In these Wednesday services, we’ve been going through the
last week or so of Jesus’ life as told in the gospel of John. We’ve come now to the last night of freedom
that Jesus would have on earth.
Jesus is gathered with the disciples. They’re having their last supper
together. Jesus knows that, but the
disciples probably don’t. They know it’s
possible—they’re aware of the danger involved in coming to Jerusalem—but
they’re probably not thinking about it too much. The events of what we’ve come to call “The
Last Supper”—with capital letters—have not happened yet. But we’re told that a meal—supper—was in
progress.
And during that meal, Jesus does something really
strange. He gets up, takes off his outer
clothes, and wraps a towel around his waist.
He then pours some water into a basin and starts washing the disciples’
feet, drying them with the towel. And he
does all this without saying a word.
Now, I’ve been asking you in these Wednesday services to
put yourself into the story, to imagine that you were actually there. So, suppose you’re one of the disciples. You see Jesus doing this. And you know that, at this time, washing
someone’s feet was one of the dirtiest jobs there was. I mean, these people were out in the
desert. They did not have shoes like we
do. Maybe they had sandals—if they could
afford them—but a lot of people went barefoot.
Feet got really dirty. And they
got calloused. And they got cut by the
rocks. And sometimes you stepped in something. You really did not even want to touch your
own feet. Washing someone else’s feet
was a really lousy job. Nobody wanted to
do it.
So this thing
that Jesus was doing strikes you as really strange. But on the other hand, by this time, you’ve
been with Jesus for a while, three years or so.
You’ve seen Jesus say and do some strange things in that time. So, while you’re kind of surprised by this,
you’re not shocked by it. You’ve seen
Jesus do stuff before.
You figure there must be a lesson here someplace, that
Jesus is trying to teach you something.
But you don’t know what it is.
And you really don’t feel much like saying anything. I mean, you know Jesus must have something up
his sleeve, but you don’t want to look stupid.
You’ve done that enough already in your time with Jesus. So you just keep quiet and figure that Jesus
will let you know what’s going on when he’s ready.
You do that unless you’re Simon Peter. You may have noticed this, but Simon Peter
was never one to just keep quiet about things.
If he had something to say, he’d just blurt it on out, whether it made
him look stupid or not. It does not seem
to have occurred to Simon Peter that there could be such a thing as an
unexpressed thought.
So, Jesus is washing the disciples’ feet. He goes around the room. He comes to Simon Peter. And Simon Peter says, “Lord, are you going to
wash my feet?”
And Jesus says, “Well, duh, what do you think I’ve been
doing with this basin and this towel?”
Well, Jesus does not actually say that. He may have thought it—we don’t really know,
do we?—but he did not say it. Instead,
Jesus said, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will
understand.”
Jesus goes on, washing the feet of each one of the
disciples. He puts his clothes back on
and he sits down. And then he does
explain it. He says, look, you guys call
me “Lord”. And you’re right to call me
that. I am your Lord. And I’ve washed your feet.
Now, Jesus may have wanted to just stop there. That should’ve been enough for the disciples
to figure it out. But Jesus had been
around the disciples for three years or so, too. He knew that a lot of times they did not
figure out what they should’ve been able to figure out. So he goes on. He says, right out, this is an example for
you. If I, as your Lord, did this for
you, then you should do this for other people.
I wonder if even then all of the disciples got it. Did they think Jesus was just talking about
washing feet? Or did they understand
that Jesus meant that we need to help each other and serve each other? Did they understand that serving each other
means even doing the lowest, dirtiest jobs there are when that’s what needs to
be done to help someone?
I don’t know. I
don’t know if we understand it, either. And
what I really don’t know is whether we live it.
Now, I know there are some people who do. There are people who do a lot of things for
others. Some of you are sitting here
tonight. There are people here who are
willing to do whatever it takes to help someone, even if that means doing the
low jobs and the dirty jobs. And you do
that without any expectation of applause or thanks.
In fact,
sometimes you go out of your way to do those things in a way so that no one
will even notice. There are all kinds of
jobs in our church, in our family, in our community, that just get done. And nobody ever notices. In fact, nobody even thinks about the fact
that those jobs need to be done. They
just get taken care of. If the people
who do those jobs ever stopped doing them, then we’d notice. But right now, no. We don’t.
We don’t notice those jobs, because they’re just done. It seems like they’re done automatically, but
they’re not. They’re done by people,
people who do them with no reward whatsoever other than the satisfaction of
being able to contribute to something and of being able to help someone.
When you come
right down to it, that’s really what our faith is all about. Helping each other. Loving each other. Doing whatever it takes to help someone, even
if that means doing the lowest, dirtiest jobs with no expectation or even
desire for thanks or applause.
Now, you may
be thinking, “Wait a minute. I thought
our faith was about believing in Jesus Christ as our Savior.” And it is.
But if we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, we need to follow
Jesus’ example. And we especially need
to follow Jesus’ example when Jesus specifically told us to. Jesus said, “I have set you an example that
you should do as I have done.” Jesus
spelled it out for us. He could not have
made it much clearer. If we call Jesus
our Lord, we need to follow the example set by Jesus. And that means being willing to do the lowest
and dirtiest jobs there are when that’s what’s needed to help other people.
I want to
emphasize that it’s the example of Jesus we’re supposed to follow, not the
example of Jeff. There are lots of
times, a lot more than I’d like to admit, where I don’t do this. And most of you know that already. There are lots and lots of people here who
are better at this than I am, who serve others and do those low and dirty jobs
much more often and much more consistently than I do them. I wish that was not true, but it is, and most
of you know that it is.
How can we get
better at it? Well, there’s no magic
formula. But it’s not like this is hard
to understand. It’s just hard to
do. And for those of us who don’t do it,
the main stumbling block is ourselves.
The main reason we don’t do these things is that we just don’t want
to. We might tell ourselves all sorts of
other things, that we’re not very good at these things or that we don’t know
how to do them or that we have other things we need to do or all sorts of other
things that we tell ourselves, but those are just excuses. And when we’re honest with ourselves, we know
they’re excuses. There’s nothing
stopping us from following Jesus’ example.
The only one keeping us from doing these things is us, ourselves.
Now, you might think that, if the only one keeping us
from doing these things is ourselves, then the only one who can get us to start
doing these things is ourselves. But I
don’t think so. Yes, we can improve on
our own and get better on our own, but my experience, at least, has been that
we can only do that for a little while.
Even if we’re sincere about trying to get better, eventually we get in
our own way again. Our old self takes
over. And we’re right back where we
started. We may truly want to get
better, but most of the time, we cannot do it by ourselves. We’re not strong enough.
But there’s one who is, and you already know who I’m
talking about. God. The only way I know to get better at this, to
become willing to serve others by doing those low and dirty jobs with no desire
for applause or thanks, is with God’s help.
We need to pray to God and ask God to help us do it.
Now, I’m not saying this happens by magic. I’m not saying all we have to do is pray and
boom!—God immediately and permanently changes our lives. We need to pray consistently and
repeatedly. We need to pray over a long
period of time, maybe for the rest of our lives. Because if we don’t, we’ll forget. Our old selves will take over. We need to consistently and repeatedly open
our hearts to God. If we do, God will
lead us where God wants us to go. God
will show us what God wants us to do.
And God will tell us what God wants us to say. And we will, over time, become more selfless
and more giving. We will, over time, be
willing to take on those low and dirty jobs when that’s what’s needed to serve
others.
And because Lent is about changing our lives, there’s no
better time than now to start doing that.
So let’s pray. Let’s ask God to
help us become more willing to serve others by doing those low and dirty
jobs. And eventually, over time, with
God’s help, we will be the people Jesus told us to be.
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