In the Holy Week celebration, today commemorates the gathering of Jesus and his twelve apostles where they share their final meal together in the upper room. Here, you may observe the setting of the greatest object lesson in human history. As the followers of Jesus gather for the meal, they ignore good hygiene and polite deportment, eschewing cleansing their muck-covered feet as they enter, so they may instead make their individual cases of who should sit at Jesus' right hand when He establishes His reign.
As the heat in the room rises as tempers flare and pride rebuts ego, the stench of the room wafts strongly. In this putrid atmosphere of self and flesh, Christ rises, humbles himself, and begins washing the fecal filth from His followers' feet.
The room falls quiet with a silence that hurts our ears more than two thousand years later. You can almost hear the candle light reflecting from the walls as Jesus -- stripped to a loin cloth and kneeling before those He created -- lifts foot after dirty foot, setting it into the murky basin and gently rubbing away the mire.
After the protestation of Peter, Jesus finishes and simply says, "Now, you go and do likewise."
That instruction remains today.
"You go and do likewise."
Oh, how we have misinterpreted and maligned the message. We have taken this upper room and we have discussed it, debated it, and even detailed it for Bible study. The command, though, was "to go and do likewise."
Today, if you have the opportunity to partake in the Lord's supper, please remember that the foot washing that preceded the final meal was a foreshadowing of His service to humanity culminating on the cross. And this day, we who call ourselves Christ followers have been called to go and do likewise.*
*This entry is a modification of an excerpt from The Servant Principle, a book I co-wrote a few years ago with Dr. Rick Ferguson.
Thanks, Bryan, for a beautiful reminder of Whom we serve and what this weekend means.
Posted by: jen at March 24, 2005 9:56 AM