Jesus Washes Feet

Blessing comes in the living of God’s love as Jesus reveals it

Commentary on John 13:1-17

Sarah Henrich

This passage for the second Sunday in Lent in the Narrative Lectionary is deceptively simple in its construction. There are three clear episodes: Jesus washes the disciples’ feet after supper (verses 1–5); he interprets his action in dialogue with Peter (verses 6–10a); he further interprets in his discourse addressed to all the disciples gathered with him (verses 10b–17). One could preach from that simplicity and highlight the expanding circles of “knowing” (see below), from Jesus (verse 1), to Peter (verse 7), to unspecified disciples (verse 17). It is worth reflecting on how Jesus expands those “in the know” to the hearers of the gospel who do what they have come to know, and adds that blessing is theirs.

And there is more. Chapter 13 begins Jesus’s long night of farewell and betrayal. The unit is bracketed by Judas the betrayer (13:2 and 18:2) and by the “finish” terms (telos, teleioo in 13:1; 17:4, 23). Because Jesus’s own death will be identified by the same verb family (teleo, 19:28, 30), John 13:1–17 is a mini-version of what is to come. These verses lead hearers into the truths that Jesus most wants his disciples to understand as the finish approaches. In 12:49–50, Jesus stated that he speaks the truth given to him by the Father. This proclamation underlines the value of what he says and does in 13:1–17.

Hearers of John’s gospel know what will happen to Jesus. The gospel must therefore transform the sheer violence of Jesus’s death, wreaked upon the body of one who has spoken of his Father’s power and glory (see also 12:28). John disallows passive horror by insisting on a reimagined glory and power: This is the good news that John’s gospel conveys.

At the center of reimagining is both agency and hope. In 10:17–18, two words, “laying down” and “taking up” (tithemi and lambano), were paired in reference to Jesus’s life. Laying down and taking up are connected to the very nature of Jesus’s glorification, his willing vulnerability, his love. In 13:4 the same words are used concerning Jesus’s garment and towel, again connected to vulnerability and love (verse 1). As contemporary hearers draw closer to the cross through the Lenten readings, these words will echo often. Jesus’s willingness and ability to lay down and take up make his life and death a chosen expression of God’s way of being.

In 12:23, Jesus had announced that “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” in connection with death—in other words, the dying of a seed. In 13:1, he knows that the hour to depart this world to go to the Father has come. His imminent departure is the context of his love for his disciples. He will reveal this love to the end by the footwashing and his giving of his life. These actions, as different as they are in degree, are alike in pattern. Both reveal love that can only be expressed and experienced in humble care. Both actions reveal that those who humble themselves for love’s sake cannot be humiliated, no matter how it looks to the “world.”

A friend said recently that “Jesus is a know-it-all in John’s gospel.” Certainly, knowing is a significant theme in these verses. It is Jesus who knows what is important, what the future will bring, and who will betray him (13:1, 2, 7, 11). The footwashing is a pattern (hypodeigma, verse 15) that should move the disciples from not knowing (Peter, verse 7) to knowing (verses 12, 17). The choice of hypodeigma here is unique in John’s gospel and is better translated as “pattern” than “example.” It is an action pattern, not a specific ritual that matters. It is the power inherent in love, to actively take a humble position in order to serve, that is revealed.

Jesus redefines the big concepts of teacher, lord, power, and glory. In his day and certainly in our own, this is a paradigm shift that is almost incomprehensible. Verse 17, the final verse in our passage, underlines the call to choose to take on the vulnerability of serving. Knowing is not enough, even as it provides the context for understanding. Blessing comes in the living of God’s love as Jesus reveals it. It must be said that there is pain in this kind of “knowing.” To renounce the familiar ways, the privilege we seek, the power we associate with security, is to go in a direction always radically unexpected. It is hard to serve one’s enemies.

It is a significant part of the “pattern” that Jesus serves everyone in his revelation of ongoing love, knowing that he is serving even his betrayer (verses 10b–11). These verses show us a love like that of John 3:16, where “so” ought to be understood as “thus”: God loved the world thusly. Here Jesus loves his disciples “thusly” and calls upon them to do the same.

For Jesus’s followers in every age, living a life of blessing is living a life often marked by failure according to common standards. Were it not for the promise of new life for Jesus and for us, who would dare to live so vulnerably? Who would want to? Perhaps we can live with the disciples during Lent, suspending our confession of “the ending” so that we can more clearly hear and discern the scandal and strangeness of Jesus’s words and ways of loving to the finish.

In our world, Jesus’s “taking up” the garment of life again is not yet fully realized. The challenge of trusting that we are blessed, as we hesitantly grasp and sporadically live the pattern of Jesus’s own life, is as difficult for us as it was for the original followers. This is where the preacher’s voice can find stories and words to weave their hearers into the place of having been made clean and called to know and to do this countercultural life in which glory is choosing to kneel to serve.

PRAYER OF THE DAY

Holy Lord God,

Jesus washed the disciples’ feet as a sign of service and compassion. Show us how to live and love in service and with compassion, for the sake of all your children. Amen.