Lord, Not My Feet Only

With regards to Maundy Thursday Services there is wonderful news. Biblical interpreters over the centuries almost unanimously agree that the first message of the foot washing story is that it is an interpretation of the death of Jesus.
When the Lord gets up from the table, puts on a loincloth of a slave, and kneels at the feet of his disciples, He does it first and foremost to teach His disciples the meaning of His death. It is indeed significant that, after He had finished washing their feet, He sits down with them again at the table and says, “I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you,” and I am not trying to cast that into the background; however, all interpreters seem to agree that it is the secondary, not the primary meaning of His action. The primary meaning is that the Son of God is stooping down from His heavenly throne to wash us clean from our transgressions. The primary meaning is that the Lord of the Universe is preparing to undergo utmost humiliation in order to purify us from the contamination of sin. The primary meaning is that the Eternal Word which was in the beginning with God has become flesh, not only “to dwell among us, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), but also to love us and to serve us to the uttermost limit, even to death on the cross. And so the evangelist John begins the story by telling us, “now before the feast of the Passover . . . . Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father” (13:1). In this way, you see, John places the story in its proper context before he tells it.