The run up to the Passover celebration in Jerusalem would have been a crazy time. Pilgrims from all the surrounding countryside were flooding in. Families and friends in and around Jerusalem were figuring out how to house and feed all the visitors. The Romans were threateningly visible in the streets to put everyone on notice that they expected obedience and compliance (sound familiar?). It was an emotionally and spiritually charged time, and everyone was one edge. Everyone, it seems, but Jesus, because in the middle of all the crazy, Jesus was preternaturally calm.
The story of the foot washing gives us a picture of a man who was in no particular hurry. He was deliberate, painstaking, thoughtful, patient, and loving. The narrative tells us that he “got up from supper, took off his outer robe, tied a towel around himself, poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel.” After finishing, he “put on his robe, reclined again and [spoke to his disciples].” What we see is someone who was acting as if he had all the time in the world, but that certainly was not the case. Jesus knew he was living his final night in the world. So, what gives? What allowed someone to live so ungraspingly when there was so little time left?
Before answering that question about Jesus, consider how differently we live, that we are so seldom wholly in the now. Think of Jacob Marley chained to his trunk full of regrets and misdeeds, of joys left behind, loved ones lost and discarded. And it’s not just the past that steals our present from us. The future is also a thief, whether we are longing for what is to come or living in fear of it. Carpe Diem, the dictum of the poets, might seem to be the answer, but grabbing the present by the throat seems very different from the calm way in which Jesus occupied it.
“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God…” That’s the answer. That’s the answer to our question about Jesus. We “spend” time. We peel off each moment like bills from a shrinking stack. But Jesus simply lived time, knowing that each moment and all things come from and return to the always open hand of the Giver. And as Jesus confidently and gratefully received each moment from the Giver, he then gave himself unhurriedly and completely to the people he loved. We can’t just decide to “be like Jesus,” but I think it is possible on occasion to take a deep breath or close our eyes or hug a loved one or place a hand on a tree or dig our toes into grass or sand and rest in the Giver’s care in order to live even a moment or two in the present.