This is the transcript of Mark Goodacre’s short where he gives his answer to the question. He also points out how this story shows a synoptic type of relationship between all four gospels.
Transcript of the video
I’m Mark Goodacre, I’m at the Chinese University of Hong Kong at the moment and at Choong Chee Theological College where I’m lecturing today. There’s this beautiful statue behind me, it’s by Hu Ke and it depicts Jesus washing Peter’s feet. It’s one of those iconic scenes in John’s Gospel and since I’m lecturing on John today it’s particularly joyous that they have this statue.
So John 13, you have this story where it’s Jesus’ last evening with the disciples and he decides that he’s going to wash all of his disciples’ feet in this act of ultimate submission, service, ministry. He does the menial thing, he behaves like a slave with a towel around his body doing this menial work. And a lot of people will say, well why does John do this rather than have the institution of the Eucharist like you have in Matthew, Mark and Luke? And a lot of people think that John is independent of the synoptics and doesn’t know of that story, the institution of the Eucharist.
My own take is that John is actually presupposing the story of the Eucharist from the synoptics. He keeps mentioning the supper and I think he’s evoking the story from the synoptics but he doesn’t need to tell that story because it’s already familiar to the readers. And we know it’s familiar to the readers because when you look at John chapter six, the story of the feeding of the five thousand, you get lots of Eucharistic themes in that setting.
But why does John do this story here? Why does John talk about washing the disciples’ feet and especially Peter’s feet? Well Peter is prominent already in the synoptic narrative of the institution of the Eucharist. It’s when Jesus prophesies that Peter is going to deny him and we have that as well in John chapter 13, alongside the prediction of Judas’s betrayal, which also comes in the synoptics and here in John 13. In fact it’s the longest verbatim link between the synoptic Gospels and John.
There’s a lengthy verbatim link. Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me. But I think the reason why we get this story here in John is it’s basically establishing Jesus as servant, Jesus as servant of the disciples and this is a theme that you get all the way through the synoptic Gospels that’s picked up now in John’s Gospel.
And is there any synoptic inspiration for this story? Well, I think there is because if you look at Luke 22, his story of the institution of the Eucharist, you get material all about Jesus as their servant. It’s material that’s moved from elsewhere in Matthew and Mark, and I think that setting has inspired the fourth evangelist to set this story of the foot washing here in this iconic place in his Gospel. It’s one of those stories that you can return to again and again and again.
It’s a mark of how memorable that last evening with the disciples is in John’s Gospel.
