Well-intentioned Christian service can easily slip into pride, performance, or a white savior complex. It’s in our nature to be a little smug about our service. The politician loves the photo op serving in the soup kitchen line. Your friend loves how they look in the social media post pulling weeds at the community garden.

In terms of service itself, these mixed motives, filled with pride, are fine. God can use all kinds of motivation in service of God’s kingdom. In this lifetime, my motivations to serve others will probably never be completely free from pride. Thankfully, God’s grace can use anything to motivate me to serve others.

But this mixed motivation falls short of what God offers to the church as a community characterized by justice and righteousness. If I come with my wealth and my power and serve someone who continues in their need and dependence, and we leave the interaction with me feeling good and that person feeling ashamed, then we’re distorting the gracious gift that God offers through the spiritual discipline of service. God has something better in mind for us.

Social workers and community development experts know this well. They see the power dynamics and broader systems at play when well-intentioned people work to alleviate poverty or to meet material needs in some way. Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert introduced many of us in the church to these dynamics through their 2009 book When Helping Hurts. The paternalism of so many of our efforts ends up reinforcing cycles of poverty rather than breaking them.

The story of Maundy Thursday offers us an antidote. Jesus and Peter show us a better way at the table of the last supper. Someone needed to wash the disciples’ feet, and their Lord and Teacher Jesus, the least likely to do such a dirty job, put the towel of service around his waist and got on the floor to wash their feet.

John 13 says, “During supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God…” — in other words, even though Jesus was fully equal to God and had every reason to be proud – he “got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.” He dressed himself like a servant. Motivated by humility and love, he served.

The text is so clear about what this means for our actions. Jesus says to his disciples, “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

Jesus can’t get much more direct than that. Because he has served his disciples, his disciples also must be people who serve with humility and love.

Because of our tendency to prideful service, I’m interested in our imitation not just of Jesus, but of Peter. Peter at first shows a different kind of pride – he doesn’t want Jesus to wash his feet. Jesus insists, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Peter finally relents and receives humble service from the Lord of the universe.

Like Peter, we are invited to start our service from a place of our own need. Before Peter can offer anything to others, he needs to be served by Jesus. Before we can offer anything to others, we need to receive grace and love from Jesus.

This is what is radical about Christian service, service in the name of Jesus. Christian service is not about the “haves” giving to the “have-nots.” It’s not about going to help the needy. It is about being completely honest with our own desperate need. We all are the have-nots who need Jesus. We all are the needy, in need of the salvation that only Jesus can provide.

And we all are image-bearers of God, each with something unique and beautiful to contribute to our mutual care and service. If we start from there, Christian service ends up being a spiritual discipline of humility and grace, and not a show of pride or self-interest.

God gives us grace through the spiritual discipline of service. God gives us joy through the practice of serving others. But even more than that, God meets every one of us in our need, because we are all needy. God gives grace to every one of us, giving and receiving service from one another, and all of us receiving what we need most from God alone.

The person who receives hospitality sometimes gives the best gift of all: the gift of dignity to the one who offers the hospitality. Service is not most often the grand and creative project – it’s doing the laundry, or making the phone call, or picking up the trash, or paying attention to someone.

And all of this is true because we all need Jesus. We all are beggars, and thanks be to God, Jesus Christ gives to all of us out of the abundant riches of his grace. Let Jesus wash your feet first. Thanks be to God for the service of Jesus Christ, and the service we are invited to engage together in his name and by his grace.