On February 7, 2010, CBS launched the first episode of Undercover Boss. That first show featured Larry O’Donnell, the then CEO of Waste Management, Inc., as an undercover trash man in training. The series was a ratings success for the network, with its premiere episode receiving 38.6 million viewers and a share of 32%. The show is now in its 11th season, having successfully duplicated the undercover feat 136 times in as many companies. Central to the format of the show, is the company leader who is “made down” (as opposed to “made up”) to look like an entry level employee. In nearly every episode, the Undercover Boss discovers (or rediscovers) the real work of the company to be quite challenging. The success of the show hinges on the genuine interaction of corporate management with the worker in the trenches. At the end of each episode, there are usually tears, hugs and an authentic realization on the part of the Boss that he/she had lost touch with the true demands of the jobs required to make their large corporation successful.

Two thousand years earlier, God was “made down” in the person of Jesus. However, unlike the out-of-touch corporate manager of Undercover Boss, Jesus knew clearly the necessity of transferring the culture of servanthood that would eventually fuel a kingdom movement that would impact and draw out people from every culture and language on earth. Perhaps the most difficult nuance of Jesus’s training His Disciples was the development of an other-worldly leadership style that was inconceivable to humans prior to Jesus — servant leadership. Just a week earlier He had a direct encounter with James and John that nearly tore his team apart over the subject of leadership (see Mark 10:35-45). His Disciples imagined that their Messiah would eventually assume a powerful political position over the kingdoms of earth, and they wanted to be His left- and right-hand men in the leadership hierarchy. Now, the night before Jesus was to bodily leave the earth, His key trainees still had no grasp on both the nature of His kingdom and the nature of the leadership needed to initiate its invasion of earth.

Perhaps it is the deep warping impact of sin on the human heart that makes humanity blind to this truth (Jeremiah 17:9). Possibly it is the compounding effect of human brutality from culture to culture that makes men unable to see that sustainable community is built not on leadership dominance, but rather on practical service and genuine servanthood. This aspect of “Heaven’s corporate culture” is lost to the hearts of men. Jesus’s Disciples had spent two years absorbing his core values, but they still had not caught on to His essential nature as servant (see Philippians 2:1-11).

Jesus, who never wasted anything, took the opportunity of dirty feet to bring home to his Disciples this foundational kingdom value. Thirteen men with dusty feet about to recline sideways, head to toe around the Passover meal. The need was simple, obvious and pungent. God in the flesh sheds down to his underwear, grabs a basin, pitcher of water and servant’s towel from the peg beside the door. Then, one by one, washes the feet of his own Disciples. SLAVE WORK performed by God dressed down in human flesh.

At first the room is stunned and quiet — each Disciple taking in what is physically happening right before their eyes (and feet)! And then, predictably, water spills on Simon Peter’s feet as words spill from his mouth to break the silence.

“Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

“No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

I appreciate Jesus’s words here: “… later you will understand.”

Read carefully John 13 and you will discover that Jesus washes the feet of Judas Iscariot. Jesus clearly knew Judas’s plan. Put me in Jesus’s place, and I would have poured scalding hot water on Judas’s feet and beat him with the basin. But Jesus loves and serves even his enemy.

God went undercover to wash the feet of His creatures! On display is His glory … certainly not the glory of a Roman Caesar or Greek warrior King, a Babylonian ruler or Egyptian Pharoh. Jesus, the very essence of God, displays an attribute that has always existed within the community of the Godhead. The Father serves the Son and the Spirit, and the Spirit serves the Son and the Father. The Son serves the Father and the Spirit. This is how glory operates. It is never grasped, and always poured out freely for the other. Later, maybe we too will understand.