Do you know what I have done to you?

In the Fourth Gospel, at his final meal with his closest friends, Jesus is reported to have done something extraordinary, something even his trusted disciple Peter tries to avoid.  After welcoming them all to the table Jesus takes up towel and water and washes the feet of the disciples.

We in the churches have ritualized this moment in our various Holy or Maundy Thursday services, mindful of Jesus' words to them, "For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you" (Jn 13:15).  And so we wash feet, or hands if we live in a cold climate, and clergy debate whether it is better to wash or be washed, and we think it's about vulnerability and servanthood and personal space.

And we miss the point.  Back just a few verses, once the washing was complete, Jesus has asked the critical question: "Do you know what I have done to you?"  Too often we mishear the question, and humbly recount all the lovely things Jesus has done for us.  But that's not what he asked.  Do we understand in our bones what that act - along with all his miracles and parables and daily interactions - has done to us?  

Jesus, what have you done to us?

You have, quite simply, reversed everything we thought we knew about human society.  Who counts, who doesn't; who's in, who's out; who's superior, who's inferior; who's chosen, who's left behind.  Who's "first" in the kingdom of heaven, and who's going to spend eternity on the outside looking in.  You have flipped it all, like the tables at the Temple, on their heads.

And you weren't content to simply flip the standard by which our status gets measured.  There's more going on here than simply a preferential option for the poor, as necessary as that step is.  You took the whole notion of standards and measurements and tossed it blithely out the door!  You took on pain and suffering and death, the things we humans resist most vigorously, and embraced them completely.  You walked to the cross like a king to your throne, rested in the grave only as long as was absolutely necessary, and then burst forth with the blaze of the sun at dawn.  

What have you done to us? To our fears, to our certainties, to our longings, to our inadequacies, to our meager self-regard?  You have blown them out of the water, out of the grave, out of this world, and in their place you have given us yourself.  Your fierce, shining, loving, joyous Self, now and for all time.

It is so much easier to dye eggs and eat chocolate and hide baskets for children than to give up the world we have constructed for ourselves.  That's ok, though, because you will do this every Easter, every Sunday, every moment of every day until we throw up our hands and admit, You Win!  As you always do.  Love Wins.  Always.