As I contemplate the complex image of Jesus in the New Testament, what amazes me is the simplicity of His message in the first chapters of the gospels. Turn the other cheek. Go the second mile. Have two cloaks? Give one away. Do not look at the speck in your brother’s eye; look at yourself. Always forgive. Where your treasure is, there your heart is also. Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.

What also amazes me is Jesus’ humanitarianism. He is always for others, never for Himself. Despite tiredness, loneliness, misunderstandings and suffering— even with “no place to lay His head”—He is always defending the oppressed, helpless and outcast, regardless of who they are: children, women, seniors, tax collectors, prostitutes, traitors, the homeless, sick people, pagans or heretics. Regardless of what terrible things they have committed. Irrespective of how much they are condemned in their communities and society.

Jesus, Son of God, God with us, doesn’t lord over but serves, showing love for people in His mission to save the world. This is the ttitude that He teaches His disciples many times during His earthly ministry—even shortly before His death, even betrayed, even in the hour of sorrow. During the Last Supper, in John’s account (John 13:1–17), Jesus takes off His clothes, wraps a towel around His waist, and washes the feet of His apostles—all of them, including Judas. This is not the work of a teacher and master, which He is. It is usually what enslaved people do for the free people. It is humbling and diminishing in the world of the ancient Middle East, so the apostle Peter rejects it. He won’t accept this menial service from Jesus, whom he loves and honours. But he has to be cleaned spiritually, which he does not understand until after the cross and resurrection, and physically, as a demonstration of serving each other.

“Do you understand what I have done for you? … you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you (John 13:12, 14–15).” As those sent by Jesus, they must be servants to others, not patrons and owners. They should serve the faithful ones, like Peter, and the lost ones, like Judas.

Is this Christianity? Yes, this is Christianity that is based on the premise of loving one another (John 13:34–35). Simple, yet fundamental.

The beginning of the 21st century—at least in Central Europe, my part of the world—is not the easiest time for Christianity. It is increasingly challenging to find God in my disenchanted world. It seems that people are getting on pretty well without God in their daily lives, in their secular reality. Intellectual arguments are less entertained and less effective. But that was never the primary way for followers of Jesus anyway. The life of love is the effective testimony—to see Christ in the other and act as Christ toward the other, no matter who they are.

Is this how Christianity is perceived in my part of the world? Does it serve and not rule? Does it wash the feet of people and not stay confined in beautiful, ideological towers? This is a time, like 2,000 years ago, to give a simple but powerful witness of love—beyond sublime words, beyond beautiful and complicated arguments, just the witness that Christ has conquered evil and leads us in the way of love.

It is essential to return to the simple example: just care for the other person— every person, regardless of their ethnicity, gender, orientation, social status, political views, financial situation, religious persuasion or sinful ways. Is it possible? Is it possible to wash another person’s feet in the 21st century?