The Bath, The Feet, and the Basin

I apologize in advance if sometimes this podcast seems to veer off a present trajectory but every time I do I deep dive, something sticks that makes me want to go deeper. My friends accuse me of being a walking hyperlink... guilty as charged : )

This came up in our last podcast, so I decided to return here and sit on this passage.

Most of us read straight past it. In the upper room, between Peter’s protest and Jesus’ lesson on service, there is one sentence: “He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.” (John 13:10)

That verse contains two washings. One is a bath that never needs to be repeated. The other is a washing of the feet that we need again and again. It also contains a warning: one man at that table had his feet washed by the Son of God and still was not clean.

In this episode we work through John 13 verse by verse. We follow the Greek words John chose, trace the pattern back to the priests’ laver in Exodus, and ask why it was the feet. The disciples had been arguing about which of them was the greatest. No one picked up the basin until the greatest in the room did. Peter and Judas both failed Jesus that night. What separated them was not the size of the failure but whether they came back to the basin.

We are clean. We will get our feet dirty. Come back to the basin, and then pick it up for someone else.

Notes: The Bath, The Feet and the Basin

Episode Link:

https://www.rabbitholesandmeditations.com/the-bath-the-feet-and-the-basin/