Thursday 17th April

Two things stand out about the Thursday of Holy week.   Foot washing.  And a new commandment.

Foot washing was something practical and necessary I suppose in a country where everyone wore sandals or similar and there was no tarmac on the roads :-)  Jesus makes a point of taking a towel and adopting the stance of a servant in order to emphasise the point that in the Kingdom of God there is no such thing as master and slave.   We see the reaction of the disciples - most notably Peter - to this outrageous breaking of the cultural rules but Im left wondering about the reaction of the servant whos job it was to do the foot washing.  I wonder how he/she felt watching Jesus , the Master, doing the very job he/she was supposed to be doing.   I bet they never washed another foot again after that without thinking about Jesus.   He had somehow given great worth and value to a job which had previously been considered so menial as to be not worth noticing.

Thats one of the many brilliant things about Jesus.  The more you look at Him the more you see His love.  When I am doing the menial thankless tasks of life - washing the bathroom floor, changing the beds, dusting - the jobs which no-one ever notices until they havent been done and for which no-one ever thanks you - I can picture Jesus taking up the mop and joining me.  Nothing is beneath Him and everything has value.

Then there is the other outrageous thing He does at the Passover meal.  He gives a new commandment.

If we stop to think about that for a moment - for the Jews the commandments given to Moses are the basis of everything on which their relationship with God is built.  Moses is the great prophet, the saviour and

deliverer and God has spoken to him face to face and given him the rules by which His people are to live.   The thought that anything could be added to the ten commandments and the laws must have been utterly shocking.  What was Jesus saying??   A new commandment?   ( John 13: 34)

The new commandment takes the 'old commandments' and catapults them into a new league.   The commandments of Moses were about minimum standards of behaviour I suppose.  Dont steal, dont murder, dont lie ...  keep these rules and you will be able to live together as a society under God.   But Jesus sets a new standard - that of love;  serving, giving, humble, kind love.   As He has loved us.   Impossible of course.  Unless He is living in us.