8/13 The Towel Before the Platform: What It Really Means to Follow Jesus

The Towel Before the Platform: What It Really Means to Follow Jesus

There is a story from ancient Rome that most people have never heard, and it may be one of the most powerful illustrations of Christianity ever recorded.

Between 249 and 262 A.D., a devastating epidemic known as the Cyprian Plague swept through the Roman Empire. Symptoms were severe. Death was common. Entire cities were emptying as people fled in panic, desperate to escape the reach of the illness. But one historian named Dionysius recorded something remarkable happening in the middle of the chaos. There was a peculiar group of men and women moving in the opposite direction. While everyone else was running out of the cities, these people were running in.

They were followers of Jesus Christ.

They went into the infected cities and tended to the sick and the dying, knowing full well they could lose their own lives. And here is what makes it even more extraordinary: the people they were serving were the same people who had been persecuting them.

Christianity was not tolerated in Rome at that time. These believers risked death for their faith on any ordinary day. Yet they ran toward a plague to serve people who wanted nothing to do with them.

The question those dying Romans must have asked themselves is the same question the world still needs answered today: Who are these people? Why would they touch someone everyone else is afraid to touch? Why would they serve someone who cannot repay them?

The answer has always been the same. They are followers of Jesus Christ.

And here is a thought worth sitting with: before Christianity had buildings on every corner, it had examples on every street.

The Scene in the Upper Room

In John 13, verses 1 through 17, something quietly staggering takes place. Jesus, knowing that his hour had come, knowing that all authority had been placed in his hands, knowing that he was about to face the cross, does something no one in that room expected. He picks up a towel. He kneels down. And he begins to wash his disciples' feet.

This was not a symbolic gesture performed for a willing and grateful audience. Jesus washed the feet of Peter, who would deny him three times before sunrise. And he washed the feet of Judas Iscariot, the man who was already planning to betray him. He knew it. The text makes that clear. And he knelt before him anyway.

In verse 15, Jesus explains why: "For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done for you."

This is the heart of the passage. This is the challenge that every person who claims to follow Christ must eventually face.

The Difference Between Salvation and Discipleship

There is a distinction that deserves careful thought. Salvation asks us to receive what Jesus did. Discipleship asks us to become like the Jesus who did it.

Receiving the gift of grace is the beginning of the journey, not the destination. The apostle Paul captures this tension beautifully in Philippians 2, verses 5 through 8, describing how Jesus, though he existed in the form of God, did not cling to that position but instead emptied himself, taking on the nature of a servant, humbling himself even to the point of death on a cross. Paul then turns to the reader and says, in effect, adopt this same attitude.

This is what discipleship looks like. Not just believing the right things, but walking in the same direction Jesus walked.

John 13, verse 35 makes the standard plain. Jesus says that the world will know his followers not by the size of their gatherings, not by the power of their arguments, not by the impressiveness of their platforms, but by their observable love for one another.

The world does not simply need an explanation of Jesus. It needs an illustration of him.

What It Looks Like to Pick Up the Towel

In the first century, washing feet was the lowest task assigned to the lowest servant. Jesus chose it deliberately. He was not just performing an act of hygiene. He was redefining what greatness looks like in the kingdom of God.

In Mark 10, Jesus tells his disciples that the rulers of the world lord their authority over others, but that things must be different among his followers. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. The Son of Man himself did not come to be served, but to serve.

So what does it look like to wash feet in everyday life today?

It looks like patience with the coworker nobody else can stand. It looks like generosity toward someone who will never be able to repay you. It looks like sitting beside the person everyone else walked past. It looks like forgiving first, apologizing first, showing up when it is inconvenient. It looks like mowing an elderly neighbor's yard, listening without an agenda, tipping generously, treating the server or the custodian with the same dignity you would offer anyone else.

Sometimes the towel looks like forgiveness extended to someone who has genuinely wronged you. And this is perhaps the most confronting part of John 13. Jesus did not wash Judas' feet because Judas deserved it. He washed them because love is not determined by the worthiness of the recipient. The character of Christ was not shaped by the character of his betrayer.

The person who hurt you does not get to determine who you become. The person who betrayed you does not get to take the towel out of your hands.

A Legacy Built on Love

The Cyprian Plague eventually subsided. Many of the Christians who ran into those cities died from exposure to the illness. But something shifted in the Roman Empire in the aftermath. The faith that had been mocked, ridiculed, and violently persecuted began to be respected. Not because of arguments or power, but because of love made visible in action.

That is still the most compelling evidence that Jesus is alive. Not a building. Not a stage. Not a well-crafted sermon. A human being who actually lives like Christ.

Anyone can carry a Bible. It takes a disciple to carry a towel.

The invitation is open. The towel is waiting.