“Do you understand what I have done for you?” Jesus 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 an example that you should do as I have done for you… Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
John 13:12-15; 17
Early in my ministry career, we called them “mission trips”.
Whether we were taking a group of teenagers to rural Appalachia, inner city Denver, forest-fire stricken central Texas, or third-world Honduras, we understood our ventures as a place to go and a people for whom we were “doing mission”.
There was a lot of value in removing teenagers from their comfort zone and taking them someplace unique to their perspective. It’s hard to communicate poverty and marginalization by just talking about it. That’s why we scrambled into rental vans or airplanes and went somewhere other than their familiar upper-middle class neighborhood. Even if we went to the local night shelter or soup kitchen for the day, we pulled them out of their world and showed them the Jesus that He himself describes in Matthew 25.
But we often missed the point when we defined the term “missionary.” We were essentially telling teenagers that being a missionary meant doing someone else a favor by painting their house, scooping beans onto a tray, building a safety fence or mowing a lawn. We weren’t teaching discipleship. We were casting teenagers in the role of saviors. We were putting the focus on the wrong person.
In our lesson from the Gospel of John, Jesus told the twelve (and us) at the Last Supper: I am Lord and Teacher, yet I washed your feet. So, lay aside your privilege or status or wealth and get your hands dirty. For you are not the Teacher, you are the student. Find some feet to wash. Simply put, “do as I do.”
Then Jesus reminds us that the gift of this kind of discipleship, of doing what the Lord and Teacher does, is blessing. That blessing comes in many forms. It could be peace of mind or a settled soul. It comes in knowing that in doing so, we move even closer to the mind of Christ. So, as Jesus’ disciple, our daily lesson is to get our hands dirty and wash each other’s feet.
Let us pray:
Lord and Teacher, we desire to do as you have done. We are willing to get our hands dirty and wash each other’s feet. We seek the blessings of discipleship. May it be so. Amen.
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