Thursday in the Fourth Week of Easter, May 12, 2022

John 13:16-20

When Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet, he said to them: “Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it. I am not speaking of all of you. I know those whom I have chosen. But so that the Scripture might be fulfilled, the one who ate my food has raised his heel against me. From now on I am telling you before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe that I AM. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”

“When Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet.”  The Lord Jesus, who came to fulfill the prophecies about him, here acts as a prophet himself by engaging in what scholars call a “prophetic action”.  His act of washing of the feet of the Apostles consisted of a humiliation, since only slaves performed such services, and this is in line with similar actions which God commanded the Prophets to do: Jeremiah, who was told not to marry; Hosea, who was told to marry a prostitute; and Ezekiel, who was told not to mourn when his wife died.  These frightening, humiliating actions taught some truth to the Israelites in a visceral way.  The Lord Jesus shows his Apostles more forcefully than with speech, that they must serve not just one another but all people, no matter what the cost.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him.”  Jesus compares the Apostles to slaves and messengers in order to teach the enormous distance between himself, the Son of God, and them, his creatures.  If God stoops to humble service of those whom he created and who owe their existence to him, then how much more the creatures ought to serve one another.  “If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it.”  This is not so easy to understand in our daily lives.  It means meditating regularly on our lowliness so that we come to instinctively know it, and this means not shying away from the truth, which insults our pride.  The fact is that there is more distance between God and ourselves than between the most powerful person on earth and an insect.  The Son of God dying for us can be compared to a human dying for the sake of a single bacterium.  Yet he did this out of his overwhelming love for us.  “I am not speaking of all of you.”  The Lord Jesus died even for Judas, who rejected his grace and preferred to hang himself.  We see the Lord’s love for Judas in the number of opportunities he gives him to change his mind about betraying him and even repenting after he has followed through with the betrayal.  And he shows his love for his Apostles by warning them that he is to be betrayed.  His telling them that he knows this will happen confirms his divinity for them and will console them when it happens: “I am telling you before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe that I AM.”  

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”  It is a continual teaching of the Lord Jesus that “whoever has seen me has seen the Father” and that “the Father and I are one”.  Here he teaches that the person who “receives” his messenger “receives” him, the Son, and thus also the Father.  The Greek word translated here as “receive” has many other meanings, including: “to take” or “to grasp” (in the physical sense), “to understand”, and “to keep”.  Substituting these for “receive” in the quotation helps us to gain the full sense of what the Lord meant.  But having explained to the Apostles their position as servants — indeed, their need to render service — the Lord Jesus reminds them of the magnitude of the service they form in spreading the Gospel.  

Sometimes the service we provide as believers in Christ and members of his Body may seem slight: a kind word or gesture delivered in a moment.  But Christ is in our words and gestures when they offer them for his sake and so they can produce an effect out of proportion to the effort we put into them, even that of the conversion of souls.