“Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” (John 13:14)
Expanded Passage: John 13:1-17
As a daycare provider, my mother needed to bathe siblings who came to our house covered in their feces. As a volunteer at a summer camp for abused, neglected, and abandoned children in our county, I have seen staff members doing extra laundry for children who, because of the trauma they have experienced, wet their beds. I also have read accounts of saints, including Mother Teresa, washing the hair of people in hospice.
Perhaps some of these individuals thought, “This is not what I signed up for” when faced with these challenges. I know I would have. Nevertheless, they kept doing what they were doing because of Jesus’ lordship over their lives. Like Jesus, they were convinced that they needed to “pour” (v. 5) themselves (the Greek verb βάλλει connoting intensity) into others’ lives.
Although many of us might not be members of a denomination that practices foot washing and even fewer of us are members of a religious order, all believers are members of what has been called “the order of the basin and towel.” We are to get down and dirty—in the best possible sense of the phrase—so that Christ can be seen, heard, felt, and understood by those with little to no knowledge of the Bible. Only then can they, too, bear witness to God’s transformative, ongoing work within them in word and deed.
Let Christ’s lordship reign in your reservations and rule your service.
Laurie Dashnau is professor of English and writing, and director of the writing center at Houghton University (NY). She regularly teaches Narrative and Personal Essay, and Writing about Spiritual Experience.
© 2025 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
