This little company were, as nearly as human beings can be, rooted and grounded in perfect love. The lesson of their lives had been love, taught them by precept from day to day, as he harmonized their contentions and repressed their selfish ambitions; and by example, as he persistently tolerated, loved, bore with a treacherous friend in his own family.
It was necessary that they should be prepared to exercise power, for power was about to be intrusted to them. It was necessary to prepare them to be the governors of the future Christian Church. But he was unwearied in efforts to make them understand that superiority must only be a superiority in doing and suffering for others. When the mother of James and John asked the highest two offices for her two sons, he looked at her with a pathetic sadness. Did she know what she was asking? Did she know that to be nearest to him was to suffer most? He answered: "You know not what you ask. Can you drink of the cup that I shall drink, and be baptized with my baptism?" And when they ignorantly said, "We are able," he said that the place of superiority was not his to give by any personal partiality, but was reserved for the appointment of the Father. But the ambitious spirit now roused had spread to the other disciples. It is said that when the ten heard it they were indignant with James and John. But Jesus called them to him and said:--
"Ye know that they that are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you; but whosoever shall be great among you let him be your minister, and whosoever will be the chiefest let him be servant of all; for even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and give his life a ransom for many."
One of the very last acts of his life, and one of the most affecting comments on these words, was his washing his disciples' feet as a menial servant--a last significant act, which might almost be called a sacrament, since by it he, in view of his dying hour, put this last impressive seal on his teaching of humanity and brotherly love.
The contest which should be the greatest, in spite of all his efforts, all his teachings, all his rebukes, had only smouldered, not been extinguished, and was ready at any moment to flame out again, and all the way up to Jerusalem when he came to die they walked behind him quarreling over this old point. As a dying mother calling her children around her confirms her life-teaching by some last act of love never to be forgotten, so this Master and Friend before the last supper knelt in humility at the feet of each disciple and washed and wiped them, and then interpreted the act as a sign of the spirit in which leadership in his church should be sought: "If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another's feet." In after years the disciples could not but remember that Jesus knelt at the feet of Judas and washed them as meekly as those of all the rest; and then they saw what he meant when he said, "Love your enemies."