From: HOMILIES BY EMAIL
SIQs (stories, illustrations, quotes)
Holy Thursday
April 8, 2004

RCL Readings:
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10), 11-14
Ps 116:1-4, 12-19
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

#1
I have three precious things that I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be
bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others, and you can become a leader among humanity.
-Lao-tse

#2
Years ago, the Reagan's were entertaining very special guests. The
day before they were to arrive, while preparing the guest room,
Mrs. Reagan laid out some towels with a note saying, "If you use
these I will murder you." The note was meant for her husband,
Ronald Reagan. In the excitement of her guests' arrival, she forgot
to remove the note. After they had come and gone, she discovered
the towels, still in perfect order, as well as the note itself.

#3
"Wash Me" had been hand lettered on the dust covering a little red
car. The next day the modified message read, "YOU wash me."

#4
"The great leaders of humanity in all fields have not been the
arrogant and the greedy, but the servants. The real servants are the
true nobility. The greatest of all, the Son of God himself, declared
that he had come not to be served but to be a servant, and to give
his life a ransom for many."
-John E. Mitchell

#5
An old Quaker story tells about a visitor coming into the silence of
a Friends' Meeting for worship and asking the person next to him,
"What time does the service begin?"  The Quaker said, "When the
worship is over."

#6
Toward the end of his life, Albert Einstein removed the portraits of
two scientists-Isaac Newton and James Maxwell-from his wall.
He replaced them with portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Albert
Schweitzer. Einstein explained that it was time to replace the image
of success with the image of service.

#7
The family was gathered at the table ready to eat the freshly
prepared meal. A young boy was designated to offer thanks for the
food. Everyone bowed their heads and sat in silence. After a
moment the boy looked up and said, "If I thank God for the
broccoli, won't he know I'm lying?"

#8
A large group of European pastors came to one of D. L. Moody's
Northfield Bible Conferences in Massachusetts in the late 1800s.
Following the European custom of the time, each guest put his
shoes outside his room to be cleaned by the hall servants overnight.
But of course this was America and there were no hall servants.

Walking the dormitory halls that night, Moody saw the shoes and
determined not to embarrass his brothers. He mentioned the need to
some ministerial students who were there, but met with only silence
or pious excuses. Moody returned to the dorm, gathered up the
shoes, and, alone in his room, the world's only famous evangelist
began to clean and polish the shoes. Only the unexpected arrival of
a friend in the midst of the work revealed the secret.

When the foreign visitors opened their doors the next morning,
their shoes were shined. They never know by whom. Moody told
no one, but his friend told a few people, and during the rest of the
conference, different men volunteered to shine the shoes in secret.
Perhaps the episode is a vital insight into why God used D. L.
Moody. He was a man with a servant's heart and that was the basis
of his true greatness.
Gary Inrig, A Call to Excellence, (Victor Books, a division of SP
Publ., Wheaton, Ill; 1985), p. 98

#9
A good many are kept out of the service of Christ, deprived of the
luxury of working for God, because they are trying to do some
great thing. Let us be willing to do little things. And let us
remember that nothing is small in which God is the source.
D. L. Moody, quoted in The Berean Call, Bend, Oregon, March,
1997

#10
Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, believed that
Christians should do all things wholeheartedly, not just those
actions that can be seen. He reasoned, "As our Father makes many
a flower to bloom unseen in the lonely desert, [let us] do all that we can do, as under God's eye, though no other eye ever take note of
it."

#11
Marion Mill was born in a fairy tale royal palace in Hungary. Her
first spoon was solid gold. They sent her to school in Vienna where
she became an actress, and there she met and fell in love with a
young medical student named Otto.

Otto and Marion married and went to live in Hollywood, CA.
There, as they "set up house," he began to dabble in movies. He
became so interested in movies that he gave up his medical practice,
and went on to become the internationally famed movie director
Otto Preminger. Marion's beauty, wit, and irresistible charm
brought her everything a woman desires. In Europe, New York and
Hollywood she became a famous international hostess.

But Otto's princess could not handle the fast life of Hollywood. She
went into alcohol, drugs and numerous affairs. Her life and lifestyle became so sordid, even for Hollywood, that Otto Preminger
divorced Marion. She tried to take her own life three times,
unsuccessfully, and finally moved back to Vienna.

There at a party she met another doctor, named Albert Schweitzer,
the well-known medical doctor, musician, philosopher, theologian
and missionary. Schweitzer was home on leave from his hospital in
Lambarene, Africa.

She was so fascinated by Schweitzer, that she asked him if she
could talk to him alone, and he permitted that. For almost six
months, every week, she met with Dr. Albert Schweitzer. At the
end of that time he was going to go back to Africa, and she begged
him to let her go with him. Schweitzer surprised everyone by
agreeing. Marion, the young princess, who was born in a palace
went to a little village in Lambarene, Africa, and spent the rest of
her life emptying bed pans and tearing up sheets to make bandages
for putrid sores on the poverty-stricken nationals.
She wrote her autobiography. I love the title of it-All I Want is
Everything. When she died, Time Magazine quoted from her
autobiography these words: "Albert Schweitzer says there are two
kinds of people. There are the helpers, and the non-helpers. I thank
God He allowed me to become a helper, and in helping, I found
everything."
John Donne, Christianity Today, p. 50

#11
Franklin Roosevelt's closest adviser during much of his presidency
was a man named Harry Hopkins. During World War II, when his
influence with Roosevelt was at its peak, Hopkins held no official
Cabinet position. Moreover, Hopkins's closeness to Roosevelt
caused many to regard him as a shadowy, sinister figure. As a result
he was a major political liability to the President.

A political foe once asked Roosevelt, "Why do you keep Hopkins
so close to you? You surely realize that people distrust him and
resent his influence." Roosevelt replied, "Someday you may well be
sitting here where I am now as President of the United States. And
when you are, you'll be looking at that door over there and
knowing that practically everybody who walks through it wants
something out of you. You'll learn what a lonely job this is, and
you'll discover the need for somebody like Harry Hopkins, who
asks for nothing except to serve you."

Winston Churchill rated Hopkins as one of the half-dozen most
powerful men in the world in the early 1940s. And the sole source
of Hopkins's power was his willingness to serve.
Discipleship Journal, Issue 39 (1987), p. 5.
Don McCullough writes in Waking From The American Dream:

#12
"During World War II, England needed to increase its
production of coal. Winston Churchill called together labor
leaders to enlist their support. At the end of his presentation he
asked them to picture in their minds a parade which he knew
would be held in Picadilly Circus after the war. First, he said,
would come the sailors who had kept the vital sea lanes open.
Then would come the soldiers who had come home from
Dunkirk and then gone on to defeat Rommel in Africa. Then
would come the pilots who had driven the Luftwaffe from the
sky. "Last of all, he said, would come a long line of sweat-stained,
soot-streaked men in miner's caps. Someone would cry from
the crowd, 'And where were you during the critical days of our
struggle?' And from ten thousand throats would come the
answer, 'We were deep in the earth with our faces to the coal.'"
Not all the jobs in a church are prominent and glamorous. But it
is often the people with their "faces to the coal" who help the
church accomplish its mission.
Don McCullough, Waking From The American Dream.

#13
Leonard Bernstein, the late conductor of the New York
Philharmonic orchestra, was once asked to name the most difficult
instrument to play. Without hesitation, he replied, "The second
fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm-that's a problem. And
if we have no second fiddle, we have no harmony."

#14
Hudson Taylor was scheduled to speak at a Large Presbyterian
church in Melbourne, Australia. The moderator of the service
introduced the missionary in eloquent and glowing terms. He told
the large congregation all that Taylor had accomplished in China,
and then presented him as "our illustrious guest." Taylor stood
quietly for a moment, and then opened his message by saying,
"Dear friends, I am the little servant of an illustrious Master."

#15
"Alex Haley, the author of ROOTS, has a picture in his office,
showing a turtle sitting atop a fence. The picture is there to remind him of a lesson he learned long ago: 'If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know he had some help.'

"Says Alex, 'Any time I start thinking, WOW, isn't this marvelous
what I've done! I look at that picture and remember how this
turtle-me-got up on that post.'"

#16
Did you hear about the minister who said he had a wonderful
sermon on humility but was waiting for a large crowd before
preaching it?

#17
"They that know God will be humble," John Flavel has said, "and
they that know themselves cannot be proud."

#18
When I saw Sadhu Sundar Singh in Europe, he had completed a
tour around the world. People asked him, Doesn't it do harm, your
getting so much honor?" The Sadhu's answer was: "No. The
donkey went into Jerusalem, and they put garments on the ground
before him. He was not proud. He knew it was not done to honor
him, but for Jesus, who was sitting on his back. When people honor
me, I know it is not me, but the Lord, who does the job."
Corrie Ten Boom, Each New Day


<><  <><  <><  <><  <><  <><  <><  <><  <><  <><  <><  <><  <><
Bass Mitchell, Hot Springs, VA
HOMILIES & BIBLE STUDIES BY E-MAIL
Check out my web site at www.homiliesbyemail.com
bass.mitchell@homiliesbyemail.com