Holy Thursday: The Lowest Member of Society

“Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet” by Sieger Hoder

Tonight is indeed a night different from all other nights. Nowhere else in the history of religion do we see a scene like this, the Almighty Lord of Heaven kneeling on the ground in the loincloth of a slave, washing the dirty feet of mere human beings, a task performed only by the lowest member  in the society.  Do you understand that?  This was a slave’s job.  Yet Jesus did it.  “When he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them ‘Do you know what I have done to you? . . . If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should do as I have done to you” (John 13:12-15).  And he said to them,”A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you” (John 13:34).

–Fleming Rutledge, The Undoing of Death