The King with a Towel

Two days after Jesus told the story of the King on his shining throne, it was Passover time in Jerusalem. Jesus and his twelve friends gathered for supper in an upstairs room.

Jesus knew this was his last night with them. Soon he would leave this world and go back to his Father. He had always loved his friends, and he would love them to the very end.

But the devil had already put a plan into the heart of Judas, one of the twelve. Judas was going to hand Jesus over to his enemies.

People walked everywhere in sandals then, on hot, dusty roads. (By suppertime, feet could look as if they had been planted in a garden and pulled back up.) When guests came to dinner, a servant knelt by the door and washed their feet. It was the lowest job in the house.

Tonight there was no servant. The basin and the towel sat by the door, and nobody touched them. Not one of the friends got up. That same night they even argued about which of them was the greatest. (At supper they lay on cushions around a low table with their feet stretched out behind them. So twelve pairs of dusty feet were right there, and everyone pretended not to notice.)

Jesus knew that the Father had put everything into his hands. He got up from the table. He took off his outer robe and tied a towel around his waist, the way a servant would. He poured water into the basin, knelt, and began to wash his friends' feet.

The room went still. Splash. Scrub. Dry. He washed the feet of Judas too.

Then he came to Peter.

Peter pulled his feet away. "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"

"You don't understand what I am doing now," said Jesus, "but afterward you will."

"No!" said Peter. "You will never wash my feet. Never!"

"If I do not wash you," said Jesus, "you have no part with me."

"Then, Lord, don't stop at my feet! Wash my hands and my head too!" (Peter never did anything halfway.)

"Someone who has had a bath only needs his feet washed," said Jesus. "And you are clean, though not every one of you." He knew who was going to betray him.

Then Jesus put his robe back on and lay down at the table again. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked. "You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, because that is who I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you should wash each other's feet. A servant is not greater than his master. Now that you know these things, God will bless you if you do them."

Water from a basin can only reach so far. By morning their feet would be dusty again. There was dirt in that room that no towel could touch: the plan hidden in Judas's heart, and all that arguing about who was the greatest.

That night the friends did not understand. Afterward, just as Jesus had said, they did. The one kneeling on the floor was the one the Father had given everything to. Before the next sunset he would die on a cross, to make his friends clean where water could not reach.

The King who holds everything in his hands used them that night to pick up a towel.