Most Noble
One of the most noble professions in the world is one that gives many people the opportunity to serve many others.
When I think of serving, I think first of serving God.
But how do we serve or love God? One way is by serving others.
Jesus says in John 13:34 to his literal disciples to "love one another as I have loved you.
" What does Jesus mean by 'as I have loved you'? We don't even recognize His presence most of the time, so how the heck can we know what 'as I have loved you' means? First of all, Jesus is perfect.
That means His love is perfect.
That means He served perfectly.
Well, we all know we can't do perfect.
Strike one.
Secondly, Jesus washed the feet of His disciples.
All of them.
Even Judas, the one who would betray Him.
Feet that wore sandals all day walking on dirt and maybe had bugs in their toenails.
Imagine those toenails.
He washed those feet with His hands.
Maybe you have this all figured out and you're not one of the people, including myself, who have actually been offended when we had to manually correct a word that was interpreted inaccurately by our voice recognition app.
Do I really need to say anything more about this? Strike two.
Oh, one other item.
Jesus died a horrific death on the Cross at Calvary.
Willingly.
Not just willingly.
Delightfully.
All Jesus wanted to do was please His Father in Heaven.
Jesus gladly paid that price because that's what His Father wanted and Jesus loved His Father that much.
Um...
I don't know about you, but I have a hard enough time paying the price of giving up "me" time 1) when it's time to get out of bed and it's still dark outside, and 2) when I'm deep into reading or studying.
But don't get any big ideas.
I might be reading down the specs on that Bentley I can't fall out of love with, or studying the picture in my mind of me volunteering to drive it up to the Walmart to pick up something for my wife and then giving her some sorry explanation when I show back up at the house empty-handed because I just needed any excuse to put more miles on this beautiful hand crafted piece of motorized artistry.
"I forgot what you told me to pick up.
" "Um, babe, you could have called me," she responds.
"My phone died?" Strike three.
So what does it mean, 'as I have loved you'? It seems obvious that we can't love as He has loved.
This is a subject I recommend you discuss with your pastor or spiritual mentor because it goes way deeper than I am able to go here, but for the purpose of this piece I will pose the question this way: Is it possible we can say Jesus loved and served His disciples in spite of their negativity and imperfections? Doesn't it mean so much more when we are loved by someone when we know we've been unloveable? What about when we don't even know how unloveable we are? Would it be reasonable to say, Jesus being perfect and all, that He served His disciples and loved them the way He did because He focused on the positive? If that is the case, then maybe it is possible that we can love as He has loved.
It appears that even our ability to obey this new commandment is a product of His Grace and an example of His servant leadership to us.
Which brings us back to a most noble profession.
One that gives many people the opportunity to serve many others.
When Jesus washed the feet, those feet, of His disciples, He was leading them by being the example of how they should serve each other.
He was being the example for us.
Because it's difficult to go any lower than washing somebody's nasty feet with bare hands, Jesus took away any literal or figurative excuse not to serve others on any level, to love one another as He has loved us.
Like Jesus, we should love others when they're unloveable.
We should serve them when they won't serve us.
And when they turn their back on us and tell others about how we tried to suck up to them and say what we did wasn't good enough anyway.
We should look beyond their imperfections as Jesus looks beyond ours.
We should love them as Jesus loves us.
When someone annoys us or rubs us the wrong way, it may be that God is showing us a picture of what we look like to Him and it could be a sign that may be a person we're called to serve in some way.
We should look beyond all that negative junk and find some reason to serve them because somebody somewhere is looking beyond all our negative junk and serving us in some way.
If we would have done it naturally, would that new commandment have been spoken? Our natural tendency is to highlight all the negatives we can find.
My 10-year-old daughter brought home a paper recently that rewarded her for all the errors she could find in it.
Kids are being taught fundamentally that it's perfectly fine to criticize and focus on every mistake they see, especially in others.
But Jesus does the opposite.
And He commands us to love one another as He loves us.
When a person or an organization endeavors to follow this principle to look beyond the negative and edify the positive in each person, wash the feet of people who will betray you and develop servant leaders who serve and develop other servant leaders, is there a more noble profession to pursue? Does your profession do that?
When I think of serving, I think first of serving God.
But how do we serve or love God? One way is by serving others.
Jesus says in John 13:34 to his literal disciples to "love one another as I have loved you.
" What does Jesus mean by 'as I have loved you'? We don't even recognize His presence most of the time, so how the heck can we know what 'as I have loved you' means? First of all, Jesus is perfect.
That means His love is perfect.
That means He served perfectly.
Well, we all know we can't do perfect.
Strike one.
Secondly, Jesus washed the feet of His disciples.
All of them.
Even Judas, the one who would betray Him.
Feet that wore sandals all day walking on dirt and maybe had bugs in their toenails.
Imagine those toenails.
He washed those feet with His hands.
Maybe you have this all figured out and you're not one of the people, including myself, who have actually been offended when we had to manually correct a word that was interpreted inaccurately by our voice recognition app.
Do I really need to say anything more about this? Strike two.
Oh, one other item.
Jesus died a horrific death on the Cross at Calvary.
Willingly.
Not just willingly.
Delightfully.
All Jesus wanted to do was please His Father in Heaven.
Jesus gladly paid that price because that's what His Father wanted and Jesus loved His Father that much.
Um...
I don't know about you, but I have a hard enough time paying the price of giving up "me" time 1) when it's time to get out of bed and it's still dark outside, and 2) when I'm deep into reading or studying.
But don't get any big ideas.
I might be reading down the specs on that Bentley I can't fall out of love with, or studying the picture in my mind of me volunteering to drive it up to the Walmart to pick up something for my wife and then giving her some sorry explanation when I show back up at the house empty-handed because I just needed any excuse to put more miles on this beautiful hand crafted piece of motorized artistry.
"I forgot what you told me to pick up.
" "Um, babe, you could have called me," she responds.
"My phone died?" Strike three.
So what does it mean, 'as I have loved you'? It seems obvious that we can't love as He has loved.
This is a subject I recommend you discuss with your pastor or spiritual mentor because it goes way deeper than I am able to go here, but for the purpose of this piece I will pose the question this way: Is it possible we can say Jesus loved and served His disciples in spite of their negativity and imperfections? Doesn't it mean so much more when we are loved by someone when we know we've been unloveable? What about when we don't even know how unloveable we are? Would it be reasonable to say, Jesus being perfect and all, that He served His disciples and loved them the way He did because He focused on the positive? If that is the case, then maybe it is possible that we can love as He has loved.
It appears that even our ability to obey this new commandment is a product of His Grace and an example of His servant leadership to us.
Which brings us back to a most noble profession.
One that gives many people the opportunity to serve many others.
When Jesus washed the feet, those feet, of His disciples, He was leading them by being the example of how they should serve each other.
He was being the example for us.
Because it's difficult to go any lower than washing somebody's nasty feet with bare hands, Jesus took away any literal or figurative excuse not to serve others on any level, to love one another as He has loved us.
Like Jesus, we should love others when they're unloveable.
We should serve them when they won't serve us.
And when they turn their back on us and tell others about how we tried to suck up to them and say what we did wasn't good enough anyway.
We should look beyond their imperfections as Jesus looks beyond ours.
We should love them as Jesus loves us.
When someone annoys us or rubs us the wrong way, it may be that God is showing us a picture of what we look like to Him and it could be a sign that may be a person we're called to serve in some way.
We should look beyond all that negative junk and find some reason to serve them because somebody somewhere is looking beyond all our negative junk and serving us in some way.
If we would have done it naturally, would that new commandment have been spoken? Our natural tendency is to highlight all the negatives we can find.
My 10-year-old daughter brought home a paper recently that rewarded her for all the errors she could find in it.
Kids are being taught fundamentally that it's perfectly fine to criticize and focus on every mistake they see, especially in others.
But Jesus does the opposite.
And He commands us to love one another as He loves us.
When a person or an organization endeavors to follow this principle to look beyond the negative and edify the positive in each person, wash the feet of people who will betray you and develop servant leaders who serve and develop other servant leaders, is there a more noble profession to pursue? Does your profession do that?
