The Royal Order of the Towel

So, the most eventful, meaningful week in human history begins this Sunday as we celebrate Palm Sunday. Jesus enters Jerusalem to a hero’s welcome. It also starts the plot to finally arrest and crucify Jesus as a religious subversive and blasphemer.  It is curious to me how quickly the tide can turn, as it does between the next two Sundays when the same crowd that was waving palm branches and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” is yelling, “Crucify him, crucify him,” and are spitting on him.And so, we find ourselves this Sunday ironically talking about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. We finish up our series on serving by looking at Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. It is shocking really. Feet have always had a certain stigma about them. I mean, even when I did a wedding where the bride and groom washed each other’s feet, I cringed. Really! I was close––I was right there––but to do this publicly was almost too much.  These feet were sort of clean, and they were getting married; but in antiquity feet were in sandals in an arid, dusty climate, walking on streets and paths where fresh animal dung was always a hazardous landmine you didn’t want to land in! You get the picture.For a superior to wash the feet of an inferior was not done in the Roman world. And in the Jewish world, no Jewish servant could, by law, be required to wash the feet of a fellow countryman––only a Gentile servant could be asked to stoop so low. And yet, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.I suppose the place that Palm Sunday intersects with this scene is pretty clear to me. Sovereigns (royalty) have always had special insignia they hand out to certain people to honor them and induct them into elite orders. Some of them are Order of the Garter, Royal Victorian Order, Order of the Thistle, Order of Bath, Order of St. John, and I could go on. These orders are given by the sovereign to worthy recipients amid great pomp and circumstance to sort of set them apart from lesser mortals. And hey, if you were inducted by the king or queen into an order, you wore the insignia every chance you got. Jesus does the same, but not like the rulers of the world do it. In one of his last acts to his disciples, he inducted them into an order and the insignia of his love, his life, his ministry, his kingdom, and his rule and reign through his disciples in time and space—is a towel.The towel is what Jesus gives you to spread his kingdom! Curious? We’ll talk Sunday amid palms and vows as we welcome a whole host of new members into our family and, in a real sense, invite them to take up the towel with us, to spend and be spent for Jesus.Blessings,Jim