Foot Washing

The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.
The evening meal was being served, when Jesus got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. Their teacher, their master, Jesus, stood before them dressed in something like a long undershirt. That’s the way slaves would have been dressed to serve a meal. He tied a towel around his waist and poured water into a basin. He began to wash their feet, drying them as he went with the towel that was wrapped around him.
It would have been shocking, even embarrassing to the disciples present. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"
It wasn’t really about feet. There was something bigger happening here. The one into whose hands the Father had given everything now takes his disciples' dirty feet into his hands to wash them
"No," Peter said, "no, you shall never wash my feet." But Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me."
Peter, never one to do anything halfway, responds, "Then, Lord, give me a bath all over! Wash my head, my hands, everything!"
But Jesus said, "No, you are already clean; you need only to have your feet washed."

The disciples had already been cleansed of their sins, they already belonged to Jesus, and as Jesus had said, nothing could snatch them from his hand-- except for Judas, into whose heart the evil had already entered and was even now doing its work.

But walking through the streets of ancient Jerusalem gets your feet dirty, just as walking through the world of today gets your soul dirty, even those of us for whom the price has been paid. We begin to pick up the attitudes of the world around us -- sometimes without being aware of it. That was what had happened to the disciples, and that is what happens to us today.

And so Jesus washes their feet. The remedy for dirty feet is foot washing. And the remedy for a dirty soul is washing too; The Apostle John was there. The Lord knelt before him that night and washed his feet like all the others. He would later write, “but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”.
When we gather around the Lord's Table, it is just as though we were put back into the same situation that the disciples experienced.

The Lord is here washing our feet this morning. And as we remember him through the taking of this bread and this cup, as we examine ourselves, and confess our sins to him in silent prayer, his blood is continuing to purify us from all sin.

It is only because we are his that we could ever be clean all over in the first place,
and it is only because we humble ourselves, and allow him to wash even our feet, our dirty, unpresentable feet, as he kneels before us with a towel, can the defilement that our souls have picked up this last week be washed away now.