Theological, Theoretical, Practical
I love my Sunday School class. There are so many people in that class with such interesting insights into the passage of Scripture we're studying. Right now we're in the Gospel of John, and this morning we talked about Jesus washing the disciples' feet.Mark (the teacher) had made a wisecrack about not getting caught in bunny trails (unrelated, or marginally related topics), and I had a bunny trail going on in my mind, so I thought I'd post it here.
It's interesting to me to see how often Jesus' teachings functioned on multiple levels. If you look at John 13, you find that He's using the foot washing as a teaching opportunity...but what is He teaching?
He's teaching two completely separate lessons - one rather theological in nature, and the other very "practical" in its daily application.
The theological lesson comes in when Peter says to Him "Are you really going to wash my feet?"
And Jesus says "What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter." Hereafter? What does He mean by that? After what? The answer is, after his crucifixion. He confirms this by his next statement: "If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me."
The footwashing is not the real issue here. The real issue is the "washing" which will occur as a result of Jesus's ultimate service act - the submission and sacrifice of Himself on behalf of our sins. And that's a very "theological" teaching.
But that is not all Jesus is teaching. He also intends for this lesson to be a very practical lesson for His disciples: "I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you."
This is more than just theology - this is a deliberate role-playing game in which Jesus demonstrates for us first hand how His followers are to relate to one another, serving each other, instead of expecting to be served by one another.
Both are important lessons. Unfortunately, I think we have a tendency to go to extremes - either we "over-spiritualize" things, finding all the theological lessons while ignoring all the practical lessons, or we excel in finding the practical lessons, and miss out on the theology.
But both are very important. Theology helps us to understand the nature of who God is, while the practical lessons provide us with the nuts and bolts of how we live as followers of Jesus Christ in this world.
To ignore one and focus exclusively on the other makes us unhealthy, and accounts for many of the attrocities which have been done in the name of Christ over the centuries.
Posted On May 15, 2005 at 10:32 AM
On May 15, 2005 WOW wrote: Did you read the "Now or Later" section that we didn't get to? I thought that was a great picture of your "World mindset vs. Christian mindset." The world says the pyramid should be with the point at the top (with me in the point) and all the other people under me. The Christian viewpoint should be with me in the point, but the pyramid upside down and all these other people above me. WOW! We don't teach that much do we?
Doug Replied: I didn't see that. That's really interesting, though, because I used that analogy the very first week of my leadership class last fall, with a slightly different twist.
The world mindset says that leaders are at the top of the pyramid, and the flow of resource and benefit goes from bottom to top. The Christian mindset says that the flow of resource and benefit goes from top to bottom! In other words, to be a leader is to be the ultimate servant.
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