The Doctor Who Mopped the Floors

In 2014, Dr. Paul Farmer — Harvard professor, MacArthur genius grant recipient, and world-renowned infectious disease specialist — was spotted mopping the floor of a clinic in rural Haiti. A visiting journalist asked why someone of his stature would do janitorial work. Farmer shrugged. "The floor was dirty. The patients deserved better."

This was no publicity stunt. Farmer had spent three decades building Partners in Health, an organization that brought world-class medicine to the poorest communities on earth. He could have stayed at Harvard, published papers, and collected accolades. Instead, he lived for months at a time in Cange, Haiti — a village with no running water — sleeping on a cot, eating what his patients ate, treating cholera and tuberculosis one person at a time.

He did not consider his credentials something to be leveraged for comfort. He emptied himself of privilege and took the form of a servant, kneeling beside the sick and dying in places most physicians would never go.

This is the pattern Paul describes in Philippians 2. The Almighty, who existed in the very form of God, did not cling to divine prerogative. He emptied Himself, took on human flesh, and knelt beside us in our sickness and shame — all the way to a cross. And because of that downward journey, God the Father exalted Him to the highest place, giving Him the name above every name. True greatness has always moved downward before it moves upward.