Sermon 118
Sermon by John Metcalfe at Wonersh on Sunday 17th
February 2008
Meekness
and Majesty
While we sit, let’s pray…
"Loving Lord, help us to appreciate your meekness and humility as we open
our hearts to your Word. Amen"
It’s
Passover night, and Jesus is sitting down to eat with his closest friends,
people who look up to him, disciples who’ve been with
him through thick and thin over the last 3 years. It’s an intimate moment – Jesus knows that
this is his Last Supper, tomorrow will be Good Friday, and he does this amazing
thing. He strips off, bends down and
washes their feet. Then he asks them: “Do you understand what I have done for you?” As we go through this story, I’d like you to
think about three aspects.
First, I
invite you to imagine this scene, to imagine Jesus bending over and washing
your feet, and then to reflect on the model that Jesus is giving to us - how we
can bend over and serve the people around us.
That’s what the Care Team in this church is all about, but we are all part of Jesus’ Care Team. Jesus himself tells us in verse 15 that “I have set you an example that you should do as I have for you”. Who
amongst us would stand in front of Jesus and refuse to follow his example?
Second,
think back to the previous chapter where a woman bent down and poured oil over
Jesus’ feet, washed his feet with her tears, anointed him, and prepared him for
his death. Jesus now does the same thing
for his friends. She anointed him in
preparation for his death on the cross, and he anoints his followers to prepare
them for their deaths on their crosses. This morning, right now, the Gospel invites
us not only to serve one another, but to prepare one another to go to the
cross, to help each other to walk the way of the cross, to anoint one another,
and as we do this, the Gospel says we will be greatly blessed. That’s in verse 17.
Thirdly,
we remember that at this great moment, when Jesus loves us and serves us and
calls us to love and serve one another, how do the disciples respond? They betray him, they deny him, and they
abandon him. They all run away from
him! How would we respond if that
happened to us? Of course, we’d be hurt
and angry. But Jesus is different. Instead of losing it, getting angry or
holding a grudge, he reaches out with even greater love and says, “I want to be
your friend. I want to be your food and drink. Here is my body and blood for
you. I love you that much. I want to be with you that much.” So I invite you to reflect on the loving,
compassionate, forgiving response of Jesus, as he gets hurt and rejected from
all sides, and see how we can respond as Jesus did, with that same love,
compassion and forgiveness.
Back to
our story – if you want to follow it, please turn to page 1081 in the pew
bibles. John tells us that after Jesus
and the disciples had walked into
Perhaps
all the disciples were suddenly struck by this great contradiction, but John
tells us only of Peter. He says, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus sensed his
confusion, and perhaps also his shame.
He replied, “It’s all right Peter, for me to wash your feet. I know you
don’t understand now, but later on, when you fully realise just who I am, you will know.” Later, Jesus asked, “Do you understand what I have done to you?” The twelve sitting with Jesus clearly did not
understand. Once again, they didn’t know
what to make of their leader, who’d done such an unleaderlike thing. What they understood of power and prestige
and position told them that none but the lowest would stoop to such a filthy
task. So Jesus explained further in
verse 16, “I tell you the truth, no
servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who
sent him. Now that you know these
things, you will be blessed if you do them.” That reminds me of the Beatitudes – God’s
topsy-turvy upside-down world.
Eugene
Peterson in The Message translates Jesus’ words this way: “If you understand what I am telling you, act like it—and live a blessed
life.” Surely this is one of the
secrets of the spiritual disciplines that we must understand – understanding Jesus is not enough. We must actually do the things Jesus did.
And as we do them, as we follow him into the practices he modelled for
us, then we’ll find ourselves delivered from the darkness and fear and guilt
and dysfunction of living by the rules of this world. We’ll experience the joy and power and
fulfilment that comes from living by the rules of the Holy Spirit – that’s what
living in God’s
A
spiritual discipline is something we do within our own power that then puts us
in a place where God can begin to change us.
The change itself is something that isn’t within our power. Only God can change us. But the disciplines are our way of opening
ourselves to God’s power. In a sense,
they’re our way of inviting God to proceed in his gracious act of giving us new
life and making us new people.
All
spiritual disciplines involve activity.
That night with the disciples, Jesus chose to demonstrate this by washing
feet. But the spiritual discipline of
service can take lots of different forms.
Dallas Willard, in his book ‘The Spirit of the Disciplines’ says, “In service, we engage our goods and strength
in the active promotion of the good of others and the causes of God in our
world.” He’s pointing out that any
activity that’s for someone else’s good, or for the larger purposes of God in
the world, can be an exercise of service.
Another well-known Christian author, Richard Foster, provides these
suggestions for things we can easily do: taking a friend on an errand when her
car’s out of action, helping clean a friend’s house when company is coming and
time is tight, withholding sharing that juicy bit of gossip you just heard,
letting a car into that long line of traffic, or using your precious time to
listen to someone spill their heart.
I think
this subject of service can be hard for us to grasp because we’re more inclined
to think about ourselves than we are to think about others. Self-centeredness can make us think that
we’re God of our own lives, and maybe even of others. The discipline of service teaches us to
become centred on others. It teaches us
that life isn’t really about us, but about someone else. When we serve others, we draw closer to them
to understand their needs, and as we come to know them, we open ourselves to
the possibility of loving them. We move
away from fearing or judging others because now we know the reality of their
world, and we see that we have things in common. In serving others, we begin to learn that our
own self-image and self-worth are not dependent on our position and power, but
are dependent on God. As we give up some
of our time or energy or money in order to serve others, we begin to learn that
what we possess doesn’t define us, nor does it give us life, only God does
that. All service is ultimately about
serving Christ himself, and we meet him in the people we serve.
When
Christ humbled himself before the disciples, Peter took offence. Jesus was his Teacher and Lord. What business did he have to humble himself
before Peter like a common servant?
Peter couldn’t bear to see his Jesus humiliate himself. When Peter objects, Jesus insists, saying, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” Peter can’t stand the thought of losing
Jesus, and replies, “Then Lord, not just
my feet but my hands and my head as well!”
To which Jesus replies, “A person
who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of
you”, referring to Judas Iscariot.
In The Message translation it uses these words: “If you’ve had a bath in the morning, you only need your feet washed now
and you’re clean from head to toe. My concern, you understand, is holiness,
not hygiene.” Jesus must wash
us. He insists on washing the dirt away to make us holy. It doesn’t require a full bath for the whole
body. The quantity of water or the
amount of washing that Jesus applies to our bodies is immaterial. The point is that Jesus must do it, and we
must allow him to do it. Jesus must wash
us, because in washing us he humbles himself and we’re cleansed.
He served
us by going to the cross where he bore the entire load of our sin. Jesus served us then and there. And Jesus serves us here and now. In response we should live our lives in
service to one another. That’s how we
serve Jesus. After washing His
disciples’ feet, Jesus said: “Do you
understand what I have done for you? You
call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord’, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed
your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do
as I have done for you.” Jesus
wasn’t instituting a sacrament of foot washing.
He was teaching them humility. It
was a lesson they needed to learn … and so do we! If the Lord God of heaven and earth could
stoop to wash his disciples’ feet, then we who call him our Teacher and Lord should
likewise humble ourselves before one another.
The
greatest service we can offer to anyone in this world is to imitate the humble
service of Jesus, and the most important way in which can serve our friends and
neighbours is by forgiving those who sin against us. Jesus taught us only one prayer. In that one prayer we make only one
promise. We promise to forgive those who
have sinned against us. In order that we
might learn to forgive, our Lord Jesus must first forgive us. He did that by giving his body and his blood
such that we could have true and full forgiveness. Here we find our peace with God. Here in Christ’s humble service we find our
lives and true humility.
We usually
hear this story on Maundy Thursday, which commemorates the Last Supper – Jesus'
last meal with his disciples on the evening before he died. Our word 'Maundy' comes from the Latin
mandatum, which means 'commandment', and it echoes what Jesus said that evening
after washing the disciples' feet. You
can see this in verses 34 and 35: “A new
commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love
one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love
one another.” And we can demonstrate
that love by serving one another.
Let’s
finish with the words of verse 15 in our minds: “I have set you an example that you should do
as I have for you”.
And now
let’s now keep a few moments of quiet in personal prayer as we reflect on those
words: “I have set you an example that you should do as I have for you”.