I was given orders this week to make this as short a sermon as possible [since we're showing off a baby at church and that's going to take some time]. But part of my job is to not always give you exactly what you want but what you need to hear, so consider this your Lenten discipline for the day—that can wait. Although, come to think of it, this whole baby thing does kind of color everything I read here—like I can no longer read Jesus saying “Not all of you are clean” without resisting the urge to point at Natalie, because I know different.
There are so many other parental
angles to this scripture, in fact, that it was awfully tempting to go in that
direction—suddenly I have a whole other appreciation of being a servant of
others—but just because it’s the life change that’s on my mind doesn’t mean it’s
on yours and the fantastic thing about these examples that Jesus sets is that
they can apply across many, many life events. Case in point: when Jesus talks
about being a servant of all it can easily apply to raising a child, but it
also can apply to teaching, going on a mission trip, visiting a loved one in
the nursing home, baking bread for somebody in need, or sending a card to tell
someone you’re thinking about them. Jesus came to be a servant—a “suffering
servant,” says Isaiah—because servanthood is preferable to any other way of
living, which is precisely why we should value parents and caregivers and
nurses and restaurant staff—among many, many others. Every one of these people
puts on the clothes of Christ every day of their lives.
This is also completely at odds with
our common conceptions of power. Peter doesn’t like what Jesus is doing—a king
is not to serve—which is funny because if I’m Peter and Jesus, the Savior of
the world, is doing something I didn’t expect I’d probably reevaluate my ideas
of what a king should be rather than questioning the one who is king, but
nobody ever said Peter was the brightest bulb in the box. That’s not to say he
didn’t have a point, though. We expect a king to rule, not to serve; to be
lifted up on a throne, not groveling at the feet of those less worthy; and we
expect these things because that’s what we would do if we were in power.
I believe this is one of the most
compelling reasons to be a Christian. There are a lot of religions in the
world, most of them offering something really good—some kind of reward either
in our lives or in our deaths. Some believe in karma—that you get back what you
have done to others. That sounds great—a world that is completely and
inexorably fair—but my experience of the world suggests something different. If
karma isn’t true, then we’re left with only a couple of possibilities: the
first is a kind of purposelessness to the universe, and the second is grace. We
believe in grace because Christians understand that all of us mess up—most
days… in fact every day. We mess up when we do bad; we mess up when we try to
do good; and we mess up even when we do good, because our good isn’t good
enough and meanwhile we failed to do good for someone else. We are finite
creatures charged with the command to be infinitely perfect. So in a way
Christians are one half of the way to nihilism—we are one half of the way to
believing that nothing matters and the world is purposeless—but at the very
peak of our awareness of our imperfection we find Jesus Christ standing in our
way, and this is why Christianity is unique: first, because of Jesus’ death and
resurrection, but secondly because of the example Jesus gave us of humbling
ourselves in all circumstances: to be the one washing the feet, to be the
beggar, the outcast, the lost and forsaken; to be the poor and the stranger;
and to seek out that which makes us uncomfortable because that is where God
promises to be.
I believe this is also one of the
preeminent reasons why Christianity is struggling to keep its numbers in the
Western world. It’s hard for powerful people who can get what they want to see
the value in humility and discomfort. Christianity is a religion for the
powerless; not the powerful. When you are told by media, as well as friends and
family, that you are a self-sufficient person, who has worked for what you have
gotten and that you deserve to be happy, healthy, and free, it becomes
increasingly undesirable to live as a servant. So, on a large-scale, people
have been pulling away from the Christian church, because, unlike every other
area of their lives, the church is not here to provide you with a service. You
may come into the church under the assumption that the church is here to feed you,
but it’s not. If the only reason you’re here is to “get something out of
church” then this isn’t the place for you, but you’ve probably already noticed
that. The church, like everything in the Christian life, is not something we
use but something that uses us. The church is about being a servant and a missionary
and sacrificing for the sake of the Gospel, because we know that no matter what
the commercials tell you: you don’t deserve it. What you deserve instead of a
new car or a flat screen TV is to serve your friends and neighbors, even the
people you don’t like.
And then a funny thing happens. See,
if your main motivation for going to church is to be fed, then you’re not going
to like what we have to offer, because here you get to be the one doing the
feeding and the foot washing, the serving and the cleaning. You might think
this is backwards—we all work quite enough in the rest of our lives, thank you
very much—so you might not even give it a try. So, you skate by, week after
week, being a Christian out of a sense of duty, but not enjoying it. But every
so often an amazing thing comes about: you break out of our shells and decide
for reasons sometimes even you don’t understand that you will serve, and then what
happens? You are fulfilled in ways you never would have imagined. That’s the spirit
at work. The things that you think will be tedious—like washing another
person’s feet—are precisely the things that make us happy and give us meaning.
Part of the joy of service is that you make other people happy, but it’s even
more than that: it makes us happy—whether others know about our service, or
respect it, or not—because we are created to serve; not to lounge; and certainly
not to consume.
And I guess that brings me back to
being a dad. There are a million ways to serve in life—being a pastor is one
and so is being a dad; so is being an ambulance driver, or a farmer, or a sewer
worker, or an accountant, or doing just about any job you can imagine. We all
have different ideas about the way we should serve in this life, and all of
them are good. These days vocation is basically synonymous with our work, but
Luther understood vocation to be all of our callings in life—our work, and our
family, and our service to our friends and neighbors, because all of these are
ways that we tell people about Jesus. All of you are preachers: you preach when
you wash feet, or clean a bed pan, or change a diaper, or when you visit
somebody at the nursing home, or send a “Get Well” card. None of those are
necessarily enjoyable endeavors on their own, but, when all is said and done,
they always end up being more enjoyable than you would have guessed.
And that’s why Jesus washes feet: to show us how
to live.
Amen.
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