The most compelling picture of Jesus, other than nailed to a cross, is Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. Jesus on his knees was a living reminder for the disciples that Jesus meant it when he said, “I did not come to be served but to serve.”  Washing the feet of another was totally counterculture.  It still is today.  Jesus calls you to follow him into the counter culture as a servant. 

The world squeezes you into thinking in terms of our selves.  In Chuck Swindoll’s book, Improving Your Serve, he describes a cartoon in which four words were chiseled out of a granite monument.   The words were I, me, mine, and myself. At the base of this strange “monument” were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people with their arms held up high, as if worshiping at a shrine.  And then in very small letters, this caption appeared at the bottom of the editorial cartoon:  ‘Speaking of American cults…’”

Surrounding the border of this picture were four familiar lines from well-known commercials: “Have it your way,” “Do yourself a favor,” “You owe it to yourself,” “You deserve a break today.” [i]   That is the mold that the world around us unashamedly wants to squeeze us into. We like it this way, and we are comfortable thinking in this way.

What happens when you think like the world?  You think first of yourself. Your most important treasure is material. When you see a hurting person who does not look like you, you go to the other side of the street or you hurry on your way to more important matters.  When people do not live up to your standards, you are critical and judgmental, ignoring your own sin.

It’s hard under that kind of pressure to see yourself as a servant.  Here is my message in a nutshell:  Jesus was a servant.  We are called to be nothing more and nothing less.  Young and old, male and female, ordained and non-ordained, paid and non-paid, we are all servants.  As Jesus said, “A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master.” (Matt 10:24-25). Our master and teacher was a servant.  We are all called and commanded to be servants like him.

Paul said, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:6). What was that mind like?  He humbled himself, washed feet, and died for us. To think like a servant of Jesus is to think in vulnerability and sacrifice. It is to think of the least of these, crossing racial and ethnic barriers, giving your coat to another, taking up a cross, washing feet, and binding up wounds, reaching out to the outcast—just like Jesus.

Most of us don’t really want to think like a servant. We don’t want to get too close to God.  As one person wrote, “I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.  I don’t want enough of God to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth.  I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.” [ii]

We don’t really want to get enough of God to make us servants. Somewhere along the way we came to believe that being a servant was optional.  Jesus was actually very clear: “After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord and—you  are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.’ ” (John 13:12-17)

Ralph Lynn, retired Professor of History at Baylor, was probably the most influential teacher I had a Baylor.  He is 91 years old and still writing.  He recently wrote, “Fifty or so years ago, the Lebanese statesman and Eastern Orthodox Christian leader Charles Malik gave the entire Christian world a solemn assessment and a warning foresight of its possible future:

“If you win the whole world and lose the mind of the world, you will soon discover that you have not won the world.” [iii] Put differently, if Jesus has not won and taken control of your mind, Jesus does not have you. If your mind does not think like Jesus, you don’t belong to Jesus.  Thinking guides our feelings, attitudes, and behavior.  Thus Paul wrote,  “Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” 

What we know is that the mind does not renew very easily.  Old ways of thinking are protected by an army of guardians.  Our ego does not trust change and resists any thought that interrupts the status quo.  Just as it is hard for a sedentary person to begin running, an overeater to reduce food intake, or a type A person to relax, it is hard to allow your mind to be released from the habitual thought processes of the world. We hear many voices in our world.

There is the social voice: “Don’t do any thing that will endanger your upward mobility.”  There is the material voice: “There is only one thing that really matters in this world—money.”  The psychological voice reasons with you: “You’re not sinful.  You live a much better life than your friends.”  The world is not passive.  There is the pressure of being squeezed into a life that is self-centered and distorts the truth. 

How do we open our minds to Jesus? The real issue is deep in your life, where you choose the voices you wish to hear. Jesus transforms our thinking when we are willing to surrender our lives on earth and our hope for eternal life to Jesus Christ.  Carlyle Marney put it this way: “The spinal cord of redemption is the nerve to submit all my notions of value and of the self to Christ for correction.” This is how the mind comes to think like a servant—submitting ourselves to Christ for correction. Paul says of this, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”  (2 Cor. 5:17-18) 

We are not the transformer but the transformee! Jesus wants to change our appetite for life so that we hunger and thirst after righteousness. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me.” The mind is transformed through taking Jesus into our lives and learning of him.  How do we learn anything?  We learn by hearing, seeing, reading.  We learn by exposing ourselves to information and knowledge.  We choose the content.  You want control of your life?  Take responsibility for your mind, and just about everything else will follow.

I am convinced that there are three absolute essentials for thinking like Jesus:  worship with others, studying Scripture with others, serving others.  You neglect either of these three, and Jesus will lose the battle for your mind.

When you have the mind of Christ, your vision is changed.  Matthew 25 asked six questions, “When did we SEE you?” The words burned into our a servant’s mind, “As oft as you did this to one of the least of these my children, you did it to me.”  On another occasion when Jesus saw a crowd of people walking toward himself, the Scripture says,  “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matt. 9:36)  This is the way that God must see the people of Afghanistan who are facing a long hard winter and the prospect of starvation. It is estimated that 7.5 million women and children are at risk of starvation or even freezing to death this winter.  In the mind of Christ, bin Laden is a small figure.  But starving women and children loom large. God has compassion for them. I think it is also the way God sees many of the affluent people of our communities. They are harassed and in need of a shepherd who can save them from themselves. God is not impressed by one’s balance sheet at the bank.  God looks into the heart and soul of people and sees the pain of sin.  He sees people in need of salvation.

When the mind of Christ is alive in you and you see people as Jesus sees them your behavior changes. (Matt. 20:28) “Just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” The mind of Christ prompts us to give to others, come along beside of others rich and poor. We are God’s servants to the hungry, the thirst, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison.  To hear Jesus tell, it this is what matters the most in our lives.  What if he is right?

If you think like a servant of Jesus, the measure of your worth changes. The world would like to make us believe that life is first about self and our that measure of worth is about accumulation, winning, being on top, and being first at any cost.  Greed, power, and lust are the driving forces of the world’s thinking.  Is that all you want from life? Is that what life is really all about?   Jesus said, “Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.” In one of Jesus’ parables about servants, he tells of three servants who were given money.  Two of the servants used their money well, and the master said to them “Well done, good and faithful servant.” The third servant, who buried his money, heard the most chilling words: “Depart from me, you worthless servant.”

Life is a struggle between the world’s mind-set that surrounds our lives with pressure and the mind of Jesus. Jesus wants to renew your mind, to make you into a new person that thinks like a servant.  He wants to make the very center of your daily life different.  He wants you to be driven by the mercy of God. The good news is that God has the power to do this. Are you ready for your mind to be transformed and made over in the mind of Christ?  If not, why not? . God is ready when you are.  We sang it earlier:  “I am weak but he is strong.” Amen.

WBC 10-21-01