Character in a Crisis: Humility

This week is what Christians all over the world call Holy Week—the week leading up to Easter when we celebrate the risen Christ. As I read the story of Jesus’s last gathering with his disciples, I was struck by the character traits that Jesus showed. Traits that allowed him to step boldly toward the cross and purchase our redemption.

It couldn’t have been easy, he knew what awaited him, yet he walked with one purpose: to fulfill the call of God and bring eternal life. 

This week, I want to look a little more closely at the character of Christ as he walked through his own crisis, in hopes that it will help us walk through what is surely our collective time of crisis in the world.

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Humility (John 13:1-11)

Let’s set the scene. Jesus and his disciples have been sharing a meal together, the one commonly known as the Last Supper. Jesus had been preparing his followers all along for the crushing events that would come within the next few hours, but now he has some final words of instruction. It was an intimate time, kind of like a dinner party with your closest friends.

But first, Jesus has one final act to perform. He fills a bowl with water, grabs a towel, and stoops to kneel in front of Peter. Peter is astonished! “What are you doing?!” he cries.

Jesus explains that he is going to wash Peter’s feet, a supreme act of humility. This man who had walked among them, explaining that he was the long-awaited Messiah, the Savior of the world, was now going to minister to his friends in a most humble way—by washing their dirty, stinking feet.

In contrast to Peter’s pseudo-arrogance (“You’ll never wash my feet!”), Jesus kneels and says that this is the only way to have a part of me—to kneel and let me serve you, and for you to sit and allow yourself to be served.

Both postures take humility.

In our current time of crisis, we must follow Jesus’s example of humility. While we don’t have to wash anyone’s feet, we do need to adopt the character of Christ, especially now, when it feels hard.

We must humble ourselves to our authorities who tell us to stay home, whether we like it or not.

We must humble ourselves to our family when we mess up and lose our patience, as we inevitably will. (Raise your hand if you haven’t lost it just a little yet.) (I thought so.)

And sometimes, we must humble ourselves to allow others to minister to us. (A friend sent me flowers this week just because we’re stuck at home. What a gift! I had no idea how much I needed those.)

Humility isn’t easy. It requires us to forget ourselves, to kneel or sit, and to submit to someone else. It sure feels different from our usual got-it-together stance.

But to live in community, to push through our own arrogance, to work together to get through these difficult days, we must remember, and imitate, the humility of Christ.

This week, let’s seek to be a little more like Jesus, who

“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.” Philippians 2:7-8