The extreme importance of the example of footwashing is now made clear by a remarkable series of emphatic statements. Nothing else in the Gospel of John is insisted upon like this. It is all the more forceful by contrast with the lack of such imperatives connected with earlier actions of Jesus, beginning with the first sign of turning water into wine. The one exception, the feeding of the five thousand, is very significant: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink