8 min. to read if you read all the footnotes, too.
Jesus washing the disciples’ feet in the Upper Room is a scene familiar to most of us. He stands up from the dinner table. He removes his outer robe and wraps himself in a towel, the garb of a house slave. He picks up a pitcher of water and moves toward his friends to do the duty society dictated belongs to the lowest people. To wash the dust of travel off the feet of those reclined for dinner.
That scene underscores Jesus’ definition of leadership as servanthood. It models a humble way of relating to others. It is the literal example for the foot washing practice that the church I grew up in observed quarterly. But there is an element of this scene that we glance away from, an element that is important for our understanding of the other-centered, co-suffering way.
John’s gospel sets up the scene with these words: “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.”1John 13:1 He knew that the culmination of his life and ministry was upon him.
Here, John’s gospel says, “He loved them to the end.” To the end. The Greek there is evocative.2εἰς τέλος (eis telos) It can be read as a temporal reference. “Jesus loved them until the end of his life.” It could also be read as a measure of degree. “Jesus loved them fully and completely.” In keeping with other uses of this word in the Gospels, it could also be referring to the final goal of his ministry. His love for them is the end, or fulfillment, of his mission. Taken together, we can read this statement in this way: Jesus, loving his disciples completely and in total alignment with his sense of mission, would express his love for them fully to the end of his life through both the upcoming foot washing and his crucifixion.
The foot washing is a sign-act, one of those moments in John’s gospel where Jesus acts or speaks to demonstrate something true about the nature of God and this new kingdom. So, the foot washing certainly invites us to follow Jesus’ model with our own humility, but even more, the foot washing tells us something about the nature of God—and, if this is to be a revelation, it tells us something about God that we did not expect. So what does this act reveal about God that we didn’t understand before?
Does God behave like this?
In verse 3, John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus was in full possession of his understanding of himself, his identity, and authority. This means that what happens next happens in that context. Jesus knows fully who he is. Think about what this means. We can either understand the foot washing as something that occurred in spite of Jesus’ identity and authority, or as something that happened to express his identity and authority.
Much of Christianity takes the former path. We want to see the foot washing as condescension, Jesus stepping down from his rightful place for a moment to show us God’s soft side. A good leader knows their authority, and in spite of that, they choose to serve others. A good king, after all, is benevolent. We transfer this thinking to God. We imagine all God’s sovereignty, the respect due God, and the power we imagine God to have. When we see Jesus exchange his clothes for the garb of a house slave and take on this menial task, we smile at how God condescends to this humble position.
But what if that’s not what’s happening? What if the revelation within the foot washing is that this is not the exception, but the rule? Could it be that a more accurate understanding of the nature of God looks like this? Starting with this assumption gives so much clarity to Peter’s reaction.
When Jesus approaches Peter to wash his feet, Peter recoils. Why? Because in his world, with his expectations of authority and hierarchy so deeply formed by the pervasive Greco-Roman culture, this act was shameful. People were expected to act in accordance with their social status. It was shameful to act otherwise. Obviously, it was disgraceful for a slave to act above himself, but what is less obvious to us today is that it was equally shameful for someone in a position of power to act beneath their station. When Peter recoiled, he did so because if he allowed Jesus to wash his feet, he would be affirming that Jesus was beneath him. Jesus was taking on shame by acting the part of a slave. If Peter allowed Jesus to wash his feet, Peter would be piling more shame on Jesus, and in doing so, taking on shame himself.
Peter says so with his actions. The gentle NRSVue has Peter respond, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”3John 13:6. But the Greek is so much more emphatic than this. “Do YOU wash MY feet?” Peter’s shout sounds like shock and horror. Peter and the disciples wanted to see Jesus in an elevated capacity. He was their teacher. He was, even with their limited understanding, the promised Messiah. For an elevated person like Jesus to do the work of the lowest household servant was simply unacceptable. Thus, Peter recoils.
In verse 12, Jesus affirms that the disciples are right within their frame of reference. “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am.”4John 13:13. But, Jesus immediately subverts their expectations of what this means. He chose to take on the shame of “acting beneath his station,” and he makes clear that he expects this from his followers.
Will we follow Jesus into shame?
The foot washing prefigures what will happen in hours on the cross. Both the crucifixion and the foot washing dramatize what has always been true since before the foundation of the world. In the Christ Hymn of Philippians 2, Paul says that Jesus “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” The emptying in Philippians mirrors Jesus taking off his clothes and putting on the towel of a servant in the Upper Room. This emptying of self, what Simone Weil calls the “voiding” of self, is an essential quality of God. It is the heart of other-centered, co-suffering love.
The disciples wanted Jesus to be their guy, taking his rightful place within the system of the pyramid of power that defined their world. Jesus wanted to subvert that entire understanding of reality. God is not alone, at the pyramid’s peak, ruling from on high, and expecting faithful followers to take their appropriate place in the hierarchy. God pervades the cosmos and is always, everywhere, the suffering servant. When Jesus says, “I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you,”5John 13:15-16. the disciples, and we are invited to join in this new order of things.
Today, Christians seem governed by their own sense of shame. Some Christians feel shame because they believe that Christianity is looked down on by secular society. This results in insecurity and a reactive commitment to the kind of social war necessary to establish that Christianity is right, strong, and worthy of being respected. Other Christians fear acting on what they think is right because of the perceived judgment that will come from other Christians in their family or church. Some Christians continue to exclude and dehumanize others—folks in the opposite political party, immigrants, those in the LGBTQ community—because they are not willing to take on the shame they perceive will come their way if they stop.
What we want is for Jesus to validate our self-centered, ego-defending ambition – we want to not feel shame. What Jesus wants is to invite us into other-centered, co-suffering love – irrespective of what those around us consider to be shameful.
This is Jesus’ model because it has always been the heart of God. Jesus did not consider foot washing beneath him. He didn’t buy into the shame that culture assigned to that role. He wasn’t ashamed to be seen with women, numbered among the criminals, scorned by the religious. He didn’t consider arrest and crucifixion to be a shameful failure. He scorned the shame that human perceptual frameworks assign to keep certain people beneath and on the outside. It seems like it might be timely for those of us who follow Jesus to join him in taking on the shame so that others can be welcomed in and find life.
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