Dear All
Palm Sunday tomorrow & into Holy Week. We could take several different themes this week: the cheering of the crowds as Jesus enters Jerusalem, many of the same people will, over the next hours, be shouting for his death – loyalty, the power of the crowd, a Passover meal. But within this particular Passover meal, not only did Jesus share bread & wine but gave us the example of service, of the master serving his disciples in a very menial way, true humility, and so on. We are taking ‘Service’ for our reflections this week & hope you find something helpful amongst what we have chosen.
The blessing is Marty Haugen’s ‘The Hand of God’. May it bring us many blessings as we travel through this year’s Holy Week.
With much love from us
The Clearing
Do not try to serve
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then
will you know
how to give yourself
to the world
so worthy of rescue.
Martha Postlethwaite
St John Henry Newman
God has created me
To do him some definite service.
He has committed some work to me
which he has not committed to another.
I have my mission.
I may never know what it is in this life.
But I shall be told in the next.
I am a link in a chain,
a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for nothing.
I shall do good, I shall do his work.
Therefore, I will trust him.
Whatever, wherever I am, I cannot be
thrown away.
If I am in sickness, my sickness may
serve him
If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may
serve him
He does nothing in vain, he knows
what He is about.
He may take away my friends. He
may throw me among strangers,
he may make me feel desolate, make
my spirits sink.
Hide my future from me—
still he knows what he is about.
Foot Washing
It was an embarrassing moment; piling into the upper room,
Only to discover the door servant wasn’t there
– he’s the one who usually washes feet.
We threw off our cloaks on the cushioned couches
and sat, awkwardly, preferring not to recline –
no-one wants to rest his head next to his neighbour’s hot and dusty feet.
We knew that one of us should have got up and served the others;
but on the way here we’d all grandly put our case for which of us
would be the greatest, would sit in the highest seat in his coming kingdom –
menial tasks weren’t on our menu.
And so He took the basin and the towel, stripped himself of all but his humanity,
knelt on the floor in front of each one of us, and gently bathed our feet.
He wasn’t even acting out the duties of a slave; in that moment
he became the lowest of the low.
There was no way I’d let him touch my feet, abase himself before me!
He was my Master and my Lord, for God’s sake.
I couldn’t comprehend why he should do this when it should have been me,
their so-called leader – or one of us at least.
‘Never!’ I said, recoiling away from him. I remember his reply to this day.
‘If I don’t, then you won’t belong to me.’
I thought back to the time on the boat, that very first day when I fell at his feet.
‘Then, Lord, wash me all over,’ I said. ‘Bathe me, in your beauty, and your love.’
A Prayer before the Washing of Feet
God of dirty hands and tired feet,
taking people as they come,
kneeling and healing,
touching where others turn away,
forgive us when we want to be too clean.
Forgive us when we despise life
for the messy business it is.
If we are too proud
to own up to our brokenness,
if we keep hidden
what needs refreshment,
how can you care for us?
You can care – and this is how:
when we are ready to move
from distance to involvement,
from intent to touch,
then you will wash the feet
that tire on rocky roads;
you will care and heal
beyond our expectation.
Thanks be to God.
David Coleman