Pierced Hands and Dirty Feet
- Connie Cartisano
- Oct 26, 2023
- 4 min read
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.
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