The Way of The Cross: Tuesday: Servanthood – Family Devotions for Holy Week, 2020
Though we are physically dispersed as we enter this most Holy Week, Saint Matthew’s parish can remain in connection with each other by engaging in daily prayer and contemplation
I want to offer us a series of daily meditations and hymns that support this blessed connection, and help us walk The Way of The Cross with Christ this week.
We will pray each day on one of three themes that will encompass our Maundy Thursday observance: Servanthood, Community, and Abandonment.
Today we will reflect on Servanthood.
~ Peter+
The Rev. Dr. Peter B. Stube, Interim Rector
Ponder these questions at the end of each day’s reading and hymn.
In light of what I have just heard/read:
1. How can I love God today? (in a small way)
2. How can I love my neighbor today? (person you live with, person who thinks differently than you, etc.)
3. How can I love myself today?
Tuesday: Servanthood
“Maundy” means to remember, to live into again. On this day we remember the day the Lord gave the disciples the Lord’s Supper, what we call Holy Communion or Eucharist (Thanksgiving). The Gospel on this day is the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
This is a shocking development. He, their Lord, demonstrates a different way of leading. He leads by serving them, performing the job that the lowest servant in a household would do. Some of his disciples are scandalized by this and want to wash his feet. Peter who really does not understand, wants Jesus to wash all of him. Jesus indicates that washing his feet is enough to make him clean.
Leadership in God’s household is most concerned with making sure that the needs of all who are entrusted to God’s care are served, cleansed, and safe. Jesus is not subservient in any way and yet leads through service. He shows no partiality, clings to no prerogative, but lays all aside willingly, obediently for his disciples and for us. In so doing, he invites them and us to the same life of servanthood for all who will be entrusted to us as we walk the way of the cross in service to God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The first generation of disciples were then willing to go to the ends of the earth, to place themselves in danger, to labor among all people from the least to the greatest for the sake of their Lord who taught them that the way of the cross means we will joyfully follow God wherever God leads, whatever it costs because of our deep thankfulness of all that he did for them and for us during this week.
Listen to John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem on Servanthood as he reflects on the lives of the first disciples and our lives in service to God.
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
Text: John Greenleaf Whittier
1. Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper rev’rence, praise.
2. O Sabbath rest by Galilee,
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity,
Interpreted by love!
3. Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
4. Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small Voice of calm.
5. In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.