You have heard it said, "Clothes make the man." Or perhaps it was put this way: "You are what you wear." We may laugh off these old truisms but you and I are more deeply influenced by clothing than we think. Flashy, expensive clothes impress us. So do uniforms. So do specialized occupational and professional clothes.

Why do we quickly reduce our driving speed when we see a uniformed patrolman or immediately feel guilty when a policeman comes to our door? Why will a crowd of otherwise profane men quit swearing when a priest or pastor wearing a backward collar shows up? Why do judges continue to wear robes - and, in England, even wigs? Why are we more apt to believe vitamin ads on TV if the person holding the pills wears a white doctor's coat?

Clothing has an effect on us.

These effects are often achieved because clothing can classify people according to occupation. People do what they wear. In the largest and broadest way, we divide occupations into two groups - the "white collar" and the "blue collar." Even the rather negative term "red-neck" must originally have had something to do with where one worked and what he wore. White collar workers don't get red necks under banks of eight-foot fluorescent tubes. They don't get farmers' tans either.

These divisions and distinctions have an impact on us. We often react to people because of what they wear and what they drive and how they live. We make judgments about them on that basis. As often as not we're wrong, but we do it anyway.

I remember driving a half-dozen of my young hockey players home one day after a practice session. As we dropped one boy off, another looked at his suburban house with its attendant boat and camper in the driveway and said to him, "You must be rich." We all laughed.

As we drove on and dropped off the other boys one by one, the conversation remained centered on which kids on the team were "richest," as far as that could be judged by appearances. Houses, cars, clothing, even hockey equipment was entered into evidence. Everything depended on the "appearance" of affluence.

Finally, when only one boy and I remained in the car, I spotted a man I knew on the street. "See that man?" I said to Paul. "Yeah, that one; the one in jeans and boots and with the hybrid seed corn hat." Paul could see him, but he obviously wasn't impressed. "He and his two brothers," I went on, "own four sections of land west of town. That's over 2500 acres. At today's prices that land is worth about four million dollars." There was a long pause. Then Paul said, "He sure doesn't spend much of it on clothes."

Appearances make an impression and clothing is a big part of that impression. People do dress in certain ways for certain jobs. What they wear and how other people react to what they wear become signals.

Jesus gave his disciples and all of us a gigantic signal when he took that basin of water and began to wash feet. On Holy Thursday, that special Thursday, that mysterious and memorable night when Jesus and his disciples ate their last meal together, Jesus acted out what he had been teaching them for three years. He acted out what it meant to be a servant. He did it with clothing and with water.

Over those years, Jesus had said things about serving, in a dozen different ways and in a dozen different places. Often his teachings about servanthood and humility were prompted by the proud bickering of the disciples, - arguments about who was the greatest among them and who would have the most honored place in the kingdom of heaven.

When they began bickering in these ways, Jesus was apt to say such things as:

"Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave." (Matthew 20:26)

Or:

If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. (Mark 9:33)

Or, he might tell them the parable of the seating arrangements at the banquet, or the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

Again and again, Jesus taught them lessons of humility and service. But what did they do after they ate that beautiful, meaningful, and mystical Last Supper? They began once again to argue and bicker about who was going to be the greatest. (Luke 22:24-27)

By that time there was no time left. On the last night of his life, it was too late for words. Jesus began to act out a lesson in humility. He began with clothing. He took off his cloak and robe, the uniform in which he had spent three years teaching, the clothing of his preaching and healing. He stripped off that uniform of his lordship and laid it aside. He stood there before them naked, stripped to the waist, with no uniform at all.

Then he changed into the uniform of the lowest household slave. He wrapped himself in a towel. His clothing became their bathmat. He wore - he actually became - that on which they would wipe their feet. Jesus, the Son of God, dressed himself as the lowest front-door, foot-washing slave. He acted out his own lesson. He became the least of all and the slave of all.

Nor was this a masquerade. Jesus didn't just slip into the towel and say, "See, see. I'm not afraid to dress like a slave." He wasn't acting a part, like one of those fashion-plate hippies who wear $125 decorator jeans with artistically arranged patches, with just the right shade of bleach, and exactly the most attractive amount of fray on the cuffs.

The role of slave and servant wasn't a short-term game Jesus played only on Holy Thursday. Slavery was for him a lifetime role. He had been playing that role from the beginning and he stayed in it all the way to the cross. Jesus was born a king, but a king who walked through his kingdom on foot as a suffering servant, just as the prophet Isaiah had predicted. Not only did Jesus dress like a slave, he acted like a slave and served like a slave. He took a basin of water and began to wash their feet.

As Jesus went from disciple to disciple, it was almost as if he was baptizing their feet. Some of the disciples merely submitted. They didn't fully understand, but they let Jesus go ahead anyway. He washed their feet, which he then wiped on his towel, on himself.

But not with Peter. For once, Peter knew exactly what was happening and he wanted no part of it. Peter knew who Jesus was. But fully as important, Peter knew who he himself was.

This Peter was the fisherman who once had tried walking on water. It only partly worked, but Peter knew how special it was even to have tried. When he had gotten back safely into the boat, he had said to Jesus, "Truly you are the Son of God." (Matthew 14:33)

This same Peter was the one who had responded to Jesus' question, "Who do you say that I am?" by answering, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." (Matthew 16:16)

This is the same Peter who said of himself to Jesus, "Depart from me, 0 Lord, for I am a sinful man" (Luke 5:8), and of whom Jesus had said, "You are Peter, the rock on which I will build my church." (Matthew 16:18) And, on another occasion, Jesus had said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me." (Matthew 16:23)

Peter had all these mixed feelings about himself and his own place in the kingdom. His image of himself was confused. But when he compared himself to Jesus, he had no mixed feelings at all. He knew who was the sinner and the slave - and who was God and Lord and King.

When Peter saw Jesus wrapped in a towel and washing feet, he was disturbed. It bothered him to see the roles reversed. His feelings were like those of John the Baptist at the Jordan: "You should baptize me," John had said. "I should wash your feet," Peter was saying. "You? Wash mine? Never!"

That was Peter's system. He figured things out in his own way and then acted on those conclusions. He had protested loudly when Jesus predicted his own death and sacrifice. He had pulled a sword in the Garden when Jesus was ready to surrender peacefully. And now, on the most solemn and personal evening of their several years together, on this special night when Jesus took bread and said, "This is my body," and when Jesus took wine and said, "This is my blood," and when Jesus took water and said, "This is my ministry," Simon Peter said, "No."

Peter didn't take long to convince. Jesus quickly said to Peter (maybe mostly with his eyes), "I want to wash you into my ministry, I want to wrap you in my towel of service. I want to share my serving and my servanthood with you."

Peter quickly got the idea and, suddenly, he wanted more: "If a footwashing will make me more like you, then wash me all over. Scrub your ministry, your service, your love into my whole body."

"No," Jesus said, "just your feet. Then you're clean all over."

Peter was given a lesson in symbol and in sacrament. If a little washing was good, Peter was saying, then why not a lot? Because symbol and sacrament don't work that way, Jesus said; because the washing didn't come from the basin, but rather from the heart and to the heart. The water was just a symbol, a sacred sign.

On that night of nights, Jesus said to the disciples (directing it, of course, to Judas), "Not all of you are clean." Jesus could and did wash Judas' feet; he could have scrubbed Judas all over. But Jesus knew - and you and I know - that you can't scrub the heart by washing the feet, or even the whole body.

The heart of man, the fallen and corrupt hearts of all the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve, can only be scrubbed clean by faith and by words and by the declaration of God. The small ritual washing of feet on Holy Thursday only represented what had happened and what would continue to happen to those followers who remained faithful. There was no coming back for Judas; there would be no turning back for Peter and the others, once Jesus had washed them into slavery and service to his cause.

The same is true of those few drops of water that once washed you and me into this great enterprise. And it's true of those tiny sips of wine and those tiny wisps of bread: they remind us again and again that, as Jesus served, we must serve; as he was obedient unto death, we ought at least be obedient in life.

Thus these tiny symbols remind us again and again of truths much larger: a taste of Christ's body fills us with his body; a sip of his blood fills us with his blood, his life; and the splash of water that once drowned our sin can remind us that we are indeed - and continue to be - washed clean all the way through by the servant, the slave who was this world's king and God, our Lord, our Savior, our friend - Jesus the Christ.

Nothing in my hand I bring;Simply to thy cross I cling.Naked, come to thee for dress;Helpless, look to thee for grace;Foul, I to the fountain fly;Wash me, Savior, or I die.(Augustus Montague Toplady, 1740-1778)