Every now and again I see an article in a magazine, or I hear a sermon preached, that deals with Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. I have given this issue some thought, admittedly because of a seminary assignment, and have come up with the following. Enjoy...
It was Jewish tradition to wash one's feet before reclining
at a table for a meal. As this was normally done by a servant or slave, and
since Jesus didn't have any, Kostenberger presumes that this hadn't been done.[1]
Nevertheless, it was a cultural norm; it needed to be done and it was a
surprise that it hadn't been done already.[2]
I believe this is a testament to something important
relating to Jesus and his disciples. The fact that Jesus and the disciples had
already reclined at the table to eat without accounting for the cultural norm
of footwashing suggests that Jesus was more informal with the disciples than
many teachers would have been in his day. He was more of a mentor to them than
a rabbi.
Jesus teaches us that everyone in his Kingdom is a servant,
including the Son of God himself. If he has left us this precedent, then there
is no excuse for anyone not to comply with his ministry. This was, as
Kostenberger points out, a horribly convicting moment, causing the usually
impetuous Peter to flip back and forth between extremes.[3] In fact, his response is indicative of what
the disciples all undoubtedly felt. Pushed against a rock and a hard place,
with old culture on one side and Christ's call on the other, they had no choice
but to make a decision.
Kostenberger makes it clear that the church was never
supposed to implement actual footwashing as a rite as that would have been to
institutionalize what Jesus meant to be an example.[4] Therefore,
the key is to know that it was an example. Finding examples in modern life are
not difficult. Outreach magazine reported on a church that placed urinal cakes
with the name of the church on it in local public restrooms as an example (no
citation because I can't find it in my stack of past copies). I don't believe
this was a good example, but it does show that churches are at least looking
for them. What would have made a good example would be adopting a public
restroom and cleaning it. Caring for the hygiene of the homeless would be
another example, as I saw personally with The Outpost Ministry in San
Francisco. Finally, I think that (inside
the church) cleaning a fellow believer's house or clearing out a garage or
gutters might be a more precise example, as Jesus was ministering to believers
in the actual example.
[1]
Andreas J. Kostenberger, Encountering John: The Gospel in Historical,
Literary, and Theological Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
1999), 146.
[2]
Ibid., 145.
[3]
Ibid., 147.
[4]
Ibid.
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