The flickering of lights in the upper room cast shadows all around. They were gathered for a meal, but a weight hung over the proceedings. The conversation did not crackle the same way. The laughter was nervous. This was unusual. Over three years, they had grown into a family; a bickering, loving, motley crew of a family bound by the amazing sights they had witnessed and their teacher. Yet they looked now at his face and felt in their bones that it was all coming to an end.
Then Jesus did something unusual, but to be honest, the unusual was actually fairly ordinary with him. He wrapped a towel around his waist and filled a basin with water. Then he knelt before each of them and washed their feet. Feet caked in dirt and mud mixed with cuts and sores. Feet that had followed him all over the Palestinian countryside. It was servant’s work, not something fit for a rabbi, much less a messiah or God’s own son.
Yet there he was kneeling before each of his students; including the one who he knew would walk out the door in a moment to betray him. He washed their feet clean and told them that was what they were to do. He was not a teacher who simply told them to serve one another from high upon a hill. He knelt down and showed them what it meant to serve and love one another, even those considered enemies. And he told them, he told us, that love was the true mark of being his follower.
Dear God, thank You for the love that You show us in the life of Jesus. May we follow the mandate he gave his disciples on that night long ago: to love and serve one another as he loved us.