The air is thick with significance and meaning. A festival of triumph and remembrance.

Passover.

 The city a buzz.

 The temple courts full. 

A gathering of people from near and far, the capacity of our city bursting. 

Old friends and families gathered together, and all that this entails.

The pinnacle of remembrance for God’s people, the foundation on which we remember our identity as God’s chosen ones. For decades, centuries, over a millenia our people have remembered. We have held onto the promise. We have believed for a deliverer despite the cost. 

And yet, the air is heavy. As I walk into the banquet hall, guided by a man I just met, it’s as if I can tangibly feel every particle of dust that has landed on me throughout the day. Each one a reminder of what it means to walk through this broken and aching world. 

As best I try, I can’t stay fully clean. The dust a tangible reminder of our need for this festival. A reminder of the ache for hope outside of myself. 

Broken bread, hummus, bitter oil, wine. The way our people physically ground ourselves in the story we have been a part of since the day of Abraham. How beautiful it is to participate in the rich history of our people. To bring history into the present through taste and smell.

I need this touch point with the reality of God’s story. It helps me to take myself outside of my own. The one I construct as I interpret the glances of those I walk by, or measure myself against the expectations laid on me since birth. The reality the world tries to sell me. I need this touch point to reorient myself to the reality that matters. The reality of my God. 

Jehovah Jireh - The Lord that provides. Full of eternal power and grace. 

As I glance across the room, I notice something just a touch different in his gait. The air around him almost looking heavier, his pace evidence of this. The love he carries inside of him has a cost. I can see it now.  It’s as if I can physically see the complexities he carries.

What it must be like to love with such depth a world that consistently denies you. What it must feel like to know who you are, to understand the need of the world, and to still let them choose. To so often watch those you love walk away, desperate for the answer they want instead of the answer God knows they need. 

A man, and somehow embodied eternity all at once. Living hope amongst human suffering. With eyes to see it all and a heart that feels the depth of its weight.

And yet there is one who reclines amongst us who is set to betray him. 

I watch Jesus as he walks. And to my surprise he begins to remove his outer garments. 

The air grows still, all eyes locked. Trying to make sense of what surely cannot be. 

Jesus wraps a towel around his waist, and slowly pours water into the basin for washing feet. 

“Come.”

 The words pierce my soul. A cold shock shoots through me. 

 But the others move towards him. 

Our rabbi kneeling at the feet of his disciples. 

Our Lord stooping down to do the mundane work of washing feet. 

I will not accept this. 

He looks at me. The air is still, the heaviness now making sense to me. Today is the day my world, my understanding, is to be turned upside down. Amidst the festival that grounds us is God’s story, Jesus is rewriting my narrative. 

 My words fall out of my mouth.

“Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

His eyes are gentle, he’s teaching me. 

“You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 

I can feel the gravity of the words in my chest.

But this cannot be. His words challenge my understanding, they threaten the very way I have oriented myself to life. 

“No, you shall never wash my feet.”

And I see the chasm this creates in the space between him and I. My words, they’re leaking my fear, betraying my own confidence. Somehow I am revealing myself to him, even as I try to keep myself together. 

I so long to be his soldier. Use me oh Lord, but do not wash me. This is not what I wanted or asked for. I want to follow you with my strength, not show you my weakness.

How is it that his simple words somehow reverberate inside of me, causing my walls to crack, threatening to fall. 

But he doesn’t force them down. Instead he gives me an invitation. 

“Unless I wash you, you have no part of me.” 

I’m uniquely aware again of the dust on my body, caked onto my feet, my hands, living in my soul.

I see the depth of the invitation in his eyes. 

“Then, Lord, not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!” 

The light in his eyes as I say this reveals a smile, but it does not spread to his lips. Though I am no longer keen to the on goings around me, Jesus does not portray to the room the gravity of the moment between us. This moment, though public, is personal. It is meant for us alone. 

My Lord, my Rabbi. My friend. 

“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.” 

I’m reminded of who I am. Dignity in his words. I am not the dust that covers me. He knows. And now I do too. 

I place my feet in the basin. And I watch as the dirt evaporates off of my feet into the water.

As the dirt floats away, the tension in my chest does the same. And slowly Jesus removes what has been caked on and would not come off on its own. 

His hands scrub the dirt that does not let go easy. A release of holding those and myself accountable. Forgiveness and Confession stemming from his humility. 

I’m again aware of the weight in the air. It is full now, not just heavy. I see how he stands it, the tension. There’s glory amongst the broken. He brings freedom that bounces through the heaviness in the air like light. 

He tenderly dries my feet, and moves on. I sit, settled and curious. 

“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.” 

My life cannot look the same any longer. Jesus showed me something that cannot be undone. And it requires something of me. 

He has extended an invitation. 

It is my choice if I want to accept it.