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123 6 Looking Forward (John 13:1–17:26) = Now we draw the circle even tighter. We move to a private meal, shared by Jesus and the disciples, on the eve of the Passover. Jesus has been pointing to his death—his death as a source of life and victory. God’s glory will be revealed. All will be drawn. But it has not happened yet. Now he draws the disciples close to him and prepares them. When it happens, he says, believe— believe that in dying I am in God, doing his will. And then abide, live in what I have done. In doing so, he says, you will be bearing witness to what I have accomplished. Washing, 13:1-20 We are at the Last Supper, and John comments that, “knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father” (13:1), and “knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands” (13:3), Jesus deliberately rose from the meal, laid aside his garments, girded himself with a towel, and began to wash the disciples’ feet (13:4). John stresses that this was quite deliberate on the part of Jesus. Jesus had “loved His own who were in the world,” John writes, and now, almost silently, he pictures what he is about to do to complete that work: “He loved them to the end” (13:1). “To the end” is eis telos in the Greek—meaning fully, completely, reaching the limit or goal.1 The washing is a demonstration of that end. It pictures the full expression of who God is and how he loves that is about to be unveiled. What we see is the cross. Humbling himself, laying aside his clothing and girding himself with a towel, Jesus does the work of a servant, giving up all that was properly his in order to make them clean. The intimacy of the 124 John in the Company of Poets act is startling. Imagine him pouring water into a basin, kneeling down and washing their feet, one by one, wiping them dry on the towel at his waist. It is like nothing we have seen in the Gospel so far. Imagine each of the disciples staring at him and anticipating his touch as he works his way around the group. The tension must have been unbearable. Peter, not unexpectedly, is the one who finally reacts when Jesus reaches him, blurting out, “Lord, do You wash my feet?” (13:6). This is not what someone in authority should be doing, he insists, rebuking Jesus for having reversed everything. Peter does not understand what the act is pointing toward, but even if he did, he would have had the same reaction. Accepting such a gift from one so high above him is overwhelming and he cannot bear it. There is no way to pay it back. Jesus understands that this does not make sense yet. “What I do you do not realize now,” he says, “but you shall understand hereafter” (13:7). Store this away, he says. After these days, you will understand what I did and why it was necessary. Peter is not satisfied with this explanation. He is embarrassed now, and to protect himself, he forcefully objects: “Never shall You wash my feet!” (13:8). To that, Jesus quietly replies, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me” (13:8), beginning to unfold the parable he is enacting before their eyes. On his own, Peter, like the other disciples, is unclean and self-absorbed, continually setting himself apart from the very one he loves. And this will never change until Jesus washes him, overturning every hierarchy Peter knows in order to accomplish something Peter cannot do on his own. Peter, again not unexpectedly, begins to understand, but then rushes too far ahead: “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head” (13:9). We laugh, understanding that Jesus has created a picture to illustrate a point, and that Peter does not need more of the picture to receive what it is pointing to. He simply needs to let Jesus wash his feet. One can see, in this, how hard the gift is to accept. There are no degrees about it, no actions one can take to refine or enhance it. One is simply clean or not: “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you...

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