Bible Study Moment: John 13

You might say I’m a week late but I’m going to look at what is in the gospel of John at the Passover meal (also known as the last supper) that Jesus had with his disciples before his arrest. John takes 5 chapters compared to a few verses in the other gospels.

John 13:1 reads in part, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them fully.” This is why we refer to the succeeding events as Christ’s Passion.

In verse 4 Jesus starts washing the feet of the disciples. I believe Mel Gibson should have begun his “The Passion of the Christ” here instead of later since John was his primary gospel source and John begins the passion story with the washing of the disciples’ feet. I think this would have set an entirely different mood (and more correct one) for the movie.

Jesus is teaching them again that he calls us is to be servants. In the sermon that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered 2 months before he was killed, he spoke of Jesus’ call for us to serve. In it he notes “You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”

 

Mark Phillips