“For as long as we misunderstand the glory of Jesus as the antithesis of his humility, we will be strangers to humility ourselves. We will think that we are being like Jesus whenever we draw self congratulatory attention to the striking incompatibility between our rank and our menial acts of service. We will think it is admirable that someone with our status and accomplishments and importance temporarily sets those aside to take up basin and towel. We will think it notable that someone like us cares so little for his station that he will stoop low. We will feel slighted when our humility is not admired and noted. Indeed, we will make sure that our humility is as well known to others as it is to us, and our servility will be to us and to them a never-ending source of wonder and admiration. And, if we are skillful, it will not even look like this is what we are doing.
This is what happens when we think that humility is a path to greatness rather than greatness itself. This is what becomes of us when we think that our occasional quaint forays into servanthood are meant to adorn our majesty. This is what the church reduces itself to when it sprinkles the waters of baptism onto structures and assumptions and ways of being that are not the way of Jesus. If we baptize a hierarchical ecclesiology—and we have—then we must go the whole way and not sprinkle blessing upon power, prerogative, and abuse but rather mercilessly drown it all into the death of Jesus so that it may be raised to newness of life by the one who gave his life as a ransom for many sinners.” Dr. Garwood Anderson
