Introduction
One of the most humiliating experiences of my school days was when I was late one morning for P.E. I think I must have been about 12 or 13. I dashed into the sports building, quickly changed into my kit and ran barefoot into the gym where all my classmates were already standing in a line against a wall.
I apologised for being late and hoped that would be the end of the matter. But my P.E. Teacher Mr Rollinson, (we used to call him 'Rolo') looked at me with eyes as wide as saucers, and called me out to step out in front of the others. He then pointed at my feet. “Lambert! You come here into my nice clean gym - late - and your feet are absolutely filthy! When was the last time you had a bath?”
I looked down and, to my shock, my feet were as filthy as I can ever remember them. It looked like they hadn’t been near water or soap in weeks. I don’t know why; perhaps my shoes had holes in – or maybe I really had forgotten to bath or change my socks for weeks – I was after all a teenage boy. But my feet were undeniably grimy.
In the stress of the moment, my mind went blank. When was the last time I had a bath? I said, “I can’t remember, sir.” “You can’t remember the last time you washed your feet?!” he shouted. I felt deeply embarrassed and ashamed as the whole class erupted with laughter, pointing at me and making jokes forever after about my lamentable personal hygiene.
Maybe that’s one of the reasons this morning’s passage of Scripture has always touched a nerve for me.
So let’s read it together; it’s John 13.1-17.
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel round his waist.
After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped round him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’ Jesus replied, ‘You do not realise now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ ‘No,’ said Peter, ‘you shall never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.’ ‘Then, Lord,’ Simon Peter replied, ‘not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!’
Jesus answered, ‘Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.’ For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not everyone was clean. When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. ‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’ he asked them. ‘You call me “Teacher” and “Lord”, and rightly so, for that is what I am.
Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed [what does it say?] if you do them.
The Upper Room that night
Has anyone here ever been to a Foot Washing Service before? Some more traditional churches hold them every year on Maundy Thursday, the day before Good Friday. I’ve been to a few in my time and what tends to happen is this; everyone scrubs their feet, clips their toenails, puts on clean socks and nice shoes before going to church.
When the minister gets round to the foot washing bit, everyone’s legs from the ankle downwards are immaculate, and the water in the bowl looks identical after the ceremony to what it did beforehand. Maybe it’s a good visual aid for some, but it can feel like a bit of a charade.
When Jesus washed his disciples' feet before reclining at the last supper, he was not intending to institute an annual liturgical custom. He did it because, like for me that morning in school, there were 24 filthy dirty feet begging for urgent attention.
This is the night Jesus will be betrayed and arrested. He is with the twelve in a first-floor room in what will be their final meal together. Food is prepared. Everything is ready. They enter the room and take their places.
Forget Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting of the last supper. There are no knives, forks or chairs. No one is sitting up. Instead, everyone is lying on a soft cushion, leaning on their left elbow, so as to eat using their right hand. Their heads naturally rest close to the chest of the person to their left, their feet all point away from the low table rather than tuck under it.
In our culture, people wash their hands before sitting down for a meal. But in Bible times people wash feet as they enter a house. Nick Page, in his book The Longest Week, explains why this is so necessary. “Judean cities were… filthy” he writes. “Walking through the streets was a matter of negotiating the dirt and the dust, the excrement and waste matter, ashes from fires and rotten food.”
Even in 1980, when I visited Jerusalem as a tourist, I remember our guide telling our group, “Mind where you’re treading because it could be anything - and probably is.”
In addition to the unsanitary approach to waste disposal, water is scarce in Jerusalem - it still is today - and there is very little rain during the year to naturally clean the streets. People in first-century days, if they owned footwear, wore open-toed sandals. Everyone’s feet got very dirty very quickly. It stinks. It’s nauseating. It is enough to put you off your food.
Unsurprisingly, nobody wants the job of cleaning feet. It became the most demeaning and humiliating of tasks. And in that very hierarchical society, it wasn’t the done thing even to wash the feet of an equal. The thought would never occur to anyone to wash the feet of one below them in the pecking order.
In Luke’s Gospel, it says that a dispute arose as they were gathering around the table as to which of the twelve was the greatest among them. Who’s the most important? Who’s top dog? Who gets the places of honour? This is how it worked; the second lowest ranking servant had the demeaning task of unfastening and removing people’s sandals. But only the absolute lowest of household servants had the worst job of actually washing the feet afterwards.
John the Baptist looked at Jesus and said, “I am not worthy of untying his sandals.” I’m not quite up the second-worst job. But Jesus didn’t think the most demeaning task of washing feet was beneath him.
It’s difficult to think of an equivalent for our day and age; imagine being invited out to dinner at someone’s house and just before you sit down to eat, your host gives you a toilet brush and a bottle of Toilet Duck and asks you to clean the toilets because they haven’t been done for weeks. You’d be offended and taken aback wouldn’t you? You would never expect anyone to ask such a thing.
But in John 13, during the meal, to everyone’s amazement, Jesus abruptly pushes himself up from his mat, leaves the table, takes off his outer cloak, thus adopting the simple clothing of a slave, ties a towel around his waist, fills a bowl and begins to wash his disciples’ feet.
This is what the kind of thing Philippians 2 means when it says, “He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant… humbling himself.” This isn’t just poetic licence, it is literally what Jesus does here. He makes himself nothing as, one by one… he carefully removes each sandal. He takes the very nature of a servant as he holds each dusty, sweaty, hairy-toed, verruca-spotted, gross smelling foot in his hands, lifts it into the water bowl, splashes fresh water over the ankles, and rubs away the ground-in dirt, paying particular attention to between the toes, until each is clean again. He humbles himself as he dries each foot with his towel. Then he drains away the polluted water, fills the bowl again and moves on to the next disciple.
Jesus washes these men’s feet one by one – apparently in awkward silence. Until he gets to Simon Peter, who true to form, is verbally incontinent. Peter can’t stay quiet any longer. “Lord; are you going to wash my feet?” In fact, according to Nick Page, in the Greek, Peter splutters incoherently in astonishment and it literally reads, “Master, you… my!”
I think Peter really wants Jesus to suddenly coil back and say, “Oh, Peter, you’re so right! What was I thinking! Of course, this is totally inappropriate. I’m getting this all wrong. I deserve the VIP Lounge treatment. You, Peter, are obviously my subordinate. At the very least, this should be the other way round. Let's see if we can find an unsuspecting chav to take care of the foot washing!” But, of course, Jesus doesn’t say that.
Jesus is actually within his rights to insist that everybody washes their own feet, since there’s no servant available. “Come on guys, you’ve got to take responsibility for your foul-smelling feet, it’s overpowering.” Instead, he insists on washing them all, and he answers Peter, “You don’t understand now what this is about, but it will be clear enough to you later.”
Peter persists though. Maybe if he just protests loudly enough, Jesus will see Peter is really uncomfortable and back down. “You shall never wash my feet,” he says in v8. Jesus doesn’t blink. “Peter, if I don’t wash you, you have no part with me.” He’s saying, unless you surrender and let me do this, you can’t be part of what I’m doing.
Let Jesus cleanse you
We have to allow Jesus to wash us.
Jesus is certainly commenting here on Peter’s personal hygiene. “Peter, I’ll be frank with you. Your feet are so rank that I don’t think I’m ready for the main course until we've sorted this out.” The state of Peter’s feet (and everyone else’s) is putting everyone off their food.
But, as is so often the case in John’s Gospel, there’s a deeper level to what Jesus saying here. There is a spiritual significance to this washing of feet which Peter is not going to fully grasp until he receives the Holy Spirit, who will remind him of everything Jesus said to him and lead him into all truth. This foot washing thing is, in fact, a prophetic picture of Jesus’ atoning death on the cross that’s just hours away.
As he suffers in agony and dies, Jesus will take the dirt and darkness that pollutes every heart and put it on himself. On the cross, God will make Christ, who has no sin, to become sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus will take on himself the full blame and the whole punishment for all our moral filth – everything, once for all. This is what Jesus means in v8. He’s saying, “Peter, unless you are ready to let me wash away the stain of sin, the stubborn rebellion against God, in your life, I am wasting my time with you.”
And so it is for each of us this morning. I am dirty before God because of my many sins, and there is nothing I can do to clean myself up. Everybody who has ever lived on this earth is in the same boat.
Isaiah 64.6 says that even our righteous acts are like filthy rags. That’s the good things we do. Oh, the ego, the pride, the vanity they lead to. Your dilemma, and mine, is that we need much more than a quick spiritual wipe down to bring us up to scratch. The amazing truth is that God’s love is so high, low, deep and wide that he decisively cleanses us from every sin; past, present and future, by making us clean, washing away the otherwise permanent stain of sin forever. That’s what the cross is all about.
Are you allowing Jesus to come near to you, to wash your feet? Are you gladly submitting to his headship, letting him cleanse you of sin? Are you allowing Christ to perform that ongoing washing and refining that you need to stay in a life-giving relationship with God?
Some people needlessly forfeit intimacy with God because they won’t let Christ take their shame and guilt away. “No Lord,” says Peter, “you will never wash my feet!” Some resist this because they are unwilling to submit to Christ's moral leadership; “Jesus, I am not willing to accept your decision as final on my relationships, choices and values.”
Or it may be a refusal to admit that there is a need for cleansing; “Lord, I’m all right really, just as I am. I’m comfortable with the darkness in my heart. I’m used to it. I don’t want you to change anything.”
Or there may be a lack faith in Christ's power to cleanse. “Lord, do you have what it takes to clean up a life as messed up as mine?” Peter gets it at last. “Master!” he says. “Not only my feet, then. Wash my hands! Wash my head!”
Serve one another in love
But that’s not all. Jesus doesn’t stop there. He finishes off, washes them all, including Judas, even Judas, and then puts his outer garment back on. Everyone’s eyes follow him back to his place at the table. I bet you can hear a pin drop. What is he going to say now? Could he possibly come out with something more outrageous?
Let’s pick it up again at v12. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asks them. No answer. No one dares speak. They still don't understand at all. “You call me Teacher and Lord,” says Jesus, “and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”
Can Jesus possibly come out with something harder to accept than washing their feet? Yes, he can. He says here that it isn’t enough that God incarnate gets street grime and unmentionables from your feet under his fingernails just before sitting down to dinner. This is in fact a hands-on practical training course! “You also should wash one another’s feet.”
In the last few hours before Jesus' death, the Bible tells us about two bowls of water. There’s this one used by Jesus for washing feet. Can you think what the other one was?
It was the one used by Pontius Pilate to wash his hands of Jesus. There are only two bowls; which are you going to chose? Is it the one that represents a life of humble service to others? Or is it the one that epitomises indifference to Jesus and his message? There’s no third bowl in between those two.
The missionary to China Hudson Taylor used to say, “A little thing is a little thing, but faithfulness in a little thing is a big thing.” Washington DC pastor Mark Batterson adds, “If you do little things like they were big things, God will do big things like they were little things.”
There was a vicar in Sandringham, Norfolk who used to preach to the royal family whenever they were in residence. And King George VI once said to this minister, “Why is it that when you preach, what you say touches my heart more than any other preacher I know?“ The vicar said, “Your Majesty, I don’t know if I want to tell you.” The king said, “Go ahead, please do, you can tell me.”
So he said, “Well, whenever I preach, I focus my attention on the humblest, lowliest maid from the royal household sitting in the back pew and I preach from my heart to her servant heart.” That’s the reason George VI, who knew the Lord, was so touched. It’s because he too had a heart of service.
He passed that on to his daughter, Princess Elizabeth. On 21 April 1947, her 21st birthday, she delivered a speech when visiting South Africa. “My whole life,” she said, “whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.” It is said that these words moved Winston Churchill to tears.
She absolutely kept her promise. She was still hard at work in the week she died, three decades after retirement age, without showing the faintest hint of self-importance or self-pity. She truly was a servant queen. Meekness and majesty, just like her Lord and Saviour.
Are you up for following Christ’s example of serving others? Who can you serve today? And listen, if you want blessing in your life, do you? If you want to see God's favour in your life, there is a particular and special blessing that God sets aside for everyone who follows through and serves as Jesus did.
The last verse of our Bible reading, v17, leaves us in no doubt; “Now that you know these things, (the importance of washing one another’s feet) you will be blessed if you do them.” Do you want blessing in your life? There’s the secret, right there. A life spent in the service of others unlocks a river of God's favour and blessing.
Ending
But as I come in to land, let’s circle back to the first verse of this chapter.
"It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end."
Jesus knows he is going to be betrayed by our villain Judas immediately following this incident. He knows our hero Simon Peter will deny all knowledge of him three times before daybreak. We'll get into that next week. He knows all of them will desert him and run away. He knows.
And still, it says, “he loved them to the end” or as another version translates it, “he now showed them the full extent of his love.” The Lord knows us completely, inside and out. Like Simon Peter, he knows what we will do and fail to do, and say and fail to say tomorrow. He knows what we are made of and all the little ways we will mess up today, tomorrow and the next day.
And still, he loves you. How are you going to respond now, as we come to the Lord's table, to the irrepressible love of God for you?
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 28 September 2025.
