Downwardly Mobile Service (Excerpt from Chapter 10 of my new book, Be Still and Listen)

For many Christians, the foot washing stands out as one of the most significant events in Jesus’ life. Jesus was known for teaching by example. So, we can’t miss the significance. Jesus does this downwardly mobile service before his final day. Thereby, he establishes the service model. Any who follow Jesus will follow in similar kinds of humble service.

The Jewish and Roman culture of Jesus’ time wasn’t a whole lot different from our own: the point of life was (and is) to succeed, or get on top, and once on top to stay on top, or else attempt to go further up. Salaries need to be ever-increasing. Houses need to keep getting larger. Vacations, longer. Perks, more of them. But here is a man who was in some ways already on top – who was rabbi, teacher, master to these disciples – who suddenly got down on the bottom and began to wash their feet. In that one act Jesus symbolically overturned the social order. Even his own disciples couldn’t comprehend it and were shocked.

Jesus wanted his followers to model downwardly mobile service with their lives. Jesus wanted us to approach the odious smells and the grime in between the toes, to get into the cracks and crevices of broken and dysfunctional human lives.

On the evening of the foot washing a dispute arose among the disciples as to who was greatest. Pointedly, Jesus did not deny the human instinct of competition and ambition. He simply redirected it: “The greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. (Luke 22:26)” In other words, the dominion of heaven is based on downwardly mobile service.

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Also by Amos Smith, Healing the Divide: Recovering Christianity’s Mystic Roots

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