I See Jesus the Servant

 March 20 2022

John 13

Have you ever noticed that a big part of adult life is just figuring out what to keep and what to throw away? Right now, one side of my garage is filled with stuff that I am waiting to clean up when the weather is nice and I can open up the garage door and back up the truck and decide just what I am going to keep and what I am going to haul away.  The same process happened when we got a new washer. Since we had to clean out the laundry room anyway, we again had to decide if we had to keep all of that stuff that had accumulated in there or could we perhaps give some of that trash the old heave ho! Whenever I get ready to haul stuff I consider trash to the landfill I am reminded that one man’s trash is another mans treasure.  Isn’t it funny that what I consider to be worthless is worth a great deal to someone else.

That’s the way it is in life; we always have to take stock of what we have and decide is this trash or is this a treasure.We have to do a similar process with our spiritual life as well. Its amazing how our life can pickup bad habits, unorthodox beliefs and worldly attitudes and every once in a while we have to stop and do a little spring cleaning in our hearts. This is, perhaps, why the season of Lent is here, in the spring, with the days getting longer, the light being brighter, and we can see a little better, and notice our need for cleansing. As we take this time to prepare ourselves to encounter Christ at Calvary, in these days of Lent, in the stronger light of spring, we must fix our eyes upon Jesus and see him for who he really is. We often want to make Jesus something that he never really was or is because who Jesus is sometimes does not sit well with our modern sensibilities. Nowhere is this more evident than in todays scripture found in the thirteenth chapter of John where we see Jesus taking off his outer garment, and wrapping a towel around his waist, he grabs a basin full of water. Jesus kneels and begins to wash the feet of his disciples. Peter, always the one who sums up our human response, is adamant that there was no way that Jesus was going to wash his feet; his Messiah is a warrior king not some slave groveling in the dirt. Get up, Peter wants to say, quit this nonsense he wants to demand but Jesus puts Peter in his place. Peter, Jesus says, if you won’t sit down and let me wash your feet, then you’re off the team, do you get my drift? Jesus demands that we see him as a servant; any other ways of seeing him simply will not do.

We have to wonder just why it is then that Jesus does such an outrageous act, one I am sure his followers did not see coming. The answer, I believe, must be found within the central theme that John has in these last chapters of his gospel, which is the theme of the new Temple. When John writes about Jesus as the Good Shepherd in the tenth chapter, he begins using the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm, a psalm that speaks of entering the gates of the Temple. Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, is the gate of the Temple, he is the way in which we may enter into the Temple, the Father’s house. We recall that what Jesus is also doing as the Good Shepherd is uniting us all into one fold, to be his united sheep. The way that he does this is through loving God with his whole heart, loving God and loving others, loving God with all of his very life, willing to lay down his life for the sheep and loving God with all of his strength and power using that strength and power to protect his flock. 

Jesus as our Good Shepherd expects us, his flock, to follow him in his love of God. We too are to love God with all of our hearts, with all of our life and with all of our strength or power. The question for us upon finding out that this is what Jesus is calling us to do is just how will we be able to do such a thing? All of us know the stuff that rolls around in our hearts and we know that there is a lot in there that is not very pretty. What we have to confess is that what we need is a way to give our hearts a good spring cleaning, a way to get rid of all the trash that has accumulated in there. As Jesus is going to lead us into the Temple, into the holy presence of God we know that with all this trash fouling up the works, we are in no shape to follow Jesus there. We cannot forget that those who served in the Temple in the Old Testament had to be cleansed themselves before serving before a holy God. It was the High Priest who would take and cleanse the priests who served under him to prepare them to serve before a Holy God. This washing was a gesture which pointed to the fact that it was the High Priest who was to distinguish between what was clean and what was unclean, what was common and what was holy as we are told in the tenth chapter of Leviticus. Just as we do when we spring clean our houses, the High Priest had to decide what was unclean, the trash and what was clean, what was the treasure, that which was able to be used by God.

The work of the High Priest in the Old Testament was to prepare us for the coming of Jesus, who we are to know as our High Priest. He also is the one who decides just what is clean and unclean. We hear him state this in the gospel of Mark, the seventh chapter where we learn that what makes a person unclean is what comes out of a person’s heart, the evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and a lack of wisdom. Here Jesus confirms what we already must admit, that our hearts are in no shape to be of any good to a holy God.What is needed is that all this trash be cleansed away. Are you beginning to see why we need to see Jesus as a Servant, as one who can take and wash our hearts and prepare them so that we might walk on holy ground? This is what Jesus is trying to teach us as he washes the feet of his disciples. This was an action which  points us toward a greater truth that what is necessary for us to serve before a Holy God is not clean feet but rather clean hearts. 

 There is a reason why John has written this chapter so that the washing of the feet parallels the new commandment that Jesus gives, the one where his love for us is the way that we are to love one another. What we are to understand from the way that Jesus has phrased this command is that we need to experience his love and then and only then will we be able to love as he has loved us. Now, we have to ask ourselves just how is it that this love of Jesus is able to do this? The answer is that it is the love of Jesus, this is what is able to cleanse us of all the trash that builds up in our hearts. The way that the love of Jesus accomplishes this is by changing just what it is that we treasure so that what we used to treasure becomes nothing but a pile of trash to us. Jesus tells us in the sixth chapter of Matthew that it is our hearts, this is where are treasures are kept. He further goes on to tell us that people either lay up their treasures on earth or they will  be people who treasure what is in heaven. Where we choose to keep our treasures, whether on earth or in heaven, this is what determines whether our hearts are clean or whether they will be filled with all kinds of trash. When our treasures are those things of this world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eye, and the pride of possessions, then this is when our hearts will be found to be full of all kinds of uncleanness, a heart full of trash. When our hearts are full of trash then there is no way that we can come and serve before a holy God.

What we need then is to become people who treasure what is in heaven. This is what Jesus is telling Peter when he says to him that if he does not allow Jesus to wash his feet then Peter would have no share in the inheritance of Jesus. This inheritance, this share in the life to come, this is the very treasure of heaven. Yet it is a little perplexing just how this love which Jesus has for us can make a way for us to have a share in this treasure that Jesus wishes to share with us. John gives us a clue of how we can come to share in the treasure of heaven in a odd little detail that he gives us concerning John, the disciple that we are told that Jesus loved, who is reclining at the table, laying his head upon the chest of Jesus. This seems a bit odd doesn’t it, until we realize that this same image is what John uses in the first chapter to describe where Jesus came from, from the very bosom of the Father. So, John wants us to remember that Jesus has come to us from the highest heaven and here he is at the lowest he can go, kneeling at our feet. We are to be in awe of the condescension of the very Son of God, to behold the mystery of this one so intimate with the Father yet willing to leave all of that splendor to come to us to serve us. This is what Paul writes about in the second chapter of Philippians, “Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to seize hold of, but instead he made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of our humanity. As one of us, he humbled himself by being obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”This is how far the love within the heart of Jesus, the very love which has been in heaven from before the foundation of the world, how far this love was willing to go on our behalf. Jesus freely chose to leave his Father’s side, to take on our corrupt flesh and to go further, to taste death for all of us, a death upon the criminals cross. This Jesus had to do because the love within his heart would not let him do anything else. Jesus is seen as a Servant because this is the only posture that his love would let him take, an extreme love that drove Jesus from heaven to kneel upon the dust of earth.

In the demonstration of this love, Jesus the very Word of God is speaking to us, communicating to us about who we are to God. We hear this message in the words that Peter wrote many years after allowing Jesus to wash his feet, in his first letter, the end of the first chapter, “You were ransomed from your futile ways inherited from your forefathers not with perishable things  such as silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ…” The message is clear; you were worth everything to God. You are a treasure that God just had to have, a treasure God was willing to give everything to call his own. Our Heavenly Father gave his most precious gift all so that you and I might at last know our worth to God. You see, Jesus is not just the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world; no, he is the Lamb of God who took away your sins and my sins. It is important for us to know that Jesus came from the farthest reaches of heaven to come to the lowest point of death, all for you, all for me, all so that we might know that we are treasured in heaven by God. You see, only as we fully understand that we are treasured in heaven, only as we allow this very fact to bring us to our knees, only then will we be cleansed of our treasuring the treasures of earth. When we allow the message that we are a precious treasure, that we were worth the precious blood of Jesus, to penetrate our hearts, only then will our hearts know that our true treasure is in heaven because it is in heaven that there is one who treasures us above all else. When we are overwhelmed by the love of heaven then we can agree with what Paul has written in the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians, that now the love of Christ has seized ahold of us because we have concluded this: that the one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who died for us and was raised.” This is why the commandment that Jesus gives to us is a new commandment, even though it is the very commandment that God has always called his people to obey. This commandment is new because of what Jesus has done for us, that he has come to the very depths of our world to prove to us that we are treasures to God and when this truth hits us, how can we not be seized a hold of by the very love of God? How can we not understand that our old self, the one who lived by the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eye and the pride of the possessions, how can this person go on living seeking the treasures on earth when they know that the God who created us, treasures us and willingly gave his most precious gift to have us as his own? When Jesus died, when he gave his life for us in the greatest act of love, of course we died, because now at last we know that we must live realizing that we are forever indebted to God for what he has done for us. And how, we must ask are we to repay what God has given for us? Jesus tells us this, that just as he has loved us, we too are to love one another. As Jesus saw each one of us as a treasure worth leaving his home in glory to come and pour out his life to save, so we also must see every person we encounter as a treasure, a treasure that our Heavenly Father was willing to purchase with the precious blood of Jesus. So, our love for others does not depend at all on who they might be but rather our love of others comes out of a heart that is responding to the love of Jesus, repaying the debt we owe, one person at a time.

It is when the love of Jesus cleanses our hearts of all desires of earthly pleasures by speaking to us about our great worth to our Heavenly Father, this is when Jesus promises us that we have a share in his inheritance for when we love like Jesus we then have hope of living like Jesus for all eternity. As Jesus has come as a Servant so too we go forth as servants. As Jesus tells us, he has given himself as our example so that we are to love just as he has given his love for us. When we have experienced the truth of God’s great love for us, we are to go forth as messengers, story-tellers who tell of a God who sent his Son to give his life to ransom ours, all because of his great love for us. We go forth with this great love in our hearts because the Son of God went forth from the heart of the Father to bring the love of heaven to the dust of earth and we at last might know the treasure we have always been to God. When we know this to be our story, when we know that Jesus came to earth and gave his very life out of his great love for you and me, and now this love has seized a hold of us, this is when Jesus tells us that we are blessed. What we must understand about this word, “blessed”, is that it comes from the Hebrew word to kneel.When we kneel to serve others, to bless them, this is when we find that we are indeed blessed. We are to know that the blessing of God comes to us not simply from knowing of the Father’s love for us but rather we are blessed when this great love compels us to love others just as it compelled Jesus to love us. Only as we love others as Jesus has loved us, only then will the blessing of God be upon us. With this blessing of Jesus we come back, once again, to Jesus being our High Priest. The High Priest had to not only distinguish what it was that was holy and what was common, what was unclean and clean but he also was the one who stood before the people of God and pronounced the blessing of God over them. This is what Jesus is doing with his disciples, those who will serve in the new Temple that Jesus is bringing forth through his death. Jesus tells them that the blessing of the Lord is upon them when the serving love of Jesus seizes hold of their hearts and now they live their life for Jesus, the treasure which is ours in heaven. This is a life that knows that there is a blessing in serving others in love because we have been blessed by Jesus who came and served us in love. So, as you do a little spring cleaning during this season of Lent may you feel free to throw out all those earthly treasures that will never last and instead may you once again know the treasure in heaven, the one known as Jesus, the Servant, who loves us because he treasures us. Amen.