Have Americans Forgotten That Humility is a Virtue?

It’s Holy Week on the Christian calendar, so I’m going to write about Jesus today — about what Jesus did on Maundy Thursday two millennia ago. The story is two thousand years old, but it speaks to what’s going on in the US today.

Jesus washed his disciples’ feet.

Jesus on Maundy Thursday

As you may or may not know, Good Friday observes the day of Jesus’s crucifixion. Maundy Thursday observes the night of Jesus’s last meal with his followers.

The Last Supper is a scene many will recognize from Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of Jesus and his disciples sitting down to a meal together. But when I think of Maundy Thursday, it’s not the Last Supper that comes to mind. It’s what Jesus did at the end of that meal.

He wrapped a towel around his waist, poured water into a bowl and washed the feet of his disciples, every last one of them, even the ones who would later, when the going got tough, betray or deny him.

There he was, the Son of God, kneeling before a bunch of fishermen and tax collectors, washing their feet.

Have Americans Forgotten That Humility is a Virtue?

In the Christian scheme of things (and in the scheme of things according to most of the world’s wisdom traditions, as far as I can tell), it is the humble, compassionate and just among us who will ultimately prevail.

That is the message Jesus was driving home to his disciples that night, I think, shocking and stunning them with God’s extreme love for them and for all of God’s human creations.

Which is why I put aside my to-do list on Thursday and drove down the hill to church, where a couple dozen twenty-first-century Christians were gathering to do what Jesus had done. They knelt in front of each other and washed each other’s feet.

They humbled themselves before each other and before God. They embraced humility as the centerpiece of their Christian faith.

Blessed Are the — Meek?

As I watched these goings-on, a line from the Sermon on the Mount came to mind: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

Like most people, when I think of meek, I think of someone who hasn’t the will to stick up for themself. I imagine a Donald Trump style loser. Somebody with no cards, just a pair of twos.

But maybe the meek — the humble — are not so weak. Maybe it takes strength to be humble. Maybe it takes strength to be trusting and hopeful and compassionate and just.

There are a lot of that kind of meek people in the world, I’ve noticed. I had supper with a few of them the other night, the night on the Christian calendar when Jesus assures his people that, in the end, it is the meek who will inherit the earth.

More about the Christian calendar at “The Virgin Blanca and Baby Jesus — Still Smiling This Advent Season After 700 Years.”  Was Jesus a loser? I took up that question back in 2016 with “Jesus Was a Loser — Does That Make Donald Trump a Winner?”