John 13:1-17 “His Own Clothes” Scott Hoezee

Whether or not you’ve ever noticed it in particular, it’s striking to observe the role that clothing plays in Jesus’ final hours before his death. At the bitter end, despite the polite placing of a loin cloth by just about every painter and artist in history, we know that our Lord was sacrificed naked, the same as all who met that diabolical fate. But prior to his final stripping, there are several other strippings and re-dressings. The single oddest verse in any of the four gospels comes in Mark when an anonymous, unidentified man is said to flee naked from the Garden of Gethsemane right after Jesus’ arrest.

Better known is the little burlesque that those bored Roman soldiers played with Jesus in between their flogging of him and Pilate’s final verdict. They stripped Jesus of his own clothes and arrayed him in mock royalty. They stuck an old reed staff in his hand and called it a scepter. They grabbed someone’s ratty old red bathrobe and called it a royal cape. They smashed a thorny twist of brambles into his skull and called it a crown. They had their fun mocking him, playing blind man’s bluff with him, bowing down in faux adoration before him. But when it was finished, they put his own clothes back on him before leading him out to Skull Hill for the final stripping of the day.

We’ll want to think about all of that some more this evening, but first notice John 13's mention of Jesus’ clothing and the one occasion in those final hours when Jesus willingly strips himself. John, as you may know, never really presents us with the classic narration of the Last Supper. Maybe he knew that Matthew, Mark, and Luke had covered that territory plenty well already. Maybe by the time John composed his own gospel account he decided to give his readers a different angle from which to view that sacred night in the upper room. So to make his own unique theological contribution, John elected to uncover the essence of that final meal: servanthood and sacrifice.

And he sets it up brilliantly. Look again at verse 3: Jesus knows that all things are in his hands, that the Father had put everything into Jesus’ power, that he had come from his Father and would return to his Father. Jesus has the whole world in his hands and he has every tiger by the tail. He was literally the king of the world. But the paradox of the gospel is revealed in the first word of verse 4: “So.” Jesus had it all, was sitting pretty. We know what happens to the average human being when this is the case. As Frank Sinatra famously crooned in the song “New York, New York,” each person wants to “wake up in the city that never sleeps to find I’m king of the hill, top of the heap.” Everybody these days wants to be Donald Trump. Everybody wants doors opened for them wherever they go. They want limo rides and penthouse views of Central Park.

If you think of any mogul, millionaire, tycoon, or any apprentice-like wannabe to become the big cheese, then it’s easy to complete this sentence: “He knew that he had the world laid at his feet, so . . .” So what? “So, he reveled in the high life, he called his servants to bring him a $100 cigar and a snifter of imported cognac, he phoned up his private pilot and told him to fuel up the corporate jet for a jaunt to Aruba.” For the average person, that is what results from the sense of having come out on top.

But you already know John 13's surprise. Jesus knew that he was the top of the heap and had all the power in the world, so . . . so he stripped and started to wash smelly feet. Jesus showed what it means to be God. Jesus displayed before the disciples’ amazed eyeballs the essence of what it means to have it all. It’s the same paradox of the gospel we noted in another sermon a couple of weeks ago. The more of God you have in you, the more humbly you behave. There are any number of things in this life that can puff us up in pride. There are achievements you can crow about, honors and accolades that come your way and that you can go on Larry King to trumpet to the world.

But the greatest thing, the best thing that could possibly ever happen to anybody, is to have the Spirit of the Living God in your heart. To be filled to the measure with the goodness and glory of Christ Jesus is the grandest reality there is. But when you get that, you don’t dress up in the garments of power as this world knows it, you strip down to your underwear and go to work in serving others.

For Jesus, the main advantage of being the king of the mountain was that from that height, he had a clear view that allowed him to see this world’s neediest. Once he spied them, he rushed to their side to help. In New York City, some of the most valuable real estate around exists up in thin air. People can actually “own” vertical space and sell it at prices that defy the imagination. Because what the elite in the city want is literally to rise above it all. If you can get an apartment or a condo or a penthouse high enough off street level, you won’t be bothered by the honking of cabs and the noise made by the madding crowds of little people that scurry below. People want to rise high so they don’t have to notice those who dwell on the streets below.

For Jesus it’s just the opposite: the benefit of a lofty perch is exactly so that you have an unblocked line of sight to scan the crowds in order to discover the neediest who are out there. On that night long ago, Jesus had the clearest sense he had ever had in his life that he was special, that he was truly God’s own Son, and that the world was his oyster. And no sooner did he gain clarity on all that, and the next thing anyone knew he was clad in only a towel wiping the dust off the calloused feet of grown men.

Of course, ever since there has been a tradition in some parts of the church of literally re-enacting this footwashing ritual. That’s OK but Jesus knew that this was just a metaphor for the real thing. His sacrifice on the cross was the real thing of which this footwashing act was the foreshadowing, the parable in action. Soon he’d be stripped yet again. When Jesus tells Peter in verse 7 that he would soon understand the meaning of this, that was his way of telling Peter, “Keep your eyes open for the next time you see me stripped and then make the connection.” In other words, the grim and grisly things that were soon going to happen to Jesus were not some terrible accident they should have seen coming and so swerved to avoid. What would happen on Skull Hill was necessary to cleanse the whole world of its filth.

Despite the little conversation Jesus has with Peter after Peter initially objects to the footwashing, Jesus gives his primary teaching about this only after he has put his own clothes back on. He gets re-dressed in his nice clothes and takes his place once again at the head of the table, the place of honor. He then tells the disciples it’s just fine that they call him “Teacher” and even “Lord.” They are right to do so, apparently. Jesus is not for one second denying who he is.

But once he returns to his proper place at the table as their Lord, dressed yet again in his nicest outfit, the disciples see him through different eyes. How could they not? I could don the spiffiest black suit in the world, put on a crisply laundered white shirt and the sharpest silk tie I own. I could wear this suit in hosting you at a formal dinner party. But if just prior to appearing before you in that nice suit I had appeared before you in my skivvies in order to perform some menial service, it’s a good bet that, suit and silk tie not withstanding, you’re not going to be able to completely forget having seen me in almost nothing as I performed some menial chore.

Jesus put his own clothes back on. He sat back down at the Passover table’s place of honor. He told them it was fitting to call him Lord. But in the wake of his recent nakedness and servitude toward them all, their assessment of Jesus as Lord was changed. Lordship, apparently, comes through servanthood. And if that doesn’t generate love and awe in your heart, something’s wrong with your heart.

Jesus is Lord but he is unlike any lordly, powerful person we’ve ever before met or even conceived of. He is right to sit at the head of the table. But when that same Lord had just recently been crawling around the floor in a towel, your attitude toward this grace-filled, merciful, and compassionate figure is so altered that you can’t think of the concept of Lordship the same ever again.

Before explaining precisely what he had done for them that night long ago, Jesus put his own clothes back on, inviting the disciples to see him as he was but through new eyes. Before they led him to be crucified, the soldiers put Jesus’ own clothes back on him. But after being mocked and ridiculed and abused by those Roman soldiers, Jesus’ reappearance in his own clothes forces us to view this man through new eyes. The soldiers jeered at him because they thought he was a fake king, a mixed-up maniac with delusions of grandeur. But the quiet dignity with which Jesus goes to the cross in his own clothes reveals to us the true greatness of the one who really is king.

After they had nailed him to the cross once and for all, the soldiers took Jesus’ clothing and cast lots to see who’d walk away with this particular piece of that day’s booty. And why not? This would-be king now impaled on a spit wouldn’t need his clothes again. Not where he was going. Yet on this coming Sunday we celebrate the resurrection of this man. I don’t know exactly what kind of clothing he was wearing Easter morning. But he must have been reclothed this time by no less than his heavenly Father because he hadn’t brought a spare set of duds with him into the tomb, after all. Whatever he was wearing, though, he was definitely in a sense back in his own clothes.

He was now the victorious and resurrected Lord of might. But seeing him back in regular clothing again after we had seen him die on a cross causes us to view him through new eyes. If sacrifice is what being the Lord of lords and the King of kings involves, then we who follow this Lord know how we also must now act. We are servants.

In his letters, the Apostle Paul told us that as baptized believers, we must now clothe ourselves with Christ. We slip on Jesus like a garment, pulling on Christlikeness the way we’d pull a wool sweater over our heads. That’s what we display to the watching world. We want others to see Christ in us so that when one day Christ comes again, they will recognize him because they had been seeing him in us all along.

In a wonderful sermon, Gardner Taylor said that on that great and coming day when Christ shall come again, we shall see him arrayed in raiment more dazzling than the sun. And on those glorious garments will be written “King of kings and Lord of lords.” His garments will be utterly glorious but all who see him will have no doubts about one thing: Jesus will again be in his own clothes, clothes that fit him in every sense. And all who see that will shout “Glory!” Amen, Maranatha, Come, Lord Jesus, and Amen.