Sermon for February 6, 2022 - John 13:1-17
This is a deeply moving passage. And it’s all the more moving when we understand the underlying message in this account. This is a picture of Jesus visibly and tangibly demonstrating His heart for the church, His desire for our relationships and this His key to the main focus of his entire ministry - the Kingdom of God.
Today is the 4th message in a series we are doing on the spiritual disciplines. We began with an overview of the topic by Pastor Arleen, and then so far we’ve looked at the spiritual disciplines of prayer and of reading the Word of God. Let me know if you’ve tried any of the spiritual disciplines so far and how it’s going so far. I’d love to hear from you about that. And if you have any questions, please reach out.
Today we’re looking at the spiritual disciplines of submission and servanthood. You might wonder how submission and servanthood can be considered as spiritual disciplines. Aren’t spiritual disciplines supposed to be things that we do on our own, ways that we enter into the ‘training’, so to speak, of being a disciple of Jesus? But submission and servanthood - those things are about our relationships. So how can they be called spiritual disciplines?
Good question. One answer would be that prayer and fasting and reading the Scriptures and other things that we might call “personal spiritual disciplines” are hugely important because they lay the groundwork for our lives. They help to prepare us for the ministry that God has called each of us to.
They help us to apply discipline to our lives. Notably, when practiced they teach us patience. They teach us to dwell in the moment. They teach us impulse control. They teach us to depend on God. They teach us the heart and mind of God as we explore the Word of God
The personal spiritual disciplines do all that and a lot more, WHEN we practice them in an ongoing way, when they become a regular pattern in our lives. But again, how are submission and servanthood considered as spiritual disciplines? Well, they are key to your ministry. Did you know that God has called you to ministry? That ministry is a big part of your purpose in life.
You see we’re saved by God’s grace through the gift of faith; we’re not at all saved through what we do. But then once we have been saved, once we have come to follow Jesus, we discover that God has things - good things - for us to do that He’s intended all along for us. We learn that we ourselves are part of God’s plan to bring blessing to others.
That of course is a theme that we find throughout Scripture. Notably it’s stated pretty directly in Ephesians 2
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Those “good works” are your ministry. They are the outward expression of your life in God. And as we learn from Jesus, 3. ministry is first of all expressed in servanthood, as we will see.
So prayer and knowing the Scriptures are extremely important and they do represent things that need to become a daily part of our lives. We need to commune with God, to confess, to intercede for ourselves and others, we need to read the Bible so as to better know God Who we love and serve.
But here’s the thing. The spiritual disciplines of submission and servanthood are the testing ground. They are the foot-on-the-ground, real life opportunities to apply what we gain through prayer and reading the Word.
Prayer shapes us, it humbles us; it brings us into conscious contact with our Redeemer; prayer refines us in our deepest parts and, as we let it, really helps to conform our inner person to the image of Christ.
Likewise reading the Word shapes us. It helps us to think rightly, to sort out the confusion of what it means to be human and fallen and broken in a fallen and broken world. The Word makes us wise in relationship to sin, the devil and the world.
But submission and servanthood, those things represent where the rubber hits the road. They are “field disciplines” as it were.
Before we look at this passage in some depth, I do feel I need to say something that needs to be said when touching on the topic of Biblical submission.
It has been heartbreaking for me to hear, over the years, about some, I would say or hope, a minority, of Christian of influence, be they formal church leaders or just folks that try to influence others - who have really failed in a key component of being a Christian leader.
What I mean by this is that some of us have experienced a very real abuse of the concept of submission at the hands of other Christians who were in some position to speak into our lives, again be they a pastor or not.
There are some who have exercised their authority in the lives of others to effectively bully them into submission. Normally this is not done in public view. It’s done to manipulate and control people’s behaviour.
You may have known people connected to the church who have been very charismatic, smooth-talking, generally impressive people, but who have ultimately been coercive, controlling and really NOT, in their attitudes, behaviours and character AT ALL like Jesus. Rather they are better understood as bullies.
And if you’ve experienced that you’ve likely been left confused, self-doubting, maybe angry and possibly even a bit adrift at sea spiritually. These people who have abused the idea of submission are wolves in sheeps clothing. Jesus warned us about them. We have to be wise as serpent and innocent as doves in every area of our lives, including those we allow to have influence in our lives.
My personal rule of thumb, to be frank, is to “say no to nonsense”, no matter who says it. Somebody says you should do something that you believe is really stupid or at least highly questionable or illogical or irrational - just don’t do it. Even if that will offend the bully, even if that may break the relationship you have with that her or him, you are better off without that person in your life.
Secondly, if anyone raises the issue of you “not submitting” or “not being submissive enough”, huge red flags should go off in your head. To use that language is inherently, in this day and age, a clear sign of abuse. Again, be willing to forfeit your relationship with someone rather than to allow yourself to be coerced and manipulated by any other person.
If you know me, or if I’ve ever asked you to do anything, you may have noticed that 99% of the time but I ask someone, anyone to consider doing something I am a) asking them rather than telling them to do that thing, and B) will always add either before or after I asked the thing, that “no is a good answer“, or “no is an excellent answer“.
Why? It’s because I am aware that for some people I may be an authority of sorts in their lives and I am aware that whatever voice or authority I may have can be abused. So I would much rather something not get done, or to do it myself, than to make anyone feel in any way compelled or forced or coerced into doing something. This probably means that there are a lot of things that don’t get done that would get done if this church had another type of leader.
But you know what the upside is - anyone who does anything at Church at the Mission does so because they want to. We have Elders who pray for you and serve you - because they genuinely want to and they love you.
We have leaders like William who does all that he does (most of which you never see by the way), because he wants to, he delights to because he is free to do it or not do it, and he does it because he delights in God and loves to serve God as he serves the church.
I would rather 1 person like William than 100 people who feel they are obligated to serve in the church.
Enough about that. That’s likely more than I needed to say, but it’s off my chest.
Let’s just pause and breathe for a moment for anyone still processing any of what I’ve just said. (Play elevator music)
So back to our passage for today: What do we see as we look at Jesus modelling for us servanthood and, yes, submission, because that is what is going on in this passage.
Jesus wanted to have his disciples understand what he wanted from them. He wanted them and us to understand that He wants followers who will be servants. And our passage today shows us that it’s not something that Jesus preached about while He was being waited upon by others, while He was exercising His right to be served by others.
He wanted to give a tangible example that couldn’t be misunderstood. And to demonstrate what the life of a disciple should look like as it relates to others, he wants to give us an example. So, instead of asking Peter, for example, to stoop down and wash the feet of a fellow disciple to demonstrate His point, Jesus prepares Himself to serve.
He does what is needed with His garments, and then He washes the feet of His disciples, His friends. This is a stunning act. All the more so when we understand that servants were ranked in the average wealthy household in Jesus’ day.
Those who were higher up as servants had certain duties that related to their dignity in the house. They did certain things, and other things were beneath their dignity, they left for lowlier servants. Now to wash the muck and goop, and dried dust off of another’s feet was the duty of the lowest servant. Think about that.
Jesus goes beyond simply serving the disciples. Jesus takes upon Himself the duty of the lowliest of servants. The lowest of servants.
This is a remarkable picture. The Creator of everything, the King of the universe bows to wash the feet of those He came to save. This is meant to be understood. And I think it’s meant to be disturbing. On one level it makes zero sense. We can actually stop there, as many have done, and simply shake our heads and think to ourselves, “That’s odd!”, and then move on to the next thing. (Pause)
Or we can sit with this picture, sit with this extraordinary Scripture passage, and consider what Jesus means to say to us. I think when we do that we see that Jesus wants followers, disciples who will be servants; who will live their lives as servants. Not have moments when they serve others, but rather who will adopt an attitude, put on a cloak, as it were, of servanthood.
Last week Jeff Knott, our guest speaker, talked about “putting on the zeal of the Lord” first thing in the morning as a way to intentionally keep our focus on glorifying and serving God throughout the day. I think we can also “put on” the heart of a servant first thing each day in order to remember what our attitude should be toward others.
What does that mean? Well, God wants people that will be humble. He wants people that will live with the purpose of loving others and loving God and serving both.
You see here Jesus gives us an important key to living a fulfilled life, living an abundant life. The key to living a fulfilled life is to not focus on living a fulfilled life. That means not to focus on finding ways to be happy, to be fulfilled. It means to develop the attitude of a servant.
A servant is not cowardly, indecisive, weak-willed, or whatever other negative idea we may have. A servant is a person with a clear purpose for living, whose personal agenda is to lift up others, to love and care for the needs of another.
Jesus, in the passage we just read, once-and-for-all elevated servanthood to a profound and purposeful level. When you serve, you follow the example of the Creator of the world. When you consider another person’s well-being ahead of your own, you follow the example of the Saviour of the world.
When you put your immediate desire for lifting up your own reputation, second to supporting and serving another, you follow the example of the Redeemer of all mankind.
Let’s look again at the example of Jesus through the eyes of the Apostle Paul: 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. 5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature[a] God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. Philippians 2
Now, to be a servant means that we need to cultivate the attitude of a servant. That’s not something we do while sitting on our thumbs. We learn to develop a servant’s heart by serving. It’s that simple. There are applications in all of life, and there are applications in the church.
To keep it brief, let’s talk about the church. What is a healthy path or trajectory for a person who goes to church? At first when we come to church, we come for ourselves. We come to learn, we come for healing, we come because we have a sense of needing to be connected to the people of God. That’s normal and that’s healthy. That can take some time.
A good church doesn’t rush healing in a soul. A good church nurtures the healing and let’s person take the time they need to become healed. A really good church recognizes that we never stop healing, because as long as we’re alive we will suffer in some way. So then in that sense healing never stops. Thanks be to God.
Something happens when we’ve experienced some healing and when we start to mature in our faith though. Our reason for church, our reason for continuing to come to church, changes. We start to come as much to give as to receive, we come as much to contribute as to take.
We think less and talk less about “Am I being fed?” and more about “How am I feeding others?” We think about offering our gifts to God and to the people of God. We start to notice stuff.
When we meet in person, we’re back to being in the gym of 270 Gerrard for the time being while our other location is being completely rebuilt.
So now here, when we’re in person, we start to think: ”Hey..this is a gym. And it’s set up as a sanctuary. “That must take some effort, every Sunday. I wonder how can I help? And there’s a podium and speakers and a band and - there’s a lot going on here that others are obviously doing. Hey, I could help out, I could do the things that I see others doing and lessen the load, be part of the team that makes it happen.
Maybe we see someone new who is all on their own and nobody’s talking to them, and we think, “Hey, that was me a while ago and someone finally came and talked to me, and that was nice. So now I’m going to go and introduce myself to that new person”.
In other words, we start to serve. We start to care that others are served well. Our focus is not all inward, it is, an increasing amount of it, outward and concerned for others.
And then, after doing this for a while, we find ourselves less concerned about ourselves and now feeling quite full...full of relationships, full of feeling like our lives are impacting others, be it ever so humbly; full of a sense of peace that comes from being outside our own heads and inside the needs and well-being of others.
That’s a healthy path, I think, that leads to a lot of joy. Those who take that path end up being known better and they end up as being known as people who serve others, who are attentive to the needs and concerns of others.
And that’s where we get our leaders from. Our Elders are chosen from among those who we observe over time serving others, people who have servants’ hearts.
Servants are, in God’s Kingdom, celebrated. Servants are, in the church when things are as they should be, respected and admired and imitated. Servants are, in God’s economy, the true leaders of the church.
So submission and servanthood, modelled as they have been by our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, are disciplines, deeply spiritual, that when practiced help to make us more like Jesus, who of course submitted himself, 8. making “himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, and was himself a servant to all.
So may we join Jesus in His humility. May we learn “to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21) And may we add this to our understanding of what it means to learn to follow Jesus, on mission, together. And may we continue to develop the heart of a servant. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
