Skip to main content

John 13:13-17: Spoonful of Salvation

This story is from an article by Reverend Dr. Darren J.N. Middleton published in The Expository Times where he relates a Ghanaian parable:

Once Kwaku Anansie lived in a town filled with wicked [selfish] people. They were always fighting, backbiting … [gossiping, and just being selfish]. Finally Kwaku decides to teach the people a lesson. He tells his wife to prepare a large banquet. Then he invites everyone in the town on one condition, that they have to eat with the spoons that are provided. As the guests arrive Kwaku hands each guest a spoon with a very [very] long handle. The guests then begin to eat the delicious food set before them. But since they are sitting close together they begin to disturb each other with their long spoons. In a short time all the guests are pushing, shouting, and fighting with one another. Kwaku [then] stands on a chair and calls for order. ‘I have invited you to a banquet and you have turned it into a battleground. Why are you doing this?’ One of the guests then raises his spoon and shouts, ‘Kwaku Anansie, you have [betrayed and] deceived us and made us look foolish! Nobody can eat with these long spoons you have given us! Kwaku responds, ‘no, it is not that I have made you look foolish but rather your own selfishness has betrayed you.’ Then he calls one of the guests to sit across the table from him. ‘This is the way to use these spoons’, he says as he dips his long spoon into the soup and feeds the person across from him.

Kwaku fed his guest personally, everyone at the banquet needed to do the same in order to enjoy the meal. Jesus washed his disciples feet and every one of us who has been cleansed by Jesus needs to do likewise at the eschatological banquet as we inherit everlasting life. Jesus says, John 13:13-17:

“You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Now that we know these things, we will be blessed if we do them. This is important. There is no room for selfishness at the everlasting banquet. There is no room for thinking we are above helping others and serving them as a servant would serve a friend of his master. This is the only way we can truly enjoy our place at the eternal feast with Christ.

In what ways can we accept a spoonful of salvation from someone else while we offer them the same? 
More daily blogs at
More articles, sermons, and papers at
www.sheepspeak.com
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hosanna! The Triumphal Entry into Holy Week (Matthew 21:1-11)

Today  is Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is when we commemorate the Sunday before Jesus’ death. Jerusalem was occupied then, like it is now; now it is occupied by the Israelis, then it was occupied by the Romans. The Judeans in the first century didn’t like being occupied then any more than the Palestinians like it today. The Romans were harsh, not nearly as brutal as modern Israel, but harsh enough that the first century had their version of … (Remember the suicide bombers of the ‘70s and ‘80s?) …suicide bombers: the Sicarii (zealots), Judean terrorists / revolutionaries would walk into crowds with daggers looking for Romans to kill –. One of Jesus’ followers, Simon, was arguably a Sicarii or zealot.   Passover is the commemoration of ancient Israel’s birth as a nation. The Angel of Death passed over Egypt and the nations of Isreal and Judah were created through the Exodus. Passover, in the Roman period, was a time when many people of Judean descent descended upon Jerusalem. I ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lanterns (Matthew 25:1-13, Psalm 146)

  The topics I chose from our Lenten list for today are “God has rescued us from the Dominion of Darkness”; “He has Freed Us from the Power of Sin”; the Kingdom of God is at hand. Do we believe that? Do we live that?   In theology we use the term ‘prolepsis’ to refer to the time when the Kingdom of God begins, which is now, the time between the resurrection of Christ and His return at the eschaton. This is the time in which we are living and as Christians it is our responsibility to be willing instruments of God to display what it means that He has rescued us from the Dominion of Darkness; He has Freed Us from the Power of Sin, that the Kingdom of God is at hand. But do we even actually believe that He has already done this? And if He has why does it not seem that the Sin and Darkness still reign?   We know the parable of the bridesmaids (holy ones) in the Bible who needed to keep their lanterns lit – because lit lanterns were to be there when the Bridegroom Jesus returns...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bah Ram You Shaggy Goat (Daniel 8)

This book is written in a couple of different languages as we  have it  tod ay. Ch apter 7  that Susan looked at with us  is the last Aramaic chapter - if that is on purpose then chapter 7  probably concludes  the first  section  of Daniel  rather than  beginning  the  next  section   but Ch apter 8  that we are looking at today  (and everything flowing from it)  is obviously connected to  Chapter 7  as Da n iel  refers to the first dream when relaying the second one.   Chronologically speaking,  Chapter 8 and  Chapter 7 take place before  C hapters 5 and 6.  In Chapter 5, Babylon falls, Belshazzar is killed and  the Persians take over. None of that has happened in Chapter 8 which we are about to read .   Verses 1-4   8 In the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, I, Daniel, had a vision, after the one that had already appeared to me. 2 In my ...
2 comments
Read more