Today’s Scripture Readings

Gospel Reading

NRSV

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’ Jesus answered, ‘You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ Peter said to him, ‘You will never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’ Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!’ Jesus said to him, ‘One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.’ For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’ After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

There’s a striking contrast between the grand ritual of the Passover from the Book of Exodus and the humble gesture of Jesus recounted in the Gospel. Yet the link between the two is crucial. The Passover is all about the liberation of slaves, which is the seed of the whole Bible and of biblical religion like Christianity.

But so too is the foot-washing of Jesus. The slave who washed the feet of guests was at the bottom of the pecking order, the lowest of the low. Yet here is the Lord and master washing the feet of his disciples. No wonder Peter protests; and the other disciples would have been no less shocked at what Jesus was doing. He himself knows exactly what he’s doing; and he asks the disciples, “Do you know what I have done to you?” He’s been a long time preparing them for this moment, teaching them that the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve after they had been arguing about who was the greatest.

They’ve come a long way since then, but they clearly have a long way to go. They will have to pass through the darkness of Calvary and come into the light of Easter before they will really understand what Jesus has done and how they have to do the same. What they have to understand is that the only way into true freedom from all slavery is the way of self-sacrificing service. If they understand that, they will understand that the self-sacrificing love of the Cross wasn’t a shocking defeat but a glorious victory, a Passover from death to life.

We are drawn into the same victory each time we enter the sacred mysteries of the Eucharist, in which the foot-washing Lord goes further to give himself to us in the bread which is his Body and the wine which is his Blood. He becomes the Body broken and the Blood poured out for the life of the world – on the Cross but also in the Eucharist which ensures that his perfect self-giving and its liberation are for ever and for everywhere.