A visiting speaker to our church several years ago told of noticing one particular flight attendant on his trip. She seemed kind-hearted and attentive to everyone’s needs.

As the preacher exited the plane, he commented to this flight attendant that he had appreciated her kindness and care of her passengers. He ended by saying, “You have a real servant’s heart.”

The flight attendant was all smiles until the last line. She bristled, offended at being called a servant.

In Christian circles, saying someone has a servant’s heart is a compliment.

But to the world, “servant” connotes elitism, class differences, and degradation.

When Jesus lived on Earth, He turned conventional thinking on its head in many ways.

One of those ways was in the area of greatness and service. He told His disciples, after two of them asked for positions at His side in His coming kingdom:

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave [or bondservant], even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:25-28).

Jesus Himself provided an example of serving others. Throughout His ministry, He healed, comforted, and encouraged people. He touched the untouchables. He took time for the marginalized.

But the night before His crucifixion, just before He was betrayed and arrested, He made a special point of demonstrating service to His disciples. He washed their feet. This was a task usually done by the lowest servants in that day of dusty, unpaved roads and sandaled feet. Afterward, Jesus asked them.

Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them (John 13:12-17).

Like many, I believe the example that Jesus wants us to follow is not just in physical foot-washing. That’s not a cultural thing in our era, though there might be times it’s necessary.

I think, rather, Jesus meant this symbolically. We’re to serve each other in whatever way is needed. This seems to be reinforced by what Paul wrote in Philippians 2:3-11:

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but 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. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus didn’t negate the concept of serving others when He said later that same night, “You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:14-15). After all, friends serve each other. Just before these verses, He spoke of showing love by laying our lives down for each other, as He did. I think He’s speaking of not being servants here in the particular aspect of a servant’s not knowing what His Master is up to. Jesus opened His heart to His disciples and told them what He was doing, even though they didn’t understand.

Perhaps He also meant that serving one another was to be in the manner of a beloved friend, not a servile, perfunctory employee.

Having a servant’s heart doesn’t mean being a doormat, having no will or opinion or activities of our own. But it means being attentive and willing to serve others where needed.

I have to admit, this thinking doesn’t come naturally to me. In some circumstances, as when my husband or mom had surgery, I was in a mindset of helping them in whatever way they needed. And good manners direct us to hold open doors for others, help them when they drop things, and so on. But in everyday life, I’m often in my own little bubble. It’s not that I expect others to wait on me (except in a restaurant). I just don’t actively think about serving others.

But when I do, sometimes I am reluctant or resentful, usually because service clashes with other things I wanted to do. I appreciate what Oswald Chambers said in the September 11 reading from My Utmost for His Highest:

The things Jesus did were the most menial of everyday tasks, and this is an indication that it takes all of God’s power in me to accomplish even the most common tasks in His way. Can I use a towel as He did? Towels, dishes, sandals, and all the other ordinary things in our lives reveal what we are made of more quickly than anything else. It takes God Almighty Incarnate in us to do the most menial duty as it ought to be done.

A servant’s heart requires humility, unselfishness, attentiveness, and faith. I need to pray God will grow those traits in me and help me be willing to see ways I can serve others.

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)