Serve Like Jesus
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
From the room where they had supped to the Mount of Olives was about a mile, but on this night when the city’s population had swelled to twice its normal size with thousands of pilgrim families there for Passover, but the two men might as well have been a hundred miles, or a thousand miles away, trapped in their own thoughts.
The two men had been silent since leaving the Upper Room, each mired in their own confusion. When the city walls lay behind them and there was no one else within earshot, one of them cleared his throat and looked around in the darkness to confirm they were alone. Then he looked at the man next to him and said softly, “That was strange, right?”
There was a short silence, then the other man grunted. “Strange, because the teacher washed our feet? Because the Messiah — the man who has been promised to us as a savior and redeemer — just treated us the way a slave would treat his master?” The man fell silent, grunted again, and murmured, “Yeah, that was strange.”
The first man nodded in the darkness. “OK — I just wanted to make sure I was reading it right.” “What do you think he was trying to tell us? I mean, he can be pretty — uh — hard to understand, sometimes.”
“My friend, the longer I listen to him, the more I start to believe that Jesus is here to change the world — by changing us. It’s like he’s taking everything we thought we understood from the law, turning it on its head, and trying to help us understand a new truth in a new world, a new kingdom he’s trying to bring about.”
“A world where the master is the slave, and the slave is the master? What kind of world is that? We thought that there is a natural order, but what he’s saying — what I think he’s saying — is that the ways of God are not what we thought they are.”
The second man sighed, remembering Jesus’ words: “servants are not greater than the master, nor messengers greater than the one who sent them.” And he had washed their feet in a show of humility and service, he humbled himself like the lowest sort of slave. Maybe the idea was that the lowest slave and greatest master can somehow be the same person at the same time. Maybe authority and servanthood can and must coexist together.
He shook his head. “Maybe the master was trying to say that neither is greater than the other. Or that when we live by his new commandment, to love one another, that love is reflected in a willingness–a desire–to serve others. As a teacher, I may be greater than my student in wisdom, but it is still appropriate that I might serve him in the humblest ways.” “Maybe,” the first man said doubtfully. “But that hardly seems like the way a Messiah would behave.”
The second man shrugged. “But is there anything about Jesus that seems like the Messiah we expected? Is he a priest, a general, a king? Or is he a humble man from Galilee whose only weapons are God’s word and God’s love?”
He fell silent for a few yards. “Maybe what he brought aren’t weapons at all — just the law and the love that’s at the heart of it, because those are sufficient to redeem the world.”
“And he does that by washing our feet?” “What better way to show that one can be a master and a servant?”
“Maybe,” the first man repeated. “Think about it. Jesus sent us out to heal the sick and preach to the lost, remember? How did you feel when you were doing that?” “Well — honestly, I was scared, but I also felt pretty important. Like I’d been chosen to do a special mission.”
“And maybe that’s it. You witness, you heal, you teach the loudest when you are serving. When you were showing love. Tonight, he did that by washing away the spiritual dirt from our souls while he was washing the dirt from our feet!
The first man sighed. “Maybe. But if that’s it, then how is he going to redeem us all? He can’t very well bathe the world.” There was a very long silence as both men looked up the road, to the Mount of Olives and the garden there, the first man said “Well maybe that is our job as followers, to bathe the world ourselves!”
If Jesus, God in the flesh, is willing to serve, we his followers must also be servants, willing to serve in any way that glorifies God. Are you willing to follow Christ’s example of serving? Whom can you serve today? There is a special blessing for those who not only agree that humble service is Christ’s way, but who also follow through and bathe the world. Serve Like Jesus. Amen.