what God loves to bless

What God Loves To Bless
John 13:1-17
Everything in Jesus’ life is moving him forwards to the cross, so he is intent on some special conversations with his closest allies, the disciples. Here in John 13, Jesus demonstrates clearly his love towards his disciples, grace towards Judas the betrayer, and obedience to his Father. We are left with a strong illustration of servanthood leading us to be willing to clean up the mess for each other.
But how do we create a culture of servanthood?
1. Come to grips with our identity so that we don’t have a problem with the idea of servanthood.
2. Come to grips with our mission so that we continue to do as Jesus did.
3. Come to grips with our rank so that we can reach all with our act of service.
4. Come to grips with the need / opportunity for service around us which is immense.
• The service of presence
• The service of availability
• The service of giving up
• The service of anonymity
• The service of receiving
Jim Bakker, having an aide massage his feet
John 13:1 gives an opposite picture
- Verse 1 tells us the hour had come, the time all of eternity had been pointing to
- Jesus was transitioning, preparing to leave
- No one knew but Jesus that this would be His last night with His followers
- And the focus was now on those He had invested in, those who chose to follow Him
- Those He loved “to the uttermost”
- Loved as much as anyone could be loved (eis telos)
- The advance of God’s kingdom, the hope of the church, would rest with these men
- So Jesus gathered them together to talk
- A conversation that is His longest one in the book of John (or any gospel for that matter)
- One we will engage with for several weeks
- At times it seems to ramble
- It is not systematic
- There is no clear outline, no smooth transitions
- Eight times the disciples will engage/interact/ask questions
- Some refer to it as a FAREWELL ADDRESS
- Over and over He tells them He is leaving
- But it might be more correct to say it was a FINAL BRIEFING
- Part of a closing MISSIONAL CHALLENGE
- While He is leaving, they are not coming because they have a mission to do, a work to complete
- And a Helper is coming; they won’t be doing it alone
- He is critical, for there is an enemy at work to destroy everything they are called to do
- Just as an enemy was at work to destroy Jesus, the devil and Judas were working in a conspiracy to destroy Jesus (verse 2)
- But nothing at all is spinning out of Jesus’ control, He had/has absolute rule (verse 3)
- HE DOES WHATEVER HE WILLS
- He could have devastated Judas with a mighty blast of His anger
- Instead, He devastated all of His disciples with a mighty blast of His SERVICE (verses 4ff)
- The One who had disrobed Himself of royalty to wear the garment of humanity, (what Christmas is really all about!) disrobed Himself even further to adopt the dress of a slave, doing what the lowest of the lowest did at meals (wash feet)
- AND as custom, people reclined, with feet pointing out, full of grime and sweat and dung and dirt, and those at the lowest rung would do the messy work of washing
- But THIS NIGHT, Jesus did it
- He got down on His knees and began to show them the full extent of His love
- By taking the hands with which He held all power and authority in the universe and began to wash their muck
- And suddenly things were upside down for these men
- And Peter would have none of this
- Students serve teachers
- Followers serve Masters
- “You shall not, absolutely not, wash my feet!!” (verse 8a)
- Peter, who often had a better plan for Jesus’ life
- But Jesus overrode Peter
- He is not discouraged by our humanity, turned off by our messiness
- “Unless you let Me wash you, you have no part” (verse 8b)
- Which remains true: If people will not let Jesus do His work of washing, cleansing lives of their dirt, they can have no part with Jesus…ever!
- And then Jesus put on His clothes, returned to His place (verse 12)
- And then asked them, asks us, a pointed question, “DO YOU GET IT?”
- Because they didn’t
- And all too often, we don’t either
- They didn’t get it because they had an ongoing argument over who was the greatest, who was alpha
- And where there is trouble over who is the greatest, there is conflict over who is the least
- Someone needed to wash the others’ feet
- So they sat, feet caked with dirt
- Until Jesus took a towel and redefined greatness
- Redefined leadership
- Greatness is about descending, not ascending
- Willing to do the menial task of cleaning up the dirt in the lives of those we live with
- All too often, we’d rather let someone else
- Worse, we would rather they take their messiness somewhere else
- But Jesus is teaching us this:
- If you’re going to be My community…
- If you want My blessing (verse 17)…
- If you intend to advance My kingdom, if you are going to change this world…
- Than you must create a culture of servanthood
- If we can’t do it here, we can’t do it there
HOW DO WE CREATE A CULTURE OF SERVANTHOOD?
1) COME TO GRIPS WITH OUR IDENTITY
- Verse 3 is more than informational
- It helps explain Jesus’ actions
- Jesus, knowing His mission, origin, destination, and authority
- Knowing who He was, Jesus could get up and take a towel
- People who have the hardest time serving are often those who are insecure in themselves
- Who fear they will be labeled
- But those who find it easiest to serve are those who know who they are in Christ
- Creating an ethos of service involves something else
2) COME TO GRIPS WITH OUR MISSION
- If we are unwilling to serve, it is because we do not understand that our mission is to continue what Jesus began
- What He has done, we are to do
- “As I have loved you, love one another” (John 13:34)
- “As I have done the Father’s work, you must be about doing the will of the Father” (John 14:12)
- “As I have lived life to the full, you must live in all of My fullness” (John 14:19)
- “As I have born much fruit, you must bear much fruit” (John 15:8)
- “As I was hated, you must anticipate to be hated (John15:18)
- “As I have served, you must serve (John 13:16)
3) COME TO GRIPS WITH OUR RANK
- If anything gets in the way of service it is pride
- Self-interest, self service, self-centeredness plagues all of us
- But Jesus tells us our rank; we are not above our Master (verse 16)
- If there is anything beneath us, we have placed ourselves above Jesus
4) COME TO GRIPS WITH THE NEED/OPPORTUNITIES
- For the need to be a servant is everywhere
- But service is not so much a list of to do’s, it’s broader
A. THE SERVICE OF PRESENCE
- Lots of service begins here
- The ministry of presence might mean getting up in the middle of the night to sit beside the bed of an older, frail, and frightened friend who is dying
Illustration – Prison/Paul
- Going abroad where others are unwilling to go, the fringe
- The marginal, economically deprived places
- Palestinian camps of Beirut, the forgotten places like the
Congo, Darfur, the people in need in Dalkeith, Woodburn, Eskbank
- To simply say, “I am here with no other agenda but to be with you”
Illustration - Bishop in Uganda, interviewed in CT
- We can easily forget that Jesus was most often present at the margins
- And lots of us are unwilling to go there
- And if we are, it is as go-and-fix-it people
- As people who have the answers, and tragically, we just let you fix things, maintaining our lack of confidence
- But what is needed is to come and be with, with no other agenda than to be with us
- Such that we gain our confidence and move forward
B. THE SERVICE OF AVAILABILITY
- The service of interruption
- Taking the latch off the door, in order to pray with someone deeply troubled in spirit
- It is an opportunity of service offered to us countless times each day
- To be always available is to be not worth much when we are
- But servants know when to be available, when they must be
C. THE SERVICE OF GIVING UP
- Giving up your seat, giving up your rights, giving up your place, giving up the fact it has to be your way, giving up your agenda on Friday night
- It may even mean giving up your career
- Robert McQuilkin, a seminary/university president shifted to care for his wife Muriel, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s
- Henri Nouwen, author and priest, who left the academic community to move to a community of mentally impaired people to minister to their needs
- They both had been washed by Jesus, and so they made the decision to give up their place and “wash the feet” of others
D. THE SERVICE OF ANONYMITY
- Doing something that needs to be done without needing to be acknowledged, without wanting to be known
- Such as prayer
One could go on…
E. THE SERVICE OF GUARDING THE REPUTATION OF OTHERS
F. THE SERVICE OF SHARING OUR GIFTS
- Right here at St John’s, everyone bringing a brick to the wall, giving your time, talent, your passion
G. THE SERVICE OF RECEIVING
- Part of servanthood is letting someone else wash our feet
Point - This is footwashing, not some church rite, some institutional service of literally washing feet
- Which means little in our culture
In the book, “The Rise of Christianity”, sociologist Rodney Stark set out to understand how Christianity rose from 12 to a few hundred to… in just 300 years, half the population of the Roman Empire were believers
- And this is what he discovered: That Christians chose to live in the cities, and when terrible conditions and epidemics took hold
- Many left, except the church
- That chose to stay and provide basic care, wash the feet of others
- And out of this culture of servanthood, paganism was powerfully impacted