John seems to paint the washing almost like a living picture of the cross, before the cross even arrives. Jesus rises from the table and lays aside his outer garment. He wraps himself in the towel and then takes the garment up again (that same rhythm of laying down his life and taking it up again).
A sermon in motion, showing that his coming death would cleanse by stooping lower than anyone expected God to stoop. And before they ever heard the hammer and nails, they felt the meaning of it in water running over their ankles.
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The sequence of movements. He rises from his place, takes off his outer garments, wraps himself in a servant’s towel, and kneels to wash away the dust. Then he reverses it all, towel set aside and garments back on, and returns to his seat.
That mirrors the larger story. He left his place, laid aside glory, took on the form of a servant and bore what was unclean, then returned to where he started. The whole gospel, acted out with a basin and a towel.
Kneeling with the basin at church, something shifts in me. And I finally get why Jesus grabbed that towel himself instead of waiting for someone else to do the servant’s work.
Jesus says if you’ve had a bath, you only need your feet washed. I think the bath was the three years they’d spent with him, being shaped and taught, while the foot washing was what remained before the cross.
It was like he was saying their spiritual formation was complete. Now he was about to do the final work, taking away what was left of their sin by going to the lowest place possible.
Peter couldn’t accept it in the moment. He was rejecting everything that kneeling pointed to.
The foot washing was Jesus modeling humility none of them would show that night, not one. Love showed up in a towel and a basin when everyone else was too proud to kneel.
The example he gave them is what stands out to me. He wanted them to do the same for each other, love through action.
The sacramental dimension opens up when you see it as part of preparing the apostles for their ministry.