At the Last Supper, before giving His disciples the wonderful gift of the Holy Eucharist by which we are spiritually nourished, Jesus washed their feet, and then He said to them: “What I just did was to give you an example: as I have done, so you must do.” ( Jn. 13:15) Over and over again Jesus showed His disciples by His example and teachings what His mission was all about. It was about love and love is about serving others. Jesus made it very clear that if we are to be His true disciples then we are to loving serve others.
Just a few weeks ago we heard in the Gospel how Jesus miraculously fed more than five-thousand people with just a few loaves of bread and a few fish. After seeing that miracle, the people wanted to make Him their King then and there, but Jesus refused to allow it, and they did not understand why. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a small donkey and was hailed by the people as King of the Jews as they laid palm branches at His feet, He was then arrested by the authorities and put on trial, and His disciples did not understand why. When Jesus was crucified and hung on the Cross between two thieves, and when He died, giving His life as a ransom for us, His disciples, who had for the most part abandoned Him, did not understand why He allowed that to happen. In fact, much of what Jesus said and did, as recorded in the four Gospels, was not well understood by His own followers. Why was that? It was because they had their own pre-conceived idea of what the Messiah would be like, what He would say and do and Jesus did not fit their template. They expected that God would send as Messiah a great and powerful king to free them from the oppression of the pagan Romans, who ruled their country
and their lives. They remembered the good old days, the golden age of King David, and how great it was to be a free and independent people, how great it was to have David and his powerful army to defend them. They were dreaming of a future in which God would restore those glory days to Israel, and they had hoped that Jesus was the one to do that for them. Instead, Jesus told them: “The Son of Man has come not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.”
When Jesus rose from the dead and when the Holy Spirit came upon the members of the Church at Pentecost, then they finally came to understand God’s plan, and Jesus’ mission as Saviour. It was only then that they saw the connection between the true Messiah, who was Jesus, and the “suffering Servant” spoken of in the book of the prophet Isaiah. Many, many years before the birth of Jesus Isaiah had written these words about the Messiah: “He was spurned and avoided by men, a Man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity - yet it was our infirmities that He bore, our suffering that He endured.. He was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sin.” (Isaiah 53:3,4,5) We recall those words each year on Good Friday as we commemorate the suffering and death of Jesus on the Cross, and what we should learn from them is that Jesus is God’s Suffering Servant, God’s Divine Son who carries out His Father’s plans most effectively precisely because He is God’s humble servant. God’s plans are always best carried out by those who are willing to put themselves out in service to others, even to the point of suffering and death. We need to learn well that as true disciples of Jesus we are called to serve others in need.
In today’s world many of us have been conditioned to admire power in others, be it financial power, or political power, or military power, or even athletic power, as we recently observed in the summer Olympic games in China.. We have been conditioned to believe that
winning is all-important these days. We all would like to be a winner, the person who comes out on top, number one, the person with a high salary, the person who is in a position to control and dominate over others. We want to be first, the best, and so it is often difficult for us to appreciate what Jesus wants to teach us in today’s Gospel passage. Jesus teaches us that we are to put ourselves out for others. We are to be humble servants as He Himself was a humble servant while He lived on this earth. To be a humble servant does not mean that we are to be weak or wimpish allowing others to push us this way or that. A truly humble person is one who knows the truth about himself or herself in relation to God and others. A humble person is one who has the strength to serve others because he or she knows that is what Jesus asks of us and it is what Jesus will help us to do if we are willing to do it.
To be a true disciple of Jesus in today’s world we need to rethink the life-style we have been conditioned to put our faith in. We need to ask ourselves the question: what does it really mean for me to be a faithful disciple of Jesus? Can I honestly say that over the past two weeks, for example, I have really tried to be a servant of others, at home, at work, at school, at play? What have I done over the past two weeks to help others who were in need? Did I show any concern for another person’s suffering, for another persons’ loneliness, for another person’s need? Did I put myself out to help someone else, even when that was inconvenient for me at the time?
Once there was a political leader who attended the coronation of King Edward V11 in London, England back in 1901. He went to lavish receptions in equally lavish surroundings. He attended sumptuous parties, and of course was at the coronation ceremony itself. When he returned home some friends asked him what was the one thing that impressed
him the most about his experience, and to their great surprise, he told the following story. He: said that “when he was returning to his hotel after a wonderful reception one night, he saw two children huddled together in the doorway of a house, their arms around each other, sleeping. It was a bitterly cold night and one of the children was a boy about twelve-years old, while the other was a little girl, apparently his sister, about three years old. The boy had taken off his coat and put it around his sister’s shoulders, and had put his wool cap over her cold feet”. The politician then said to his friends back home: “it may seem strange to you, but of all the things I saw in London, this picture will always be my strongest memory”
Should it be really so strange, I wonder? Just a simple act of loving concern for someone else, even to the point of suffering oneself, is not only very impressive, but also memorable in our sight, and in God’s sight as well. Jesus teaches us that for God a simple act of loving service is more acceptable than even the coronation of a king.
In today’s Gospel Jesus tells His closest friends that He “must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day, be raised.” (Mt:16:21) When Peter refused to accept what Jesus told them, Jesus then says to them: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. (Mt.16:24-25)
As I mentioned earlier, we have the Holy Spirit with us to help us be the persons God wants us to be. When we do even a small act of kindness for someone, or do any kind of loving service to another person in need then we are serving Jesus Himself. It will be wonderful to come before Him on the day of we die and hopefully know that it will be these acts of service to others that will be most remembered and rewarded by Him..