The Laver in the Life of Jesus – Part 2

 

“He poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and wipe them with the towel with which he was girded.”  John 13:5

 

    The highest love is always quickest to detect the failures and inconsistencies of the beloved. Just because of its inten­sity, it can be content with nothing less than the best, because the best means the most blessed and it desires that the object of its thought should be most blessed forever. It is a mistake to think that green-eyed jealousy is quickest to detect the spots on the sun, the freckles on the face, and the jarring discords in the music of life: love is quicker, more micro­scopic, more exacting that the ideal should be achieved. Envy is content to indicate the fault, and leave it; but love detects, and waits and holds its peace until the fitting opportunity arrives, and then sets itself to remove, with its own gentle and tender ministry, the defect that had spoiled the completeness and beauty of Its object.

 

      Perhaps there had never been a moment In the human con­sciousness of our Lord, when, side by side with this Intense love for His own, there had been so vivid a sense of oneness with His Father, of His unity with the source of Infinite Purity and Blessedness. We might have supposed that this would have alienated Him from His poor friends, but our thoughts are not as His. Just because of His awesome holi­ness, He was quick to perceive the unholiness of His friends, and essayed to rid them of it, just because of His divine goodness. He could detect the possibil­ities of goodness in them, and be patient enough to give them culturing care and this He did as He stooped to wash the disciples’ feet.

 

      The greatest musician may be most tortured by incom­petence; but he will be most likely to detect true merit, and give time to its training. “The most powerful magnet will pick out, in the powdered dust of the Ironstone, fine particles of metal that a second or third-rate magnet would fail to draw to itself.” Do not dread the awesome holiness of Jesus: It is your hope. He will never be content until He has made you like Himself; and side by side with His holiness, never fall to remember His gentle, tender love.

 

      “He rises from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.” This is what the apostle calls tak­ing upon Himself the form of a servant. The charm of the scene is its absolute simplic­ity. You cannot imagine Christ aiming at effect. There was no thought of the beauty or humility of the act, as there is when the Pope yearly washes the feet of twelve beggars from a golden basin and wiping them with a towel of rarest fabric! Christ did not act for show or pretense, but with an absolute singleness of purpose in fulfilling a needed office. In this, He set forth the spirit of our redemption. Christ needed to provide an antidote in His absolute humility — a humility that could not grow beneath these skies, but must be brought from the world where the lowliest are esteemed the greatest, and the most childlike reign as kings.

 

      This is the key to every act of daily cleansing. We have been washed—once, definitely and irrevocably, we have been bathed in the crimson tide that flows from Calvary, but we need a daily cleansing.    Our feet become soiled with the dust of life’s highways; our hands grimy, as our clothing beneath the rain of filth in a great city: our lips—as the white doorstep of the house—are fouled by the incessant throng of idle, unseemly, and fretful words; our hearts cannot keep unsoiled the stainless robes which we drew from the closet at morning. Constantly we need to return to the laver to be washed. But do we always realize how much each act of confession on our part involves Christ on His? Whatever important work He may at that moment have on hand: what­ever directions He may be giving to the loftiest angels for the fulfillment of His purposes: however pressing the concerns of the church or the universe on His broad shoulders—He must turn from all these to do a work He will not delegate. Again, He stoops from the throne, and girds Himself with a towel: and in all lowliness, endeavors to remove from you and me the stain that His love dare not pass over. He never forgets Calvary and the blood: He never spends one hour without stooping to do the most menial work of cleansing filthy souls. It is because of this humility He sits on the throne and wields the scepter over hearts.

 

      This is the key to our ministry to each other. I have often thought that we do not often enough wash one another’s feet. We are conscious of the imperfections that mar the characters of those around us. We are content to note, criticize, and learn them, yet we dare not attempt to remove them. This failure arises partly because we do not love with a love like Christ’s—a love that will brave resentment, annoyance, rebuke in its quest— and partly because we are not willing to stoop low enough.

 

      None can remove the mote of another, so long as the beam is left in his own eye, and the sin unjudged in his own life. None can cleanse the stain, who is not willing  to  take  the  form  of  a  servant, and go down with bare knees on the floor. None is able to restore those who are overtaken in a fault, who does not count himself the chief of sinners and the least of saints.

 

      We need more of this lowly, loving spirit: not so sensitive to wrong and evil as they affect us, as anxious for the stain left on the offender. It is of comparatively small consequence how much we suffer; it is of much importance that none of Christ’s disciples should be allowed to go on for a moment longer with unconfessed and unjudged wrongs clouding their peace, and hindering the testimony that might be given. Let us therefore watch for each other’s souls; let us consider one another to provoke to love and good works; let us in all sin­cerity do as Christ has done, washing each other’s feet in all humility and tender love. But this spirit is impossible save through fellowship with the Lamb of God, and the reception of His holy, humble nature into the inmost heart, by the Holy Spirit.

                                                                                        F. B. Meyers

 

     “That man is truly great who has the regal humility, which makes him both servant and king among men.  In the book, The Beloved Captain, there is a passage, which describes how the beloved captain cared for his men after a march.  “We all knew instinctively that he was our superior ~ a man of finer fiber than ourselves.  I suppose that was why he could be so humble without loss of dignity.  No trouble of ours was too small for him to attend to.  When we started marches, for instance, and our feet were blistered and sore, as they often were at first, you would have thought that they were his own feet from the trouble he took.  After the march, there was always an inspection of feet.  That is the routine.  But with him, it was no mere routine.  He came into our room, and, if anyone had a sore foot, he would kneel down on the floor and look at it as carefully as if he had been a doctor.  Then he would prescribe a remedy that was ready at hand, being borne by a sergeant.  If a blister had to be lanced, he would very likely lance it himself there and then to make sure it was done with a clean needle and that no dirt was allowed to get in.  There was no affectation about this, no striving after effect.  It was simply that he felt that our feet were pretty important, and he knew that we were pretty careless.  So he thought it best to see to the matter himself.  Nevertheless, there was in our eyes something almost religious about this care for our feet.  It seemed to have a touch of Christ about it, and we loved and honored him the more.”  The strange thing is that it is the man who stoops like that ~ like Christ ~ whom men in the end honor as a king, and the memory of whom they will not willingly let die.   

                                                                                     William Barclay