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THE ROAD TO GREATNESS LEADS DOWN

In the classic story, "The Prince and the Pauper," everything gets turned upside-down when the rich kid is suddenly in poverty, and vice versa. Or maybe you recall the old, old "Planet of the Apes" series where men were the inferior species and where the monkeys ran everything.

Well, that particular rerun probably wouldn't make NBC's "Must-See" Thursday night list, but our focus all this week is on a particular Thursday evening back in the year 31 A.D., and the spiritual truths God is trying to tell us we absolutely MUST SEE.

Only the book of John shares the quiet, understated incident that literally turns the spiritual world upside-down. In chapter 13, Jesus and His 12 disciples have come to a furnished upper room to have the Passover meal; it's going to be their last time together before Christ goes to Calvary. Of course, He knows that and they don't. Their minds are still set on earthly kingdoms and political power and Jerusalem-based thrones — twelve of them. They're less than 24 hours away from the cross, and they have no clue.

Now, here's the event God tells us is must-see. Verse four from the Clear Word paraphrase:

"Before the meal, [Jesus] stood up and removed His outer robe, took a towel, tucked it in at His waist and prepared to wash His disciples' feet. No one else offered to do it, so He poured water into a basin and washed each man's feet and then dried them with the towel that was at His waist."

Now, does this sound like such a big story? Matthew, Mark, and Luke don't even mention it. It probably didn't take more than a minute per man, 12 minutes total, to accomplish this small task. And true, we sense a bit of the upside-down-ness of this: Jesus, after all, is their Lord and Master and Savior. He's the Teacher and they're the "teach-ees." He leads, they follow. One of them should wash His feet and not the other way around. But let me add a bit more to this.

Obviously, the washing of visitors' feet would be a servant's job. But it was actually worse than that. In his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey digs back into history and tells us:

"In those days, foot washing was considered so degrading that a master could not require it of a Jewish slave."

And without a lot of talk, Jesus quietly did this job, this lower-than-a-servant's menial task. For these 12 men who were perspiring with pride, jostling for position, all wanting to sit by the window and get the corner office, He got down on His knees and was a servant to them.

But here's the important thing for us to notice and remember. This wasn't just a good deed, where the leader does the lowly thing. And where onlookers could shrug and say, "Okay, He's Jesus. He did something nice and humble. Let's move along." Friend, this quiet, 12-minute act was a huge turning point, a pivotal moment, a Lesson #1. It was a penetrating spotlight in the eyes of these 12 blinded men, and it is supposed to serve that same purpose today as we think about it.

The Christian magazine for pastors, Leadership, recently included the following anecdote courtesy of the Joke Distribution Network. The 12 disciples are right here, and maybe you and I are too.

"Introduction to property law from a toddler's perspective: If I like it, it's mine. If I can take it away from you, it's mine. If I had it a while ago, it's mine. If I say it's mine, it's mine. If it looks like mine, it's mine. If I say I saw it first, it's mine. If you're having fun with it, it's mine. If you lay down your toy, it's mine. If it is broken . . . it's yours."

Well, Peter and James and John and Judas and the others sat down to that Last Supper with thoughts of "Mine! Mine! Mine!" in their heads. They honestly did not understand about surrender and about humility, and they had absolutely no concept whatever that Jesus Christ, their best Friend, was about to humble Himself and willingly submit to death on a cross — even though He had told them this. For some reason, the "Mine! Mine! Mine!" attitude of pride kept His teachings from getting through to them.
Here's another paragraph from the book we read from yesterday, Bill Hybels' Descending Into Greatness:

"Deeply ingrained Me First patterns — to say nothing about our sin nature — cannot be broken overnight. It is no surprise that Jesus had to devote tremendous time and effort to teaching His followers a new way of living. It was a curious form of language He used to teach them, almost as if He reversed the common usage of terms: ‘Mine' became ‘yours,' ‘getting' became ‘giving,' and ‘ruler' became ‘servant.' Jesus' conversations with His disciples became confusing at times, as when two men try to talk to one another in different languages." And then Hybels adds this, which might apply to any of us too: "This was especially true in His interactions with Peter. As hard as he tried, Peter often seemed to hear Jesus wrong. Jesus said ‘kingdom'; Peter heard ‘rule.' Jesus said ‘stand firm'; Peter heard ‘fight.'"

And I guess when words simply didn't work anymore, when even the Master Teacher didn't have vocabulary to get through to these 12 hard heads, He took off His robe and donned a servant's towel, and just SHOWED them. For 12 silent, sweaty, embarrassed minutes He showed them heaven. He showed them the upside-down nature of the eternal kingdom.
And then He said to them, beginning in verse 12:

"Now let Me explain why I washed your feet. You call me Lord, and that's right, because I am your Lord. So, if I'm willing to do anything to serve you, even what you consider a menial task like washing dirty feet, you should be willing to do the same for one another, no matter how demeaning it might seem for you. I've given you an example of love. That's how I want you to love each other."

So Jesus taught them with a deed, and then He looked them in the eyes and taught them with clear words. And what a paradigm shift, a new theology! This was a moral U-turn for the men, when Jesus said to them:

"Whoever wants to become great among you" — well, that was for sure all 12 of them — "must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many."

I have to confess something. I belong to a denomination which practices this ordinance or ceremony of washing each other's feet. In the Adventist tradition, every time we partake of Communion or the Lord's Supper, we also kneel down and wash the feet of another believer. Some wonder if John 13:14, where Jesus says, "You also should wash each other's feet," was meant just for the disciples, or for us as well. In any case, it's a wonderful tradition and a powerful teaching tool.

But even as we're doing it, it's easy to miss this "Must-See" moment. The mind wanders; old jealousies and built-up feelings of pride might get a bit damp, but they don't quite get washed away. We begin to argue like Peter did: "Lord, I don't need this! I can't accept this!" Friend, it's such a challenge to LEARN, to really see what we're seeing from this incredible Thursday evening, that the kingdom of God truly is built on the principle of DESCENDING into greatness.
In his book, Kingdoms in Conflict, Watergate big shot Chuck Colson, who sat in the Oval Office more than a few times, writes this:

"The lure of power can separate the most resolute of Christians from the true nature of Christian leadership, which is service to others." And then this observation is so true: "It's difficult to stand on a pedestal and wash the feet of those below."

You know, friend, I really think this is a "Must-See" lesson; don't you agree? We need to watch this Thursday evening video, and then just rewind it and watch it again and again. Every time we edge toward that pedestal.

In a wonderful confessional book entitled very simply Fatal Conceit, former PTL president Richard Dortch writes about the experiences in politics and power which finally sent him to prison, along with Jim Bakker. And then this quiet anecdote from the relentlessly power-driven years of Adolf Hitler's reign of terror:

"Leslie Weatherhead, an English pastor whose church was destroyed by Nazi bombs during World War II, wrote: ‘When I am hot and rebellious, bitter and cynical and sarcastic, when it seems evil can win in the world and the battle is strong, when it seems as though pride possesses all the high places and greatness belongs to those who can grab the most, when it seems that faith is mocked and humility is trodden in the dust, when pity seems weakness and sympathy, folly, when a foul egotism rises up within me bidding me assert myself, serve my own interests and look out for number one, then, my God, as I listen down the corridors of the years as I listen for the voice of the Almighty, may I hear the gentle splashing of water in a basin and see the Son of God washing the disciples' feet."