"He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, 'Lord, are you going to wash my feet?' Jesus replied, 'You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.' 'No,' said Peter, 'you shall never wash my feet.' Jesus answered, 'Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.' 'Then, Lord,' Simon Peter replied, 'not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!'”
(John 13:6-9)
You have probably heard the story about the preacher's kid who came into the house, filthy dirty after playing outside all day. His mother met him in the kitchen and marched him straight upstairs to the bathtub. He protested every step of the way, telling her he didn't need a bath, but she would not be persuaded. As the bath water ran, she lectured him about the dangers of germs in the dirt that covered his body. Then she said something about cleanliness being next to godliness and it was all the boy could take. "Germs and Jesus! Germs and Jesus!" he exclaimed. "That's all I ever hear about around here and I've never seen either one!"
This young man was neither convinced of his own need for cleansing, nor concerned about his mother's warnings about germs or his spiritual condition.
In our text today, Peter seeks release from cleansing, not because he is ambivalent to the dust and dirt on his feet, but rather, he is uncomfortable that his Master desires to wash his feet. "That is the task for a servant," he most surely thought to himself. On more than one occasion Peter sought to "adjust" Jesus' thinking and action. In one particular case, he stood between Jesus and Jerusalem to stop his movement toward the cross. Recognizing this impediment as a distraction from his mission, Jesus sternly chided Peter, "Get behind me, Satan!"
"You shall never wash my feet," Peter boldly proclaims once more in verse eight, standing squarely between Jesus and what He needs to accomplish. If so, Jesus tells him, "...you have no part with me." Peter was being confronted with the model of servant leadership...a model he would continue to struggle with for some time to come.
From stubborn rejection to humble reception, Peter finally relents, allows the One he has acknowledged as "the Christ," to make clean his dirty feet. Perhaps today, you and I still struggle to allow Christ to cleanse the sin that stains our lives. Perhaps we need to humbly receive the gracious gift of cleansing Christ still offers, not just for part of our lives...not just for certain things we have done, but as Peter came to realize, "not just my feet but my hands and my head as well." In other words, all of me.
Prayer: Christ, Savoir of all, Servant of all, I open every part of my life to you and ask for your cleansing. Amen.
Jim Abernathy
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