I've had a song running through my head these past few days as I've been reading this gospel & thinking about it. It's a newer one to us – Will You Let Me Be Your Servant? (ELW, #659) We've sung it a few times, but it may not be all that familiar to you. It's the kind of melody that gets stuck in your head – but it's the words that were ringing in my ear this week. The first and last line are the same. I won't sing it for you...
“Will you let me be your servant,Such interesting words – 2 different sides of the same coin. “Will you let me be your servant...? Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.”
let me be as Christ to you?
Pray that I may have the grace
to let you be my servant, too.”
You know, my tendency is to get that last line mixed up. It's an easy song to remember, but I always want to switch the words around and say, "Pray that I may have the grace to let me be your servant too."
Because even though none of us really wants to be in the position of servant, we often find that serving others, doing something for someone else, is a whole lot easier than being the one who is served. Being served puts us in the position of owing someone else something. It seems like we always want to figure out a way to pay that person back with an equal act of kindness, rather than just receiving whatever they have done for us and saying thank-you. But more than that, I think that having someone else serve you, having them offer themselves and their help in whatever way, whatever form that takes, makes us feel vulnerable. It forces us to admit that we have needs we cannot meet on our own, and that's a hard thing to admit, at least for most of us.
I've come across that a lot. I'm sure you've seen some of these situations too– the elderly person who really can't live all on their own safely anymore, but resists having a companion or aide coming to their home to help them; the people who have lost a job, but never tell anyone until months or years later, usually after they have found work again; the person who suspects or knows that they have cancer, and yet choosing to go through treatment without telling anyone but their immediate family members.
There are a lot of reasons for keeping these things to ourselves. We don't want to burden anyone else. We want to prove to ourselves that we can take care of ourselves, that we can manage just fine without help. We don't want that vulnerability of needing someone else.
Some of you may not have this problem. I've always admired the people I know who just seem to easily be able to say, “I'm having a hard time. Can you help me?", but I'm not really in that crowd. A few months back, Andy & I were watching an episode of the show Fraggle Rock, you know, the Muppet one, and one of the characters, Red, had some sort of problem, and one of the other Fraggles offered to help her, and she burst out into song - “I can do it on my own!” There are times when that could be my anthem, my theme song! If I'd been there at Jesus' farewell meal with his disciples, I'm pretty sure that while Peter was busy protesting, “You will never wash my feet!” I would have been off pouring water of my own – not so much so that I could join Jesus in washing the other disciples' feet, but so that by the time Jesus got around to me, he'd find my feet scrubbed clean already. “I don't need you to wash my feet, Jesus. I can do it on my own.”
But Jesus' acts and words on this night point his disciples and us in a different direction. Because the call to follow Christ is not a call to self-sufficiency. Being a Christian does not enable or encourage us to be people who “can do it on our own.” Instead, Jesus invites us to enter deeply into each other's lives, to become the kind of community that loves and trusts each other enough to share our vulnerability, to take off the masks we hide behind and let others see our needs. Because the call to follow Jesus is also the call to be part of a community of faith. We cannot be Christians all alone, off in our own little corner somewhere, doing our own thing. The Christian life assumes that we will be involved and invested in each other's lives, that we will be open to one another, willing to share our burdens, just as we help others to carry their own. This is how we become the body of Christ, our lives knit and joined to each other's, as the Holy Spirit breathes in us, and the love of Christ flows through us and between us.
The Servant Song puts it this way: “We are pilgrims on a journey, we are trav'lers on the road; we are here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load.” This is what we are called to do and to be as the body of Christ. And it starts with this night, as Jesus kneels at the feet of his friends, washing their feet, taking the role of a humble servant, as the disciples experience this sign and symbol of the deep love Jesus has for them, the kind of love that doesn't hold back, that meets us at the places of our deepest needs, that offers itself to fill our hunger and quench our thirst, and encourages us to love one another in this same way, the way of give and take, the way of offering and receiving, the way of loving and knowing that we are loved in return. It is only because we know how much Christ loves us, that Jesus accepts us, that he claims us as his own – no matter what, that we are able to even try to love each other in this way, to be open and tender and vulnerable with each other. It is our identity in Christ that sets us free to truly love one another, just as Christ loves us.
“Will you let me be your servant,May this be our song. May this be our prayer. May this be our life together, as we learn to love as Jesus loves us.
let me be as Christ to you?
Pray that I may have the grace
to let you be my servant, too.”
Amen.
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