Are You A Servant-Leader?

Recently Cheryl Bachelder, CEO of the Popeyes, wrote a book on servant-leadership. Dare to Serve: How to Drive Superior Results While Serving Others is a case study of the turn-around of the restaurant chain. Cheryl gives credit to her team, which instilled a culture of focusing on franchise owners, and serving them.

 

Cheryl gives her definition of a servant-leader and even defines their characteristics and values. Their overarching mission is to demonstrates great humility, while having the will to do the “right things”.

 

Today’s reading is John 13:1-17. It is Maundy Thursday and Jesus is about to celebrate the Passover Feast with his disciples. This is an important event, and his disciples had just bathed. Arriving at the feast wearing sandals, their feet and ankles were dusty.  Customarily, a servant would wash the guests’ feet before the meal.

 

Jesus, no ordinary servant, washed his disciples’ feet!

 

This great story is meaningful at many different levels. Jesus came to wash our sin-soiled souls, not our bodies. Jesus washed our sins away on our baptism. The disciples’ pre-feast bath is analogous to baptism.

 

As baptized saints, we still walk in a sinful world. We need spiritual refreshment – the Lord’s Supper, introduced during the Passover Feast. The foot washing is analogous to Holy Communion.

 

Jesus was the leader of the disciples, and continues in that role today for the entire church. Demonstrating humility, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. He served them.

 

Jesus served his church by dying on the cross, the greatest humiliation known in the Roman Empire. Jesus could have used his authority to save himself and to remove our sin in some other manner, but this was not his Father’s Will. Rather, Jesus humbled himself and served us by suffering death.  Jesus, the world’s greatest servant-leader, did the "right thing”.

 

What should our response be? To be a servant-leader, of course.

 

There will be times when we need to put our own wills aside and focus on the needs of others. We need to carry out Jesus’ Will, not our own. We need to serve others so that we can do the “right thing” and spread the Good News of Eternal Life.

 

Are you a servant-leader?