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.

Sermon Cliff Note: The Third Temptation -- Choose

If we were to reduce Jesus’ three wilderness temptations to one-liners, we might say that the first temptation is the temptation of need . . . the second, the temptation of surrender . . . and the third, the temptation of power.

The temptation of need is the temptation to turn away from or to blame God for our lack, our problems, our needs.  This is the temptation which says essentially: God won’t help you, so you better help yourself any way you can.  The second temptation says: This is too much for you.  Just give in.  Quit. It doesn’t matter what you do – God will save you anyway.  The third and final and perhaps most seductive temptation of all is essentially this: Imagine what you could do if you were in charge!  

Consider this temptation as told in Matthew 4.9-10 from The Message:

For the third test, the Devil took him to the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth’s kingdoms, how glorious they all were. Then he said, “They’re yours—lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they’re yours.”  Jesus’ refusal was curt: “Beat it, Satan!” He backed his rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy:“Worship the Lord your God, and only him. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness.”  The Test was over. The Devil left. And in his place, angels!

Satan is claiming to be able to bestow everything in creation to whomever he chooses.  Remember that the real meaning of Satan’s name is The Liar.  From humanity’s first encounter with this figure in the Garden until the end of time, The Adversary’s claims are lies.  The earth is not his to give.  Bowing down to him doesn’t get you the world; it gets you kicked out of the Garden.

The next thing to consider is what is being asked of Jesus.  The NRSV and The Message, as well as most other translations in English say Jesus is being asked to worship, the inference being that Jesus is being asked to worship Satan and not God.  In the Greek, it’s a bit more subtle than that.

The literal translation reads something like this:  Again he is saying to him, “All these I shall give to you if ever you should fall prostrate before me.”  

To fall prostrate or to bow before can be an act of worship.  But it is also, especially in Jesus’ world, an act of recognition of someone’s superior status to you.  Recognizing someone’s superiority doesn’t necessarily make of them a god.  But it does recognize their power.  And this temptation is all about power and status, about the things that get so much attention and importance in this world.  Thus it bears remembering that immediately after this encounter is when Jesus delivers his Sermon on the Mount with the beatitude blessings upon the the societal nobodies.

The Adversary offers Jesus all the power of the world if only he will recognize The Adversary’s own claims to power, to which Jesus says, no thanks.  

Literally what he says is, Then Jesus is saying to him, “Be under [your] leading, Satan?  It has been written, “For God, your master, you shall be prostrate before and to him only shall you be offering service.”

In telling The Adversary to go away, in rejecting this third temptation, Jesus is saying two things: (1) the world isn’t yours to give; and (2) even if it were, none of that can compare to the worship of God, the serving of God, to God’s very self.

What might we learn from Jesus’ encounter in the desert wilderness?  What might be our take--aways when it comes to this third temptation?

It’s doubtful that any of us are going to be offered the ability to control the whole world any time soon.  So what are the temptations to power in our lives?

Perhaps they’re the temptations of the every-day . . . the things we don’t even think of as being related to power at all. . . things we bow down to without giving it much thought . . . things like our schedules . . . our agendas . . . our desires . . . our vision of how things ought to be. . .

And we have lots of power or power-potential, whether we think so or not . . . all of us . . . we have power in our relationships with other people – our children, our spouses, our family and friends . . . we have power in how we spend our money . . . we have power in how we spend our time . . . if nothing else, it is the power to choose – and as Jesus points out, the power to choose is to be about the worship and service of God – always.

So perhaps some questions we might ask ourselves during this lenten time of reflection might include:

1. How do I react when I don’t get my way?  Do I recognize that I’m not the only person involved and that others might see things differently?  Or do I get mad?  Judge the other person?  Withdraw my support?  Undermine the others by complaining? 

2. Have I ever agreed with an opponent about anything?  Or do I always see my opponents as wrong simply because they are my opponents?

3. When I choose to buy something, do I think about whether this buying will glorify God?  Does the question seem silly?  What might I do differently with my money if I thought about it in those terms?

4. When someone asks you to do something, do you think about whether the doing is in service to God?  Do you pray about it?  Or do you just answer based on what you think or feel at the moment?  

What Jesus faced was a time of trial.  And what times of trial do is winnow away the unimportant, reducing life down to the things that matter, which makes the matter of choosing much simpler than in the day-to-day of life.

In the day-to-day of things, perhaps we might do well to recall the parting words of Joshua: Choose this day whom you will serve.  As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

To paraphrase Bob Dylan, you gotta serve somebody – the question is who.

Sermon Cliff Note: As For Me and My House

Thinking about this, the 35th year anniversary of the McDowell Volunteer Fire Department, I’ve conducted an informal survey, asking ‘why do you do this?’  Most have gone silent and thought about it for awhile . . . many have mentioned family ties . . . but perhaps Gary summed it up best for them all – “somebody’s got to do it.”

It’s true, isn’t it?  Somebody does have to do it.  But not everybody does do it.  What we call to mind today is that more than 35 years ago, a bunch of somebodies got together and dreamed it.  And in their dreaming, they made it so.  Many of you will remember the helping hands – many of those hands were your very own . . .

There’s a Greek word – oikos – from the New Testament.  It literally means ‘house’.  In its various forms, it is also used to refer to the contents of the house, the human body, a household or family, a whole clan or tribe of people, a nation, a Christian community of believers, and indeed, to the whole inhabited earth.

In coming together to rededicate this house, it is appropriate to think on its many meanings – house as place of shelter, as a repository for our treasures, as our own bodies, as family, community, tribe, nation, church, and as the whole of creation – it is appropriate because in very real ways, to be a member of the MVFD is to be a house in its broadest sense.

The house we have here is a chosen thing – chosen by you, but even more importantly, chosen by God.  Speaking of Abraham, God says in the book of Genesis, “. . . I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

Like God’s own observation about Abraham, you rededicate yourselves to the future generations, to those who will come after, with every step you take.  Just as it was shown to you by the generations that came before, you show the next generation the way of righteousness and justice whenever you answer the call and throw on the gear and head out to who knows what, leaving your own family behind to take care of the family of a stranger.

Throughout scripture, we are reminded that we humans will be known by God by our fruits – by the results of our lives.  In Genesis, we see God’s sense of partnership with we human beings and right here in McDowell, we see that partnership being acted out day by day – we see it by the fruits of lives saved, friendships forged, dreams brought into reality.

But it’s one thing to do an act of kindness for a friend or family member and quite another to do it even at the possible cost of one’s own life for a stranger or an enemy.

In the gospel of Matthew in chapter 25, we read, “. . . the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’  Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?  And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?  And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’  And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ . . .”

Like those standing before God’s throne, you visit the feeble, you rescue the vulnerable, you give food and drink to those in need, you provide for the sick, you answer the call whether the person calling is worthy of your sacrifice or not.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is House – capital H house – a family, a church – a community of faith providing for those in need simply because somebody has to do it.  You were who Jesus was talking about.  What you might not have known is that the complaining old lady . . . the drug-addicted couple . . . the obnoxious and demanding, the careless, the angry, the ungrateful, the disdainful rich and the filthy poor, the one who started the fire himself as much as the one merely a victim – that all of them – each and every one – are Jesus himself.  Whenever you answer the call, it is Jesus himself you serve.

When you gather together to raise money for Relay for Life, you are doing God’s work.  When you slip a fellow fire fighter a little something to tide him over during his cancer battle, you are doing God’s work.  When you run into a burning house that any sane person would run out of, you are doing God’s work.  When you hold the hand of a car wreck victim waiting for the ambulance, you are doing God’s work.  When you sweep the floors and wash the vehicles, you are doing God’s work. When you attend one more training session when you’d rather do anything but, you are doing God’s work.

Your house has been well and truly built – on the founding stone of a community that believed it was possible . . . and necessary . . . and the cornerstone of a God who answered your prayers . . . with the walls of your own serving answer to God’s call . . . and the roof of God’s own protecting . . .

And so it is that you can proclaim with Joshua as he met the people Israel one last time before his own death . . .  “. . . choose this day whom you will serve . . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Amen.

Torpor

tor·por noun:  a state of lowered physiological activity typically characterized by reduced metabolism, heart rate, respiration, and body temperature that occurs in varying degrees especially in hibernating and estivating animals Merriam-Webster

Humans are not considered hibernating animals.  I wonder why.

I get the science part, but when it comes to winter time, at least where I’m from, people tend to hunker down in place, doing only that which is essential and leaving the rest for the warm time.

So yes, farmers work hard in the winter.  But they too hustle to be done and get back into the warmth, plunking down by the fire to just sit and stare and wait – for warmth to return.

Spending the last 11 days largely at my mother’s hospital bedside, I have fallen in to my own torpor, evidenced by lowered activity.  Most of the day, I simply sit.  It’s kind of like being a fireman, this bedside duty – rushing to help when needed and otherwise simply sitting and waiting for the next call.

Mom is now transitioning to a place where she will require less of my presence and attention and I will (presumably) return to my previous state of activity – that thing I call my life.

But this, too, is my life, this serving by waiting.