Ideally, I’d have written this post yesterday and posted it early today; but I’m late. On the plus side, I can share what I heard in tonight’s gospel lection while I was at church. Here’s the part that struck me:

And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. —John 13:3-5 (NRSV)

We often talk about Jesus’ humility: He’s God, but comes to earth as a human, born into a colonized people, born into poverty. He takes up a vocation that ensures he’ll be poor, and sides with people on the margins of the social order. He doesn’t seek accolades, and dies a particularly shameful death.

In the longer pericope from John 13, Jesus instructs his disciples to imitate him. We see this theme elsewhere in Scripture: that we ought to follow Jesus’ example of humility. And I think if we’re to do that, we need to notice how Jesus is able to exercise such humility. He knew that his “Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God…” The text connects this so closely to his action it almost sounds like Jesus was eating, then remembered his origin in God and quick jumped up to wash his disciples’ feet. What a strange response to remembering who he is.

Or is it? We find a similar connection in Philippians chapter 2:5-11

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

In other words, his ability to act in extreme humility seems to be drawn from his self-awareness and security in his identity. He doesn’t need to do anything to protect his ego, or shore up his status. He’s God. Nothing will change that. This gives him freedom to act as he does at the Last Supper.

How are we to imitate that? We’re not God; our status and security are precarious. So we find ourselves acting in ways that protect our ego and position us roughly where we want to be in the social order. Jesus does turn that order on its head, throughout the Gospels. Sure, we should be much less concerned with it than we are…but we’re also social animals with strong instincts to care how we’re perceived by other people and safeguard our belonging in a group.

However, Jesus’ example invites us, I think, to locate our identity in God, as God’s beloved and co-heirs with Jesus of God’s kingdom. So established, we are now free to behave, like Jesus, as if our station in life and how we’re perceived by others are no threat to our true status and identity. We are free to perform service for others that would otherwise seem beneath our dignity (to ourselves or to others).

I’m not very good at this. I tried, this Lent, to focus on ignoring the cultural messages about who I am and what I’m worth, but I’m going to need a lot more practice at that then I’ve gotten in a mere forty days.

But I’ve heard humility defined precisely this way. When you are secure in who you are, when you have a proper assessment of it, then you have no need of pandering to your own ego’s insecurities.

I also have to comment on a part of the reading from John’s gospel that always makes me laugh.

Peter, apparently cognizant of matters of status, tries to stop Jesus from washing his feet: Jesus is above such a thing! But Jesus says, “If you don’t let me do this, then you have no part in me.” So Peter, apparently wanting to really belong, blurts, “Then not just me feet—wash all of me!”

Jesus’ response always strikes me as: “Peter. Didn’t you shower this morning?”