Jesus gave us a model for the work of the church at the Last Supper. While his disciples kept proposing more organization – Hey, let’s elect officers, establish hierarchy, set standards of professionalism – Jesus quietly picked up a towel and basin of water and began to wash their feet.
Last Supper
Author Unknown
The Lord kept the Passover with His disciples in the Upper Room to fulfill the law. More than that, communion with Him looks toward the Wedding Supper that we will be eating and drinking in the last days. Jesus fulfilled the Old Covenant by His observance of the Pasch and at the same time established the New Covenant with us. We entered into a new dimension of worship and fellowship with the spirit. Jesus was… sacrificed as the Passover Lamb. We are not only to observe the Lord’s Supper, we are to be a part of it by being part of His sacrificed body. Jesus participated and finished the old ceremony that we might participate with Him and be a part of the new.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
I am looking to you, Lord. You have said so many loving words. Your heart has spoken so clearly. Now you want to show me even more clearly how much you love me. Knowing that your Father has put everything in your hands, that you have come from God and are returning to God, you remove your outer garments and, taking a towel, you wrap it around your waist, pour water into a basin and begin to wash my feet, and then wipe them with the towel you are wearing …
You look at me with utter tenderness, saying, “I want you to be with me. I want you to have a full share in my life. I want you to belong to me as much as I belong to my Father. I want to wash you completely clean so that you and I can be one and so that you can do to others what I have done to you.”
I am looking at you again, Lord. You stand up and invite me to the table. As we are eating, you take bread, say the blessing, break the bread, and give it to me. “Take and eat,” you say, “this is my body given for you.” Then you take a cup, and, after giving thanks, you hand it to me, saying, “This is my blood, the blood of the new covenant poured out for you.” Knowing that your hour has come to pass from this world to your Father and having loved me, you now love me to the end. You give me everything that you have and are. You pour out for me your very self. All the love that you carry for me in your heart now becomes manifest. You wash my feet and then give me your own body and blood as food and drink.
Ann Voskamp
“And on the night He was betrayed… He broke bread and lifted it up and gave thanks.” If Jesus can give thanks *in that*, I can give thanks in everything.
Arthur John (A. J.) Gossip
But, you object, a heart like mine can offer Christ so little – at best, so poor and pinched and stingy a hospitality and such meagre fare; for I have nothing worthy of Him to set before Him, only a kind of affection, real enough at times, but which, at others, can and does so easily forget; only a will, quite unreliable, deplorably unstable; only a faith that is the merest shadow of what His real friends mean when they speak about faith, I know. But, there was once a garret up under the roof, a poor, bare place enough. There was a table in it, and there were some benches, and a water-pot; a towel, and a basin in behind the door, but not much else- a bare, unhomelike room. But the Lord Christ entered into it. And, from that moment, it became the holiest of all, where souls innumerable ever since have met the Lord God, in High glory, face to face. And, if you give Him entrance to that very ordinary heart of yours, it too He will transform and sanctify and touch with a splendour of glory.