What do you say when you
sit down to eat for the last time with the people you've grown closest with for
the last 3 years? How do you tell them you love them? How does one say goodbye?
Do you even ruin the moment by reminding them you're dying or do you just
ignore it?
If you knew your every action and word was being recorded for posterity, would
that change what you do?
1 night. 1 meal. 1 group
of people that you love and are very close with.
Jesus washed their feet.
It's interesting that out of the four Gospels, only John mentions that, in the
middle of supper, Jesus kneels and performs this menial task. Yet this one act
paints one of the clearest pictures of Jesus’ character. Sometimes it's easy to
forget that Jesus was human too, He had real emotions, desires, friends, tears,
joy. His actions are so out of the ordinary that we tend to assume He wasn’t at
all ordinary. God was a man. He lived among men and He ate His last meal with
men who expected Him to act like a normal man. And most normal men would have
done something normal on their last night alive. Actually, I doubt any of us
would do what He did. See, I would have written a speech. You know, something
powerful, persuasive, moving, and very focused on me and why I matter and
should be remembered. I probably would have listed all the great moments we had
all had together, told them about the times I worked miracles and they weren't
even watching, reminded them that I loved them and instructed them to keep
spreading my legacy around the world. I would have made my last moments great.
Jesus made His last moments humble. Knowing He was going to die the next day
and these were some of His last moments with His disciples and friends, he
didn't do what most humans would have done.
Actions speak louder than words.
Two of the people around the table were going to betray Him. All of them had at
one point doubted Him. They had been together through some rough times, He'd
seen them at their worst. These disciples had been consumed with petty things,
interested in glory, full of pesky questions, and they were sinners. Jesus
never sinned. In every way that seems to matter to us, Jesus was above them. He
loved them anyway. He didn't just say it, He did it. Love is an action, so
Jesus dressed as a servant, lowered Himself to His knees, and washed their
feet.
The shock Peter
expressed was felt around the room.
Who
was this man who claimed to be the Son of God, had become the beacon of their
hope, and now submitted them to the awkwardness of cleaning the dirt from
feet? Expectations were shattered.
"Do you understand what I have done to you?" Jesus asks. No one did.
Very few people today understand either. We think that to imitate Jesus we just
have to pray more, or maybe harder. For us, loving others looks like explaining the meaning of the hypostatic union or argue out our opinion on predestination.
Maybe being Jesus for you means tithing, evangelizing, going to church, or
visiting nursing homes.
That's what everyone expects you to do.
That's normal.
Being Jesus means doing what no one expects. Be Jesus- get down on your knees
and love.
The King, Son of God, Holy of Holies, Lord of all, the Spoken Word, Logos, our
Savior Jesus was about to die. He came to love, He lived to serve, He died to
save. In doing so, He flipped the script and rewrote what it looked like to be
a great human. No speech, no partying, no prolonged hugs or pity party, nothing
we would expect from a dying man. When He finishes washing the feet of mere men
He says, "I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I
have done to you". His example was to do the unexpected. His example was
humility. This image of serving is what it means to be Jesus to the world
around us.
We don't understand what
Jesus did, if we did we would always be shattering expectations. It's too
awkward for us to actually see washing people's feet as an example of what we
should do every day. So we look at the Last Supper foot-washing as a symbolic
ritual that Christ did, something we don't have to repeat. We ignore the call
on our life to do menial acts of service for the people that scorn us, betray
us, or just annoy us. Instead, we pretend to imitate Christ by doing exactly
what everyone expects us to do. Being Jesus doesn't mean allowing ourselves to
get trapped in a box or trend of "Christianity".
What does the world expect from you? Humble yourself and do something greater. Today, take Jesus literally. Follow the example that He used His last meal to set for you. Step outside of your given role, lower yourself and do the unexpected. The people around you need Jesus, be Jesus for them. Serve them. Shock them. If you only had one more meal, what could be more powerful than to follow the example of our Lord?
