“I don’t need your help.” This was the response I received after offering assistance to a woman who had fallen outside the Post Office. The truth is she did need help. Her leg was pointing in the wrong direction indicating a broken hip.

     Self-sufficiency is the costliest form of pride there is. Self-sufficiency has led to more broken bones. Self-sufficiency has placed more alcoholics in an early grave. Self-sufficiency has landed more bad marriages in divorce court.

     Pride was the sin with which Peter struggled most. Jesus saw a hubris in Peter that would escape the best of us. Jesus knew Peter was really more interested in protecting Peter than he was in protecting Jesus.

     You see, the act of washing the feet of a dinner guest was relegated to the lowliest of house servants. Jesus was a rabbi. Rabbis were considered to be at the top of the social order. Rabbis should have their feet washed, not the other way around. So, when Jesus bent down to wash Peter’s feet, it would have seemed proper for Peter to help Jesus avoid a horrific faux pas.

     Yet the truth is that Peter’s ego was getting in the way. I’m talking about pride‒‒not the kind of pride a father feels when his daughter gets accepted to her first choice of colleges or even the pride a Bengal fan feels in the afterglow of a victory. I’m talking about the pride of self-sufficiency that says, “Jesus, I don’t need you to be clean. I can handle my own problems. I can manage my life just fine.”

     For Peter to admit he needed Jesus to wash his feet would have been to acknowledge that he’s not his own man‒‒even worse, to admit that he is dependent. Such an admission is a tough pill to swallow for those of us who grew up watching John Wayne movies. John Wayne is a true hero who needed no one and pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.

     This brand of independence plays well in the movie theatre. It doesn’t play so well in the real world (or the world as Jesus envisions it). The truth is that each of us needs a Savior. We need God to do for us the very things we cannot do for ourselves.

    Even more, it is through the Spirit of this Jesus that we live, we breath, and we have our very being. Apart from the Holy Spirit we are and we can do nothing of significance. We need help whether we want to admit it or not.

     The season of Lent is what the church historically has considered a journey of repentance. To repent means to turn. Not just to turn away from sin, but to turn toward the only one who harnesses the power to do something about our sin. To turn from self-sufficiency toward the one whose grace is more than sufficient. To turn from never will you wash my feet, Lord, to forever shall I pour before you all my pride.

     The words by Isaac Watts summarize the echo plea of the penitent soul:

             When I survey the wondrous cross
             on which the Prince of glory died,
             My richest gain I count but loss,
             and pour contempt on all my pride.