Wednesday in Lent III                                                                          6 March 2013

LTS Chapel                                                                                             Pretoria, South Africa

“I am Among you as One who Serves”

St. Luke 22:24-30

Prayer: Merciful Father, God of all consolation, we bless you for giving your Son into the flesh to bear our sin and be our Savior. By Your Word and Spirit, stir our hearts to turn from all sin and to trust in your gracious promises, that enlivened by Your mercy we might find our greatness in living as Your brothers and sisters, giving of ourselves even as you have given Yourself to us in your Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.

Martin Luther once said of the Lord Jesus, that in the Lord’s Supper, He is the main course, the chef, the waiter, and the butler. Jesus does it all. Listen to His own words, “I am among you as one who serves.” Elsewhere in Mark 10, Jesus says that He did not to be served but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many.  Jesus speaks the words of our text just after He had demonstrated what a bountiful and good servant He is. He served the disciples by instituting the holy supper of His body and His blood. In this Sacrament which would forever render the old Passover obsolete, Jesus establishes the new testament in His blood. Here is a meal beyond compare for it is the very body and blood of the Lamb of God.  Never was there a Passover meal like this! More than the remembrance of the ancestor’s ancient deliverance from Pharaoh’s bondage, this Sacrament bestows the forgiveness of sins in the Messiah’s body and blood. Here the Savior shows Himself to be the Servant who humbles Himself even to death on a cross to redeem and rescue a whole world living under a death sentence.

But is precisely in the dusk of that night when the Son of God had spread the table of His kingdom before the disciples, that a dispute erupts among them. Who should be regarded as the greatest? It was a pious argument, no doubt. Each disciple could recount what he had sacrificed, what he had left to follow Jesus. The argument about greatness was unheard among Jesus’ disciples. It had happened before. It would happen again. It happens even today when those who bear the name “Christian” seek to have others recognize their standing in the kingdom on the basis of their piety, or spiritual gifts, or what they have suffered on account of Christ, or the status that they think is theirs on the basis of office and position. We can even use our record of service as a claim to honor and greatness.

Jesus does not simply shame the men who would be His apostles with their awkward positioning. He says to them that they will have the places in His Father’s Kingdom assigned to them. They have been with Jesus from the beginning. They have endured His trials and suffered with Him. They will reign with Him, eating and drinking at His table, and judging the twelve tribes of Israel through their preaching. Jesus calls them back to what really matters; Himself. He is the One who is among them as their Servant. That is what really matters. There is no way for Jesus to be your Savior unless He is Servant.

This morning we come to confess the ways that our eyes have been blinded to this Lord who is among us as One who serves.  Have you claimed a special place on account of your discipleship? Have you thought more about your status as a student of theology, a pastor or teacher of the church, a deaconess student or worker in the church than about Christ? Have you lived as though your greatness depended on what others think of you, how they evaluate you rather than how Christ has claimed you as His own, cleansing you with His blood? When we honestly examine ourselves, we do see that God’s law cuts us down to size. Before Him no one can boast. What we think of as our humility can be a disguise for arrogance.

There is nothing for us to do but to cry out with the Psalmist: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who should stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared” (Psalm 130:3-4). There is forgiveness of all your sins –the arrogance, the pride, the trust you have placed in your own capacity and much more- for Jesus still is among us as the One who serves. Your sin He has carried to the cross. All of it. Nothing was left out. And to all who come in repentance and faith, He will serve you once again today with the word of pardon, the absolution that sets you free for the sake of His bitter suffering and death for that is the kind of Servant He is.