Thanks for this thoughtful and well-researched reflection. I found it deeply resonant.
If I may, I’d like to add a personal observation: I’ve never met a truly humble person who wasn’t also deeply grateful. In my experience, humility and gratitude travel together. When someone sees themselves clearly and without illusion, they tend to recognize how much they owe to others—and that naturally leads to a spirit of thankfulness. Gratitude may not be the definition of humility, but it’s very often its evidence.
Your comment made me think of something: I often fall back on my own brokenness and failures as a source of humility. When someone irritates me I think “Well, I’ve been annoying as well” or so one cuts me off in traffic I think, “Well, I’ve cut people off at times when I was really in a hurry.”
But Jesus…. has no brokenness, no failures, nothing like that on which to rely. Perhaps He knows our brokenness and that’s enough for Him to know, we have dirty feet and are desperate for a cleansing.
He was tested in every way we are and yet did not do anything that missed the mark - as a human being, not just because he was God, and not simply on the level of morality. Also, the Gospels say he was moved with compassion. He didn't have to know sin through his own failure. He was completely united with humanity by means of the Incarnation. He knew. That's hard for us to wrap our heads around, because we don't consider the ramifications of the Incarnation.
⸻
Thanks for this thoughtful and well-researched reflection. I found it deeply resonant.
If I may, I’d like to add a personal observation: I’ve never met a truly humble person who wasn’t also deeply grateful. In my experience, humility and gratitude travel together. When someone sees themselves clearly and without illusion, they tend to recognize how much they owe to others—and that naturally leads to a spirit of thankfulness. Gratitude may not be the definition of humility, but it’s very often its evidence.
Sort of like putting a towel around your waist and washing the dung off the feet of your friends.
Your comment made me think of something: I often fall back on my own brokenness and failures as a source of humility. When someone irritates me I think “Well, I’ve been annoying as well” or so one cuts me off in traffic I think, “Well, I’ve cut people off at times when I was really in a hurry.”
But Jesus…. has no brokenness, no failures, nothing like that on which to rely. Perhaps He knows our brokenness and that’s enough for Him to know, we have dirty feet and are desperate for a cleansing.
He was tested in every way we are and yet did not do anything that missed the mark - as a human being, not just because he was God, and not simply on the level of morality. Also, the Gospels say he was moved with compassion. He didn't have to know sin through his own failure. He was completely united with humanity by means of the Incarnation. He knew. That's hard for us to wrap our heads around, because we don't consider the ramifications of the Incarnation.
Dana