[Machine transcription]
Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart
out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them
to the end.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear saints of God, I don’t know if you â I have a tendency to kind of laugh at the disciples
because they’re always having this conversation
about which one is the greatest.
And I think we have to be careful
because it turns out that we’re also
having the same conversation all the time.
I’ll prove it.
Last night when I got home,
the first thing I did was turn on the TV
to figure out who the states had decided
the greatest Democrat was.
To run for president.
And once they sort out who the greatest is,
then all the country will get together
and take a vote to figure out who’s going to be the greatest, and this is happening
all the time.
It’s not just in the country, it’s in the states, it’s in all of our cities.
We’re always having these conversations about who’s going to be in charge.
But beyond that, what this conversation of the disciples indicates, who’s going to
be the greatest, means that they⦠it’s less of what they think of themselves, and
it’s more about what they’re expecting to happen to Jesus.
Now, you’ll remember just a couple of weeks before this last Holy Week, the disciples
were terrified to go to Jerusalem.
Remember that Lazarus was dead and Jesus was going to go and raise him, and they were afraid
even to go up to Bethany because they knew that the Jews there wanted to kill him, and
Thomas had to say, well, let’s go with Jesus.
If he dies, we’ll die with him.
But now things have changed.
At least they look like they’ve changed a little bit.
We’re reading in Holy Thursday, but remember on the Sunday before, Jesus had had this arrangement
where He was riding on a donkey and He rode down into Jerusalem, and instead of being arrested,
He was surrounded by the crowds, and they were crying out,
Hosanna!
Hosanna!
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!
And you have to think that at this point the disciples say, well, maybe things aren’t
going to end up like we thought they were.
Maybe things aren’t going to end up like Jesus said they were.
Or maybe this whole thing is going to work out all right.
Maybe Jesus will come into His kingdom.
Maybe He will take over and we’ll be there, one on His right hand and one on the left,
so we better sort it out now, who’s the greatest?
Who gets to sit where?
I think there’s another little clue that this was the situation, because remember they were
seeking to find and arrest Jesus at night, or when He was apart from everyone else, and
why was that?
Because the crowds were in favor of Jesus.
The Pharisees knew that they couldn’t grab Him when He was teaching in the temple because
He had won the people over.
In fact, I think we ought to keep that in mind when we get to the next morning on Good
Friday and Pilate, who thinks he’s got a pretty good beat on the crowd, thinks that he can
hand Jesus over and the crowd will ask for Him. He was wrong. The disciples were
wrong. Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve. So you can imagine as the
disciples are asking this question about who is the greatest, knowing that the
greatest of all of them is Jesus, knowing that they’re just arguing to figure out
who was going to have the greatest position of service, but that Jesus
Jesus Himself was greater than all, Jesus stands up, and He takes off His coat, and
He grabs a towel, and He wraps it around His waist, and He pours a basin full of water
and comes to wash their feet.
Can you imagine it?
When you were a disciple in the ancient world, you were basically like a servant.
I mean, the disciple was to the master what the servant was to their master, with a few
exceptions.
There were a few tasks that were so menial that only a servant would do them, not even
a disciple would be asked to do them, and right among those tasks, perhaps the lowliest
of all, was washing feet.
Only the lowliest of the lowly would be asked to do such a thing.
Yet Jesus comes to His disciples to do just this.
And Peter, who we think He comes to first, was sitting at the end of the table, reacts
perhaps as all of the disciples would react and say, Lord, no, no, this cannot be this
way.
You come to wash my feet?
Jesus says what I’m doing you don’t understand, afterward you will understand, and Jesus
says this to him, you shall never wash my feet. It’s too lowly, it’s too humble.
Peter would say to Jesus like John the Baptist would say to him when he comes
to be baptized, I don’t need to be baptized, you don’t need to be baptized
by me, I should baptize you. So Peter would say to the Lord Jesus, you
don’t, you can’t wash my feet, I should wash your feet. And as far as it goes
Peter is right, Jesus is the Lord of all.
We know that Mary Magdalene herself was commended when she comes to wash the feet of Jesus with
her tears and wipe His feet with her hair, and Jesus says, she who loves much, she who
is forgiven much, loves much.
That was right, but Peter says, Jesus, Peter if I do not wash you, you have no share with
me.
Jesus must serve us.
Jesus, the Lord of all, must serve you.
Well, I think Jesus convinced Peter, but he goes overboard the other way.
If I do not wash you, you have no share with me. So then Simon Peter says,
Lord, then not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
In other words, if this is what it takes to be part of you, I want to be part of you.
or give me it all, wash my hands, wash my head, wash my whole body.
But Jesus says to him, the one who is bathed does not need to wash except for his feet
and is completely clean, and you are clean.
Now, I’d like to suggest, dear saints, that there’s two kind of equal and opposite errors
that Peter puts before Jesus and before us tonight.
There is, on the one hand, the idea that Jesus is the Lord who must be served.
It’s a common idea.
After all, Jesus is God, so if we are going to serve⦠if He’s going to be the Lord,
then we must serve Him, and we understand our Christian life as a life of service to
God, not remembering that Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve and give Himself
as a ransom for many.
As He explained it to the disciples when He says, who’s greater, the one who sits at
the table or the one who serves?
Is it not the one who sits at the table, and yet I am among you as the one who serves?
Jesus is the Lord who serves.
But then Peter goes on to the other side, and he says, well, if you are going to serve,
then maybe you can be my servant.
You can serve me in the way that I want to be served.
You can give me this and that, and Jesus says, no, no, I will serve you, but I am still the
Lord who serves and I will determine what you need.” I mean this happens in the
church when people say well Jesus I want you to give me whatever you know the
best life now or I want to give you answers to all my problems or I want you
to you know make make this life great Jesus says look I’ll tell you I’ll tell
you how I want to serve you I want to die for you I want to forgive you your
sins, I want to shed my blood to make you clean.”
Because I think if the disciples could have stopped Jesus there from serving Him, if they
could have somehow stopped Jesus from bowing down on His hands and His knees and washing
their feet, if they could have stopped Him there and said,
Jesus, we want to tell you what we’re thinking, and they would have said to Him, this humility
is too much.
This is too lowly.
This isâ¦this is tooâ¦I know you talked about suffering, but this isâ¦this is too
lowly.”
And Jesus would say to him, just wait until tomorrow.
If you think this is humble, seeing Me on My hands and knees with a towel around My
waist scrubbing between your toes, if you think this is lowly, just wait till tomorrow
When they tear off my beard and gamble for my clothes and put the nails through my hands
and the spit on my face, and then you will see the humility with which I will clothe
myself.
Then you see the lowliness to which I will reach to forgive all of your sins.
Dear saints, I don’t think it’s an accident that Jesus connects the washing of the disciples’
feet with the giving of the Lord’s Supper.
We’ll talk about that next week as we come to it in the readings.
But in this way, Jesus comes to us tonight, not wrapped in a towel, but wrapped in bread
and wine so that He can cleanse you, so that He can serve you, so that you will be part
of Him.
God be praised, Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.
