April 9, 2009
(Maundy Thursday)
Of Dogs and Servants
by The Rev. Bruce Hall, Deacon
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14 •
Psalm 116:1, 10-17 •
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 •
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
(From
The Lectionary Page)
Earlier this week I did something that horrified me. Driving home from an evening with friends I was traveling up State Line Road when a dog ran in front of me and before I could stop I heard the sickening sound of a thud. I stopped my car in the middle of the street, turned on my emergency blinkers, and scrambled out of the car to see to the dog. I checked around the car and under the car but the dog had disappeared. I was anxious to find the injured animal and heading back to my car I noticed the small line of vehicles developing behind my idling car. Approaching the car behind I motioned for the driver to roll-down his window and as he did I asked “Did you see where the dog went? How hurt did she look?” “It didn’t seem hurt at all, it just ran off between those houses. Nope, it didn’t seem that hurt.” “The only thing worse than hitting a dog” I said, “is being a dog owner and hitting a dog. You’re hitting your dog, you know?” The driver just looked at me, then my car, then me. He was ready to be about his business and my car was in the way. I drove around that neighborhood for quite some time looking for that black Labrador but without much luck. When I got home my German Shepherd must have thought it was Christmas or some special occasion to receive a second rawhide chew-roll that night.
In the following week I managed to avoid hitting any more animals but I did manage to pass several people asking for help, for money, for food. How different was my response. When I thought a dog was suffering and needed help my response was immediate and my responsibility clear. Later, when it was someone at a Linwood intersection staring at me with a sign saying “Homeless! Please help!” , there was equivocation, intellectualization, and all manner of obfuscation as to the utility and purpose of giving this person a couple bucks. It is safe to say—without being overly revolutionary—that we ought to treat our neighbors at least as well as our pets.
How we treat one another is the focus of tonight’s Gospel. In John’s account we hear of Christ’s call to his early followers to love each other by inverting the roles of master and servant, teacher and pupil, with which they were familiar. Throughout his adult ministry, Christ taught that each of us is connected, one to the other, as common children of our Creator. But in taking on the towel of a servant and performing the low act of washing another’s feet, Jesus sought to demonstrate the way that this connectedness should be reflected in our love for one another. Not sentiment but a love that manifests itself in altered roles and awareness of who we can be to one another. Servanthood, choosing to allow another’s needs to guide and shape your thoughts and actions is to ask us to do something very different from what the work teaches. The world teaches us to often relate to others hierarchically in terms of who does and does not have some form of power as in adults and children, employers and employees, teachers and students, sergeant and private, or customer and waitress. In so much of our lives from the ballot-box to the market place, we are taught to understand the work and each other in terms of who and what is above and who is beneath—and to act accordingly. Our society’s institutions that distribute power and wealth have become very accomplished at perpetuating the entrenched notions of hierarchy to the point that many accept them as inevitable, natural, and as a legitimate basis for organizing our communities.
Jesus dramatically challenges this way of thinking by taking on the dress of a humble servant and washing the feet of his disciples. He is trying to teach his disciples to understand human relationships in a different way—that they need not be based on power but in genuine love. This love, the love Christ demonstrates was meant to be the model for his disciples. Notice this message is not directed to the world at large but to the inner circle of his early followers that they love one another. By extension, you and I are asked to do the same. When we as a congregation become servants to one another, we are the present incarnation of this ancient lesson. By our humility and deference to each other the world can see another way that to build healthy, loving communities, a better way to resolve conflict and overcome adversity through serving others. In giving a new commandment as a summary of his teaching, Christ asks us to serve each other as a means to teach the world about who we are and the truth that lives in our hearts.
In a few moments, we will commemorate the new commandment Christ has given us by washing one another’s feet. We do this not as an isolated or private form of piety, but as a sign to a troubled world that Christ represents a new way to live and that we here tonight are a testament to that message.
Today so many people are lost and alone, yearning for community. They live next door, share our roads, supermarkets, our churches, but they do not feel connected to those around them. They feel lost in unemployment lines, deserted as the bills come due, abandoned in the wake of divorce, alone in the numbing silence of a loved one’s death. So many of us are looking for belonging as members of a genuine community and Christ has given us a powerful metaphor for what that communality looks like. By approaching each other as mutual servants, we can build concrete expressions of true community in a society that has reduced so many of our relationships to buying and selling, dominating or being dominated.
Just as Christ has loved and accepted us, let us now love and serve each other in acts of compassion, the living evidence of the truth within us and a truth we are called to proclaim as the Kingdom of God.
