The God of the Towel

The God of the Towel

Of all the accounts in the gospels, no better is found than what we see unfolding in John the 13th chapter. We’ve entitled this webcast, “the God of the towel” because of the events that are about to unfold.

I’m sure that in the context of their culture, this must have been mind-blowing. What we’ll also recover in our time today, is how it is still equally so 21 centuries later.

For those scholars who devote themselves to the understanding of the historical Jesus, they always carry a sense of wonder at how such a person of history could take what amounted to a movement of peasants and literally turn the course of history.

One of the ways that Jesus accomplished this, was the way he employed cultural symbols to make the most of his point. In this instance, the symbol of the washing of feet could not have been a more apt teaching tool for the need of the moment.

As with all mankind, the temptation to be self-oriented, self-serving, self-aware, worked on the disciples of Jesus as much as anyone. But the life of Christ was a much different life and that is why as his followers, you and I are participating in lifestyles reflective of a less traveled path, a higher road of service, if you will.

The entirety of the Jesus story as brought to us in the gospel accounts, is about a person absorbed with the idea of serving others, of lifting up others.

Admirably, most of us could picture ourselves doing the same thing with those we love. But there were more twists to this story than just those who are “easy” to love. The main twist is that Judas is in the room as well. In a few moments, Judas would be gone and on his way to collect his money and betray his Lord. If it were me, I think I’d have waited to do the foot washing thing until Judas was gone. But Jesus didn’t see it that way—he didn’t see it that way at all, and perhaps that’s the real point of the story.

Of course, along with Judas, Peter was in the room. When Jesus got to Peter, Peter protested that Jesus would never wash ‘his’ feet.

Hmmm, a Lord to serve but not be served by that might have fit the popular and cultural setting of the day, but it didn’t fit the setting of the “new day” that Jesus was was about to bring forth.

In the new day of Jesus, it was a time when all humanity would be served by those who, like Jesus, ‘got it.’

What they got was not a do-gooders attitude and they certainly didn’t get the layers upon layers of messages we have gotten today on how to wear our religion on our sleeves.

This wasn’t some trite message about being sure to pray in public restaurants and such so that the whole place will know you’re a righteous person, no, this was about a central theme being acted out before their eyes the power of of which they could ‘never’ forget. In the community of God-followers, there is no understanding for those unwilling to stand-under.

When the Lord of the world says “we’re going to love,” that is one thing, but when he does it, when he demonstrates it, it is inescapably the Presence of God at work. It is inescapable because the love of God is contra-everything we’ve known or been shown to date.

What Jesus is doing in this passage was so ‘other-than’ within his culture that no doubt the words of the other disciples are not recorded because they’re speechless.

For us it begs this question when is the last time that we loved another in a way that left them speechless? Even more, can we think of ways we can love that will leave the world speechless?

Is there a way to live a life of understanding by standing under others? Living by lifting up; living by doing the unthinkably practical even when it might seem we are ‘beyond’ that?

I’m going to suggest that if adherents of fulfilled prophecy, of the fulfilled story of redemption if we could prayerfully consider ministries of the practically unthinkable, perhaps people would see the difference between our spoken versus lived words as well.

Encouragement is practical and yet most days it does not come to mind. Having a contributing versus a converting mentality is practical but almost always, within the teaching of our religious communities, is something that takes second place to more polemical forms of communication.

We, like the Jesus we follow, are called to be children of the God of the towel. We are called to do the practical that is hands on and which has immediate impact far sooner than we are called to some nebulous hypothesis about changing the world.

We live for others “all” others because we are followers of the God of the Towel.

This webcast is the nineteenth program in a series on "The Gospel of John." Listeners are encourage to read along in the Gospel as a way to delve deeper into this study.

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The Gospel of John, Pt 19, Jun 2, 2004