Pilate washed hands. Jesus washed feet. Here’s your choice today…
[Pontius Pilate] took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!” (Matthew 27:24)
Pilate wanted nothing to do with the prisoner, Jesus of Nazareth. So he tried to make him someone else’s problem, pawning him off on the Pharisees and Herod (see John 18:31 and Luke 23:6-7). But ultimately, Jesus wound up back at Pilate’s doorstep.
Exasperated, Pilate succumbed to political pressure and agreed to have Jesus crucified. But not before one final act of trying to absolve himself of responsibility. Today’s passage says that Pilate “washed his hands in front of the crowd” and said, "It is your responsibility." In other words, “This is not my problem.”
Just hours earlier, Jesus was doing a bit of washing himself. “He poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet,” to clean their external filth as a symbolic act of the deeper internal filth he was about to wash clean on the cross (see John 13:1-17).
The contrast could not be starker. While Pilate washed his hands to distance himself from a mess he did not create, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet to draw near to a mess he did not create.
If we desire to image Christ, we will do the same.
Know a struggling colleague who is dragging down the team’s productivity? The "Pilate move" is to distance yourself so their failure doesn't rub off on your reputation. But the way of Jesus may be to use your experience to quietly coach them.
Did you recently inherit an underperforming team? It is easy—and perhaps even justified—to "wash your hands" of the previous manager’s mistakes by simply firing everyone and starting over. But imaging Christ may look like leaning into the mess and doing the slow, dirty work of individual mentorship.
See a broken process that is causing frustration at work? The natural response is to complain that it’s not your job and wait for someone else to fix it. But God may lead you to roll up your sleeves and take ownership of a problem you didn’t cause for the sake of the team’s flourishing.
We are called to “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus…who…made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant” to clean up messes he didn’t create (Philippians 2:5-7). So here’s my charge for you today: Spot one mess at work you didn’t make. Refuse to wash your hands of it, but instead, embody the way of Jesus and wash those proverbial feet. Christ’s glory will shine brighter as you do.
