Why Jesus washes Our Feet

When the powerful person sees the power or possessions that have been given him as a mandate to be of service to others…As long as power and wealth are seen as ends in themselves, then power is always a power to be used against others and possessions will always exclude others.  At that moment when the Lord of the world comes and undertakes the slave’s task of foot-washing — which is, in turn, only an illustration of the way he washes our feet all through our lives — we have a totally different picture.

God, who is absolute power itself, doesn’t want to trample on us, but kneels down before us so as to exalt us.  The mystery of the greatness of God is seen precisely in the fact that he can be small.  He doesn’t always have to take the highest place or the box seats.

God is trying in this way to wean us away from our ideas of power and domination.  He shows us that it is in fact a trifling matter if I can give orders of a great crowd of people and have everything I could want — and that it is truly great if I undertake the service of others.

Only when power is changed from the inside, when our relationship to possessions is changed from within and we accept Jesus and his way of life, whose whole self is there in the action of foot-washing, only then can the world be healed and people be able to live at peace with one another.  Jesus shows us what man ought to be, how he ought to live, and what we ought to work toward."