Sermon Transcript
John chapter 13, verses 3 to 9. Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. 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.
Well, as Nate said, we’re beginning a new series today entitled A Better Story. What Nate didn’t tell you, and you wouldn’t have known unless you were really paying attention to our slides is we always give credit to the composer and songwriter on the slides, whoever wrote the song, even if it was a long time ago. And that A Better Story song was written by Nate and Laura.
That’s pretty cool, right? Yeah, it was like in my head this week, and then I told Nate, I was like, I have your song in my head. They did. That’s awesome, right? So tell them they did a good job because they did.
Um, our primary goal with this series, uh, is to help Christians be able to share their faith in a thoughtful and compelling way to non-Christians. We found most Christians want to be able to share their faith with their friends, neighbors, colleagues, But whenever they try, they either don’t know what to say, or it all comes out wrong, or it feels forced, and it’s awkward, and it’s ineffective. So Christians feel kind of bound up, like we can’t share our faith. And therefore, our friends, neighbors, and colleagues are missing the greatest treasure that exists. And when we think about that, we feel a little guilty.
But at the same time, we also feel justified staying quiet because we’re convinced there is no way to share our faith that won’t push people away or that won’t ruin a relationship. That’s our experience. That’s what’s happened in our life. Can you relate to that? If so, we want to help.
We want this series to help. We want to give you some tools, or perhaps just a way to think about sharing your faith that hopefully flows naturally into conversations that you are already having, um, and in a way that doesn’t ruin anything and doesn’t push people away from Christ but makes them more curious about Christ, that doesn’t end a friendship but that, if anything, deepens a friendship. That’s our primary goal, which is a big goal. So for 6 Sundays including today, we are going to walk through 6 different conversations that you are likely already having and give you ways in which you can share your faith in Christ in the context of those conversations. The 6 conversations are power, which is today, the vulnerable, purpose, justice, friendship, and self-worth.
And we’ll spend one week on each one of those topics. And I’m telling you, our friends, neighbors, colleagues already talk about these 6 really weighty themes. You can tell these are not superficial topics. It’s not like, what’s your favorite place for ice cream? We’re not bridging to Christ from that.
These are weighty, which means they are likely only conversations that you are going to have with people that you’re already pretty close to. This series will probably not help us with cold call evangelism, like you walk up to random people and tell them about Jesus. That’s not what we’re trying to do here. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. I think that’s great.
You see that all the time in scripture. That’s just not what we’re trying to help you with in this particular series. We are trying to help you bridge from conversations you are already having with your friends, neighbors, peers that they bring up, which means they are willing to have a conversation about that topic because they brought it up, which then gives us permission to share our perspective on that topic. And then here’s the best part: on all these topics— power, the vulnerable, purpose, justice, friendship, self-worth— Jesus is a better story. He really is far superior to any other perspective on these topics.
But don’t get ahead of me, okay? When we share how Jesus is a better story, it is not like, I have a better story than you. It’s not that. It’s not arrogant. Because I know what some of you are thinking.
You just want some way to prove other people wrong and show yourself as smarter. You want to posture yourself as the true intellectual heavyweight. Um, and that is not what we are doing. That is not the purpose of this material. Instead, we are presenting Christ as beautiful as he is.
That is our primary goal. Madeleine Engle said in her book Walking on Water, she says, we do not draw people to Christ— we do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe or by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are. That’s not how we do it. But she says, we draw people to Christ by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it. That’s our primary goal.
She said it better than I can. Be able to articulate Christ as beautiful as he is to people who do not know him. That’s our primary goal. But our secondary goal is to help all of us here, whether we are Christian or not, to develop our own faith. You might be a Christian, but you might not think that Christianity is a better story on the topics of power, the vulnerable, purpose, justice, friendship, and self-worth.
You might think that Christianity is out of date or irrelevant to our everyday lives. Maybe you only participate in Christianity because it’s your tradition or your heritage, or it’s some kind of ritual for you. And you are not often inspired by Jesus. Or you might not be a Christian at all, and you might be wondering what this Christianity thing is all about. Like, how did Christianity grow from a tiny persecuted sect of a minority religion in the corner of an empire?
How did it grow from that to be the most practiced faith in the world? Like, why did it win out over so many other ideologies? Why do some serious intellectuals still hold on to it? I mean, for, for real, hasn’t Reddit and Twitter disproven Christianity like a million times? What is still so compelling about it for so many people?
That’s our secondary goal. First goal, how to share Spirit. Second goal, develop our own faith. That’s what we’re doing for 6 Sundays. So let’s get to it.
Power. Uh, as we study our text for today, which is a pretty famous account— Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, it’s pretty famous— we will see, one, the newness of Jesus’ approach to power, and 2, our need for Jesus’ approach to power. The newness of and the need for Jesus’ approach to power. And along the way, we’ll give some very specific examples of how to share Jesus’ approach to power with our friends, neighbors, colleagues. So first, the newness of Jesus’ approach to power.
Jesus says he’s going to wash Peter’s feet, and Peter freaks out. Peter says, you shall never wash my feet. Peter is offended by the notion that Jesus would serve him in such a way. It shocks Peter so much that he yells at Jesus, you, my master and my teacher, are going to serve me? Absolutely not!
He says. It was unconscionable to Peter, but today, generally, we think that’s what leaders should do. Not specifically wash feet, that’s disgusting. It was then too. But we think leaders should serve those that they lead.
We think leaders shouldn’t be served, we think they should serve. That’s what we think. But Peter thought the opposite, which means we don’t realize how formed by Christianity that we are. It feels natural to us that leaders should use their power to elevate those around them. You take a leadership class and talk about what should leaders do with their power, it’s empower others.
By the way, that wasn’t in leadership literature until 1977 when Robert Greenleaf wrote it. Didn’t happen in leadership literature until then, okay? But now we think that’s what leaders should do. It just seems intuitive right now. In fact, we feel repulsed by leaders who use their power to keep themselves in power.
We feel repulsed by leaders who would use their power to squash others. We think there’s something wrong with that, and we refuse to work for people like that. Like, if a company is going bankrupt but the CEO has somehow managed to give him or herself a million-dollar raise kind of on the way out as the sink ship we’re like, that’s messed up. Right? We say, shouldn’t people use their power not to benefit themselves, but instead shouldn’t they use their power to benefit others?
Like, wouldn’t that be better? I mean, it’s not like a law or something, but it just seems like the right thing to do.
It seems like the right thing to do to us. Us, because whether we realize it or not, we have been Christianized. The idea that a leader would give up his or her power in order to empower others, that was not a thing before Jesus. Think about it. At the time of Jesus, what were leaders doing?
What was Rome doing? Rome was expanding through military conquests. Like, who can we pummel and force into servitude? That was part of the glory of Rome, right? Dominating others.
You look at Roman gods or the Greek gods, they, they are always fighting with each other to gain more power for themselves. They literally idolized gods who would do that. It was virtuous to them to conquer and dominate. Right. And if you were a servant in ancient times, it was only because you had been defeated somehow.
Servitude meant that you had lost. Maybe you lost the genetic lottery, the family you’re born into. You lost in a literal battle. You made bad financial decisions, and now you needed to sell yourself into servitude. It was never, ever a good thing to be a servant.
You would never voluntarily lower your status. If you did, it would be like humiliating yourself. It’s why Peter freaks out. Lord, you’re making a fool out of yourself. You’re acting as if you’ve been conquered.
Don’t, don’t do that, Jesus. Now, of course, you could help people from your position of power. That was seen as good. Help wasn’t bad. But you wouldn’t do it at the cost of your dignity.
You wouldn’t do it by the cost of lowering your position. Um, in the, in the eyes of others. Like, you notice the disciples never fuss when Jesus heals people or feeds people. He’s like, that’s great, because he’s not humiliating himself. So charity was not new.
Even sacrifice was not new, because it could be costly to help people sometimes. But lowering yourself, giving up your status and its perks, that was new. This is trackable in history. Before Jesus, becoming a servant or a leader dropping in status was only described in a negative context. If you once had power and now you didn’t have power for some reason, it was only negative.
Always. No exceptions. John Dixon, PhD in ancient history, he’s a visiting academic at Oxford, serves full-time in Melbourne, though generally acknowledged as being one of the first on the scene to document the utter uniqueness of Jesus the ancient Greco-Roman world. He writes, lowering oneself before an equal was not regarded as morally advisable or sound. And he claims the term for humility used in the New Testament never carried a positive connotation in Greco-Roman literature.
He says the Greco-Roman world and the Israelites before them would sometimes celebrate leaders who practice a moderation of their power for the sake of others. But humility, on the other hand, involves not a moderation of power and status but a deliberate forgoing of such valuable ancient commodities.
For the first couple centuries after Jesus, only Christian literature painted being a servant or lowering yourself in a positive light. Like Philippians 2, you might remember, right? Consider others better than yourselves that kind of thing, only in Christian literature in a positive context for centuries. It did not exist other places. People did not consider it virtuous.
And it wasn’t, again, until centuries after Jesus that something like consider others better than yourselves began to show up in a positive context in other types of literature. Even Richard Dawkins, some of you might know that name, he’s a well-known modern atheist, author of numerous books attempting to dismantle faith. Especially, he likes to dismantle faith in Christianity, and he takes every opportunity he has to say something disparaging about Jesus. I’d say most of the time unfairly. But even Richard Dawkins writes in his book, The God Delusion, that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the turn the other cheek, the love your enemies, this idea of elevating others at cost to yourself, Dawkins says, quote, was way ahead of its time and anticipated Gandhi and Martin Luther King by 2,000 years.
No one had done it.
When Jesus gets down on his knees to serve his disciples, taking the form of the lowliest servant, because only the lowest servants would wash feet, right? So Jesus didn’t only lower himself, but he lowered himself just about as far as you could go. No one had done it. And Peter freaks out. But as we now know, it’s a better story.
Leaders using their power to serve those around them is a better story than leaders hoarding power for themselves. It is a better story than dominating others. It is a better story than leaders using their power to make themselves look more important. It’s better, and it started with Jesus. That is trackable in history.
It’s trackable. So, as it relates to us in evangelism, when your friend, neighbor, colleague says— makes a statement about power, like— these happen all the time— Kim Jong-un shouldn’t starve his people to enrich himself. Putin shouldn’t try to dominate Ukraine. CEOs shouldn’t make the employees work 100 hours a week while they relax on a yacht, right? People make statements about power all the time.
Your friends have opinions on power, how power should be used, and they share those opinions with you. You don’t need to bring it up, right? They will start the conversation, and when they do, you can respond. This is what I do. I say, Okay, so what’s the proper use of power?
What’s the best use of power? I just asked the question. It doesn’t feel like I’m forcing my beliefs on anyone. It’s just continuing the conversation that they brought up. And honestly, it’s deepening the conversation.
It’s making it richer. I say, I agree, I don’t think leaders should squash others to benefit themselves.
But what should leaders do then? Maybe I’m weird. If this doesn’t work for you, like, find another way. But it’s not awkward for me to begin with a question. It’s a natural way to move people along to Jesus.
We’re not to Jesus yet. This is just step 1, but it’s an important step. And with any of these steps, listen, I’m not giving you a script to follow. I’m not telling you, like, if you say this, your friend will say that, and then you can be like, gotcha, you’re a Christian now. It’s not.
That’s not this, right? These are like living conversations with real people that we truly care about. These conversations will take much more time than anything that I could like diagram for you, and it won’t be just one conversation. Your friends talk about power a lot, especially if there’s some huge issue going on in the world. So over time, you will get to interact on many different occasions and you can share Jesus’ approach to power in many different ways.
I’m just trying to give you a trajectory of conversations, not a script, okay? Not a script, a trajectory. All right, so your friends are upset about how someone’s using power, and you say, I agree, I agree too, I’m upset, this is ridiculous. You go back and forth for a little while on how ridiculous whatever the situation is, but then you can say, you know, now that you bring it up, How should a leader use power? To which your friends will likely give a very Christian answer, even though they don’t know that it’s a Christian answer.
They will say something like, leaders should use their power to help others.
To which you can respond, totally, I think so too. And you can give us some examples of good leaders out in the world, maybe the best boss you ever had, bad. Bring that person up. But then you can add, you know, the world hasn’t always thought that’s what leaders should do with their power, right? It wasn’t in leadership literature until 1977, and long before that, like, dominating others was considered a virtue.
Like what Putin’s doing right now, once upon a time, that’s what every nation did. That’s what you were supposed to do. That was part of the glory of the nation, like, who have we conquered lately? But now we call it grotesque. We even call it evil.
Why?
Why is it wrong? When did the world’s opinion change? We’re getting deeper now.
But again, for me, it’s not awkward to ask that question. I’m a generally curious person. I ask questions all the time. I moved to California almost 6 years ago. I still have all kind of questions about California, and I ask them.
I’m like, people who have lived here all their life, I’m like, hey, I got a question. Why doesn’t every Starbucks have a drive-through?
What? Why doesn’t every bank have a drive-through ATM? Like, what do you guys have against drive-throughs out here? Did you— have you noticed this? Everywhere else there are drive-through Starbucks and drive-through ATMs, like all over the place, and not California.
I’m like, what’s the deal, California? I— it’s natural for me to ask questions. I just, I just do it. It just comes out of me, okay? So if that’s not you, find your own way.
But I’m telling you, it’s pretty non-offensive to just be curious and ask. So, you’ve just asked, when did it become grotesque or evil to dominate others for the sake of more power?
Because the world hasn’t always been like that.
I don’t know what your friend will say to that. Your friend’s probably never thought about it before. My friends say something like, that’s true, it did change. Nations used to invade and dominate, and now we stopped. At least we’ve stopped calling it good.
I don’t know why it changed. Then usually they’ll say, I guess we just figured out it works better, like social evolution. It was trial and error over the millennia of human history, and we found out this is a good way to go. To which you can say, I’ve actually heard it was Jesus who introduced this concept to the world. That it started with him.
If you want to sound pretentious, you could quote John Dickson or Richard Dawkins, or you just tell the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. They may have heard of it before since it’s used as an example in so much leadership literature now. Or you could easily jump straight to the crucifixion, which is where Jesus gave up everything to elevate others. I mean, you want to talk about lowering your status and giving up perks in order to benefit others, that’s the ultimate example, right? Crucifixion is the worst humiliation and shame that humans have ever invented, and Jesus voluntarily did it for the sake of others.
That is the story. That is the Christian story. You can tell your friend, like, whether you believe it or not, man, like, that is the Christian message. The God of the universe stepped down to nothing to lift fallen humanity. That’s a pretty good story.
Now, of course, not all Christians use their power like Jesus did, unfortunately. And there have been so many examples of massive failings over, like, multiple centuries from numerous Christian leaders, right? There’s been some really tragic events, and we don’t need to pretend that those didn’t happen, like, in Christian history. But still, God becoming nothing, even carrying our shame, is the Christian story. And now you’re just able to bring that up in a conversation.
We haven’t said the whole story yet because we haven’t gotten to our personal need for Christ, and we’ll get there in a minute. But before we do, if your friend is willing to listen further, you can go further. I do, because maybe I’m weird, but I say serving others isn’t just what Jesus did. It’s who Jesus was. It’s actually the nature of God.
The Christian idea of the Trinity— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit— is that each, each glorify the other. Each person within the Trinity is for the other persons and is not self-serving. Each person elevates others, not self. It’s who God is. It’s not just what Jesus does.
God is not self-serving, even within himself. Now here’s why you would bring that up, because I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, you really expect me to bring up the Trinity in a conversation with non-Christians? Come on. Okay, you don’t have to, but here’s why you might want to.
Because if we believe that is— it is a virtue to lower yourself in order to raise others, if we call that good— and we do— wouldn’t God, if there is one, wouldn’t God need to personify everything that is virtuous? Wouldn’t God need to be like the ultimate good? And if so, only the Christian God can legitimately claim to be fully and always others-centered, because only the Christian God is Trinity, and therefore he is the only one who, even within himself, can always be outward-focused. He really can be all about someone else without a shred of selfishness, even within himself. Only the Trinity can pull that off.
Every other god is going to be inward, self-serving, at least to some extent. To which your friend will probably say, uh, whatever, so where are we going for lunch? Um, and this is why our aim with this material is not only to try to show that Christianity is true or interesting. Our goal is to show that Christianity is needed. These conversations must expose our personal need for Christ, or they are not evangelistic.
So let’s talk about the need for Jesus’ approach to power. Look here, verse 8 again. Jesus tells Peter, unless I wash you, unless I serve you, you will have no part of me. Jesus isn’t introducing, or isn’t just introducing, a new leadership model. Model.
Empowering others isn’t just like more effective in the workplace than being selfish. What Jesus did for us is needed. It meets a need that we personally have, not, not just a need that humanity has like in general, because we will much more freely admit that the general population is messed up and needs to be redeemed We’ll be like, oh yeah, sure, people are bad news. We’ll admit that way faster than we will admit I am messed up and need to be redeemed. But if we can’t see that, if we don’t receive what Jesus did, if we don’t believe his sacrifice specifically for us on an individual level, we will have no part of him.
So in our conversations, if we only say Jesus did something new, Isn’t that interesting? In world history, we, we haven’t done evangelism. Even if we somehow show the Trinity is a compelling and inspirational philosophical proposition, we still haven’t gotten to the gospel. We haven’t shared what Christ did for us, why we need it, and what our response must be. And with— again, with this material, our primary goal is to be evangelistic, so we must must specifically share our need.
So how do we do that, and how do we get there from having a conversation about the proper use of power? Let’s review. Um, your friend says Putin is engaging in terrorism, and you’re like, I agree, that’s terrible. Hard to believe anyone would do that. Leaders shouldn’t use their power to attack or dominate others.
And your friend says, preach! Do your friends not say that? Mine don’t either, actually. Um, but you, you continue. You’re like, uh, so how should leaders use their power?
Um, and your friend says, to help others. And then you say, preach! But then you add, why do you think we believe that? Like, where did that come from? Like nowadays, we— like, it’s crazy.
We so adamantly believe that leaders should not dominate others, like, that is so entrenched in our minds that even Putin must frame his attack through his propaganda that he’s being like self-defensive versus on the offensive attack. Putin, even he, even him, he can’t say, I just want my empire to grow. No, he can’t say that. There’s too much pressure around him of what a leader ought to be. Where did that come from?
Because it wasn’t always that way. Wait, do you think Genghis Khan felt that way? Do you think he had that kind of pressure on him? Like, do you think Genghis Khan had to say he was defending something when he attacked, or could he just say, I want my empire to grow?
He could be boldly offensive, and people didn’t question it. Yeah, that’s what leaders do with power. So, the world changed. Why did it change? And your friend will say, oh, it just works better.
And you say, yeah, it does work better, but I think it’s deeper than that. And this is where we’re getting to something new. There must be a deeper reason than simple utility. You know, optimization of human interactions. It’s got to be deeper than working better, because we almost become emotional when we see someone with power give up their power in order to give life to someone else or help someone else.
It’s almost emotional for us. It strikes a chord so deep we didn’t even really know was there. When Tony Stark puts on the gauntlet and snaps his fingers, When Anna turns to solid ice protecting Elsa, when Gandalf stays behind to battle the fire demon so the rest of the fellowship can escape, what do we say? Do we say, ooh, that’s the optimal behavior for human interactions. That just works.
Good utility there. Gandalf is plunging to the depths of the earth. Do we say, oh yeah, it looks like that team’s going to be more effective than teams whose members are out for themselves? No, that’s not what we say. We know it’s deeper than that, right?
The concepts of my life, my power, my influence should be used to elevate others is deeper than utility. It is written into the fabric of the universe. Similarly, when we see someone with power use that power to grab more power for themselves, right? Putin, Mufasa’s brother Scar in The Lion King, when Scar takes the throne from Simba. We see those things and we know it’s deeper than just inefficient, right?
Yes, that type of leadership doesn’t work well. Of course. But that’s not all, right? It’s wrong. It cuts against the fabric of the universe somehow.
And we know it. It’s written in our hearts. The God who is others-centered, even in his most intrinsic nature, created the universe to be others-centered. And if we buck against that, We feel it, and our friends feel it too.
So at this point, maybe your friends will agree, yeah, it is deeper than utility. Maybe they won’t, I don’t know. But either way, you can continue the Christian story for why goodness and sacrifice, humility, forsaking oneself for others is lodged so deep in our hearts is because we know we need the God of the universe to lay down his power for us. We know it’s our only hope. Our trouble, our plight, it’s worse than Anna turning to ice.
It’s worse than Thanos turning half the universe to ash. It’s worse than the Fellowship facing the Balrog.
We have a humiliation and a shame because of what we’ve done, because of our sin. And we need someone to carry that for us, to redeem us, to give us status before God that we have lost. We in fact need the God of the universe substituted in our place. We need Jesus to volunteer to be humiliated instead of us, to carry our shame for us, to give himself up for us. If Tony Stark, Anna, and Gandalf are good stories— and they are Because they gave up almost everything they had to save others?
They didn’t give up everything because they were able to hang on to their status and dignity. They didn’t give up everything. If those are good stories, then Jesus giving up everything he has, including his status and dignity, in order to save us is a great story. Jesus took our place on the cross. He took the penalty that our sin deserves.
He carried our shame. And then he rose to life again, showing that our sin and its penalty and its shame are gone forever because he won. He beat it. He was victorious even over our darkest sin and its penalty. It did not keep him in the grave.
That’s our story, and it’s better, and we need it.
If you aren’t a Christian, do you know that you need it?
You do.
Cry out to Jesus right now. Say, take my sin, take its penalty, take my shame. I trust that you have defeated it, Jesus, on the cross and raised victorious to life again over it. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for being a God that is not selfish, that is giving, that is other-centered.
Thank you for rescuing us, Lord. Thank you for valuing others above yourself in Christ, even though Christ is the most valuable. Thank you for taking our sin and its penalty and our shame. I pray that we trust you, Lord. I pray you help us articulate the goodness and brightness and beauty of you, uh, to others.
We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
