To serve us all our days....

 I have, of course, changed a well-known title of a book about a dedicated teacher after the First World War which was written by R.F. Delderfield and published in 1972. It was a lovely story  which was so inspiring. It was called  "To serve them all my days."   You may have read it, if you haven't, it is worth looking at.

But the inspiration of the teacher's dedication to his pupils no matter what they achieved or failed to achieve must, ultimately, have come from the one who told us that "he came, not to be served but to serve."
 

This special week, which we call Holy Week, shows us what being a servant really means when Christ talks about it.

Last Thursday we had the image of God in an apron, as one poem calls it.  Jesus took off his outer garments knelt down at the feet of his disciples, and washed their dirty feet! That was the work of a slave in those times.  No wonder Peter was horrified, and tried to stop Jesus from doing such a menial task.  But Jesus told Peter in no uncertain terms, that he could have no part in his mission if he didn't submit.  It was the living out of the mission statement he had offered to his own people in Nazareth, who rejected him.

"The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me", he cried out, "and he has anointed me to give good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, to give the blind new sight, to take away the chains of oppression, to proclaim a year of the Lord's favour!"   (Isaiah 61: 1- 2)

That is the mission statement of a servant of the people.  He was to be the Good Shepherd, giving his life for us, stupid sheep that we are, going the wrong way most of the time, but always being called back to his love, his forgiveness, his care.

Holy Week brings that forgiveness, that care, that love so close to us.  We see it each time with new eyes.  Didn't Jesus promise to give us new sight?  Well he does, all the time.  We are drawn inexorably into the horror, the wonder and the exultation of the Passion and the Resurrection.  The Servant God leading us once more into a realisation that we have to follow the same path - the path of love, the path of caring for others.  That is being Christ-like.  We are invited to do what he did, take the heavy burdens from the shoulders of others, give them hope and light in their darkness.  That sounds very noble, but in practice, in small ways we can all do it.  Smile at someone who looks downcast, say a little prayer for that person as we pass by - offer our friendeship and support to those suffering, put love at the heart of our Church and our world.  Love often comes in very small parcels, but without it, the world would be a grim place indeed.

Jesus, who is love, saw that.  He showed us the way of fidelity, the way of a servant. He served us all his days, and continues to do so now he is risen.  But he has no human hands, no human feet to walk among us now, he expects us to use ours. He has passed on his mission to us, and, for the time we are here, we have the obligation to bring the light of Christ which was dimmed temporarily on that first Good Friday, and obscured during Holy Saurday to that brightness which came with the first Easter Sunday morning.  How can we refuse to do that when he suffered so much for us?  Ours is really such a small return of love for such a total giving on the part of the Servant King.  We say, in faith, re-echoing the words of The Servant Song (click for music):

Will you let me be your servant,

let me be as Christ to you:

pray that I may have the grace

to let you be my servant too.

I will hold the Christ light for you

 in the night-time of your fear,

 I will hold my hand out to you

speak the peace you long to hear.

That is what we are called to do. If we fail to do this, then Christ's sacrifice on the Cross and his Resurrection from the dead will be, as far as we ae concerned, in vain.  And that would be terrible.

Let's pray that the Servant King may reach out, during this year of Faith to all those who need his love most. 

Have a lovely Easter.  We will pray for one another,  so that, like the first disciples, we may hear him say to us gently: "Peace be with you. Do not be afraid!"

THE LORD HAS RISEN , ALLELUIA!   HE HAS RISEN INDEED, ALLELUIA!

 

 

All photos and images owned by SMG. Drawings by P.Macauley. Copyright 2013. 

The Quiet Man

This was the title of the film version of one of  Maurice West's books long ago.  It was one of those wonderful stories  where there is a strong, silent hero and a beautiful red-haired heroine who are of course at cross purposes until the end of the film.  I loved it.

 But I want to talk about another quiet man, perhaps the  quintessential strong, silent man who, nontheless,  is always there in the background, taking charge, shouldering the responsibility  he has been asked to assume without fuss and without any congratulatory messages appearing on his website, if he could have owned one, but of course it was too early for that.

He was, of course, the son of Jesse, called Joseph. Joseph bar Jesse is more familiarly known to us as Joseph, the husband of Mary of Nazareth, and the foster father of Jesus, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Son of the Eternal, immutable, transcendent God who created the world out of nothing, the one who is the arbiter of our destiny, and the judge of our world. We could go on....

Joseph was responsible for the well-being of the Messiah.  He was charged with the responsibility of providing for his needs, teaching him, with Mary of course, his prayers, and training him in his own trade of carpenter, seeing that he went to school and presumably kept out of trouble!  Well, not through Jesus himself of course, but through the envy and jealousy of others.  That would have hurt Joseph. But he just got on with what he was asked to do, remaining always in the background, but always there for support, advice or some father/son activity. He must have been a lovely father.

 

It was Joseph who was awakened in the night to pull up sticks and take Mary and the child into a far country to get away from the vengeance of the blood-thirsty and ambitious Herod.  It was Joseph who looked back fearfully as he heard the clang of the soldier's harnesses and the screams of babies and their poor mothers as the children of Judea were snatched from their cradles and murdered because of his foster son.

It was  terrifying for him, as he fought to protect the child and his young wife. He must have felt terrible. Knowing that, had Jesus not been there, living under the nose of the tetrarch Herod, this massacre would never have taken place.  Judah's cradles would have been full, and his family would have been safe along with all the young families around him. It was a hard burden to bear, especially as he had to live virtually as a migrant worker, a refugee in a foreign land for some years, getting work where he could, mastering a strange language, learning to live among unbelievers and often hostile people.  We don't know how he felt, but we can imagine it.  There are many parallels today when people have to flee their homes in terror from some despot or other.  We see it frequently on our television screens.  It is a constant tragedy that families are uprooted and terrorised.  Joseph knew their terror, and he is the one who will help them now.

So the quiet man of Nazareth saw the child Jesus grow into a handsome, sunburnt man who went about doing good.  We don't know when Joseph died, but we know that he had a formulative influence on the growing Jesus.  What a wonderful vocation! I love to think of him teaching Jesus the skills of a carpenter.  It must have been such a joy to him. Do you know this poem about Jesus being brought up with wood, and the irony of his death on a wooden cross?  It is worth thinking about as the 19th March nears, the feast of Joseph, now the patron of the universal Church and help of all those who have to leave their homeland.  Here is the poem:

He who grew up with wood around

ran with infant feet upon sawdust ground.

Who in childhood played with wooden toys

made by a caring father,

yet with youthful hand learned to whittle wood,

shaping pieces to his own command.

What dreadful irony decreed that wood should be

his instrument of death, and could it be

that Joseph once embraced that traitor tree?

Did splinters stab his arms when outstretched

for the nailing of his palms?

Or, did familiarity carve comfort even then

evoking honest, kindly men, ladies

or the mother's chair and a working carpenter?  

(Anon.)

It was a working carpenter, a quiet man, who first shaped those baby hands to appreciate the feel and tension of the wood.  It was the quiet man's influence that remained, along with the love of his mother, at the end.

A happy feast of St. Joseph to everybody!!