Servant King(17April2011)
Series: Loving God by Following the Way of Jesus
The Way of Jesus M11 (11 04 17)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Servant King
Text: John 13:1-17
BIG IDEA: We are most like God when we are sanctified and serve.
When I was in my going into final year of seminary, I was elected student body president.
During my year, as student president, I occasionally met with the board of trustees.
Before meeting with them, I was always clearly told by senior level staff member not to bring up anything that would embarrass the administration and nothing that would blindside them—“no surprises.”
Before meeting the trustees, I get a list of their names and found out what they did…
Part of list went something like this:
C Firestone from California—of the Firestone Tire family.
J Talcott who lives not far from us in Boston. He’ll introduce himself as a cranberry farmer, but he owns Ocean Spray Drink Company.
Billy Graham…
2 or 3 times that year, I’d attended these cocktail parties (without real cocktails) with the trustees and special guests of the seminary.
At one of these parties I started chatting with an elderly woman standing nearby… After talking for a few minutes, I discovered she was Mary Rockefeller (of the Rockefeller family).
I thought, “She looks like an ordinary person. She’s dressed modestly. She’s not at all pretentious. She’s warm. Like an elegant grandmother.” She said, “I am not really qualified to serve on this board. I don’t know anything about theology.”
I thought—didn’t say—I know exactly why you’re on the board.
As I became acquainted with her, I found her to down to earth, and very generous—to the school and contributing to big projects and small ones—I recall how she would gave a fund account to help students with families at the seminary to pay for babying sitting and go on dates… who otherwise couldn’t afford to.
I thought if I didn’t know who she was, I would not know that she was Mrs. Rockefeller.
If you saw Jesus… on first glance, you might not recognize him as the unique son of God. According to the Bible, he had no outward beauty that we naturally be attracted to … He had no worldly wealth… He never postured as the leader with symbols of status, nor did he refuse to do something lowly, considered beneath the dignity of leader.
Today, we’ll see a picture of the Jesus we are called to follow and, with God’s help, to become like.
If you have your Bibles please turn to John 13.
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”
10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.
12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
In John 13 Jesus is in an upper room in Jerusalem with some of his closest friends the night he is betrayed, the night before he was nailed to the cross. We read in verse 1 that it was just before the Passover Feast. The Passover Feast was considered the most important of the Jewish feasts. It celebrated the time when God delivered his people, the Hebrew people, through the leadership of Moses, out of the land of Egypt where they had been slaves for 400 years.
The population of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus was roughly 80,000, but at Passover it might swell to some 3 million people—the streets crowded like downtown Vancouver after we won the Olympic gold medal in hockey (and some of you are saying like it will when the Canucks win the Stanley Cup this year). Word had spread that Jesus, who lived in Bethany, a community less than 2 miles away, had raised a man named Lazarus to life after he had been dead for 4 days. And Jesus, who had performed all kind of miracles, was coming through Jerusalem.
People were anticipating that Jesus would reclaim the throne of his great great great great… grandfather David, and become the king, the Messiah who would liberate his people.
So, as we might expect, when he came into Jerusalem on a donkey, people shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD! Blessed is the King of Israel! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David!” Hosanna means “save now,” but is the equivalent in our time of “God save the King.” And Jesus is a King. He is the ultimate King. According to the Scriptures he is God in human flesh. But, as we will see, he is a very different sort of king than what people expected.
Here in the Upper Room, Jesus and his friends had gathered for a meal the night before he goes to the cross. Since the roads of Palestine were not paved like ours, but made of dirt, in dry weather there would be a lot of dust, and in wet weather the roads would turn to mud. People in Jesus’ day wore sandals, so when you would walk out in the streets your feet would become dirty. Just inside the doorway in most homes in Jerusalem would have been a basin of water and a towel. (USE PROP) In a Jewish home, typically a slave (who was not a Jew—the Jews were not supposed to ask a Jewish servant to wash their feet—too demeaning) would greet the visitors and wash their feet.
When Jesus gathered his students for a meal, none of them voluntarily carried out this lowly task. They were fantasizing about what kind of cabinet positions they might hold in Jesus’ administration. In fact, according to the gospel of Luke, Jesus’ students were arguing about which of them would be greatest in the kingdom that Jesus would soon inaugurate. As they were jockeying for position and status, no one, of course, dared to stoop and take on the role of the servant and wash each other’s feet. Doing something so slowly would be a tacit admission of who was on the bottom of the totem pole.
And then something astonishing happened! The disciples are reclining, sitting in the Upper Room, some of them are lying on their side, some are seated on the floor. They are in a horseshoe shape. Here in the Upper Room Jesus and his students reclined on the floor, and their feet are covered in grime.
Having loved his own in the world (vs. 1), Jesus now showed them the full extent of his love. Jesus knew that his Father (vs.3) had put all things under his power, that he had come from God and that he was returning to God. So (NOT BUT, but SO… or therefore)… as one with all power, who knew where he had come from and where he was going, got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, wrapped a towel around his waist, poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
Jesus is a king, in fact, he is in fact the King of every king, the Prime Minister of every prime minister, the President of every president, but he is a very different sort of king. He washes feet. In Jesus’ day, we have no example in ancient literature of a rabbi stooping to wash to wash his disciples’ feet. In that day a peer would never wash a peer’s feet. It was considered too demeaning. And if anyone needed their feet washed that evening, it was Jesus. He was just hours away from a cruel and violent lonely death. If anyone needed to be served and cared for that night, it was Jesus. But it was Jesus who took off his outer clothing, wrapped the towel around his waist, poured water into a basin, and began to wash his students’ feet, drying them with a towel that was wrapped around him.
What enabled Jesus, the King of kings, the unique Son of God, to do what was considered to be such a demeaning task? So—Jewish… it is done by Gentile slaves.
There is a clue in the passage where we read:
3 “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God and SO he got up from the meal…. And began washing their feet….”
Jesus knew that God had put all things under his power, and that he was returning to the Father. Jesus lived in the security that his Father loved him, and that his Father had given him all authority and power. That sense of security, that sense of being loved, that sense of personal power in the best sense gave Jesus the freedom to do something that was considered humiliating…to wash another person’s feet.
And when we have a relationship with God the Father, when you realize that you have been chosen by him, that you are a beloved son or daughter, we are filled with his Spirit. When we know where we have come from and where we are going, then we are secure enough to humbly serve others. (If we are insecure, we will only feel free to serve in prestigious or glamorous ways, and we achieve only a superficial kind of greatness. But if we are secure in God’s love for us, and if we are confident in the power that God has bestowed upon us, we can descend to true greatness-- greatness in God’s terms.)
We see in vs. 1 that Jesus loves his students by washing their feet. Love in the New Testament is more than just a feeling—it is an action.
In a moving scene Jesus looks around and begins to wash the feet of Thomas, a guy who’s been close to Jesus for three years, has seen amazing miracles Jesus has performed, but doesn’t really believe in Jesus yet. Thomas has doubts. He doesn’t believe Jesus will be able to do what he claims he will do—rise from the dead.
Jesus washes Peter’s feet. Jesus knows, according to verse 38, that in less than 24 hours Peter will deny 3 times that he even knows him. In fact, he knows each of them will desert him. Then, of course, he washes Judas’s feet. Judas is Jesus’ CFO. Judas literally sells him out, saying in effect “you are less than 30 silver coins to me.” He knows all this. Jesus knows he is going to be betrayed or sold, but he loves him anyway.
His act of washing his disciples’ feet, as amazing as this was, was this really a kind of trailer to what he would do for them the following day, something far greater than washing the feet of his disciples? There is a part of us that when we read the words “that Jesus having loved the people in the world, and now showed the full extent of his love,” then Jesus stooping down to wash their feet, that says “That’s it?” Amazing and humble. It would be like saying, “On their fiftieth wedding anniversary, Steve showed his wife the full extent of his love by mopping their bathroom floor.”
As amazing as Jesus’ washing of feet is, Jesus clearly has something more in mind here. In the next 24 hours he will not just remove just his shirt. He will strip right down. He will allow himself to be nailed to a cross, executed in the most painful, humiliating way imaginable, a kind of capital punishment so degrading the Romans—no matter how evil a crime of one their citizens had committed--would not subject their own people to that kind of death. His washing of feet was a prelude to his more humiliating act of service--to laying down his life on the cross, a death only fit for the worst kind of criminal—a death for his disciples and for us, a death bearing our sin and shame in himself so that you and I could be clean and forgiven.
We know his washing the feet of his disciples points to a greater cleansing he would achieve for them through his conversation with his student Peter.
When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said, "Master, you wash my feet?"
Jesus answered, "You don't understand now what I'm doing, but it will be clear enough to you later."
Peter persisted, "You're not going to wash my feet—ever!"
Jesus said, "If I don't wash you, you can't be part of what I'm doing."
Master!" said Peter. "Not only my feet, then. Wash my hands! Wash my head!"
Jesus said, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one of you is clean.
Life has a way of making us dirty. Sometimes we make a choice to jump into the mud and manure. Sometimes our feet just get dirty because we are walking through dusty roads of the world and we feel that we have been, if not corrupted, at least compromised in some way.
If we want to have a part of Jesus, the holy and pure Son of God, we need to ask him to wash and cleanse us. We need to ask him to give us a spiritual bath.
This week I just heard the story a young man who said when he was baptized he felt he was being given a bath from the inside… he felt… (and couldn’t find the word right away)… “Clean…. Cleansed. Cleansed from the inside.”
And the King of kings is a servant King. He serves us by washing us…cleansing us. The technical word used in the New Testament is “sanctify,” which simply means to make holy, to make pure, to set apart for God.
This is possible because he served in the ultimate way when he died on the cross a sacrifice for our sins—absorbing our sin and shame upon him. The Scriptures tell us in Isaiah 53:5:
But he [Jesus] was pierced [on the cross] for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
When we come to Jesus and confess our sins, in Scripture we are told:
In 1 John 1:9 we read: 9 he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins (based on Christ’s work) and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Part of what it means to follow the servant King Jesus is to be cleansed (or sanctified).
The second part of what it means to follow the Servant King is to serve.
In verse 15 we read:
15 “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”
Jesus says, “I have set an example that you also should wash one another’s feet.” Then Jesus says, “Now that you know these things you will be blessed if you do them.”
As you may know some Christian communities take Jesus’ commandment to mean that we are to literally wash one another’s feet. They hold foot-washing services on Maunday Thursday. The moms’ group that gathers here on Thursday mornings with young children, led by Karla, recently washed each other’s feet. When our team went to Cambodia in November and contributed to the final training of emerging pastors there, who were graduating the Diamond Leadership program, the Cambodians who are very conscious of hierarchy and authority decided to kneel before our team and wash the feet of our team members as a way to show that they as pastors are called to serve, and then the our team knelt and washed their feet. People were crying because in Cambodia and even Canada washing another person’s feet is so counter-cultural.
In verse 15 Jesus said, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” Jesus here shows us that the King of the world, loves us by serving us.
As NT Gordon Fee has pointed out commenting on Philippians, Chapter 2, “Precisely because Jesus Christ was in very nature God, he didn’t consider equality with God something to be used to his own selfish advantage, but he poured himself out, taking on the very nature of a servant.” (USE THE JUG and the WATER HERE.)
We are most like God when we empty ourselves and love others through service. Because we are made in the image of God, we are most fully human when we faithfully mirror the nature and character of God. He says in verse 14, “14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.”
If we had not read this passage just now and you had not read it before, you might have anticipated Jesus saying “now that I have washed your feet, please wash mine.” As we saw, if anyone needed his feet washed it was Jesus! He was about to die a cruel, violent death.
But, if Jesus had said that, his disciples would have been fighting over the privilege of being first to wash his feet. But Jesus says instead, “You should wash one another’s feet.”
Lesslie Newbigin has served for many years as a missionary in India. He said that Jesus’ command here literally changes our whole idea of relationship. Newbigin says (I paraphrase), because Jesus laid down his life for us, we owe him a debt, but he calls us to repay the debt by serving other people.” In the parlance of the popular movie some years ago, having been served by Jesus we are to “pay it forward.”
I owe Jesus Christ what he has done for me. But he calls me to repay the debt by serving others. My wife Sakiko. Our son Joey. So are the members of my community here at Tenth and our neighbours. It is an unique way of understanding our world. It reverses the values of our world—it’s upside down.
In my message a few weeks ago on loving children, I talked about how Jesus flips the values of the world upside down. People tend to move toward people who have money, status and power and conventional beauty and those can advantage us in some way. Jesus calls us to serve the people right around us, whether or not they have money, status, power or conventional beauty, whether or not they can advantage us.
He calls us to love people by serving others, particularly those who can’t repay us. Jesus washed the feet of Judas, a man he knew would betray him, in fact…. of all his students—each of whom would desert.
In our world we tend to “love” those who can advantage us in some way.
We tend to “love” people we are attracted to. We may be attracted to a person’s appearance. Or their intelligence. Or their lifestyle. Or their social network.
But when we love that people we are naturally attracted to, we at least in part are going to them to get our needs met.
When we “love” those we are naturally deep drawn to, our own needs our met.
What we often describe as loving another person, but often we are loving ourselves—getting our needs met through that person.
Dr. Peter Ritter is a psychiatrist who has written on the subject on the “them” ethics for doctors and people in the helping professions. He sometimes comes across psychiatrist colleagues who are sleeping with their clients (most aren’t). When Peter challenges them by saying that’s an abuse of power and illegal and unethical and deeply damaging to them and you, the psychiatrists will respond by saying, “I am such a loving guy (it’s almost always a man), that I need to serve these women with low self esteem by loving in a physical way.” When Peter probes a little further, the psychiatrists divulge that all the women they sleep with are young and attractive. Then Peter says, “ If you’re having sex with your clients to boost their self-image why don’t you sleep with clients who are old and/or ugly? They need self-esteem boost most.” They’ll say, “ That’s disgusting. I have standards.” Peter will say, “You’re not sleeping with your clients for them, you’re doing for you to get your needs met. So, don’t call that love.”
That’s an extreme example. But isn’t it true that in the world…we tend to “love” people we are attracted to. It may be not be in a physical, sexual way. We may be attracted to their mind, their money, their lifestyle… their connection, and so we what call love is often a case of getting our needs met—the focus is us, not them.
Jesus here redefines love as not getting our needs met through another, but by serving others—in the most humble way---even those who can’t advantage us.
Jesus said, “Now that you know these things blessed are you if you DO them.” Love is not just an attitude, but it is something we do. It’s like love—love is not simply a feeling, it’s something we do.
A pastor in the San Francisco Bay area I have taught with named John has a friend, who according to him, would not do well in a contest for high piety. He has deep wounds that still affect him in many ways. He had virtually no father growing up. His mom was a difficult person. She married five different men, none of them lasting long. She had little time for his friend and failed to give him encouragement. He’s a man now, and several years ago his mother developed a degenerative muscular disease and gradually lost almost every physical capacity. None of her children would have anything to do with her, and not one of the men to whom she’d been married even acknowledged what she was going through.
This man, however, decided to serve her. He took her into his home and cared for her, feeding her by hand, combing her hair, and cleaning up after her messes. When John was in his home, about all she could do was cry and moan incessantly. He wondered, “How can he stand this. I thought, I’ve been given blessings – the church, Scripture, family – exponentially greater than this guy, and I don’t know if I could love like this.”
When she died, 16 people came to her funeral. Not even all her kids came. But this man was there, and on a little toy tape recorder he played a tape of his mom singing a Christmas carol. He talked about how she loved Christmas and how when he was a kid he used to play
the guitar and she would sing with him.
He didn’t love her perfectly… But he loved her when loving was hardest.
He loved her when no one else would love, and he remembered her with kind words.
That’s what it looks like to serve like Jesus.
Jesus serves like that… when we were hardest to love, when we offered him no advantage. The Bible says. “God in Christ demonstrated his love for us in this world, while we were still sinners, enemies of God. He laid down his life for us in Christ.”
You see loving and serving in Jesus’ way isn’t about “loving” so it can advantage us some way. It is about loving those when it is hard to do--through action…
Let Christ sanctify and serve you… so we can love as Jesus loves.
Open up some space… is there anyone you know of that you need to serve?
The Way of Jesus M11 (11 04 17)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Servant King
Text: John 13:1-17
BIG IDEA: We are most like God when we are sanctified and serve.
When I was in my going into final year of seminary, I was elected student body president.
During my year, as student president, I occasionally met with the board of trustees.
Before meeting with them, I was always clearly told by senior level staff member not to bring up anything that would embarrass the administration and nothing that would blindside them—“no surprises.”
Before meeting the trustees, I get a list of their names and found out what they did…
Part of list went something like this:
C Firestone from California—of the Firestone Tire family.
J Talcott who lives not far from us in Boston. He’ll introduce himself as a cranberry farmer, but he owns Ocean Spray Drink Company.
Billy Graham…
2 or 3 times that year, I’d attended these cocktail parties (without real cocktails) with the trustees and special guests of the seminary.
At one of these parties I started chatting with an elderly woman standing nearby… After talking for a few minutes, I discovered she was Mary Rockefeller (of the Rockefeller family).
I thought, “She looks like an ordinary person. She’s dressed modestly. She’s not at all pretentious. She’s warm. Like an elegant grandmother.” She said, “I am not really qualified to serve on this board. I don’t know anything about theology.”
I thought—didn’t say—I know exactly why you’re on the board.
As I became acquainted with her, I found her to down to earth, and very generous—to the school and contributing to big projects and small ones—I recall how she would gave a fund account to help students with families at the seminary to pay for babying sitting and go on dates… who otherwise couldn’t afford to.
I thought if I didn’t know who she was, I would not know that she was Mrs. Rockefeller.
If you saw Jesus… on first glance, you might not recognize him as the unique son of God. According to the Bible, he had no outward beauty that we naturally be attracted to … He had no worldly wealth… He never postured as the leader with symbols of status, nor did he refuse to do something lowly, considered beneath the dignity of leader.
Today, we’ll see a picture of the Jesus we are called to follow and, with God’s help, to become like.
If you have your Bibles please turn to John 13.
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”
10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.
12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
In John 13 Jesus is in an upper room in Jerusalem with some of his closest friends the night he is betrayed, the night before he was nailed to the cross. We read in verse 1 that it was just before the Passover Feast. The Passover Feast was considered the most important of the Jewish feasts. It celebrated the time when God delivered his people, the Hebrew people, through the leadership of Moses, out of the land of Egypt where they had been slaves for 400 years.
The population of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus was roughly 80,000, but at Passover it might swell to some 3 million people—the streets crowded like downtown Vancouver after we won the Olympic gold medal in hockey (and some of you are saying like it will when the Canucks win the Stanley Cup this year). Word had spread that Jesus, who lived in Bethany, a community less than 2 miles away, had raised a man named Lazarus to life after he had been dead for 4 days. And Jesus, who had performed all kind of miracles, was coming through Jerusalem.
People were anticipating that Jesus would reclaim the throne of his great great great great… grandfather David, and become the king, the Messiah who would liberate his people.
So, as we might expect, when he came into Jerusalem on a donkey, people shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD! Blessed is the King of Israel! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David!” Hosanna means “save now,” but is the equivalent in our time of “God save the King.” And Jesus is a King. He is the ultimate King. According to the Scriptures he is God in human flesh. But, as we will see, he is a very different sort of king than what people expected.
Here in the Upper Room, Jesus and his friends had gathered for a meal the night before he goes to the cross. Since the roads of Palestine were not paved like ours, but made of dirt, in dry weather there would be a lot of dust, and in wet weather the roads would turn to mud. People in Jesus’ day wore sandals, so when you would walk out in the streets your feet would become dirty. Just inside the doorway in most homes in Jerusalem would have been a basin of water and a towel. (USE PROP) In a Jewish home, typically a slave (who was not a Jew—the Jews were not supposed to ask a Jewish servant to wash their feet—too demeaning) would greet the visitors and wash their feet.
When Jesus gathered his students for a meal, none of them voluntarily carried out this lowly task. They were fantasizing about what kind of cabinet positions they might hold in Jesus’ administration. In fact, according to the gospel of Luke, Jesus’ students were arguing about which of them would be greatest in the kingdom that Jesus would soon inaugurate. As they were jockeying for position and status, no one, of course, dared to stoop and take on the role of the servant and wash each other’s feet. Doing something so slowly would be a tacit admission of who was on the bottom of the totem pole.
And then something astonishing happened! The disciples are reclining, sitting in the Upper Room, some of them are lying on their side, some are seated on the floor. They are in a horseshoe shape. Here in the Upper Room Jesus and his students reclined on the floor, and their feet are covered in grime.
Having loved his own in the world (vs. 1), Jesus now showed them the full extent of his love. Jesus knew that his Father (vs.3) had put all things under his power, that he had come from God and that he was returning to God. So (NOT BUT, but SO… or therefore)… as one with all power, who knew where he had come from and where he was going, got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, wrapped a towel around his waist, poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
Jesus is a king, in fact, he is in fact the King of every king, the Prime Minister of every prime minister, the President of every president, but he is a very different sort of king. He washes feet. In Jesus’ day, we have no example in ancient literature of a rabbi stooping to wash to wash his disciples’ feet. In that day a peer would never wash a peer’s feet. It was considered too demeaning. And if anyone needed their feet washed that evening, it was Jesus. He was just hours away from a cruel and violent lonely death. If anyone needed to be served and cared for that night, it was Jesus. But it was Jesus who took off his outer clothing, wrapped the towel around his waist, poured water into a basin, and began to wash his students’ feet, drying them with a towel that was wrapped around him.
What enabled Jesus, the King of kings, the unique Son of God, to do what was considered to be such a demeaning task? So—Jewish… it is done by Gentile slaves.
There is a clue in the passage where we read:
3 “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God and SO he got up from the meal…. And began washing their feet….”
Jesus knew that God had put all things under his power, and that he was returning to the Father. Jesus lived in the security that his Father loved him, and that his Father had given him all authority and power. That sense of security, that sense of being loved, that sense of personal power in the best sense gave Jesus the freedom to do something that was considered humiliating…to wash another person’s feet.
And when we have a relationship with God the Father, when you realize that you have been chosen by him, that you are a beloved son or daughter, we are filled with his Spirit. When we know where we have come from and where we are going, then we are secure enough to humbly serve others. (If we are insecure, we will only feel free to serve in prestigious or glamorous ways, and we achieve only a superficial kind of greatness. But if we are secure in God’s love for us, and if we are confident in the power that God has bestowed upon us, we can descend to true greatness-- greatness in God’s terms.)
We see in vs. 1 that Jesus loves his students by washing their feet. Love in the New Testament is more than just a feeling—it is an action.
In a moving scene Jesus looks around and begins to wash the feet of Thomas, a guy who’s been close to Jesus for three years, has seen amazing miracles Jesus has performed, but doesn’t really believe in Jesus yet. Thomas has doubts. He doesn’t believe Jesus will be able to do what he claims he will do—rise from the dead.
Jesus washes Peter’s feet. Jesus knows, according to verse 38, that in less than 24 hours Peter will deny 3 times that he even knows him. In fact, he knows each of them will desert him. Then, of course, he washes Judas’s feet. Judas is Jesus’ CFO. Judas literally sells him out, saying in effect “you are less than 30 silver coins to me.” He knows all this. Jesus knows he is going to be betrayed or sold, but he loves him anyway.
His act of washing his disciples’ feet, as amazing as this was, was this really a kind of trailer to what he would do for them the following day, something far greater than washing the feet of his disciples? There is a part of us that when we read the words “that Jesus having loved the people in the world, and now showed the full extent of his love,” then Jesus stooping down to wash their feet, that says “That’s it?” Amazing and humble. It would be like saying, “On their fiftieth wedding anniversary, Steve showed his wife the full extent of his love by mopping their bathroom floor.”
As amazing as Jesus’ washing of feet is, Jesus clearly has something more in mind here. In the next 24 hours he will not just remove just his shirt. He will strip right down. He will allow himself to be nailed to a cross, executed in the most painful, humiliating way imaginable, a kind of capital punishment so degrading the Romans—no matter how evil a crime of one their citizens had committed--would not subject their own people to that kind of death. His washing of feet was a prelude to his more humiliating act of service--to laying down his life on the cross, a death only fit for the worst kind of criminal—a death for his disciples and for us, a death bearing our sin and shame in himself so that you and I could be clean and forgiven.
We know his washing the feet of his disciples points to a greater cleansing he would achieve for them through his conversation with his student Peter.
When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said, "Master, you wash my feet?"
Jesus answered, "You don't understand now what I'm doing, but it will be clear enough to you later."
Peter persisted, "You're not going to wash my feet—ever!"
Jesus said, "If I don't wash you, you can't be part of what I'm doing."
Master!" said Peter. "Not only my feet, then. Wash my hands! Wash my head!"
Jesus said, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one of you is clean.
Life has a way of making us dirty. Sometimes we make a choice to jump into the mud and manure. Sometimes our feet just get dirty because we are walking through dusty roads of the world and we feel that we have been, if not corrupted, at least compromised in some way.
If we want to have a part of Jesus, the holy and pure Son of God, we need to ask him to wash and cleanse us. We need to ask him to give us a spiritual bath.
This week I just heard the story a young man who said when he was baptized he felt he was being given a bath from the inside… he felt… (and couldn’t find the word right away)… “Clean…. Cleansed. Cleansed from the inside.”
And the King of kings is a servant King. He serves us by washing us…cleansing us. The technical word used in the New Testament is “sanctify,” which simply means to make holy, to make pure, to set apart for God.
This is possible because he served in the ultimate way when he died on the cross a sacrifice for our sins—absorbing our sin and shame upon him. The Scriptures tell us in Isaiah 53:5:
But he [Jesus] was pierced [on the cross] for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
When we come to Jesus and confess our sins, in Scripture we are told:
In 1 John 1:9 we read: 9 he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins (based on Christ’s work) and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Part of what it means to follow the servant King Jesus is to be cleansed (or sanctified).
The second part of what it means to follow the Servant King is to serve.
In verse 15 we read:
15 “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”
Jesus says, “I have set an example that you also should wash one another’s feet.” Then Jesus says, “Now that you know these things you will be blessed if you do them.”
As you may know some Christian communities take Jesus’ commandment to mean that we are to literally wash one another’s feet. They hold foot-washing services on Maunday Thursday. The moms’ group that gathers here on Thursday mornings with young children, led by Karla, recently washed each other’s feet. When our team went to Cambodia in November and contributed to the final training of emerging pastors there, who were graduating the Diamond Leadership program, the Cambodians who are very conscious of hierarchy and authority decided to kneel before our team and wash the feet of our team members as a way to show that they as pastors are called to serve, and then the our team knelt and washed their feet. People were crying because in Cambodia and even Canada washing another person’s feet is so counter-cultural.
In verse 15 Jesus said, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” Jesus here shows us that the King of the world, loves us by serving us.
As NT Gordon Fee has pointed out commenting on Philippians, Chapter 2, “Precisely because Jesus Christ was in very nature God, he didn’t consider equality with God something to be used to his own selfish advantage, but he poured himself out, taking on the very nature of a servant.” (USE THE JUG and the WATER HERE.)
We are most like God when we empty ourselves and love others through service. Because we are made in the image of God, we are most fully human when we faithfully mirror the nature and character of God. He says in verse 14, “14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.”
If we had not read this passage just now and you had not read it before, you might have anticipated Jesus saying “now that I have washed your feet, please wash mine.” As we saw, if anyone needed his feet washed it was Jesus! He was about to die a cruel, violent death.
But, if Jesus had said that, his disciples would have been fighting over the privilege of being first to wash his feet. But Jesus says instead, “You should wash one another’s feet.”
Lesslie Newbigin has served for many years as a missionary in India. He said that Jesus’ command here literally changes our whole idea of relationship. Newbigin says (I paraphrase), because Jesus laid down his life for us, we owe him a debt, but he calls us to repay the debt by serving other people.” In the parlance of the popular movie some years ago, having been served by Jesus we are to “pay it forward.”
I owe Jesus Christ what he has done for me. But he calls me to repay the debt by serving others. My wife Sakiko. Our son Joey. So are the members of my community here at Tenth and our neighbours. It is an unique way of understanding our world. It reverses the values of our world—it’s upside down.
In my message a few weeks ago on loving children, I talked about how Jesus flips the values of the world upside down. People tend to move toward people who have money, status and power and conventional beauty and those can advantage us in some way. Jesus calls us to serve the people right around us, whether or not they have money, status, power or conventional beauty, whether or not they can advantage us.
He calls us to love people by serving others, particularly those who can’t repay us. Jesus washed the feet of Judas, a man he knew would betray him, in fact…. of all his students—each of whom would desert.
In our world we tend to “love” those who can advantage us in some way.
We tend to “love” people we are attracted to. We may be attracted to a person’s appearance. Or their intelligence. Or their lifestyle. Or their social network.
But when we love that people we are naturally attracted to, we at least in part are going to them to get our needs met.
When we “love” those we are naturally deep drawn to, our own needs our met.
What we often describe as loving another person, but often we are loving ourselves—getting our needs met through that person.
Dr. Peter Ritter is a psychiatrist who has written on the subject on the “them” ethics for doctors and people in the helping professions. He sometimes comes across psychiatrist colleagues who are sleeping with their clients (most aren’t). When Peter challenges them by saying that’s an abuse of power and illegal and unethical and deeply damaging to them and you, the psychiatrists will respond by saying, “I am such a loving guy (it’s almost always a man), that I need to serve these women with low self esteem by loving in a physical way.” When Peter probes a little further, the psychiatrists divulge that all the women they sleep with are young and attractive. Then Peter says, “ If you’re having sex with your clients to boost their self-image why don’t you sleep with clients who are old and/or ugly? They need self-esteem boost most.” They’ll say, “ That’s disgusting. I have standards.” Peter will say, “You’re not sleeping with your clients for them, you’re doing for you to get your needs met. So, don’t call that love.”
That’s an extreme example. But isn’t it true that in the world…we tend to “love” people we are attracted to. It may be not be in a physical, sexual way. We may be attracted to their mind, their money, their lifestyle… their connection, and so we what call love is often a case of getting our needs met—the focus is us, not them.
Jesus here redefines love as not getting our needs met through another, but by serving others—in the most humble way---even those who can’t advantage us.
Jesus said, “Now that you know these things blessed are you if you DO them.” Love is not just an attitude, but it is something we do. It’s like love—love is not simply a feeling, it’s something we do.
A pastor in the San Francisco Bay area I have taught with named John has a friend, who according to him, would not do well in a contest for high piety. He has deep wounds that still affect him in many ways. He had virtually no father growing up. His mom was a difficult person. She married five different men, none of them lasting long. She had little time for his friend and failed to give him encouragement. He’s a man now, and several years ago his mother developed a degenerative muscular disease and gradually lost almost every physical capacity. None of her children would have anything to do with her, and not one of the men to whom she’d been married even acknowledged what she was going through.
This man, however, decided to serve her. He took her into his home and cared for her, feeding her by hand, combing her hair, and cleaning up after her messes. When John was in his home, about all she could do was cry and moan incessantly. He wondered, “How can he stand this. I thought, I’ve been given blessings – the church, Scripture, family – exponentially greater than this guy, and I don’t know if I could love like this.”
When she died, 16 people came to her funeral. Not even all her kids came. But this man was there, and on a little toy tape recorder he played a tape of his mom singing a Christmas carol. He talked about how she loved Christmas and how when he was a kid he used to play
the guitar and she would sing with him.
He didn’t love her perfectly… But he loved her when loving was hardest.
He loved her when no one else would love, and he remembered her with kind words.
That’s what it looks like to serve like Jesus.
Jesus serves like that… when we were hardest to love, when we offered him no advantage. The Bible says. “God in Christ demonstrated his love for us in this world, while we were still sinners, enemies of God. He laid down his life for us in Christ.”
You see loving and serving in Jesus’ way isn’t about “loving” so it can advantage us some way. It is about loving those when it is hard to do--through action…
Let Christ sanctify and serve you… so we can love as Jesus loves.
Open up some space… is there anyone you know of that you need to serve?
posted by Shigematsu at 3:43 PM
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