Episode Transcript
CONSECRATE
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
HEAR
John 13:1–5 NIV
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 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.
CONSIDER
Why so much detail here?
So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 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.
Why couldn’t John have just written: “He washed his disciples’ feet”? Would that not have been enough? Apparently not.
John wanted us to see something. Actually, I am convinced he wanted us to behold something. I think the Holy Spirit inspired John to give this account in such detail because he wanted us to see the exquisite nature of extraordinary love poured into the lowliest, ordinary, undignified act of service.
So he got up from the meal,
took off his outer clothing,
and wrapped a towel around his waist.
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.
It has me asking myself: Does anything I do for another person come anywhere close to this exquisite nature of extraordinary love poured into the lowliest, ordinary, undignified act of service? Further, is there anything I have ever done, great or small, that would merit this granular level of description?
It’s just so easy to get caught up in the undertow of oughts and shoulds and duty-bound obligatory service and just power through it. On the other hand, it’s easy to be sucked into the seduction of wanting to do something extraordinary and grandiose. What slays me about this story is the way Jesus takes the most menial, ordinary, and unmentionable act of service and fills it with such love that, two thousand years later, we still can’t get over it.
I think this must have been something of what Mother Teresa meant when she said, “We can do no great things—only small things with great love.”
So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 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.
The good news. These opportunities present themselves every single day.
If not me, then who?
If not here, then where?
If not now, then when?
PRAY
Abba Father, we thank you for your Son, Jesus, who takes an unmentionable and undignified act of service and makes it something we can’t stop speaking of. Lead me in this way of living today. We pray in Jesus’s name, amen.
