Jesus Is Humble

Have you ever been at a wedding and being ever so slightly cheesed off when you saw the table plan?

I have.

I thought that I was a pretty close friend of the couple, but not only did I find myself on a table in the very back corner of the room, but I was on the side of the table as far away from the bride and groom as it was possible to be.

Shunned.

I was annoyed that day because I lack humility and thought I was more important than everybody else.

Humility is not a particularly sought-after characteristic in our society (Churchill once described someone as ‘a humble man, who has much to be humble about’!), but in the Bible, it is considered as the ultimate virtue and one that God himself exemplifies.

The old church father John Chrysostom once said, “humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation and bond of all virtue.”

24 “A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. 25 Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. 26 But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. 27 For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

In today’s reading, we find Jesus’s disciples arguing about who is the greatest. Much like me at the wedding, they all had a perception of where they ranked in the pecking order, and each wanted to establish their own claim to the top spot.

Jesus answered them in a surprising way. He didn’t tell them that the desire to be great was wrong, but rather explained that true greatness is found in being the lowest rather than the highest. It is by voluntarily serving others that we embody the kingdom of God.

This is a lesson that Jesus taught with more than mere words. His life was the life of a servant. When the disciples argued who would wash the feet of the group, Jesus stepped in and took on the task himself. His whole mission was to lay himself down to the very lowest place and give himself for us all.

As it says in Philippians 2, “…though he was in the form of God, (he) did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Jesus is our humble king, and he calls us to follow him.