On the night before His arrest, Jesus gathered His disciples for a Passover meal. It’s there that He taught them about service and spiritual authority. Instead of a lengthy discourse, He only spoke briefly about it. What’s rather lengthy was the time that He spent washing the disciples’ feet—all twelve of them! So, He taught them about serving by serving them, not by lecturing them. In his book, Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster insightfully comments, “the spiritual authority of which Jesus spoke was an authority not found in a position or a title but in a towel.” I thank God that in our church I see many walking around with a towel and a basin ready to serve.

God’s way is almost always the opposite of the world’s way. In the world the buzz word is leadership. There are plenty of books on the topic and there is an abundance of leadership training offered to us
who aspire to climb the corporate ladder. Interestingly what is so important to the world is not even mentioned in the Bible. There is no teaching on how to be a leader; there is only teaching on how to
be a servant. Servanthood, not leadership, is what is important to Jesus, as He once said that He came to serve, not to be served.

In the time of Jesus, the act of washing feet was considered one of the lowest jobs, so low that even a servant was not required to do it. The reason is while washing, one had to be positioned down on
the floor and the feet to be washed were usually covered with dirt. That’s what serving is at its truest and highest nature: we clean dirt and position ourselves much lower than the person we serve. God calls us to serve, not only the well and the clean, but also the dirty and the unwell. We clean up their mess and humble ourselves even to the point of having no dignity so we can be of service. And it all begins with a simple act of refusing to be served. Like Jesus, we too say that we come to serve, not to be served. “Where is the towel?”

Pastor Paul