To the Uttermost

Jesus is crouching before me, sitting back on his haunches, a steaming basin of water in front of him. He has one of my feet in his big hands. I sit in my spot, bowing my head, hiding my face from the others in the room with us as much as I can, tears pouring down my cheeks in a cascade I can’t stop. He’s silent as he takes my foot and gently rubs a wet cloth over the dirt and the sweat that has gathered there from a day full of walking through things I’d rather not walk. He scrubs between my toes and along my insole, up my heel and around the top. He’s thorough as he works. Normally this would tickle and I’d be tempted to jerk my foot away with a laugh, but there’s too big of a lump in my throat.

I’m too tired, too full of an ache that won’t go away. I’m trying too hard to hide my vulnerability from the others – the way his touch makes me want to fall apart.

The room is cozy and full of candlelight. The smell of hot, delicious food wafts through the air. There’s movement and banging of dishes as supper is served. But all I feel is his hand on my foot, the way it surrounds my ankle. The warmth of his skin and the slight rasp of his callouses. The gentle, hidden swipe of his thumb as he soothes me, wordless. He’s aware that I’m crying. He doesn’t look up while he works – he doesn’t ever make a production of his actions even if we make it one later. He’s always in the simple doing. When he’s finished washing my skin clean, he takes the towel he’s tied around his waist and rubs my foot between his hands until it’s dry again before picking up my other foot.

There’s something incredibly intimate about it.

The whole room is silent. All the men are shocked at what he’s doing, that he would take the job of a servant this way. That he would disrobe and take a towel and kneel at our feet. He’s the teacher! The leader of this group. The wisdom and miracle worker their culture says should be waited on hand and foot.

No one wants to break the silence. Everyone is avoiding everyone else’s gazes. It’s embarrassing. None of them want him to touch their dirty feet. I sense Peter beside me, tucking his feet under him, as if to hide them. All of them have been around Jesus long enough to know not to argue with him, (though Peter is stewing) and they’re silently, uncomfortably guessing at what he’s going to tell them this is about.

The trickle of the water into the basin is loud in the silence.

He’s finished my second foot, but before he lets it go he squeezes my ankle gently, forcing my gaze to meet his. Our eyes collide and I know my heart is laid bare before him. Every ragged part of it. I can maintain my calm, hang onto the surface of things and go about acting normal – right up until I meet his eyes. He doesn’t ever let me hide from him, nothing is shoved down too deep, no fake smile of mine convinces him to let me stay in hiding from him or myself.

It takes a while for me to breathe. To get through the emotions that flit between us – the exchange of my grief and weariness for his unwavering, steady presence; my silent scream at him that I can’t go on and the answering squeeze of his hand around my foot that promises me he’ll pick me up and carry me if I let him.

When we get past that part of our wordless discussion – when I give him all my fears and lies and rebellious thoughts, he draws my attention back to where my foot is. In his hand, on his lap.

We have this ongoing discussion between us, about feet.

It’s weird, I know. But a long time ago he showed me something about his armour – why peace is part of what gets fitted onto feet (Ephesians 6). He’s reminding me now, in this moment, of that offer of his. That I can let what we call his “peace shoes” hold me up right now, keep me steady when my feet are too worn out and sore to carry me on my own.

Those peace shoes are sometimes the only thing that helps me remember his presence inside a conflict – around anger or reactive situations, through pain or estrangement. They’re meant to be walked into places where I don’t know what to do or how to act.

He’s going to say a lot of things to his disciples in a couple seconds, about examples and service and how we love each other in the dirty places we’d rather hide from each other. About not being too important to think of little practical things, about not being too high and mighty to help each other out. That’s the part some Christians like to emphasize – the service part, the try harder part – and its legalism can side track me from him in less than a second if I let it.

He won’t let me though, he pulls me back into this quiet, into the stillness between us, as he squeezes my ankle, swallowing it up with the rough skin of his palm and fingers.

When our eyes meet, I see the thing John noted and thought important enough to write out at the start of this story. The thing that drives all of Jesus’s actions. The thing that is essential before one begins any act of service. It’s love. Love looks back at me through those eyes – the ones with the crinkles around the corner because they love to laugh, just as much as they’re able to cry.

It’s simple and yet so completely complex what he’s so full of. What spills out of his eyes all over me, pulling me in and surrounding me in a shield. People make the mistake of thinking love is wishy washy weak and fluffy… It’s the most powerful thing I know of on this earth. The most earth shattering and the most exposing. A bring you to your knees kind of thing and a summoning trumpet call to vulnerability.

John wrote it this way – that “he loved his own to the end.” Another translation: he loved them to the uttermost.

I can see that uttermost in his gaze. The way he looks at me. The way he holds my foot. I can see that steadiness in him that comes from knowing who he is and where he’s going. There is no uncertainty about his identity in him. What he’s doing right now comes flooding out of a love so deep and fathomless I can’t find the end of it. And it is flowing out of his surety – a rock steadiness.

What he’s doing right now is not an act stemming from some need to prove himself or to perform a duty. And his knowledge of who he is; the love (of the uttermost kind) he feels, keeps this act from becoming something to prove his righteousness or a sermon on trying harder. He is a rock in this moment, and he is offering himself to me. Asking me to let go and rest on him.

I may not know who I am, I may struggle to find certainty in where I’m going and how I’ll get there. I might even let go entirely and accept that I’ll never find my way. But he knows. And he is promising me in this endless second of time that he will be my knowing for me. He will be my compass and he will hold my faith when I think it’s fallen out of my pockets never to be found again. All I have to do is remember who he is. That’s it. That’s all.

As he holds my gaze with that uttermost love of his pouring over me, slipping through his hands and up onto my feet through his simple act, he sees everything inside me that aches. That feels torn and caged and beaten down. All the uncertainty and desperation. All the ways I’m exhausted. He sees every piece of pain I’ve been fighting to carry on my own.

Like always, he takes it all – the stuff I can’t carry but keep trying to do myself. And he slips those peace shoes on my feet, reminding me that they’re his. That he fashioned them for me and I just have to put them on. They steady me, the knowledge of where they came from and what they mean trickles over me, and through me. I don’t have to make them work – I don’t have to click my heels three times and wish for home like Dorothy, nor say some magic formula or prayer to wake them up. That’s Holy Spirit’s job as the designer of them. And in response to my letting him put them on, he offers to be my comfort and my filler-up-er when I’m empty. He offers to be my Love right to the uttermost.