John 13:4-9 - … He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”

In this act of love, Jesus Christ (the Son of God, God in the flesh, and God himself) had lowered himself to the status of servant/slave by washing his disciples’ feet. This wasn’t something that a rabbi or teacher should be doing, let alone God. Yet, Jesus used this act of humility & love to demonstrate to Peter the kind of sacrificial love & humility that he would need to have in his own ministry. Jesus didn’t think anything of it to get down and clean his disciples’ feet because he was being obedient to the Father’s will, and we need to be willing to do the same when the Holy Spirit calls us to do so. So, let’s follow Jesus’ example and be willing to lower ourselves from any status we might think we have, even if it is rightfully ours, and take the role of a servant so as to be pleasing to our Father.

To close, in reading this passage, I was reminded of a line from Stephen the Levite’s song “Commissionary” from The Last Missionary, which I will quote in closing:

So in resemblance to the Son of the Father/ we know that us as the chosen play roles like Prince and the Pauper/ proper it is for us to consider it as an honor/ to follow the greater Master and serve the way that He taught us// modeled for us humility, serving the Father willingly/ still in His Deity, the second person of the Trinity/ so even we, as a royal nation of priests/ gotta see that it’s not beneath his peeps to scrub on some feet//