Iron & Altar

"He will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them." - Luke 12:37

Gird your loins and light your lamps, Jesus says, and be like servants waiting for a master to come home from a wedding. That part is what you'd expect: stay ready, keep the light on. Then the passage turns strange. If the master finds them watching, he girds himself and serves them.

I've read this one a dozen times and still catch myself skipping past that line. The master does the serving. It runs backward from every picture of authority I grew up with, where the man in charge gets waited on, not the other way around.

Paul's first reading gives the reason it's possible. You who once were far off have become near by the Blood of Christ. He made both one and broke down the dividing wall. You are no longer strangers, but members of the household. A household where the head serves at table is a strange household, and it's the one you actually live in.

Pruning a life sometimes means cutting the assumption that being entrusted with something makes you the one who gets served because of it. A father, a boss, a man with a title, can spend years unconsciously collecting the service he thinks the role owes him, brother.

Find one place this week where your position has been quietly collecting service you never asked for out loud but have come to expect. Serve that person instead, once, without announcing it.

Lord, you gird yourself and serve the ones who wait for you. Prune out of me whatever expects to be served instead. Amen.