The word “light” has occurred 23 times in John so far. After Chapter 12, the word does not recur. With Chapter 13, we have come to the Passover feast, and in verse 30, the Greek reads simply “en de nyx,” which translates as “And it was night.” This second half of John’s gospel takes place in darkness. But another name for it is “The Book of Glory.” Both things are true.
The sun sets and the doors shut, with us inside. Jesus is preparing the disciples for life after his death. We will get to the long, intense discussion, Jesus’s words that convey his eternal, invisible love. But first, Jesus speaks without words, with a visible, tangible, temporal act of love. He replaces his coat with a towel, pours water into a basin, kneels before the disciples, and washes and wipes their feet.
“Jesus, knowing that his hour had come – that he might pass from this cosmos to the Father – having loved his own in the cosmos, he loved them to the end … knowing that the Father had placed all things in his hands, and that he came forth from God and is underway to God.” (John 13:1,3 DBHart)
The question asked to Jesus throughout this Gospel, “Where are you from?”, will be answered plainly. So will be the question “Where are you going?”. The answer to both questions is “The Father.”
Jesus came forth from and was going to the Father, who had given Jesus “all things,” just like the Prodigal Father had given his own firstborn son. (Luke 15:31) Throughout the next four chapters, Jesus will expand on these three facts. But first he commands us to wash the earth from each other’s feet. The way to understand Jesus is not to take a seminar series or binge-watch lectures. The way to understand Jesus is to pour out some water and serve.
When Jesus puts on a towel, he puts on the uniform of the lowest menial task, the one that would be given to the non-Jewish slaves. Jesus makes cleaning others holy. And this hard work as undervalued today as it was then. How is it that those who wash and wipe the youngest and oldest, in child care and elder care, still make the lowest wages, while the costs of providing such care inflate year after year to the point where no one can afford this? Yet despite this unfairness, precisely because Jesus knows that the Father has given “all things” into his hands, this is why Jesus takes those hands of his to which so much has been given, and uses them to wash his disciples’ feet.
The disciples didn’t understand why he was doing this, not yet at least. Still, he washed their feet, all of them. Some disciples were brash, take-charge guys, like Peter. Some were welcoming and inviting, like Andrew. Some were polished citizens but traitors, like Judas Iscariot. And some were more “part of the scenery,” like the other guy named Judas (14:22). None of them did things the same way, and none of them did things the right way at first. All of them, he washed their feet, and after that, he answered their questions.
We’ve seen this before, but switched around, in John 12. Mary’s act with perfume was similar but singular, for it was an act only Jesus could receive. Jesus’s act with water is something he commands us to copy.
This is not a sacrament to be repeated like the Last Supper. (John doesn’t even tell us about that sacrament exactly, leaving that to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul.) Rather, Jesus gives this to us as an “example,” a model or pattern for us to copy. It’s the same word used in Hebrews for the heavenly blueprints of the Tabernacle shown to Moses. This is the divine dwelling-place we build when we wash with water and wipe off the dirt.
The cleaning that needs to happen isn’t just physical. After the things of earth are cleansed, corrupted hearts must be cleansed as well, by their own choice. Jesus quotes Psalm 41:9, from the time when King David’s friend Ahithophel conspired with the rebel Absalom to expel the true king from Israel: “He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.”
This event is the third thing in three chapters to “trouble” Jesus — the same word as when the angel “troubled” the waters at Bethesda (5:7). Jesus felt the same trouble in his heart when he saw Mary in distress (11:33) and when he prophesied that he must be buried like a grain of wheat (12:27). These are not easy things for even the son of God.
The disciples are flummoxed at this sudden turn. Peter prods the “disciple who Jesus loved” to ask for a hint. Jesus gives more than a hint – he gives Judas a piece of bread! – but the disciples trust so much in appearances that they can’t believe this. Rather they make up their own cover story for Judas, because on Passover night, the temple gates were left open and beggars allowed to gather there. Judas could have been going there to fulfill the law through alms-giving. Soon they would know the truth, that Judas was not giving silver coins to the poor, but he was getting them for himself.
Judas was possessed by the Accuser himself, and exited, in order to implement his plan to sell his friend and Rabbi to their enemies. And even though this is the most evil of evil deeds, Jesus says it has already glorified God: “Now has the Son of Man been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” (13:31). Truly, in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Only 11 disciples were there to see that glory through hearing those words. To the rest of the world, Jesus’s glory was hidden and invisible — it was night.
IMAGE: William Blake, The Last Supper (1799)
