The “alleylon” (one another) passages in the New Testament, Part 4:

When God kneels in humility to serve us, we are raised to unbelievably great stature in his eyes, and rightly made infinitely small in our own.

If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash each others’ feet (Jn. 13:14).

As a sophomore in high school, I suffered under the tutelage of a biology teacher who spent a good deal of time fulminating against God as the designer of human ugliness. According to his rather misanthropic vision of our race, the worst physical features of the hominid form were the feet and the knees. I can’t begin to imagine the terrible trauma that this poor man must have experienced at birth or at the hands of some abusive authority figure such that he could muster nothing but unbridled hatred for portions of our lower extremities. Webbed toes or tibialis posterior tenosynovitis? Excessive genuflection? I am afraid he carried his secret to the grave with him.

What makes me think of my unhappy 10th grade science instructor? Because this week’s “one another” verse explicitly honors the very joints he disparaged. John recounts one of those very perfect gospel stories: In the midst of his last earthly Passover meal, Jesus bends his kingly knees before twelve uncomprehending disciples – including the traitor who will open the way for Messiah’s arrest – so that he can perform what was one of the most menial, and yet important household tasks of the ancient Middle East: washing the feet of guests.

Are there equivalents to Jesus’ actions at table? Maybe the early Christians combing the Roman hills to rescue abandoned children; Mother Teresa tending to the poor and sick of Calcutta; the ten Boom sisters ministering in the fetid conditions of a German concentration camp? All these and many other examples are honorable, inspiring, convicting – but they are sinners serving other sinners only by the grace of the Son of God who incarnationally stepped into our suffering so that we could even begin to know what it is to serve.

I wonder if we have heard and read John’s account so many times that it has lost its impact on our hearts and minds. We’re so familiar with the characters who, apart from Jesus, almost seem like caricatures, part of chaotic, almost cartoonish scenes like those of Tintoretto or del Pacchia. Peter and his fellows distract us from the otherwise evident truths about us that the story details, and we tend to focus more on Jesus’ call to imitate him, rather than on what it really takes to carry out his commandment.

When we come to it, the 13th chapter of John’s Gospel is not something that we can skim and then happily dash along to chapter 14. Every verse holds our attention with something glorious about Jesus, and something decidedly less so about us. As always, the beauty of Christ is never overshadowed by the circumstances or people around him. Everything that John says about him draws us more to worship: He knows that his hour has come, and that he is returning to the Father. He has loved the disciples throughout his years of ministry and, despite the coming trial and his certain death, he loves them to the end. He is confident of the authority that the Father has given him. And he deliberately and graciously takes on a slave’s apparel and a slave’s task.

If we keep our eyes on Jesus at the center, we more easily find our places in the tableau, right there among the disciples. We come to understand that their reactions – explicitly articulated by Peter – present familiar temptations. Like them, when we see Jesus take up the basin and towel, the objections begin. No, Lord, we are YOUR servants who should be washing YOUR feet. We aren’t worthy of this divine humiliation. Peter’s and our response is noble; it recognizes that we are being unduly honored and raised up by the one who is Lord. From one perspective, our protests are all well-founded. Jesus’ descent does mean our ascent; his enduring the indignities of incarnation/humiliation/crucifixion means that we regain the dignity that God intended for us in the beginning. And we clearly are not deserving of the honor that we receive.

The deeper companion truth is that an experience of such ministry by the one who created and sustains us by his word and power is really an intolerable burden for any pride or other resistance that might arise within us. But an honest confession of where and how we have collected ungodly accretions will lead us to put aside the pressure to prove that we have what it takes to labor in the Lord’s kingdom without constantly returning to him for wisdom, revelation, encouragement, correction, direction – and regular foot washing. Like a squirming child in the bath, we eventually quiet our hearts and give ourselves to the exquisite sense of relief in having Jesus remove the layers of besmirching sin.

Once we sit under the weight of God kneeling in submission before us and welcome his cleansing work, we begin to gain the heart of true servanthood. Jesus has seen, close up, those unvarnished feet of ours. No exfoliating cream; no Pedi Perfect electronic foot file; not even a session with the famous Garra rufa nibbling fish can hide the truth: We have walked in the world and have taken on its grime. That reality helps us face the accumulated  muck that cakes the feet of our brothers and sisters a.) without recoiling from them and b.) remembering that we are equally eminently washable.

So serving Jesus’ disciples means getting down and dirty, finding time to see and hear where they are crusty from the assault of world-dirt. They may be enduring attacks on their thinking, losing perspective on who God is or who they are. It may mean praying with them when they have been losing hope, have become shaky in their faith, are fighting a temptation that threatens to overcome their endurance. The Christians’ foes stir up and fling mud and crud in whatever way they can, seeking to bury us with enough of it that we no longer experience the gift and fruit of being the redeemed of the Lord. We don’t come as saviors, but as companions on the dirty road.

A good number of Christians resonate with Jesus’ call to be foot-washers, and are willing to receive the Holy Spirit’s ministry that makes them fruitful servants. But perhaps there is another question for us to consider: Are we ready to be served? I recently heard a story from a brother who attended a church where the elders regularly took time to wash various congregants’ feet. Pretty inspiring example of love, but there was one catch. These men never allowed anyone to wash their feet. Whether the reluctance came from their being leaders, or from some other source, either way the result was problematic.

Why would I not want to have you wash my feet? Most obviously, I want to hide my dirt away. I get to see your mess, but you don’t see mine. As a pastor, I used to hear other pastors propose all kinds of reasons for why we shouldn’t be vulnerable to others. People would lose confidence in us; we would diminish the reputation and authority of the pastorate; we are supposed to be the servants (like Jesus, who did not come to be served). None of these hold much water, and usually felt like pretty self-serving  and self-protective excuses for keeping our stains from the public eye. Again, what initially sounds noble is, with a little digging, exposed as yet one more expression of pride.

More insidiously, WBNBW – Wash but not Be Washed Syndrome – fuels a sense of superiority and smug satisfaction. You surely have needs that I don’t experience; you are in my debt, but I am not in yours; I must surely be the better in God’s sight, and I really feel sorry for you. It’s a log and speck thing in the form of grunge. Cleaning yours obscures the enormity of how much I need someone to clean mine.

But Lord, who is the one whose feet I ought to wash, and whom should I permit to wash me? I think that Jesus gives a shocking answer by including all the disciples in his ministrations, including the man who had already made plans to betray him. What does Jesus’ choice of action say to us? First – to put it somewhat crudely – love all, and let God sort it out. To be a servant in the  of Jesus means having an open heart that welcomes even those who play the role of Judas in our lives (we are right back to meekness again). Second, we are reminded of our own regular betrayal of the Lord. And third, we serve with the thought of what the Lord desires for those whom we serve. We consider the preferred destiny that he has for them, and his image in them which he desires to enkindle and display in their lives. God’s gifts of faith and hope give us a different vision of both the ministry and the ones to whom we minister.

At the end of the foot-washing section (vv. 12-17), Jesus asks the disciples, “Do you understand what I have done for you?” Intellectually I can give an affirmative answer; in my heart, I mainly see, in the words of Psalms 45, the fairest of the children of men stooping to make of me something that I could never attain on my own: a beloved child who is also a fruitful and blessed laborer in the kingdom where foot washers are highly esteemed.