Stephen
Terry, Director
A
Community of Servants
Commentary
for the September 28, 2019 Sabbath School Lesson
Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and
fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show
special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat
for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my
feet," have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil
thoughts? James 2:2-4, NIV
Perhaps one of the most powerful images in the Bible is
that of Jesus, rising up from the table at the Last Supper, girding himself
with a towel, filling a basin with water and moving from disciple to disciple,
washing each man's feet with the palpable tenderness and love that flowed from
his heart, through his arms and into the hands that cleansed those dusty feet.
The Creator of our world, who by right could demand our obedience to him,
instead humbled himself to the status of a servant, seeking only to cleanse and
provide for the well-being of each man present. Then, rising from the last
disciple, he said, "I have set you an example that you should do as I have
done for you."[i]
Over time, this has become known as the Ordinance of Humility. Some denominations
practice it while others do not. The Seventh-day Adventist Church is one that
does. Usually about the time of the Thirteenth Sabbath at the end of each
quarter, local Adventist Churches offer the opportunity to participate. But is
that what Jesus intended with his example?
As Adventists, if we take advantage of every time the
service comes around, we may have participated 140 times or more by the time we
are 60 years old. How does one keep from it becoming a perfunctory exercise,
one where we can recite the meaning, but it no longer moves our hearts, if it
ever did. We may ridicule our Catholic brothers and sisters for performing the
Stations of the Cross as a meaningless exercise that has no benefit, while
participating in a ritual over and over again ourselves because we choose to
believe it confers some magical benefit to do so. Some might retort that there
is no command in the Bible to perform the Stations of the Cross, but Jesus
clearly said to wash those feet. While this is literally true, did Jesus really
intend for us to establish a literal Ordinance of Humility, or was he speaking,
as he often did, with parable and metaphor? Is it possible to be literally
correct and still be wrong?
Jesus said, "You may ask me for anything in my
name, and I will do it."[ii] But then he also said, "Many
will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and
in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' Then I
will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you
evildoers!'"[iii] It seems that it is therefore
possible to believe that we are doing exactly what Jesus has instructed us to
do and be completely mistaken. In the case of foot washing, we may ask
ourselves, "What was the real lesson Jesus intended?" Did Jesus
simply want us to have clean feet? If that were the even the case, we are already
going astray. Like the woman who cleans her whole house before the maid comes
so the maid won't think she is a dirty person, most of us make sure our feet
are sparkling clean before we ever arrive at church for the Thirteenth Sabbath
ceremony. If cleanliness had anything to do with the ceremony, then on that
basis alone, it is perhaps unnecessary. Some might say that it is a symbol of
Jesus cleansing us from sin. But Jesus never associated it with that. Besides,
isn't that what baptism is? Perhaps the real meaning of the ordinance is to
demonstrate that we are to lower ourselves in humility to serve mankind as
Jesus came to do. He set his own needs aside, his own rights and privileges as
God incarnate, to serve our great need for deliverance from the evil that we became
enthralled to. As that service was to our fallen world, so might our service be.
But we have nullified that to a degree. First we limited
the symbol of that service to the precincts of the church. If Jesus had done
the same, he would have taught that the ceremony was only to be performed in
the Temple or in the synagogue. Instead, he apparently performed it in the
upper room of a secular location. But we have gone even further. Fifty years
ago, when I was new to Adventism, men and women would separate to perform the
service, but today, it is possible to separate and only perform the service within
one's own family and never experience service outside the privacy of the family
circle. While there may be what seem to be good reasons behind this, we might
ask ourselves whether this is what Jesus intended by his example. Are we to exclude
those in families who are outside ours from our displaying an attitude of
service toward them? Or even worse, should we exclude those who are all alone
from our family circle? It may be apparent from how the ordinance has evolved
that we might have distorted its original intent. Perhaps this was from taking
it as being literally about foot washing and not something far more profound. When
I think back to my first participation in the ordinance, over fifty years ago,
even then, there was little explanation or reflection on the meaning, but more
a simple Jesus did it, said we should, too, so we are doing it. This seems to
me now to be a dry, legalistic perspective on the practice. But as a young
person, without the years of experience, education and critical thinking about
why I do what I do, I simply went along. After all, if everyone is doing it, it
must be right is what I felt at the time. Life has taught me better.
Interestingly and perhaps sadly, if the original foot
washing was a metaphor for service, perhaps how it is currently practiced may
be a metaphor for the condition of the modern church in relation to service. As
we have withdrawn within the church and withdrawn even further, within family
circles or even within circles of those we consider socially acceptable, our relationship
to the world has perhaps suffered similarly. We need only consider the message
found within the church budgets in most churches. Service to the secular community
surrounding our churches has very little funding compared to how much we expend
on funding expensive church plants and programs and services designed for our
own benefit with little regard for those outside our parish membership. We may
deceive ourselves into believing that the money spent for these things is somehow
necessary to bring people into membership in our denomination. But our
membership figures tell a different story. We often pride ourselves on growing
faster than other denominations, but the actual growth rate is so low,
especially in North America, that we are like a turtle calling itself speedy because
it is faster than a snail. We may deceive ourselves into thinking because we
have "the truth," we are on the right track and others will readily
join us if we can only convince them to recognize it. But that may be our
biggest stumbling block. In our veneration of "the truth," we may
have lost sight of the intent of that truth, the salvation of others and the
attitude of service that requires.
If we were to go to the community around any of our
churches and ask what positive difference the church has made to their
neighborhood, what would they say about us? Would they say that the church has
made a very positive contribution to relieving the daily struggles of their
neighbors? Would they instead see the church only as a competitor for parking
once a week that aggravates the neighborhood? Or worse, would they see that the
church has so little impact on their lives that we would only rate an
indifferent "meh" in response to our question?
It is not as though there are not needs that we could be
addressing. Some of those needs are screaming loudly on the news almost daily.
Many need healthcare they cannot afford. As a denomination with one of the largest
healthcare systems in the world, what are our local churches doing to make
healthcare available to the communities where we worship? Do the sick, who come
to us for healing, enter our hospitals seeking healing and then leave with
crushing debt that forces them into bankruptcy? Education has become so
expensive that it is no longer within the reach of many. As a denomination with
one of the largest private educational systems in the world, what are we doing
to make education available to the communities where we worship? Do those who
enter our schools seeking an education leave with such crushing debt that it
will be decades before they can afford a home for their young families?
Sometimes I am saddened to hear church members when referring to poverty in the
neighborhoods around our churches calling the people lazy or undeserving of
help. We often commute from better neighborhoods to attend those churches, but
what are we doing to mentor those around the church to help them discover means
to better themselves? I recall when pastoring many years ago that we at least had
Stop Smoking presentations that people were very grateful for as they struggled
with deliverance form the pernicious habit. It seems we no longer do even that.
As we reflect on where we are this Thirteenth Sabbath,
perhaps we would do well to consider whether our priorities match those of the
one who took that basin and girded himself with that towel two thousand years
ago. Do we give more priority to our own needs as church members or to those of
the community where we worship? Which is more likely to draw others as they
were drawn to Christ? Will we pick up that cross and carry it, or will we wait,
thinking that the church will eventually develop programs to get it done,
telling ourselves we will support it if that happens. Meanwhile we will
continue washing those feet like Jesus told us to.
