John 13:1-5

John 13:1-5 
English Standard Version (ESV)

  It's so important to contextualize this passage.  Feet were really dirty back in this day and age.  Remember when Jesus rode into town on Palm Sunday on the back of a mule, and everyone laid down palm branches as he went, covering the dirt on the road?  Roads were dirty, both from dust and mud as well as the droppings of various animals that traveled along the road.  If you walked everywhere, like Jesus and his disciples did, it would have been impossible to keep your feet clean (I don't think that archaeologists have turned up any knee-high boots to keep one's feet away from dust and dirt).  It was a tremendous sign of hospitality for a homeowner to have their slave wash the feet of their guests, but it certainly wasn't expected that the host should do it -- it was not pleasant.  In this day and age, it'd be somewhat akin to visiting the pope or perhaps a world leader and having them come out and change your oil, clean the break dust off your wheels and personally scrape any bugs off your windshield.  Hard to picture, isn't it?
  And yet here is Jesus, knowing that his hour is coming, that his death is imminent, and he's trying to do two things.  One is to express his love for the disciples, and the other is to demonstrate what true love looks like so that they will know how extremely they are called to love one another after Jesus is gone. 
  When you read this passage, think of how limited Jesus' time was, and how many things he could have spent his time doing or teaching.  Yet one of the most valuable things he could do was an act of service, cleaning the feet of the disciples.  This is how much Jesus loves you -- even though a million things may be more pressing to God, Jesus attends to you personally, to cleanse you from sin and wash you of any iniquity that stains you.  You matter to God.
  And this is the mindset for us to take into the world.  No act is beneath us.  We should be willing to take on the duties of anyone if it is a chance to remind them that they are loved.  If Jesus, the smartest and most powerful person who ever lived, can set aside his station to serve like this, then we, too, must be willing to set aside our pride and humbly serve whomever is in our lives.