Pick Up the Towel
On foot-washing, enemies, and the love that descends to the dirt
I want to confess something. I don’t like Lent that much.
It’s too long. And honestly, I didn’t even practice it this year. I like the idea of Lent more than the living of it. The concept is beautiful. Forty days of intentional stripping away, of making room, of honest reckoning with what we cling to. But somewhere around day four, I tend to reach for chocolate and wonder what I was thinking.
What I do love, without reservation, is Holy Week. Particularly Maundy Thursday. It is one of my favourite services of the entire year.
Something happens on Maundy Thursday. We slow down. We dwell in one of the most intimate scenes in all of the Gospels. John 13 captures the tenor of the whole evening. A farewell conversation between Jesus and his closest friends, his death looming on the horizon, confusion thick in the air. The disciples keep missing the weight of the moment. But then, how could they fully know? Even when Jesus had told them plainly, they somehow couldn’t hear it. We’re a bit like that too, sometimes.
Then John writes those four words: and it was night. The sun didn’t simply set. Something darker than evening was descending. Things were shifting. The very reason Jesus came at all was now close. Death was in the room.
This is the scene. The meal is underway. Judas has already been quietly prompted by darkness. The plot is already in motion. And then Jesus, knowing all of this, knowing everything that this night and the next day will produce, gets up from the table.
He takes off his outer robe.
Ties a towel around his waist.
Pours water into a basin.
And kneels.
He begins to wash his disciples’ feet. One by one. This was the task of the lowest servant in the household. Not even a Jewish servant would be required to do this. It was beneath nearly everyone in the room. The disciples felt it instinctively. This isn’t right. The order of things is being violated.
When Jesus comes to Simon Peter, Peter can’t take it. “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” The question barely contains the outrage. A moment later he sharpens it: “No. You shall never wash my feet.”
I love this moment. I love Peter’s bluntness. I love the sheer human resistance of it. Because it is exactly how we feel too, even if we’ve learned to dress it up more politely.
And what drives Jesus to this moment? John tells us in the very first verse of the chapter: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
That is the engine. Love is why Jesus wraps a towel around his waist like a servant. Love is why God incarnate—the one through whom all things were made—gets down on hand and knee before dirty human feet.
Not to do our bidding. Not to run our errands. But to serve us as our humble Saviour. And this, John wants us to understand, is not a detour from the cross. It is part of the same journey. The basin and the towel and the crucifixion are the same love wearing different clothes. Jesus said it himself in another place: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Maundy Thursday reminds us: Salvation is not only the forgiveness of sins. It is the restoration of dignity. Jesus kneels before your dirty feet to tell you: you are worth this.
I have washed feet on Maundy Thursday.
A feeble, fumbling imitation of Jesus. I have knelt before crooked toes, neatly polished nails, questionable hygiene, and feet belonging to people who’ve sent me rather pointed emails.
From that peculiar vantage point—looking up—I almost always recognize something in people’s eyes. A hesitation. An instinct to pull back.
It looks like the face of Peter.
Sometimes it looks like my own face.
Shortly after my wife Julia and I were engaged, I found myself enveloped in a cloud of shame. As I contemplated the commitment we were about to make, I kept being haunted by my past. Things I’d done, patterns I wasn’t proud of. My shame had a simple, insistent suggestion: hide. Lock it away. Pretend it isn’t there.
But my conscience wasn’t at ease.
So I told Julia what I was carrying. We decided I would share it all. I knew it might be hard for her to absorb. When I finished, I felt stripped bare. Vulnerable and exposed in the worst possible way.
Julia was silent. Then she got up and left the room. The short time she was gone felt like a very long time.
Then she came back.
Carrying a basin of water.
She removed my socks.
And washed my feet.
I wanted to stop her. It felt beneath her. Undeserved. But something in me, I believe it was the Spirit, whispered: Stay. Let her get close enough to your mess to love you through it.
This is the gift Jesus is offering Peter.
And Peter almost refuses it.
“No. You shall never wash my feet.”
Until Jesus says: “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
And Peter, bless him, immediately overcorrects: “Then not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”
That’s usually how it goes with Jesus. When you actually see how much he loves you, it doesn’t take much convincing to do what he asks. He isn’t in the business of bending your will when he can restore your heart instead.
… Then there was Judas
But we can’t leave Judas out of this. John doesn’t let us.
Right there at the beginning of the chapter, Judas is already collaborating with darkness. The plot is already moving. His feet are already pointed toward the door.
And yet, Jesus washed his feet too.
Scrubbing away the dirt.
Not the darkness.
Why didn’t Jesus wait until Judas had left? Why did he have to include him? Why wash the feet of someone whose heart is already closed, who will not be softened, who will walk out of that room and sell him for thirty pieces of silver?
We might draw a line. Judas is too far. Jesus has gone too far here. But then we have to reckon with Peter. Who, not long after swearing he would die for Jesus, will deny even knowing him three times before sunrise. If Judas is too far, what about Peter?
And if Peter, then, what about us?
Why does Jesus wash feet?
Paul writes in Romans 5: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”And then, even further: “While we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.”
This is not a God who had to be persuaded to love us. This is not a God who loves us once we’ve cleaned ourselves up. This is a God whose love descends into the dirt, to the feet of enemies and sinners alike—which is to say, to our feet.
Here is something I heard many times that I haven’t been able to shake:
You’ve never locked eyes with someone God does not love.
Even your enemies. Even the ones who’ve caused real harm. Even the ones who don’t deserve it. Even Judas.
The Inconvenient Part
Here is where it gets uncomfortable. Because John 13 is not simply a story about Jesus washing feet. Jesus is rarely that tidy.
When he finishes and puts his robe back on, he asks them: “Do you understand what I have done for you?” And then, without waiting long: “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”
Basically: “Copy me.”
And then, just to drive it home, a few verses later: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.”
As I have loved you. That is the bar. Not as you feel. Not when it’s convenient. Not toward people who deserve it. As I have loved you — which means: sacrificially, understandingly, and forgivingly.
Understandingly is the one that stops me. Jesus loves without illusion. He knows exactly what Judas will do. He knows exactly how Peter will fail. He kneels anyway. This is wide-eyed, fully-knowing, nothing-hidden love. That is a far harder thing than loving someone you’ve simply misjudged, or loving in the reasonable hope of a good outcome.
And forgivingly. Jesus is willing to forgive the very worst.
Not just the amateur-hour sins.
But we need to be honest about what forgiveness actually is, because we get it wrong in ways that harm us.
Forgiveness is not a feeling. To forgive is not to forget. To forgive is not to be freed from having to forgive it all over again when the wound surfaces again.
Forgiveness is this: to accept the cost, absorb the cost, and release the person from the impossibility of paying it back.
Accept: it cannot unhappen.
Absorb: it’s not fair, but it’s yours to carry.
Release: the debt cannot be repaid, and you let it go.
Critically: forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. Reconciliation requires the other person — it requires them to own the harm, to come with genuine openness, to show something of repentance. Forgiveness is always possible. Reconciliation is not always possible, and it is not always yours alone to offer.
Don’t confuse the two. Jesus calls us to forgive. He does not call us to pretend.
And yet. How? How do we actually forgive the inexcusable?
C.S. Lewis wrote:
“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
I hate this quote.
It’s beautiful in theory.
Brutally hard in practice.
Corrie Ten Boom survived the Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbrück.
Her father and sister did not.
After the war, she travelled Europe speaking about forgiveness and the grace of God. One evening in Germany, after she had spoken, a man approached her with his hand extended. She recognized him immediately. He had been one of the cruelest guards at Ravensbrück. She remembered, with horrible vividness, the humiliations of that place. And now here he was — telling her he had become a Christian, that he had received God’s forgiveness, and that he was asking to hear it from one of his victims.
“Corrie Ten Boom, will you forgive me?”
Her blood ran cold. She could only hate him.
So she prayed the only prayer she had: “Thank you, Jesus, that you have brought into my heart God’s love through the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Father, that your love is stronger than my hatred and unforgiveness.”
And in that moment, she was free.
She took his hand. And she later said: “It was as if I felt God’s love stream through my arms. You’ve never touched the ocean of God’s love as when you forgive your enemies.”
Corrie Ten Boom could not forgive.
But God.
This is the only honest answer to Lewis. Can we actually forgive the inexcusable? Not on our own. But God. God’s love is stronger than our hatred. Stronger than our unforgiveness. Strong enough to move through a cold and trembling hand.
The Spirit will help.
Maundy Thursday reminds us that our ability to forgive doesn’t always start with forgiveness.
Maybe it starts with something smaller. A conversation you’ve been putting off. A kindness you’ve been withholding. A grudge you’ve quietly been feeding.
Maybe it starts with picking up the towel.
Washing some feet.
Seeing what happens next.
The presence of feet that will betray and feet that will disown on Maundy Thursday also ask us: Who is your enemy?
It can be as ordinary as someone with whom you deeply disagree. A family member. A friend who betrayed your confidence. A colleague. An ex. Someone at church. A politician who makes your blood boil. Anybody.
Some of us have been betrayed. Some have been abandoned or abused. Some have been lied to, humiliated, or discarded by someone who should have known better. Some of us have been carrying that for years.
I know some of that weight myself.
For some of us, the work of forgiveness is something we need to do not alone, but with a pastor, a therapist, a trusted friend. The wound is real, and forgiveness of real wounds deserves real support.
But eventually, we have to reckon with this: Jesus washed the feet that would hurt him. And Jesus washed the ugly feet that have hurt us too.
This is how the light gets in
Jesus said it plainly: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
The watching world does not read our theology. They don’t track our church attendance. They watch whether we actually kneel before people who don’t seem to deserve it. Whether we absorb the cost. Whether we serve and forgive in the dark.
John has already told us it was night when Judas walked out. And on that night, in the darkness, Jesus still knelt. Still served. Still loved—even his enemies.
When the night lingers in our homes, our friendships, our city, our world—Jesus says: this is how the light gets in. Not through our platforms or our programmes. Through how we love. That is how the world will know. That is how we shine in the dark.
We cannot do this on our own. Corrie Ten Boom couldn’t. Peter couldn’t. Neither can we.
But God.
So we begin where we must always begin: in awe of the Lord who washes our feet. Cleansed by a love strong enough to forgive the inexcusable. Struggling, imperfectly, to forgive as we have been forgiven.
But God.