is already kneeling.¹

“The Washing of the Feet” (Fragment), Duccio, 1308-11.

These midweek devotionals aren’t sermons. They’re meant to complement the Sunday homily. I’ll share the sermon below after it’s preached:

1. I’ve heard the footwashing preached as a beautiful act of humility and love for us to imitate. I have never heard it preached as an enacted parable of the cross.

But look closely at Jesus’ actions, and hear John’s words: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” And hear Jesus’ own insistence to Peter: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”

This is more than an example.

The washing is a sign of Christ’s self-giving death. It is a picture of the stooping love of Christ for those who cannot cleanse themselves.

Humility and love are beautiful. They are what the world needs. But we do not arrive at them by being told to love, or to be humble, or to follow an example. We love when we know ourselves loved. Because he laid aside his garments for us, we might at last want to follow him there.