Jesus’ apocalyptic words have nothing to do with clairvoyance. Indeed, they are intended to deter us from mere superficial curiosity about observable phenomena (cf. Lk 17:20) and to lead us toward the essential: toward life built upon the word of God that Jesus gives us; toward an encounter with him, the living Word; toward responsibility before the Judge of the living and the dead.
CHAPTER THREE
The Washing of the Feet
After the teaching discourses that follow the account of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem, the Synoptic Gospels resume the narrative thread with a precise chronological indication that leads into the Last Supper.
Mark says at the very beginning of chapter 14: “It was now two days before the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread” (14:1). Then he recounts the anointing at Bethany and Judas’ conspiracy, and he continues: “On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, ‘Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?’ ” (14:12).
John, on the other hand, simply says: “Before the feast of the Passover . . . during supper” (13:1-2). The meal that John describes takes place “before the feast of the Passover”, whereas the Synoptics present the Last Supper as a Passover meal, and thus they appear to be using a chronology that differs from John’s by one day.
We will return to the much-debated questions about these differing chronologies and their theological significance when we consider Jesus’ Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist.
The hour of Jesus
For now, let us focus on the Fourth Gospel, where we find two uniquely Johannine elements in the account of Jesus’ final evening with his disciples before the Passion. First, John tells us that Jesus administered the menial service of washing the disciples’ feet. In this context, he also recounts the prophecies of Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denial. The second element consists of Jesus’ farewell discourse, culminating in the high-priestly prayer. These two key episodes will be considered in turn during the present chapter and the one following.
“Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (13:1). With the Last Supper, Jesus’ “hour” has arrived, the goal to which his ministry has been directed from the beginning (2:4). The essence of this hour is described by John with two key words: it is the hour of his “departing” (metabaínein / metábasis); it is the hour of the love that reaches to the end (agápē).
The two concepts shed light on one another and are inseparable. Love is the very process of passing over, of transformation, of stepping outside the limitations of fallen humanity—in which we are all separated from one another and ultimately impenetrable to one another—into an infinite otherness. “Love to the end” is what brings about the seemingly impossible metábasis: stepping outside the limits of one’s closed individuality, which is what agápē is—breaking through into the divine.
The “hour” of Jesus is the hour of the great stepping-beyond, the hour of transformation, and this metamorphosis of being is brought about through agápē. It is agápē “to the end”—and here John anticipates the final word of the dying Jesus: tetélestai—“it is finished” (19:30). This end (télos), this totality of self-giving, of remolding the whole of being—this is what it means to give oneself even unto death.
When Jesus speaks here, as elsewhere in John’s Gospel, of having come from the Father and of returning to him, one is perhaps reminded of the ancient model of exitus and reditus, of exit and return, such as we find in the philosophy of Plotinus in particular. Nevertheless, the going out and returning that John describes is something quite different from what is meant in the philosophical model. For Plotinus and his successors, the “going out”, which is their equivalent of the divine act of creation, is a descent that ultimately leads to a fall: from the height of the “one” down into ever lower regions of being. The return then consists in purification from the material sphere, in a gradual ascent, and in purifications that strip away again what is base and ultimately lead back to the unity of the divine.
Jesus’ going out, on the other hand, presupposes that creation is not a fall, but a positive act of God’s will. It is thus a movement of love, which in the process of descending demonstrates its true nature—motivated by love for the creature, love for the lost sheep—and so in descending it reveals what God is really like. On returning, Jesus does not strip away his humanity again as if it were a source of impurity. The goal of his descent was the adoption and assumption of all mankind, and his homecoming with all men is the homecoming of “all flesh”.
Something new happens in this return: Jesus does not return alone. He does not strip away the flesh, but draws all to himself (cf. Jn 12:32). The metábasis applies to all. If in the Prologue of John’s Gospel we read that “his own” (ídioi) did not accept him (cf. 1:11), we now hear that he loves “his own” to the end (cf. 13:1). In descending he has reassembled “his own”—the great family of God—from strangers he has made them “his own”.
Let us listen to the evangelist as he continues: Jesus “rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him” (Jn 13:4-5). Jesus performs for his disciples the service of a slave, he “emptied himself” (Phil 2:7).
What the Letter to the Philippians says in its great Christological hymn—namely, that unlike Adam, who had tried to grasp divinity for himself, Christ moves in the opposite direction, coming down from his divinity into humanity, taking the form of a servant and becoming obedient even to death on a cross (cf. 2:7-8)—all this is rendered visible in a single gesture. Jesus represents the whole of his saving ministry in one symbolic act. He divests himself of his divine splendor; he, as it were, kneels down before us; he washes and dries our soiled feet, in order to make us fit to sit at table for God’s wedding feast.
When we read in the Book of Revelation the paradoxical statement that the redeemed have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 7:14), the meaning is that Jesus’ love “to the end” is what cleanses us, washes us. The gesture of washing feet expresses precisely this: it is the servant-love of Jesus that draws us out of our pride and makes us fit for God, makes us “clean”.
“You are clean”
In the passage about the washing of the feet, the word “clean” occurs three times. John is drawing upon a fundamental concept of the religious tradition of the Old Testament and of world religions in general. If man is to enter God’s presence, to have fellowship with God, he must be “clean”. Yet the more he moves into the light, the more he senses how defiled he is, how much he stands in need of cleansing. Religions have therefore created systems of “purification”, intended to make it possible for man to approach God.
In the cultic ordering of all religions, purification regulations play a major part: they give man a sense of the holiness of God and of his own darkness, from which he must be liberated if he is to be able to approach God. The system of cultic purifications dominated the whole of life in observant Judaism at the time of Jesus. In chapter 7 of Mark’s Gospel, we encounter Jesus’ fundamental challenge to this concept of cultic purity obtained through ritual actions; and in Paul’s letters, the question of “purity” before God is repeatedly debated.
In Mark’s Gospel we see the radical transformation that Jesus brought to the concept of purity before God: it is not ritual actions that make us pure. Purity and impurity arise within man’s heart and depend on the condition of his heart (Mk 7:14-23).
Yet the question immediately presents itself: How does the heart become pure? Who are the pure in heart, those who can see God (Mt 5: 8)? Liberal exegesis has claimed that Jesus replaced the ritual concept of purity with a moral concept: in place of the cult and all that went
with it, we have morality. In this view, Christianity is considered to be essentially about morality, a kind of moral “rearmament”. But this does not do justice to the radically new dimension of the New Testament.
Its newness becomes clear in the Acts of the Apostles when Peter takes issue with the former Pharisees in the Christian community who insist that Gentile Christians must be circumcised and must “keep the law of Moses”. Peter explains: God himself decided that “the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. . . . He made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith” (15:5-11). Faith cleanses the heart. It is the result of God’s initiative toward man. It is not simply a choice that men make for themselves. Faith comes about because men are touched deep within by God’s Spirit, who opens and purifies their hearts.
This broad theme of purification, which is merely mentioned in passing in Peter’s address, is taken up and developed further by John both in the account of the washing of the feet and later, under the heading of “sanctification”, in Jesus’ high-priestly prayer. “You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you”, Jesus assures his disciples in the parable of the vine (Jn 15:3). It is his word that penetrates them, transforms their intellect, their will, their “heart”, and opens it up in such a way that it becomes a seeing heart.
In our reflection on the high-priestly prayer, we will encounter this idea again, albeit expressed in slightly different terms, when Jesus prays: “Sanctify them in the truth” (Jn 17:17). In priestly terminology, “to sanctify” means to render fit for divine worship. The word designates the ritual actions that the priest must carry out before he enters the presence of God. “Sanctify them in the truth”—Jesus here gives us to understand that the truth is now the “bath” that makes men fit for God. They must be immersed in it in order to be freed from the impurity that separates them from God. In this regard, we must remember that the truth John has in mind here is no abstract concept: he knows that Jesus himself is the truth.
In chapter 13 of the Gospel, it is the washing of feet by Jesus that serves as the way of purification. Here we encounter the same idea once again, but from a different perspective. The bath that cleanses us is Jesus’ love to the point of death. Jesus’ word is more than a word; it is his very self. His word is truth, and it is love.
Essentially Paul is expressing this same idea in a more roundabout way when he says, “We are now justified by his blood” (Rom 5:9; cf. Rom 3:25, Eph 1:7 et al.). And the same thing reappears in the exalted vision of Jesus’ high priesthood that is set forth in the Letter to the Hebrews. In place of ritual purity, what we have now is not merely morality, but the gift of encounter with God in Jesus Christ.
Once again the comparison with Platonic philosophies of late antiquity suggests itself, philosophies that, as we saw in the case of Plotinus, revolve around the theme of purification. This purification is obtained, on the one hand, through ritual actions, but also and especially through man’s gradual ascent to the heights of God. In this way man purifies himself from matter, becoming spirit and, hence, pure.
For the Christian faith, though, it is the incarnate God who makes us truly pure and draws creation into unity with God. Nineteenth-century piety brought back a one-sided notion of purity by reducing it to the sexual sphere, thereby burdening it once again with suspicion of material things, of the body. In terms of mankind’s broader search for purity, Saint John’s Gospel—and Jesus himself—shows us the way: he who is both God and man makes us fit for God. Being incorporated into his body, being pervaded by his presence is what matters.
Perhaps it is worth mentioning at this point that the shift in meaning of the notion of purity brought about by Jesus’ message is a further illustration of what was said in chapter 2 about the end of the animal sacrifices, about worship and the new Temple. Just as the old sacrifices pointed toward the future that was awaited, receiving light and dignity from that eagerly anticipated future, so too the whole question of ritual purity associated with this worship was likewise—as the Fathers would say—“sacramentum futuri”: a stage in the history of God with men, and of men with God, straining forward to the future, but obliged to step aside once the hour of the new had actually come.
Sacramentum and exemplum—gift and task:
The “new commandment”
Let us return to chapter 13 of Saint John’s Gospel. “You are clean”, says Jesus to his disciples. The gift of purity is an act of God. Man cannot make himself fit for God, whatever systems of purification he may follow. “You are clean”—in Jesus’ wonderfully simple statement, the grandeur of the mystery of Christ is somehow encapsulated. It is the God who comes down to us who makes us clean. Purity is a gift.
Yet an objection springs to mind. A few verses later, Jesus says: “If I, then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (Jn 13:14-15). Does this not after all suggest a purely moral conception of Christianity?
Rudolf Schnackenburg, as it happens, speaks of two opposing interpretations of the foot-washing in chapter 13: the first is “theologically more profound and in it the washing of the feet is seen as a symbolic action pointing to Jesus’ death. The second is paradigmatic and is centered on the humble service of Jesus—itself based on the washing of the disciples’ feet” (The Gospel according to Saint John III, p. 7). Schnackenburg holds that the second interpretation is an “editorial formation”, and in his view “the second interpretation seems to have nothing to do with the first” (p. 12, cf. p. 24). But this is too narrow an approach, too closely tied to the thought patterns of our Western logic. For John, Jesus’ gift and his subsequent ministry among the disciples form a unity.
The Fathers expressed the difference between these two aspects, as well as their mutual relationship, using the categories of sacramentum and exemplum: by sacramentum they mean, not any particular sacrament, but rather the entire mystery of Christ—his life and death—in which he draws close to us, enters us through his Spirit, and transforms us. But precisely because this sacramentum truly “cleanses” us, renewing us from within, it also unleashes a dynamic of new life. The command to do as Jesus did is no mere moral appendix to the mystery, let alone an antithesis to it. It follows from the inner dynamic of gift with which the Lord renews us and draws us into what is his.
This essential dynamic of gift, through which he now acts in us and our action becomes one with his, is seen with particular clarity in Jesus’ saying: “He who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father” (Jn 14:12). This expresses exactly what is meant by “I have given you an example” from the account of the foot-washing: Jesus’ action becomes ours, because he is acting in us.
On this basis we can understand the teaching about the “new commandment”. After an interlude devoted to Judas’ betrayal, Jesus returns to his instruction to the disciples to wash one another’s feet, and he applies it more widely (13:34-35.). What is new about the new commandment? Since this question ultimately concerns the “newness” of the New Testament, that is to say, the “essence of Christianity”, it is important to be very attentive.
It has been argued that the new element—moving beyond the earlier commandment to love one’s neighbor—is revealed in the saying “love as I have loved you”, in other words, loving to the point of readiness to lay down one’s life for the other. If this were the specific and exclusive content of the “new commandment”, then Christianity could after all be defined as a form of extreme moral effort. This is how many commentators explain the Sermon on the Mount: in contrast to the old way of the Ten Commandments—the way of the average man, one might say—Christianity, through the Sermon on the Mount, opens up the high way that is radical in its demands, revealing a new level of humanity to which men can aspire.
And yet who could possibly claim to have risen above
the “average” way of the Ten Commandments, to have left them behind as self-evident, so to speak, and now to walk along the exalted paths of the “new law”? No, the newness of the new commandment cannot consist in the highest moral attainment. Here, too, the essential point is not the call to supreme achievement, but the new foundation of being that is given to us. The newness can come only from the gift of being-with and being-in Christ.
Saint Augustine actually began his exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount—his first cycle of homilies after priestly ordination—with the idea of a higher ethos, loftier and purer norms. But in the course of the homilies, the center of gravity shifts more and more. In a number of places he has to acknowledge that the older morality was already marked by a genuine completeness. With increasing clarity, preparation of the heart comes to replace the idea of the higher demand (cf. De Serm. Dom. in Monte I, 19, 59); the “pure heart” (cf. Mt 5:8) becomes more and more the focus of the exegesis. Over half of the entire cycle of homilies is shaped in terms of this basic idea of the purified heart. Hence the connection with the washing of the feet becomes visible in a surprising way: only by letting ourselves be repeatedly cleansed, “made pure”, by the Lord himself can we learn to act as he did, in union with him.
It all depends on our “I” being absorbed into his (“it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”—Gal 2:20). This is why the second constantly recurring keyword in Augustine’s exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount is misericordia—mercy. We must let ourselves be immersed in the Lord’s mercy, then our “hearts”, too, will discover the right path. The “new commandment” is not simply a new and higher demand: it is linked to the newness of Jesus Christ—to growing immersion in him.
Jesus of Nazareth: From His Transfiguration Through His Death and Resurrection Page 6
