<A Reflection in the Voice of Simon Peter>

I have replayed that night in my mind more times than I can count. The room was warm with the smell of roasted lamb and bread still soft from baking. We had gathered as we always did for Passover, remembering the night our ancestors ate in haste, sandals on their feet, staffs in their hands, trusting that God would lead them out of bondage. I knew those stories by heart. I thought I understood them.

But nothing prepared me for what happened when he stood up from the table.

Jesus had been quiet that evening—quieter than usual. There was a weight in the room, something unsaid but pressing on all of us. And then he rose, took off his outer robe, and wrapped a towel around his waist. I remember the sound of the basin as he filled it with water. I remember the way the room fell silent, every one of us watching him, confused.

This was not the work of a teacher. This was not the work of the one we had seen raise the dead and calm the sea. This was the work of a servant.

When he knelt in front of me, I felt my whole world tilt. I could not bear it. “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” I asked him. It came out sharper than I intended, but I was afraid—afraid of what it meant for him to stoop so low, afraid of what it meant for me if I let him.

“You do not know now what I am doing,” he said, “but later you will understand.”

But I didn’t want to understand later. I wanted to understand right then. I wanted to keep things the way they had always been—him above, me below, the world in its proper order. So I told him no. Absolutely not. “You will never wash my feet.”

He looked at me with that steady gaze that always saw more of me than I wanted to reveal. “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”

Those words broke something open in me. I realized then that he wasn’t just washing feet. He was offering himself—again. He was giving himself away in a way that asked something of me in return. Not perfection. Not strength. Not certainty. But willingness. Openness. A heart that could receive what he offered.

So I blurted out the only thing I could think of: “Then not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” If he was going to give himself so freely, then I wanted all of it. I wanted to be made clean in ways I didn’t even know I needed.

After he washed us, he put his robe back on and sat down again. His voice was gentle, but it carried the weight of a command that would shape the rest of my life: “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

I didn’t understand it fully that night. But I began to see that he was showing us a way of living that wasn’t built on pride or fear or scarcity. He was showing us a way of living that made room—room for mercy, room for forgiveness, room for one another. A way of living that trusted that God had already given us enough, and that we could therefore give ourselves away without losing anything essential.

Later, when he took the bread and broke it, saying, “This is my body that is for you,” I felt that same truth settle deeper into me. He was giving himself again—completely, without hesitation. And when he lifted the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood,” I realized that he was binding himself to us in a way that no betrayal, no denial, not even death could undo.

Even now, years later, when I lift the cup of salvation as the psalmist says, I remember that night. I remember how he inclined his ear to us, how he loved us to the end. I remember how he asked us to love one another with that same steady, generous love.

And I remember how hard it was for me—how hard it still is sometimes—to let myself be loved like that. To let myself be washed. To let myself be fed. To let myself be forgiven.

But that is where it begins. Not with what I can do for him, but with what he has already done for me. Not with my strength, but with his tenderness. Not with my certainty, but with his invitation.

Tonight, as we gather again around the table, as we hear the ancient story of deliverance, as we receive the bread and the cup, I hear his words echoing across the years: “Do you know what I have done to you?”

I am still learning. But I know this much: he has shown us a way. A way that begins with being willing to receive what he offers. A way that continues as we offer ourselves to one another. A way that leads us, step by step, into the heart of God.

And tonight, he kneels before us once more—not to shame us, not to test us, but to love us. To make us whole. To draw us into a life shaped by the same grace he poured out that night in the upper room.

May we have the courage to let him.