Sharing at MAC

Opening for MAC meeting

I have a Scripture and an example.

First the story. I have two very good friends – Stephen and Joanna Henderson – and Steve’s brother David, who were a part of our church for perhaps 25 years, and who have been in Qld for 20 years. They came out on mission with me last year in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and they saw our ministry there, I let them in to the deep places – the places where you can be wounded so easily. They not only treated it with the utmost reverence, but it has become one of their deep places too. From my experience, that doesn’t happen very often.

Their mum, Heather Henderson, who some of you might remember by her brother Gordon Craig, who was an elder at Caringbah for many years. She passed away after about 5 years of severe immobility and pain. John, her widower, asked if I would take the funeral service.

And here is the point of embarrassment for me: John and Heather, I know had what would by my ideas be not a very good marriage. They would fight together often, and would live often quite separate-but-in-the-same-house lives. They would struggle to communicate with each other, and their kids followed on with some baggage because of them.

I then had the task of talking about their lives together, and those, I am ashamed to say, were some of the thoughts that were going through my mind. I say ashamed, not because the facts of the relationship weren’t true, but because I had somehow elevated myself, and delevated their marriage, even though I know that there are many points of improvement to make in our marriage, and that if only others knew, they would perhaps have the same attitude towards me as I had towards the Hendersons. Again, none of what I shared is wrong.

But I was struggling. But I had this one thing that I knew: That John, old school, praying in these and thous, only liking the old hymns, with a chronically bad back for the last 40 years, cared for Heather, in such a beautiful, beautiful way. She was carrying quite a lot of weight, and it meant that all those weight-type diseases fell on her with full force.

She couldn’t sleep on anything but an electrically operated seat, that raised her to sitting for the day, then reclined for bed. John cared in everyway for Heather. He needed to wash and treat her feet every day for over 5 years, and so that is where I was led to share at the funeral:

To -7Jesus Washes His Disciples’ Feet

Before the Passover celebration, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his Father. He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end. 2 It was time for supper, and the devil had already prompted Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. 4 So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, 5 and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him.

6 When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

7 Jesus replied, “You don’t understand now what I am doing, but someday you will.”

As I reflected upon John, I rejoiced that in this man’s life, despite all its own issues, I got to see so purely, Jesus washing Peter’s feet who would deny him, and Judas’ feet who would betray him, and all who would run like sheep when the shepherd was struck.

That verse 7 came home to me afresh, and I am busy applying it to all my relationships.

Perhaps I needed to be humbled again. As I think it was Dietrich Bonhoffer who said that we cannot truly forgive anyone that we feel superior to.

I have been listening today to the Henry Nouwen book – The return of the Prodigal Son – it summed up what I have been thinking with respect to how I have been humbled.

Up to the resentful complainer.

How did the time up north turn out. Well, God was unbelievably gracious. I don’t really have the temperament for funerals. I tear up easily, and I laid my thoughts on the line about John and his showing me Jesus in was humbled and then God lifted me up – John said that it was a beautiful service, and the family, many of whom don’t yet know Jesus, got to know him through their grandfather’s testimony.

God is so good, if we will but let him loose, like it says in my new favourite verse –

(NIV)

15 For this is what the high and exalted One says—

he who lives forever, whose name is holy:

“I live in a high and holy place,

but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,

to revive the spirit of the lowly

and to revive the heart of the contrite.