Perfecting the Fine Art of Serving

Matthew 23.11-12:  The greatest among you will be your servant.  All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. [NRSV]

“Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty. [The Message]

In our time, the best example we might have of Jesus’ model of servanthood is a waitress or waiter in a restaurant.  They’re now even commonly called ‘servers’.

The best ones, you never see.

Water appears as if by magic when you need it.  Food appears before you just before you were ready for the bite.  The financial exchange occurs without a word spoken.

An excellent waiter or waitress understands that their purpose is to ensure your dining experience, which includes the recognition that you did not come to meet them, you came to dine.

Our best attempts at serving others do not draw attention to ourselves or our efforts.  The help is either given or it is not.  The importance of the one who provided the help is in the help.

You may never even know the name of your surgical team, but each and every one of them mattered to your survival.  You neither needed nor required a dance troupe shouting out all they would do for you.  All you needed was their skill and care.

Allowing ourselves to disappear into the woodwork in order to be of service is a skill and it takes practice.

It also take humility – the humility to understand that when it comes to helping people, it’s about them, not you – and to be okay with that.

Jesus Schooling the It Boys

Matthew 23.4-10:  They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.  They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.  They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues,  and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.  But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.  Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. [NRSV]

“Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’  “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ. [The Message]


Religion cannot be about showing off, or it isnt’ religion at all.

Showing off shifts our faith away from the worship of God (its very purpose) to the worship of ourselves.

The most insidious, the sneakiest way we have of doing this fools (even) ourselves.

The sneaky voice of the pretender is the voice of condemnation: look how bad he is! . . . I cannot believe she goes to church and acts like that! . . . And she calls herself a Christian! 

Here’s the thing: whenever I recognize myself in your sin, I am much quicker to lean toward mercy, forgiveness, compassion, love, understanding, forebearance, grace.

It is only when I do not see myself in you that I feel so free to condemn and judge.

In this way might we understand that our condemnation of others is just a slick way of pointing out how wonderful we are, for surely in our condemnation of others is at least implied a celebration of how very lucky we are not to be (like) them.

Remember how much Jesus liked that?  Not so much.

Why should it matter so to God?  After all, aren’t we better than some folk?  Aren’t there people just begging for a little healthy criticism?

Perhaps.  But by whom?  Is not God the judge?  And if God is THE judge, then who are we pretending to be when we get all judging?

Exactly.

Because once again, we are making ourselves the focus (spiritual narcissism), making of ourselves gods (or at the least, demi-gods), to be admired (which is perilously close to being worshiped) for our wondrous selves, if for no other reason that at least we’re not that guy.

But we are not the judge.

If it’s a legal model we so desire, what we, all of us, are, are co-defendants.  But the metaphor will only take us so far.  Life is not a courtroom.  And we do not get off more lightly for our wrongs by rolling over on the other guy.  It doesn’t work that way.

Condemnation of others is the adult version of tattling – we’re the kid and God’s the Dad.  And he doesn’t want to hear it.  The only person’s inventory we are responsible for is our own.  And God isn’t just Dad.  God is The Dad.  And he already knows.

Ultimately, condemnation of others is evidence of the absence of love in our hearts for another.  And we are commanded to love others, just like we love us.  To condemn another is to find them wanting in the courtroom of our own minds and appoint ourselves the judge.

And there we are, slipping into the judge’s chair again, forgetting that our job, our only job, when it comes to other people, is simply, merely, only, to love.

Anything else just isn’t our business.

Checklisting Our Way Out of Heaven

Matthew 23.1-3:  Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,  “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat;  therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.   [NRSV]

Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer. [The Message]

Does it carry him or does he carry it?

                                                                                                              – William Barclay

Does your religion, your faith, carry, sustain, uphold, you?

Or does your religion, your faith, require you to carry it?

William Barclay opines that a religion that requires you to carry it isn’t much of a religion.

I tend to agree.

What say you?

Is religion, a life of faith lived in community, a source of comfort?  Do your fellow followers lift you up?  Do they carry you when you cannot carry yourself?  Do you do that for others?

Or is it more about the checklists, like passing through the many gates and checkpoints at modern airports, where you have to repeatedly prove you (a) are who you say you are and (b) have the right documents with you to proceed further?

For without them (the correct documents), you will be found wanting, rejected, disallowed entrance, no matter how great your need, no matter whether you are supposed to be on board or not.

If you can’t prove it, well, you’re just out of luck, aren’t you?

That, I think, is what Barclay is getting at and what Jesus is so frustrated and angered by: the human tendency to take something like grace and make of it a series of rules for an entrance examination only the examiners are qualified to impose, grade, assess, and ultimately judge.

If heaven, if the kingdom on earth as in heaven, is like encountering the TSA in an airport, we are all doomed.  And the greatest and saddest irony of all is that TSA employees stand in the same sandbox when they seek to travel.  The same rules of exclusion apply, which leaves us all standing outside the gates, wondering how on earth we missed a flight we worked so hard to make.

To Be a Good Leader, You Have to be a Good Follower (We’re All Following Somebody!)

Sermon Archive Cliff Notes from the eve of national elections of November 2008 
Readings from Matthew 23.1-12 & 1 Thessalonians 2.1-13
          Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites.  The word ‘hypocrite’ comes from the Greek word hupokrisis, meaning the ‘acting of a theatrical part’.  In other words, a hypocrite, someone we understand to pretend to have higher standards or beliefs than they really do, is an actor, someone who is pretending, someone who is wearing a mask.
          Now we’ve talked before about the masks we wear – but then we were thinking about the masks we put on to hide our sorrows from the world . . . now that is pretending, but it’s a different kind of pretending than we’re hearing about today.
          When I put on my mask to pretend I’m okay, I’m not humbling myself enough to believe that you might really care about me.  But the mask Jesus refers to is the one I put on to hide that I really don’t care about you.  The first is the mask of the follower; the second, the mask of the leader.  It is to the leader in all of us that these texts speak.
               This week, all over the country, candidates of one side will pack their bags and go home when the other side steps into the victor’s seat.  The keys to the earthly ‘kingdom’ will be passed along.  And life will go on.
          But if we follow our usual pattern, the ink won’t be dry on the page before we’re crying foul or criticizing the new leaders, before they’ve even gotten the chair warm.
          Before we get too righteous in our indignation, let us remember that we too are leaders, that we too are setting an example, that we too are called to be in the burden sharing as well as the burden bearing business of life . . .
          Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, grandchildren, family and friends, younger sisters and brothers, neighbors and strangers,  all are led by you . . .
          What Paul understood, what is central to his message to the Thessalonians, is that how you lead is determined by whom you follow . . . and we all follow someone or something . . .
          So like Paul, remember always that God is your leader . . .
          The word ‘cynical’ is defined as believing the worst about human beings and their nature.  There is no room for the cynical in the kingdom . . . and cynicism, like a disease, is contagious . . .
          So here’s a challenge particularly suited to this time in our nation . . . drop the cynicism . . . try believing the best rather than the worst about the candidates . . . all of them . . .
          Pray the best for all of them . . .
          And who knows, maybe, just maybe, they will become the leaders we need.
          But the real miracle is that maybe, just maybe, we will become the leaders we’ve been  looking for . .


CHARGE:
                 On this eve of elections, I charge you in the words of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist tradition, "Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences”.