DAY 2: WASHING THE DISCIPLES’ FEET
Scripture Passage: John 13:1-11

 

HOLY WEEK TIMELINE:

ON MONDAY:
• JESUS CURSED THE FIG TREE (MATTHEW 21:18-22).
• JESUS CLEANSED THE TEMPLE (MARK 11:15-19).

 

Have you ever been so dirty you could feel it? I’m thinking of the kind of dirty you get in the depths of the summer when it’s so hot outside the horizon shimmers. You can’t take a step outside your door without sweat beginning to pour off you. Your clothes cling to you all over. Dirt and dust and grass and everything else sticks to every bit of your skin, and your hair looks like you just got out of the pool. I’m talking about the kind of dirty you can smell on yourself. Ever been that dirty? Of course, you have. We all have.

 

When you’re that dirty, there’s nothing you want more than to get clean, and once you finally do, you realize there’s nothing like it. It’s at times like that you think to yourself that you’ve never felt better in your life than you do right then. It’s only when we fully realize just how filthy we are that we come to appreciate how good it is to be clean.

 

That’s true not only for our bodies but also our souls.

 

Read John 13:1-11. On the night before He died, Jesus gathered together with the twelve disciples, His closest followers, to observe the Feast of the Passover with them. This was a special meal that was part of a larger celebration, during which the Jewish people would remember and reflect upon God’s deliverance of them from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12). Typically, as people arrived at a house in preparation for the meal, the host would have a servant or the lowest household member wash each guest’s feet. Why? Because they were filthy. Roads weren’t paved. They were dusty and dirty, and since most people walked around in some sort of sandals, that meant their feet were dusty and dirty, too. The Passover meal was celebrated with everyone reclining at the table, and the last thing you’d want is for someone’s nasty feet to be near your food or face.

 

However, Jesus and His disciples were celebrating their Passover meal in a borrowed room, and they certainly didn’t have any servants. It was just the thirteen of them. Clearly, Jesus would serve as the host for the meal, but since the disciples were often more concerned with who was the greatest among them (Luke 9:46), none of them jumped at the chance to fill the servant role.

 

So, Jesus did something shocking. He filled the role Himself.

 

Jesus got up and “laid aside His outer garments.” These garments would have included a prayer shawl called a tallit. For a revered religious teacher like Jesus, this tallit symbolized His authority. In removing it and laying it aside, Jesus demonstrated a giving up of His God-given authority in order to serve His followers better, an act we see echoed in Philippians 2 where the Apostle Paul wrote that Jesus “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:6b-7a).

 

Jesus then washed His disciples’ feet. When it was Peter’s turn, though, he balked. He couldn’t fathom why their Lord was stooping so low. What Peter didn’t realize, of course, was that this foot washing was a symbol, a picture of the cleansing Jesus would provide for them all, a cleansing from their sins.

 

Peter gets lots of the attention here, but it’s important to take note of one other disciple in particular, Judas Iscariot, of whom “the devil had already put it into the heart . . . to betray.”

 

Jesus was well aware of Judas’ impending betrayal (v. 11), yet Jesus washed His feet anyway. He did this so that His disciples, and us, might fully understand afterward what it was He was doing.

 

You see, we’re all like Judas. We’ve betrayed our Lord and our Creator through our rebellion and disobedience. We’re covered in the filth of our sin, yet Jesus set aside His authority as God and came to earth to die that we might also be like Peter, made clean by Christ.

 

THINK ABOUT IT:
Yesterday we saw Jesus as King. What do you understand about Him now that we also see Him as a servant?
What does it mean for Jesus to make you clean?
How can you follow His example and serve others today?

DAY 1: THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY

Scripture Passage: Luke 19:28-40

 

HOLY WEEK TIMELINE:

ON PALM SUNDAY:
• JESUS ENTERED JERUSALEM RIDING A DONKEY (MATTHEW 21:1-11).
• JESUS WEPT FOR JERUSALEM (LUKE 19:41-44).
• HE VISITED THE TEMPLE AND RETURNED TO BETHANY (MARK 11:11).

 

 

We don’t know what it’s like to have a king. After all, we live in a democracy, not a monarchy. We live in a country, not a kingdom. However, we know what it’s like when one of the most powerful leaders in the world comes to town.

 

Even if we don’t live somewhere the President has ever visited in person; we’ve at least seen it online or on the news or in movies. There’s a lot of preparation that goes into that kind of visit. Streets are barricaded and shutdown. His armored car is just one in a vast motorcade escorted by police and secret service. People line the streets on both sides trying to catch a glimpse of him, some of them cheering, others shouting. It creates quite the scene.

Now, compare that scene with the one described in Luke 19. Read Luke 19:28-40. When we pick up the story in verse 28, we find Jesus completing a journey that began ten chapters ago when He determined to go to Jerusalem and fulfill the purpose for which He had come to earth in the first place (Luke 9:51). He knew full well that once He entered the gates of that city, He would set off a chain of events that would ultimately lead to His death. Yet His resolve didn’t waver. He never had the urge to flee, to try to escape. He simply put one foot in front of the other. But there were still some things that needed to be prepared.

 

Jesus sent two of His disciples ahead to secure a young donkey He could ride for the journey’s final leg. He didn’t need to do this because He was tired or His feet hurt. Actually, what He did was to fulfill a prophecy that revealed to everyone around Him just who He was. This prophecy is found in Zechariah 9:9:

 

When Jesus mounted that colt and rode into the Holy City, He revealed Himself as a king, but not just any king. He demonstrated that He was THE King, the Messiah, the One sent from God the Father to deliver and reign over His people. He was a righteous King, meaning He was perfectly right and good and just, yet along with His rightness and goodness and justness, He also brought with Him salvation for everyone who hadn’t been able to prove themselves righteous (which, if you’re keeping score, is all of us).

 

As Jesus rode into Jerusalem, He drew a crowd. Some were His followers, who fulfilled the first part of Zechariah’s prophecy with their rejoicing, praising Jesus as King, and exalting the peace and glory He alone could bring to all people. Luke wrote that these followers praised God “for all the mighty works they had seen,” works like feeding the five thousand (Matthew 14:13-21), healing the disabled (Luke 5:17-39), casting out demons (Mark 5:1-20), and raising Lazarus from the dead ( John 11:1-44). Of course, if they found all that impressive, in just a week, they were about to be blown away by the power of God in Jesus Christ.

 

This story is often called “The Triumphal Entry,” but no one present that day fully understood the triumph over sin and death Jesus was about to accomplish.

 

Still, it wasn’t all cheering and celebration. Jesus had His haters, too, and some of them confronted Him about what all His followers were saying. These religious leaders thought Jesus should silence His followers. These leaders didn’t see Jesus as their king, much less the Promised King. But Jesus let them know it didn’t matter what they thought. He was who He was. They may not have known it, but all of creation did, and if His followers didn’t give Him the worship He alone deserved, then the rocks would.

 

Jesus was the King promised to bring righteousness and salvation, and He still is.

 

THINK ABOUT IT:
What are some of the opinions about Jesus you hear from people today?
What does it mean for you to know Jesus as King?
How will you praise Him for who He is today?

Have you ever wondered why Easter is called “Easter”?

 

It all goes back to an old English word, Eosturmonath. This word was the name used for the first month of spring when there would be a big celebration in honor of Eostre, who was thought to be the goddess of the dawn who brought about the new life that accompanies the changing of the season following winter. After the Gospel reached England and the people there exchanged their worship of old goddesses for the worship of Christ, the name stuck.

 

Though we now celebrate this holiday in honor of Jesus, in a lot of ways, the name still fits. Easter is still all about new life. Sure, it happens in the spring, but not because that’s when the winter frost melts away, and the earth blooms again with all the colors of God’s creation. It happens in the spring because that’s when Jesus was crucified, around the celebration of the Jewish Passover. Even still, the new life in nature that surrounds us in spring serves as the perfect reminder of what Easter is all about.

 

Sometimes people will call Easter “Resurrection Sunday,” which is a lot more on-the-nose than Easter is. After all, that’s what we’re actually celebrating: Jesus’ resurrection, when following His death on the cross, God the Father raised Him from the dead and made Him alive, again.

 

That’s why Easter is central to the Gospel, the good news of Jesus. Only, it wasn’t just good news for Him. I mean, it was. I think we’d all agree it’s better to be alive than dead. More than that, though, it’s  also good news for us, for all of us. The Apostle Paul explains it better than I ever could:

In this time between Palm Sunday and Easter, we want to reflect upon what we know as Holy Week and remember what it was Jesus said and did. We want to see all He accomplished that week for our good and for God’s glory and how it propels us all toward our God-given mission and purpose.

 

Jesus was raised alive, again, so we too might have new life in Him. My prayer is that these ten devotions serve to motivate us throughout the rest of the year and the rest of our new lives.