Imagine you've been invited to a dinner, a celebration rather, and all your closest friends will be there. The event is a reminder of a gift bestowed long, long ago. You eagerly await the time to make your way to the hosts home. You're clean (enough), dressed in your "party" attire, ready to be with the ones you love, breaking bread and soaking up the community and rest this occasion offers. You fidget with your belt, pull your sleeves down, walk around the house one last time, then step outside. You feel anticipation, a nervous, excited energy that is causing your feet to sweat a little. It's hot where you live, hot and dry and dusty. There are no sidewalks, no cement roads, just a sandy path that's been traversed on for decades and decades. As you travel, you ponder the feet that have walked these paths and think about the paths you've been on, some you've walked peacefully, some you've silently escaped, some you've skipped with excitement, others sprinting from danger...You pull your hood over your head and eyes to keep the dust from blinding you and making your outfit dirty, you already know your feet are a lost cause, so you do your best to avoid the rest of you getting grimy.
Before you have time to think too hard about what the last week's events could really mean, you find yourself at the location of the gathering. You've not been here before, so you wait for the host to let you in, you feel awkward and a little bit like you were intruding, but this is where your greatest friend said the celebration was happening, so you're there.
As you make your way upstairs to the room where dinner will be held, you hear laughter and one of your friends reenacting the scene from a few days ago where he had just taken a donkey from it's post like it was no big deal and how the donkey had not gone with him quietly and your friend had the teeth marks and bruises to prove it. You enter the room and take a seat. Dinner is served amidst a sunset and story telling. Then at the close, a somberness falls on the room as your greatest friend stands up. He is always doing something out of the ordinary, so all eyes are on him to see what he will do. The whole room falls silent one by one and all notice him as he takes off his jacket, ties a cloth around his waist and grabs the washing basin. He speaks not a word as he moves with an air of seriousness to the table and kneels in front of one of the guests and removes his sandals. It's as if life is moving in slow-motion in these moments while your eyes wait for your brain to catch up with what is happening. As it registers, you stare in horror and your mouth gapes open. There is absolute silence as he makes his way down the table... you're next. You finally recover your ability to speak as he starts to pull off your sandal and you softly say, "Uh, Lord, are you really going to try and do this?!" He calmly replies without missing a beat, "You're not going to get this now, butttttt one day, I know you will." You're passionate adrenaline kicks in and you stand up and exclaim, "Nono, uh-uh, there is NO way YOU will wash MY feet!!" Jesus sighs and lifts his eyes up to mine and gazes deep into my soul, "Unless I do this, you won't understand, you won't be mine, you won't SEE."
John 13:7-8 did not connect in my heart and mind until this morning. What a picture!
We are washed by Jesus. He comes to us, to our dirtiest parts, and he makes them clean. He personally prepares the basin and acquires the supplies and makes the effort to take the most unworthy, undesirable, forgot about, hidden, cracked, smelly, grungy, sweat stained, dusty, muddy, deformed, awkward, hairy, crusty, infected, calloused, gnarled parts of our meager lives and cleanses them whole. In giving his disciples a pedicure, he demonstrated his love for us, for all of us, for the whole of us. The most awesome man in the history of all mankind did a servant's job so that the dirtiest of men could smell like lavender and peaches (or frankincense and myrrh, whatever flips your pancake). These men have never had a foot washing like the Jesus-foot-washing they received that day. I feel like their eyes were opened as they discovered what their feet truly looked like... clean, beautiful, functional. The way Jesus sees us. The Avenue has been doing a sermon series on "simply". Jesus lived simple and his methods were simple. We can mimic that.
I'll end this post with John 13:15- I have given you an example to follow, do as I have done to you.
bottom line - simply follow Jesus.
