Love one another................

It is a clear command:  Love one another.  As I have loved you, love one another.

But it comes at the most amazing point in John's telling of the Jesus story.  In John, the disciples gather around Jesus in the hours before his arrest and crucifixion.  The writer of John does  not focus on the meal but rather on the humble act of footwashing.

Footwashing was the work of the youngest or lowest slave in the house.  Guests were offered the opportunity to have the road's dust and other unmentionably smelly things washed off their feet before the evening's fellowship began.  From my time in Africa, it is easy to imagine a small basin being filled with water from a hand held pitcher as it is carried from person to person so the washing could commence.  In rural Africa that is often how they manage hand washing before a meal; it is a sign of hospitality.

But it requires that someone kneel at the feet of another and do whatever is necessary to both cleanse but also soothe those worn feet.  I can picture the muddy watter sloshing out of the basin a bit, some dripping of wet feet, a towel getting increasingly dirty.

I expect that the usual practice was to ignore the person performing this menial task for you (just as we are prone to ignore the bus boy who clears our dirty dishes). You'd avert your gaze and certainly not engage in conversation.  But those disciples were being served by the one they called Master and Rabbi and Lord and even Messiah.  So possibly they averted their gaze out of embarrassment.

Unfolding his body from its kneeling position, Jesus could have looked around the gathered disciples.  They didn't know how close the end was, even if Jesus did.  They didn't know that the spark that would ignite the subsequent fire was sitting right there among them.  They didn't realize at that moment that Jesus had washed the feet of the one who was about to leave the room and hand him over to the authorities.  Judas wasn't who Judas would become in our imagination and in this story at just that moment.

It was then that Jesus said, "Love one another.  As I have love you, you love one another."

Just as I have loved you.  On my knees.  Wet with the dirt and manure of unwashed feet.  Doing the work of the lowest of the slaves.  To all of you.  All. Of. You.

Jesus had already given the command as he moved from foot to foot......it just took a moment for him to stand straight and give us the words for the actions we witnessed.  Love one another.

Not fairy dust and unicorns.  Not sentiment and wedding bells.  Not puppy dogs and Kumbaya.

Kneeling.  For everyone.  Until death.....and then beyond into life.

That kind of love.



John 13.31-35