‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.’
Isn’t that a striking word for Easter week, from John 13.8?
We’re in the upper room and Jesus – towel wrapped around his waist, basin of water in hand – has just reached the last disciple in the circle: Peter. And of course, Peter can’t let the drama that’s unfolding go any further without a challenge…
‘Lord are you going to wash my feet?… You shall never wash my feet!’
No one else in the room has the guts to say it. But surely all of them are feeling it. And we’re feeling it too, aren’t we?
Perhaps it’s my overdeveloped English sense of reserve, but the point here is surely that Jesus goes a step too far in this incident – deliberately. All of us love appropriate humility but nobody wants to see the person who is truly worthy of admiration shamed. Nobody wants to see the professor sweeping the classroom floor, nobody wants to see the mother of the house carrying out the trash.
Now, of course, this moment in the story is rightly elevated today as a study in Christian servant-heartedness. In verse 15, Jesus himself tells Peter and the others, ‘I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.’ But before we sanitize it as ‘the kind of thing believers ought to do,’ pause with me at least for a second to capture and cultivate the emotional reaction that drives Peter’s outburst.
Because this is how we’re supposed to react to the cross.
What is Jesus doing as he enters Jerusalem for the final time in Holy Week? What is he doing as he finally allows the outrage of his enemies to overtake him? Yes, he’s bearing our sin. Yes, he’s washing us clean. But do we grasp how inappropriate that is?
I have sin that needs to be forgiven. Jesus goes to the cross to do the forgiving. Job done – right?
Wrong.
In John 13, Peter helps us see that Jesus carrying our sin is the last thing he should be doing. It’s a wretched thing for him to do. It’s a disgusting thing for him to do. It’s a shameful thing. And it’s all those things because of us.
Peter has it right – doesn’t he? – when he tells Jesus he will never wash his feet. Sure, he doesn’t really understand what Jesus is going for. But he does at least have some concept of who Jesus is and gives some credit where it’s due. Jesus doesn’t wash feet in the upper room because it’s his job. Jesus washes feet in the upper room because there’s no other way to be clean.
As we come to him this Easter then, let’s nurture that awareness. Is it heretical to say ‘don’t be too quick to bring Jesus your sins’? Perhaps. But perhaps at least a pause helps us realize what it involves. We should be ashamed to ask him to carry the can for all our thanklessness and self-sufficiency.
The reason we ask is not because it’s appropriate but because there’s no other way:
‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.’
Neil Martin is Ministry Assistant at Oxford Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Oxford, England. He completed his DPhil in New Testament at the University of Oxford and is a member of the St. John Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
