Jesus models servant leadership
I AM AMONG YOU AS ONE WHO SERVES…
KEEPING VIGIL WITH MYSTERY
My heart can see into the darkness. And my prayer travels deep, where the Eternal One waits. With love I listen, keeping vigil with the Mystery, With the One who waits for me. I am with the one who waits for me. Velma Frye & Macrina Wiederkehr – Seven Sacred Pauses www.velmafrye.com |
Jesus’ last gathering with the disciples…
A reading from the gospel according to John
|
THE BASIN AND THE TOWEL
He got up from the supper and took off his outer garment and wrapped a towel around himself – (John 13:4)
In an upstairs room
A parable is just about to come alive And while they bicker about who’s best With a painful glance He’ll silently rise Their Saviour Servant must show them how Through the will of the water And the tenderness of the towel
BRIDGE:
|
A TOWEL AND A BASIN
From A Radical Guide for Catholics: Rooted in the Essentials of our Faith by Bill Huebsch It is our tools that determine our trade in life and the tools of the Eucharist are a towel and a basin. In the gospel of John the bread, if there was any, is not mentioned at all. The writer of that Gospel was able to sum up all that the Eucharist means without the food; and all that was needed to tell the story was that towel and basin. We read this story at Mass only on one evening of the entire year: Holy Thursday, when very few people are present. I think that’s a great shame because it is really the charter document of the church, of our households, and of our small communities. The point made here is that if we have not washed one another’s feet with a life of service to the body of Christ, the community present and absent, then we really haven’t received communion. But it isn’t easy to be so intimate and to risk this much faith. It’s much easier to just go to Mass on Sunday which involves almost no risk at all in much of the modern world. (P 201) It is a terrible risk to look across the table at someone and say to him or her, or to them: “Do we want Jesus at the centre with the solidarity that implies?” “Do we or can we come to love each other this much?” “Will we really receive the Body of Christ, with all its bruises and imperfections and needs? All its unwanted, unwashed and unhealed?” “Are we really ready for this?” These are very intimate questions because they put us on the line with people at our own table, the one with whom we break bread, our “Companions”. (P.200) |
Let us pray…
Let’s wash the feet of the world, the tired aching feet of the Guatemalan Mayans, the nomadic feet of the Australian aborigines, the trimmed and pedicured feet of Madison Avenue, the feet of refugees with no land to call home, the busy feet of parents, the tiny feet of children around the world, the determined feet of women today, the feet in army boots carrying guns and bombs, those in the shoes of priests, neighbours, homeless, or hopeless people everywhere. Let’s make a pact with each other, a covenant, that we will stay together until the feet of the world march together on the Mountain of Justice. We make this prayer in Jesus name. AMEN . (Bill Huebsch p. 205) |
Some suggestions and commentary
In our culture the washing of feet is a rather dramatic gesture. In the time of Jesus it was an ordinary daily ritual after walking, sandaled or bare footed, on dusty tracks and roads. It was a practice that offered hospitality - the comfort of clean feet, of resting tired feet in cool water, the touch of the other who wiped the feet. It was in many households the task of the servant. In this text Jesus takes on the role of servant and asks the disciples to do the same. In Evangelii Gaudium Francis, invites us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction. True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness. (88) Are we as leaders, parents, teachers willing to participate in this revolution of tenderness? Depending upon the time available, the summary of Regina Bechtle’s article: Spirit-Led Leadership could be read and discussed in the context of this prayer. Some wisdom from our leader, Pope Francis
My mission of being in the heart of the people is not just a part of my life or a badge I can take off; it is not an “extra” or just another moment in life. Instead, it is something I cannot uproot from my being without destroying my very self. I am a mission on this earth; that is the reason why I am here in this world. We have to regard ourselves as sealed, even branded, by this mission of bringing light, blessing, enlivening, raising up, healing and freeing. All around us we begin to see nurses with soul, teachers with soul, politicians with soul, people who have chosen deep down to be with others and for others. But once we separate our work from our private lives, everything turns grey and we will always be seeking recognition or asserting our needs. We stop being a people. (Evangelii Gaudium 273) |