Not to be served but to serve
by Maria Rudolph
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Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave (Matthew 20:26b,27).
Read Matthew 20:17–34
We have the most baffling paradox: Jesus, the Servant King. Laid in a dirty animal feeding trough at birth. Stooping down to wash his disciples’ feet. Riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Hung on a lowly cross. Thank you, Jesus, for doing all the work so we can be happy children of God!
This wondrous, paradoxical grace that God extended to us through Jesus is not a cheap thing to be gained. It is a costly paradoxical grace that came at the greatest price: the life of Jesus, the Son of God. Our liturgy includes some fitting words: ‘What can I offer to the Lord, for all his goodness to me?’
Jesus gives us this challenging instruction manual: ‘Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Matthew 20:27,28).
How easy is it for you to be a servant of all and to be a slave to all? Sounds as though following Jesus looks like being everybody’s doormat. But the sound of this changes when we see what the strands are that are interwoven to make this doormat: ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’ (Galatians 5:22,23a). And the sound of this changes even more when we realise that this doormat lies in front of The Door, as Jesus says (John 10:9): ‘I am the door. If anyone enters by me, they will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.’
In that sense, let us be godly doormats for Jesus. Let us serve one another. Let us love one another as sisters and brothers in Christ and reach out to those who do not yet know the saving grace of the good news.
Loving Jesus, let me be filled with the fruit of your Spirit. Lead me to people around me who need to enter through your gates and help me to point them toward you and your good pasture. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Maria will be ordained as a pastor of the LCANZ on Palm Sunday on 13 April at 2pm at Concordia College Chapel in Highgate SA. She would love to see many Daily Devotion readers there! She has been assigned to serve St John’s Lutheran Church in Perth WA. She also supports the ministry of her pastor husband, Michael. They will be the first pastor couple of our church, but she hopes not the last. They are parents to three children, who are kept busy in their primary and secondary schools. Maria also serves the church on the Commission on Theology and Inter-Church Relations.
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