Servant Leadership?

I’ve been doing a deeper study of John’s Gospel as I teach an adult Sunday school class at my church, and this Christmas season I’ve been reflecting on John’s “Christmas” in chapter 1. In particular, I’ve been drawn to the line that says the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ and what that means for those of us who do community development work as Christ followers.

What strikes me is that grace and truth did not arrive as abstract ideas or principles. They came embodied in a person. In Jesus, they were fully integrated, never separated, never in tension with one another. And in the post-modern world we inhabit, where right and wrong, truth and untruth are often blurred, the Gospel gives us moral clarity. It tells us what is true and what is good, reminding us that doing good is never divorced from doing what is right.

Those of us engaged in development work feel the cost of holding grace and truth together, both in organizational decision-making and in field ministry. My example here comes from a field context. In some communities in South India, it is not uncommon for a maternal uncle to marry his niece. My initial reaction was deep discomfort and disgust. The risks are real—birth defects, significant age gaps, and the disempowerment of young girls. Everything in me wanted to say, quite simply, this is unacceptable.

But Christmas reminds us that God did not address human brokenness from a distance. In Christ, grace and truth entered the complexity of real lives by dwelling among us. Grace requires us to pause and seek understanding before rushing to judgment. As I listened more carefully, I began to understand why this practice exists. Mothers often believe that marrying their daughter to a younger brother offers protection—family oversight and the ability to intervene if abuse occurs. In contexts of poverty, keeping limited assets within the family can feel less like control and more like survival.

Truth still matters here. The practice causes real harm, and Christian work cannot affirm it. But grace, shaped by the Incarnation, refuses to reduce people to villains or abstractions. Holding grace and truth together means discouraging what diminishes life while remaining present with people as they find safer, more dignifying alternatives. This work is slower and more costly. It often leaves us sitting in tension, misunderstood by those who want compassion without accountability and by those who want clarity without mercy.

Perhaps this is part of the Christmas invitation for us as Christ followers: to bear the cost of grace and truth not only in our programs, but in ourselves—to love deeply without losing clarity, and to seek justice without losing mercy. That is how God came to us in Christ, and that is how we are called to be present in the world.