Transcript
Jesus Washes Feet
Richmond’s First Baptist, March 1, 2026
The Second Sunday of Lent
John 13:1-17
And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet…
Yesterday I watched a video called “How to graph y = x2.”i For two minutes and 51 seconds I sat there, mesmerized, as a guy who calls himself “Dr. B” showed me how to do something I didn’t know how to do. Because I spend most of my time in the right side of my brain, where the words and pictures are, I rarely cross over to the left side of the brain, where the numbers are. But Dr. B was showing me something fascinating. He was showing me that if you assign numerical values for x and y, you can plot a graph that looks like a picture. And I like pictures. So I stayed with him.
He said if x is 2 then y is going to be 4. I think I actually knew that already, that when you square something you just multiply it by itself, so 2 times 2 is 4. One was a little trickier. When you multiply one by itself you still end up with one (which doesn’t seem fair). Zero was worse. I think it was Billy Preston who said “Nothing from nothing leaves nothing,” but apparently nothing times nothing is also nothing.
And then Dr. B got into some of that “new math” I used to hear about. He said negative one times negative one is positive one (What? Why?), and that negative two times negative two is positive four. I almost quit watching at that point. I thought, “Now, he’s just making stuff up.” But then he started plotting those numbers on the graph, and then connecting those points with a line, and it made the most beautiful shape!
Swooping down like a bird in flight before swooping back up again. He called it a “parabola,” and suddenly I was back in my world: the world of words and pictures.
That word, parabola, comes from two Greek words that mean “to throw alongside”—para and ballo. As I looked at Dr. B’s graph I could see how one half of his parabola was thrown alongside the other half like a mirror image. Which made me think about the other way those words are used. In the Bible, para and ballo are used to make the word parable, which is what happens when one truth is thrown down beside another. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed,” Jesus said, and with those two truths lying there side by side you can see that the Kingdom starts small and grows big. It’s a parable. And so we come to the thirteenth chapter of John, where something happens that could be described as an “acted parable.”
Jesus is having supper with his disciples. It’s not the Passover Seder as it is in the other Gospels; it’s the night before. John structures his Gospel that way deliberately; he wants us to imagine that Jesus, the Lamb of God, was being nailed to the cross just as the Passover lambs were being slaughtered for the formal meal that would take place that night. So he tells the story of the Last Supper on the night before, with no bread, no cup, no “Do this in remembrance of me”—just Jesus and his disciples sharing a meal. And because it wasn’t the Seder it may have been very simple. A few of the disciples might have gone out to get some food from the first-century equivalent of a Jewish deli, and then set it down in the middle of the floor while the others unrolled their bedrolls around it and reclined, propping themselves up on one elbow so they could dip a piece of bread into a bowl of hummus. But at some point they would have realized that nobody had washed their feet.
According to a reliable source, “foot washing was a standard, necessary, and culturally expected, act of hospitality in the ancient Near East during biblical times,
primarily to cleanse feet soiled by sandals on dusty roads. Usually performed by servants or women, it was a common courtesy, sometimes even a ritual, offered to guests upon entering a home.”ii Don’t miss that last part: it was usually performed by servants or women, and if it was really only Jesus and his disciples at that meal then it’s entirely possible that no one had offered to wash their feet and no one had volunteered.
There’s a place in Luke’s Gospel where the disciples begin to argue about which one of them is the greatest. It’s at the Last Supper, just after Jesus has shared the bread and cup and told them to “do this in remembrance of him.” Then he says, “One of you will betray me,” and they begin to look around, wondering who could do such a thing. But at some point they begin to argue among themselves about which one of them is the greatest (which seems completely inappropriate under the circumstances), but they may have been thinking that they were about to become leaderless, and were wondering who their new leader would be.
It’s different in John’s Gospel. Jesus hasn’t told them yet that one of them will betray him. They are simply having a meal together and no one has washed their feet. Instead of looking around wondering which one of them is the greatest they may have been looking around wondering which one of them was the least, that is, which one of them should volunteer for foot washing duty. There may have been a long, awkward silence before Jesus finally rose from the table.
John tells us that Jesus knew his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. He knew that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God. Which is to say that Jesus knew who he was and where he was headed; he was secure in both his identity and his destiny. He didn’t have anything to prove. And so he got up from supper, laid aside his outer garment, tied a towel around his waist, filled a basin with water, and began to wash his disciples’ feet.
And since they were reclining, Jesus would have had to go around the perimeter of the room, washing one pair of dirty feet after another in the shadows of the flickering lamplight.
When he got to Peter, Peter said, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?!” And Jesus said, “You do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said, “You will never wash my feet!” meaning, “You shouldn’t be serving me; I should be serving you!” But Jesus said, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” And then, as usual, Peter wanted to jump all the way in. “Then Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean, and you are clean. Although,” he said, casting a glance at Judas, “not all of you.” He knew that Judas was about to betray him.
And yet he washed his feet. He washed all of his disciples’ feet. And when he was finished he put on his outer garment and reclined again. Looking at that circle of faces in the lamplight said, “Do you know what I have done to you?” No. They really didn’t. So he said, “You call me Teacher, and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” It’s as clear a command as you will find anywhere in Scripture, and yet for some reason we don’t do it. We take communion. Jesus told us to “do this” in remembrance of him and we do it, faithfully, frequently. We’ll do it today. But even though he said, “You also ought to wash one another’s feet,” we don’t do it.
I wonder why.
There are practical reasons. Just last week someone reminded me of a commentary I wrote on this passage years ago, where I said we don’t wash feet because of pantyhose. But it’s not just that: washing feet is embarrassing, it’s humiliating. I was
telling our friends at community missions last week about my granddaughter, and how, when she was born, she had the sweetest little feet. You just wanted to kiss them. That’s just how it is with babies’ feet. But when you’ve walked on your feet a while they begin to show the wear, and when you’ve walked on them for a lifetime you’re not really eager to show them off. It’s humiliating to take off your shoes, peel off your socks, and put your feet into a washbasin. But for the other person it’s humbling: to be the one who takes those cracked and callused feet into your hands, and washes them, and dries them with a towel.
And maybe that’s the real reason we don’t do it: because it’s humbling. And we don’t want to be humbled; we want to be exalted. I was talking to a friend last week who suggested that the “outer garment” in this story could be a symbol of all the earthly glory we seek to acquire: upward mobility, reputation, comfort, security, influence. We put those things on and parade around in that outer garment hoping that someone will see and take notice. But Jesus lays aside his outer garment. He wraps a towel around his waist. He kneels down and begins to wash the feet of his disciples. If you look closely you can see that this is the pattern of his entire life.
Scholars call John 1:1-18 the Prologue of the Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word,” John writes, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If you were plotting points on a graph the Word would be way up here, at the top. But in verse 14 the Word comes all the way down to zero; the Word becomes flesh and lives among us. And then, in verse 18, John writes, “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, has made him known.” And you realize that if the Word is back in the bosom of the Father, you have to plot a point at the top of the graph.
So, it starts high, swoops low, and then swoops up again. You can almost see it, can’t you? But here’s the thing: If you took that parabola from John 1, and laid it on top
of this parable from John 13, the two of them would line up perfectly. What Jesus does in John 1 is exactly what he does in John 13—he gives up his glory, he lays aside his outer garment. And in both cases it’s the lowest point of that parabola is the most important—it’s the place where Jesus does what he came to do. In chapter 13 the lowest point of the parabola is Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. But in chapter 1 the lowest point of the parabola is verse 12, where it says that Jesus came to his own people and his own people did not receive him, but to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.
How did he do it?
Let’s take a look at another biblical parabola, this one in Philippians 2:5-11. Quoting the words of a hymn that was sung in those early churches Paul says that Christ, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, assuming human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
What’s the lowest point of that parabola? Death on a cross. If you laid it on top of those other two I think you would find that all three line up perfectly: the Word becoming flesh so that he could give us power to become the children of God, the teacher getting up from supper so he could wash his disciples’ feet, the one who was in the form of God emptying himself in order to save us. Again and again Jesus gives up his glory, fulfills his mission, and resumes his place. If you were trying to sum it up in one
verse you might say: “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
So what about us?
Jesus told his disciples, “I have set an example before you. If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” It’s that simple. The word that is translated “example” in this passage is the Greek word hypodeigma. It means something more like “pattern.” And I love that for this passage, this acted parable. By washing his disciples’ feet Jesus is tracing a pattern in the shape of a parabola that starts high, swoops low, and then swoops up again. And then he says, “I want you to do that for one another.”
But we’re not very good at that, and the reason we’re not very good at that is because we aren’t very secure in our identity. We aren’t sure, in the way Jesus was, that we come from God and are going to God. And we don’t believe, even though he said so, that we are God’s beloved children. But what if you were different? What if you did believe it? What if you knew who you were and where you were headed? What if you believed that you had absolutely nothing to prove? Wouldn’t you be the first to get up from the table, lay aside your outer garment, and wash some feet?
—Jim Somerville © 2026
