Pierced Hands and Dirty Feet

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. John 13.1

“Oh, please, let me change her,” said my mother-in-law. My three-month-old daughter had just announced to the room that her digestive tract worked well.

“You want to?” I asked, incredulous.

She picked up the infant with a smile. “I just want to hold her.”

Grandma knew the secret, you see, that time is too short for love to have its fill. Too soon my baby would be grown and out of the house, no longer available for the cuddling love a maternal heart pours out.

Dirty Chores

Like Grandma, Jesus is famous for doing the dirty chore, and the Bible tells us he did it because of love.

Go back with me to the night he was betrayed. Supreme forces of good and evil were at work that fated night, well beyond what human eyes could see.

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power.

He knew that he had come from God and was returning to God.

And he knew the road back home was not going to be easy.

Maybe that’s why he was so eager to share this Passover meal with his friends. On the one hand, he’d be back with the Father he loved above everything. On the other, it meant leaving his disciples behind. They didn’t realize it yet, but this was to be their last supper together.

Before the group could lounge around the table, though, they had a problem. The Darling of Heaven had dirty feet, and so did the men he hung around with.

Normally, the lowest servant in the house would be assigned the filthy pre-dinner footwash chore but this house had no servant.

The solution? The host—God himself—wrapped a towel around his waist, knelt down, and took care of the problem. Every foot. Man by man. One after another. Until all were clean.

An Example of Grace

In this, Jesus “set them an example” that they should do as he had done. A fine example of serving others, humbling ourselves, forgiving offenses.

Yes, yes, all that and more.

The Bible contains no clearer, more poignant picture of grace.

More than the Divine bending low to serve, we see a very tender—very human—side of Jesus. Think about it. On the last night of his natural life, Jesus played the role of the least of God’s servants.

Why? So he could touch his disciples one last time.

“Having loved his own… the time had come to leave this world… he began to wash their feet.”

Don’t get sidetracked by Judas’s betrayal or Peter's bombast. Don’t make a lesson out of Jesus's gentle reproof. If you do, you might just miss the heartbeat of God.

The Heartbeat of God

God loves his people with an everlasting love yet until Jesus, a barrier separated him from them He was the Holy Creator. We are his unholy creatures. The two could never meet under such conditions without one annihilating the other.

Not to be denied his heart’s desire–to show love to the children of Adam–God had spent thousands of years crafting a nation to whom he might draw near. In all that time, he never once showed his face to a single human being.

Then the Incarnation. In Jesus, God lived among his people as one of them.

No small thing for the Creator to become a creature, a man who walked and talked and ate and wept and laughed with all the other creatures.

Jesus spent the last three years of his life soaking up intimacy with these 12 imperfect men, including one who would doubt him, one who would deny him, one who would betray him. He looked on their faces and they looked on his. How he must have enjoyed his time on earth!

Thirty-three years must have seemed far too short when on this night, his last night, he embraced the fact that time was up. God had drawn near, as near as could be, but as is the way in this fallen world, all good things come to an end. This is what it means to be human.

As Real As It Gets

If you knew you had less than 24 hours to live, how would you spend them?

Jesus leaped at the chance to touch his friends, to place his hands on their skin, to hold them in a way they would never forget. Grime did not keep him from relishing the feel of their flesh.

This act of love was not for Jesus alone. It was his way of “loving them to the end.” Not the cross. Not the grave–empty or otherwise. Not even the ascent to heaven or the pentecost of the Spirit. No, this humble let-me-touch-and-remember moment one on one with each.

Ever after, dirty feet would remind them of the life they had shared with the master who called them friends.

Our nearest and dearest sometimes dirty up our relationships.

So what? Our time here is so very short.

Don’t let the muck keep you from savoring the ones you love. Be like Jesus.

Palms that capture memories today may well be pierced for transgressions tomorrow. Such is the nature and privilege of love.

Trust that the Father has your back and while there’s still time, go after your beloved in a way no one will forget.

Chapter Seven

(Excerpt from Why Is Life So Hard? Volume 7: God’s Judgments)

Psalm 119.52

I remembered your judgments of old, O Lord, and have comforted myself.

Learning How the World Works

I don’t remember the world feeling quite so broken when I was a child.

Oh, life on the farm wasn’t easy in a large, poor family. We worked hard. We rarely owned anything that wasn’t a hand-me-down. Thank God for the generosity of his churches, or many a year there would have been no Christmas or Thanksgiving.

Despite such hardships, there was a measure of comfort in learning how the world worked. We knew the rules. Being poor was no excuse for being lazy. A job worth doing was worth doing well. Cleanliness was next to godliness. Don’t talk back.

We could count on getting in trouble if we broke those rules. We knew what was right and what was wrong, or if not, we found it out “the hard way.” What comforted us, in a bizarre way, was knowing that there were consequences to disobedience. If things went wrong, someone was held to account for it. And someone made it right again.

The World Is Not Safe

We hear about new atrocities and catastrophes from morning through night around the globe. This has created a stressful psychological climate. The world is not safe, and moment by moment news programs report its unpredictability, its menace.

Linking the world into a global community has benefits, but who has the wherewithal to withstand all its problems?

If the brokenness of my childhood world required comfort, how much more does all that’s presently wrong with the world at large?

Where do we turn now, as we did as children? Who will pay for the harm that is done? Who will make things right again?

This is the role of God’s judgments. This is what makes them good.

Don’t our hearts cry for safety (in our worries) and righteousness (in our grievances) when we wake in the night? Isn’t the chaos of our world—global or personal—what keeps us awake in the first place?

This is life outside Eden, and our race has been suffering under its weight practically since we began. There has never been a perfect society. No civilization outlasts conquest and upheaval forever. The world needs a better way than self-centered ambition and power-based control.

Enter the kingdom of God.

Jesus looked out over multitudes of riff-raff who wake in the night to worry and fret over the troubles of life. What did he offer them? He spoke blessings over their troubles. Look at all these people—poor, hungry, meek, sad. Good news, folks, the kingdom of heaven is for the likes of you. (Mt 5.1-11)

He had yet to defeat their enemies, but plans were in the works and going ahead.

That being the case, he began to teach them how to live like kingdom people.

Those plans…. Isaiah spotted it over 2700 years ago. We all like sheep have gone astray, and God has laid on the Messiah the iniquity of us all (Is 53.6). Think of it. All the wrong that has ever been done, or that ever will be done, must be atoned for. Someone has to pay the price. That someone was the Christ.

Paying is one thing, you say, that’s justice. But what vengeance? What about making it right? This is also up to God. “It is mine to avenge,” he told Moses. “I will repay.”

God at the Center

David did not have access to nightly news broadcasts but he saw enough evil and wrongness around him that he found God’s judgments of old—his righteous decrees, his precepts and statutes—comfort for his soul.

When he hid his family in Moab and went on the run from Saul.

When he bid goodbye to his kindred soul, Jonathan.

When his baby boy died because of his sins against Bathsheba and Uriah.

When his son raped his daughter. And her brother killed him for it.

When friends and counselors betrayed him.

When his misdeeds brought God’s wrath on the nation.

When he abandoned the Ark of the Covenant to flee before Absalom’s rebellion.

There was a lot of heartache in David’s life. Some of it was even his fault.

David turned with every step toward the ancient way recorded in God’s Word. He had no other hope. He knew himself to be fallible. He knew people to be treacherous.

He knew nothing in this world could be counted on except one thing alone. You, oh Lord, have been our refuge. Your name is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and are safe.

That’s how David ruled his kingdom—God at the center, the reason and rule of life in Israel.

And because he did, he was promised an eternal heritage. One of his descendants would sit on his throne forever.

The Son of David finally came, laid down his life to pay for the world’s wrong, and took it up again. Now he lives to restore all things. All authority in heaven and on earth belong to him. He reigns in righteousness through endless days.

Don’t be deceived by the state of the world.

God’s judgments of old do not change. What he has promised he will fulfill.

Jesus is already Lord. He is already exalted to the highest place. He bears the name above all names. Every knee has not yet bowed, perhaps, but they will.

What comfort to us who long for his appearing. Even so, come Lord Jesus. Come.

Peace Like Jesus

“Peace, I leave with you,” Jesus said. “My peace I give to you.”

What did Jesus have in mind when he talked about peace? Certainly not a utopian existence where everything goes along without a hitch. He made it pretty clear that in this world we’re going to have trouble.

What is a Messiah?

This was an especially important point for Jesus to make. Israel had long expected a Messiah to arise from the line of David, a prophet on the order of Moses. Someone to return the kingdom of Israel to its former glory in the international arena. By the time Jesus arrived on the scene, that had become far more of a political expectation than a religious reality.

When John began to preach and baptize in the Jordan wilderness, the nation had not seen a son of David on the throne for nearly 600 years. The oppression of Rome filled them with messianic longings. Jewish youth cut their teeth on Daniel’s promise of an “everlasting dominion that will never be destroyed.” Old people haunted the temple, waiting for the “consolation of Israel.”

Enter Jesus. A miracle worker with unprecedented power—to heal the sick, to deliver from demons, to raise the dead. A teacher with great wisdom and unmatched authority. No wonder their Messiah sensors went off. Surely this hope was behind Peter recognizing him as the Christ, and his hasty if erroneous insistence that Jesus should not die at the hands of the religious leaders. He could not imagine them killing their long-awaited Messiah.

If we’re honest, we all have a little of Peter in us. We long for Jesus to rock the world—and we don’t mean the gentle sway of a cradle, either. We want to see him take the world by the scruff of the neck and shake some goodness into it. We know he can. We know he will. It’s hard to wait, especially when suffering makes our longing so poignant.

Why Does Jesus Tarry?

Good question. Why, indeed?

Because his kingdom is not of this world. Before Jesus establishes his reign on earth, he first had to reconcile man to God. He did this by offering his own blood as an atoning sacrifice on Calvary. He paid the ransom set by God: one perfect life in exchange for all who come by faith. He tarries today because still others will come.

But why he tarries isn’t our problem. We live in a broken world. We suffer evil at the hands of wickedness. We are not spared disease or poverty or loneliness. Despite the many commands not to be afraid, we fear something out there is set against us. And it is. The enemy is defeated but he has not retreated.

The truth is, hardships are very real. They threaten us and our loved ones. We know ourselves to be defenseless before them. Fear combines with need and, left unchecked, anxiety takes root in our souls. More and more people resort to meds to moderate the anxiety of daily life.

How sweet is Jesus’s command, “Take heart.” How welcome his assurance, “I have overcome the world!” Our poor hearts, trounced by fear and pain, can barely gasp, “If only it were true.”

Wake up, Christian! You’re having a nightmare.

His word is true. Jesus has overcome the world. All authority in heaven and on earth already belongs to him. Turn to him!

The troubles of this world no longer master those who abide in Christ. Abide in him!

These light and momentary afflictions are working for us an eternal weight of glory. Fix your eyes on the unseen!

It’s Not That Easy

Easier said than done, right? For many of us, the immediacy of our trouble eclipses the greatness of his help, and we are still afraid. Is the peace he promised really meant for today?

Sometimes I think we live so far this side of Pentecost that we’ve forgotten the little Flame. Worse, for many the Indwelling has been reduced to a mere “seal,” a stamp on our ticket that’ll get us into heaven when we die.

How tragic! The omnipotence of God is at our disposal and we are defeated by next month’s bills, a bad medical report, a family crisis. Weak we may be, but whatever happened to the peace that passes understanding? Oh, how we need to recover the hope of glory: Christ in us.

Do you get the strength of this hope, that GOD lives in us? What once separated us from him was destroyed at the cross. Jesus died there—wrapped-up-and-laid-in-a-tomb dead. Yet he returned triumphant over death and demons, over world powers and principalities, over sickness and need and despair and every other everything that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.

The Price of Peace is a Renewed Mind

This triumph is yours through the Indwelling Spirit. Embrace your victory! The peace that Jesus gives, his own peace, doesn’t have anything to do with circumstances. The beautiful truth of the Indwelling is that peace is part of who we are. Therefore we do not lose heart. No matter how often or how hard trouble wallops our life, the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Let’s be done with prayers that amount to nothing more than pleas for comfort and ease. When fears assail you, take them captive. Make them obey Christ. Fill your mind instead with thoughts of better things, things that are good, noble, praiseworthy, excellent, true, right, pure, lovely, admirable. Rejoice always. I’ll say it again, rejoice. Be thankful.

Above all, don’t be like Jerusalem—Jesus’s metaphor for empty religion—who failed to recognize the time of God’s coming. “If only you had known what would bring you peace,” he wept over the city.

Does Jesus weep over you?

Do you know what will bring you peace?