An Absurd Love

Maundy Thursday, or “new commandment” Thursday, marks the final day before Jesus’ betrayal and death. On this night, Jesus shared the Passover with his disciples and washed their feet. The significance of foot washing has been somewhat lost on us today. In first century Palestine, where the primary means of travel was by foot, in open toed sandals on dirt roads, foot washing was a necessary act of physical and ritual cleansing upon entering any building or residence. It was a dirty job, one assigned to the lowliest of servants and slaves. For Jesus, the Master and Teacher, to wash his disciples’ feet was an absurd, role-reversing act of humiliation. Then Jesus gives them the command: “As I have loved you, so you also are to love one another.” This act stands as an example of the kind of love Jesus desires and expects of his disciples as we extend humble service and hospitality to those around us - even the Judas’. But it also pointed to what he was about to accomplish at the Cross. We now have the responsibility, and the joy, to enter into this same kind of counter-cultural love as we humbly serve one another within the church and extend it to those outside the church.

PRAYER POINTS
-Give thanks for the counter-cultural act of humiliating love Jesus extends to us and the open, hospitable invitation He gives us into relationship with Him.
-Consider the ways you can extend that same humble, hospitable love to others. Pray for fellow brothers and sisters at FirstSF that we would go great lengths to love and serve one another.
-Pray for your time tonight at your Passover Outreach Dinner. Pray for the non-believers who will be coming into your home, that you would go to great lengths to display the humiliating, sacrificial love of Christ in a way that demonstrates the Gospel to them.