Credit: Ivan Alvarado/Reuters

When are meatballs, chicken and rice a feast?  When they’re the first hot meal you’ve eaten in three weeks.  Today’s BBC website tells us that Chilean miners trapped underground since August 5 had been eating only glucose tablets and high-protein milk.  Yesterday the hot food was piped through a tube to the 33 men who are trapped 2,300 feet below the surface.

Mining is a staple of the Chilean economy, producing generations of men as hardened as the rocks they work.  When a cave-in trapped the men three weeks ago, authorities assumed all were lost.  Engineers found them 17 days later, all alive and unharmed.  “We are fine in the refuge, the 33,” their first note to the surface read.

A rescue shaft will take three to four months to complete.  In the meantime, the trapped miners have organized themselves into groups of three to watch after each other.  They have created a makeshift altar where they can share worship services.  When food is dropped to them through a four-inch hole four times a day, none eats until all have enough to eat.  As their rescue hole is cleared, the men will need to remove 3,000 to 4,000 tons of rock; they are already organizing themselves into shifts to do the work 24 hours a day.  They know that the only way to survive their ordeal is to face it together.

The night he would be betrayed and forsaken by his closest friends, Jesus washed their feet.  This was a task so menial no Jew could be forced to do it.  He washed the sweaty, dirty feet of the man who would hand him over to his enemies and the man who would deny him and the men who would abandon him.  With this instruction: “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:15).  And this assurance: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (v. 35).

Self-sufficiency is spiritual suicide.  Western culture embraces the self-made hero, turning faith into a means to our advancement.  The ancient Greeks placed sacrifices on the altars of their gods so they would bless their crops.  We go to church on Sunday so God will bless us on Monday.  “You can do it, we can help” is not just a slogan used by Home Depot to attract customers—it is the promise made by market driven churches to their self-reliant consumers every Sunday.

But there is only one King in the Kingdom; the rest of us are his subjects and children.  We are the family of God, sisters and brothers who need our fellow miners in the dark.  When we wash each others’ feet, we find God’s love in ours.

Jesus measures success not by your title but by your towel.  How dirty is yours?

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