At the last meal with his friends, Jesus offers them the commandment: “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”(John 13:34, NRSV) “Just as I have loved you,” Jesus said. As part of the example of how Jesus loved, he knelt and washed his disciples’ feet. The Ghanaian folk song, Jesu, Jesu, often sung in my experience during foot washing on Maundy Thursday, offers this final verse:
Loving puts us on our knees,
serving as though we were slaves;
this is the way we should live with you.
One year recently I had the opportunity and gift to kneel with love before someone at the foot washing, someone from whom I had been estranged. Each of us knelt before the other. There was love, to be sure, in the foot washing. But I think the simple act of kneeling before someone in love and humility said as much or maybe more about our hearts and the heart of Jesus than the act of foot washing itself.
Who are the ones we should serve? How should we serve? Where are the relationships in need of healing in our lives, in the world around us, in the Church? So often in speaking of Christian service, we talk of helping others in a top-down kind of way. Sometimes we speak of standing with people side by side, facing something together. Jesus offers us yet another way, another picture, the way of servanthood. Jesus offers us a different posture. His way of loving draws us to our knees, kneeling before one another and before him.
On our knees we worship. We pray. We listen. We seek to serve as God would have us serve. We strive to follow the hearts that God has placed within us, as God is leading them. We know that each of us will be drawn to serve in ways particular to who we are and who God has made us to be.
When my son Erik was four, we took in a stray Siamese cat who showed up on our doorstep. Not long after that, Erik saw a program on public television about animal shelters. And not long after that, as we were driving in the car, he asked, from his car seat in the back, “Mommy, what would have happened if Barry (the cat) had been taken to a shelter and no one had adopted him?”
I paused, wanting to be honest, and not wanting to use the euphemism “put to sleep.” I ended up saying that, because there is no room for all the animals, often they are “gently killed.” There was silence in the back. After about five minutes, Erik said, “I have the answer.” “The answer to what?” I asked. “What to do with all the animals,” he replied. “What?” “We can give them to the people in prison so they won’t be lonely,” came his answer. A beautiful poignant picture of every prison cell with an inmate and a dog or cat came to my mind. I wondered briefly about where the litter box would go.
Erik’s four-year-old heart was drawn in love for unwanted animals and the loneliness of those in prison, and he found a way to connect the two. A wonderful thing, a gracious image.
Where do we, each one of us, child or adult, find our hearts drawn? Our hearts will tell us who we must serve, where we must serve, how we must love as Jesus loved. First Peter offers: “Serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.” (4:10, NRSV) The things and people that draw our hearts will be as particular and unique as each one of us has been created particular, unique and fully loved. We have all received these gifts. We are all called to share these God-given gifts, kneeling before one another and before our God with that same love, drawn from the same heart that Jesus has for us, the heart to build up the Church, the Body of Christ, the heart to bring healing to the world.
As we strive to follow the hearts we have been given, as we continue to seek to “get it right,” we hear again from First Peter: “Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything.” (4:8, The Message)
