Rabbis-in-Training or Servants-in-Training?

Sometimes, Christians have missed the subversive way that Jesus teaches different things to people at his feet, depending on who they are. Take the washing of the disciples’ feet in John 13, for example. Jesus washes their feet and then says, “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14). This wonderful teaching has been universally applied… but sometimes that has lead to a misapplication.

When that passage has been uncritically applied to women, for example, it misses its impact. The whole reason this teaching had such impact is that free men were NOT expected to serve, while women were ALWAYS expected to serve.

But if you look at another passage about Jesus’s feet we see something very different. When at the house of Mary and Martha, Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said” (Luke 10:39). Mary was NOT asked to wash Jesus’s feet (or anyone else’s!) but instead was invited to sit and learn exactly like a rabbi-in-training, because in Jewish tradition to become a rabbi you had to literally sit at another rabbi’s feet first.

Do you see how Jesus treated the people at his feet differently based on the privilege they brought to that position? Those with more privilege he invited to become servants-in-training and those with less privilege he invited to become rabbis-in-training. This makes a lot more sense out of his teaching, “Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last” (Luke 13:30). What are you bringing to Jesus’s fee today and what training is he inviting you into? Can you trust that the invitation is for your good and for the blessing of the world? Will you receive it and lean into it, even though - regardless of whether it’s leading to being first or last - it will be uncomfortable?