The Towel and the Basin

The Passover was two days away, and Jerusalem was filling up with people from everywhere. The chief priests and the teachers of the law wanted him dead, and they were looking for a way to take hold of him quietly, when nobody was watching. And they said to one another, “Not during the feast. Not with the city this full — the people would riot.” So they needed somebody on the inside. And somebody came.

Judas Iscariot was one of the twelve. He had walked with him for three years. He had been sent out with the others, two by two, to tell people the kingdom of God had come near, and to heal them. He was the one who carried the money bag for all of them. And he went to the chief priests, on his own, and offered to hand him over. They were glad, and they promised him silver. He went back to the others, and from then on he was watching for a good moment — a moment when the crowds were not around. Nobody at the table knew where he had been.

On the first day of the feast, the day the Passover lambs were killed, his followers came and asked him, “Where do you want us to go and get the Passover ready for you?” And he sent Peter and John into the city, and told them: “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. And wherever he goes in, say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher says: where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my followers?’ And he will show you a large upstairs room, furnished and ready. Get it ready for us there.” Water was carried by the women of a house, nearly always. A man with a water jar on his shoulder would stand out in a crowded street the way a lit lamp stands out. The two of them went in, and found it all exactly as he had said, and they got the Passover ready.

It was the oldest meal they had, and every family in the country was eating it that same night: a roasted lamb, flat bread made without yeast because there had been no time to let it rise, bitter herbs, cups of wine. It remembered the night, hundreds of years before, when God brought their people up out of Egypt — and it remembered the promise he made them then. A covenant, that promise was called. A covenant is a forever promise: one that is not taken back. When evening came he came to the room with the twelve, and they lay down around the low table the way people did at a feast, propped on one elbow. And he said to them, “How I have wanted to eat this Passover with you, before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it is filled full in the kingdom of God.”

And then, at that table, on that night, an argument started among them. It was about which of them was the greatest. He let them finish it, and then he said: “The kings of the nations lord it over people, and the men with power over them like to be called Friends of the People. You are not to be like that. The greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the one who leads like the one who serves. Which is greater — the man sitting at the table, or the man waiting on him? The one at the table, surely. But here I am among you as the one who serves. You are the ones who have stayed with me all through my testings. And I give you a kingdom, just as my Father gave me one, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel.” Twelve fishermen and tax collectors and country men, arguing about rank at a borrowed table, in a city where the men who really ran things had already promised silver to one of them for handing him over.

He knew that his hour had come, and that he was going out of this world to the Father. He had loved his own, who were in the world, and he loved them right to the end. And in the middle of supper he got up. Every foot in that room was dirty. Feet were always dirty: open sandals, dust roads, and then you lay down at a low table with your feet behind you and everybody else’s feet near your face. So in a house with servants there was one at the door with a basin, and washing the guests’ feet was the lowest job a servant had to do. Nobody had done it that evening. He took off his outer clothes. He picked up a linen towel and tied it around his waist, and poured water into the basin. And he knelt down and began to wash his followers’ feet, one pair after another, and to dry them with the towel that was tied around him.

Nobody said a word until he came to Simon Peter. “Lord — you are going to wash my feet?” “You do not know what I am doing now. Afterwards you will.” “You will never wash my feet. Never.” “If I do not wash you, you have no part with me.” “Then not my feet only, Lord. My hands and my head as well.” “A man who has had a bath does not need washing except his feet; he is clean all over. And you are clean — though not all of you.” He said that last part because he knew the one who was going to hand him over.

When he had washed all of their feet he put his outer clothes back on and lay down at the table again, and said to them: “Do you understand what I have just done to you? You call me Teacher, and Lord — and you are right to, because that is what I am. Well then: if I, your Lord and your Teacher, have washed your feet, then you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you an example. What I have done for you, you do for each other. I tell you the truth: a servant is not greater than his master, and the one who is sent is not greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things — you are blessed if you do them. I tell you the truth: whoever takes in the person I send takes me in; and whoever takes me in takes in the one who sent me.”

And while they were eating he took a loaf of the flat bread, and gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said: “Take it. This is my body.” Then he took a cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank out of it. And he said: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. I tell you the truth: I will not drink of the fruit of the vine again until the day I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” His followers have done that ever since, in every country there is, for two thousand years: they take bread and break it, and they say the words he said over it. He did not explain it to them that night.

And then he was troubled, and he said: “I am not talking about all of you. I know the ones I chose. But what is written has to come true: ‘The man who was eating my bread has lifted up his heel against me.’ I am telling you now, before it happens, so that when it does happen you will trust that I am he.” And then, plainly: “I tell you the truth. One of you will hand me over. One of you, eating with me.”

It hurt them, every one of them. They looked around at one another, and they had no idea at all who he meant, and they began to ask him, one at a time, all the way around the table, “Surely not I?” “It is one of the twelve. One who is dipping his hand in the bowl with me. The Son of Man goes the way it is written of him — but it will be a bitter thing for the man who hands him over. It would have been better for that man if he had never been born.” Peter caught the eye of the follower lying next to Jesus, the one he loved, and nodded at him: ask him. So that one leaned back against him and said, low, “Lord — who is it?” “It is the one I am going to give this piece of bread to, when I have dipped it.” And he dipped the piece of bread, and gave it to Judas, and said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.”

Nobody at that table understood what he meant by it. Some of them thought that because Judas kept the money bag he was being sent out to buy the last things they needed for the feast, or to take something to the poor. Judas took the piece of bread. Then he got up, and went out. And it was night.

When he had gone, Jesus said: “Now the Son of Man has been given glory, and God has been given glory in him. And if God has been given glory in him, God will give the Son glory in himself, and he will do it at once. Little children — I am with you only a little while longer. You will look for me; and what I said to the leaders in Jerusalem I say now to you: where I am going, you cannot come. A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you are to love one another. By this everybody will know that you are my followers — if you have love for one another.” They had known since they were small children that they were to love their neighbor as themselves; that was old, and it was in the law of Moses. What was new was the second half of it. As I have loved you — said by a man who had that same evening been down on the floor at their feet with a towel around his waist.

And then he told them what the night was going to do to them. “Every one of you is going to fall away tonight. It is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I have been raised up, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” He said the worst thing and the best thing in one breath — and it was the worst one they answered. He turned to Peter. “Simon, Simon — listen. The Accuser has asked to have all of you, to shake you the way a farmer shakes wheat in a sieve. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your trust would not give out. And you, when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Peter said nothing about being shaken like wheat, and nothing about turning back. What he asked about was the going away. “Lord, where are you going?” “Where I am going you cannot follow me now. But you will follow me later.” “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I am ready to go with you to prison and to death. I will lay down my life for you.” “Will you lay down your life for me? I tell you the truth, Peter: the cock will not crow tonight before you have said three times over that you do not know me.” “Even if every one of them falls away, I will not. If I have to die with you, I will never say I do not know you.” And all the others said the same.

The lamps were still burning in the upstairs room. The door stood open on the dark street where Judas had gone out. And he looked around at the eleven of them who were left, and went on talking. He had a great deal to say to them, and this was the last quiet hour he was going to have to say it in.