157 Why Servants?

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Why Servants?”, originally shared on October 14, 2021. It was the 157^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    We in the Kingdom of God, in the Church, the Body of Christ, are called to live as servants of God and of one another. Why? Do we get points? Does God hear our prayers better? Today, we’re going to find out.

   A heard a story a while ago about being a VIP.

   The Pope was in New York to speak before the General Assembly at the United Nations building.

   On the morning he was to speak, as he and his entourage came out of the hotel where they were staying, and he was running late.

   As they rushed to the “popemobile”, an aide ran up and said that the “popemobile” had a flat tire.

   The Pope said, “Don’t worry. I’ll meet you there,” and he jumped into a cab.

   “The United Nations building!” the Pope said, climbing in in his pope robes.

   The driver was stunned and said, “Your Holiness! Your Holiness, I’m sorry but this is my first day on the job and I don’t know where it is.”

   “It’s OK, said the Pope. I know the way. But I’m late so I’ll need to drive.”

   And with that, the driver slid over and the Pope jumped into the front seat and sped away.”

   The pope was flying through Manhattan, cutting through traffic, speeding through yellow lights, and then the flashing red and blue lights appeared in his rearview mirror, and he pulled over.

   The police officer approached the cab, looked at the driver, and went back to his patrol car to contact his precinct.

   “Sarge, I’ve got a situation,” he said.

   “What is it?” said the sergeant.

   “I just pulled over a VIP,” said the officer. “What should I do?”

   “Well, who is it?” said the sergeant. “Is it an alderman?’

   “No, he’s way more important than that.”

   “Well, is it the mayor?”

   “No, way more important.”

   “Is it the governor?”

   “Look,” the police officer said, “I don’t know who he is. But he has the pope for a driver!”

   Two of Jesus’ disciples, James and John, wanted to be VIPs. The had followed Jesus and they felt that they deserved to ask for a reward in return.

   They had asked Jesus, in Mark 10:37b,

“Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 

   They wanted to be in the picture, the ones everybody saw when they looked at Jesus. They wanted to be near power in positions of power, to be in the entourage. And, they thought of it first.

   In Mark 10:41, we get the other disciples’ response,

⁴¹ When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 

   Why were they angry with them? Were they angry because so little of Jesus’ teaching had sunk in with their fellow disciples? Or were they angry with themselves because they hadn’t asked first?

   Given Jesus’ response, I think: the latter.

   Jesus called all of the disciples together to hear his answer, resuming with Mark 10:42,

⁴² So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.

   Jesus put their behavior in the context of those around them. The Gentiles, the non-Jews of the world surrounding them, were the Romans and those whose lives had been greatly changed by the coming of the Roman Empire.

   The Roman Empire was highly hierarchical, all the way up to the emperor. It started in the military. You couldn’t get a highly sought-after job in the civil service unless you had first served in the military. The primary way the Jews interfaced with the Empire was through the military and the civil service, and Jesus knew how people behaved in a hierarchy.

   He said to his disciples, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.”

   Among the gentiles, Jesus said, position was power.

   It’s different in the Kingdom of God, Jesus said.

   Jesus continues in Mark 10 with verse 43,

 ⁴³ But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴ and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 

   This is not your typical motivational speech. You don’t see those words on a poster in anyone’s cubicle: “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant”.

   Who aspires to be a servant, or a slave? In a household, their jobs were the lowest.

   Ted Sample, in his book Hard Living People & Mainstream Christians, I think, says that some hard living people will say things like, “I don’t take nothin’ from nobody.” But if you look at their lives, they are at the bottom of the food chain. They have to take everything from everybody, and their lives are filled with anger and frustration.

   Who do you recognize as the rulers of your life? Do they lord it over you, or do they serve you. Which would you rather have?

   Martha was stressed taking care of and feeding Jesus and his disciples. Mary sat with the disciples listening to what Jesus taught. I remember a Serendipity Bible study I taught once that asked, who would you rather work for, a Mary or a Martha. And, then it asked, who would you rather have work for you, a Mary or a Martha? 

   Things look different, depending on where you are in a hierarchy. Being lorded over, or being the one doing the lording over.

   I think that addressing this issue can be one of the key contributions that the Church makes to our culture as we move out of the pandemic and into the New Normal.

   Are we to be lords and tyrants, or servants and slaves? What we model to the world in the way we treat one another can make all the difference in getting through this pandemic and overcoming our current cultural divides.

   Kosmos, one of our local restaurants, has a sign in its drive through window that says something like, “We apologize if you had to wait. We are short-staffed. Please be patient with those who did show up today. No one wants to work anymore.”

   We are experiencing a labor shortage in many industries.

   Is it because we are still at risk of receiving and spreading the virus? Is it because there are still many who don’t care about others? Is it because people can get by with food pantries and stimulus checks? Or, is it because they got used to doing whatever they wanted while in isolation from others.

   Probably all of those. But I would add one more. Maybe another factor is that some people got used to setting their own agenda and just don’t want to deal with the workplace pressures, the drama, the politics, and being supervised by people who “Lorded it over” them.

   A book was published in the late 1960’s called The Peter Principle. The author, Laurence J. Peter, observed that in any hierarchical organization people rise to the level of their incompetence.

   That is that, if you do well at your job you get promoted. If you do well at that job, you get promoted. If you do well at that job, you get promoted, and so on up through the hierarchy, until you don’t do well. Then you don’t get promoted.

   So, in any mature hierarchical organization, everyone is working at their level of incompetence.

   That explains a lot, doesn’t it?

   What would we have to do to keep that from happening?

   Well, imagine what would happen if everyone in a hierarchal organization wasn’t looking for an opportunity to move up, but for a chance to better serve? What if everyone rose to the level of their greatest contribution and had the humility to recognize their true limitations?

   I’m not talking about promoting poor self-esteem, or a lack of ambition, but about redefining it from what serves me, or even what serves the organization, to what serves God. From seeking power over others to being the servant and slave of others because we first serve God.

   Bob Dylan said it in his song, “You Gotta Serve Somebody”,

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes
Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody

   That’s one of life’s basic questions is, “Who do you serve?” We all serve somebody. Is life only about serving ourselves, or is there something more?

   We in the Kingdom of God, in the Church, the Body of Christ, are called to live as slaves, or in a more palatable phrase, as servants of one another because we are servants of God.

   Why?

   Do we get points? Does God hear our prayers better?

   We get the answer in the last verse of this passage, in Mark 10, verse 45,

⁴⁵ For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

   We live in response to what God has already done for us on the cross. We can’t earn it. We were captive to Sin, but Jesus paid the ransom for us with his blood. We live as a new Creation, as people who are different, born again, in a living relationship with the one true living God. That relationship expresses itself in service to one another naturally and organically in the Body of Christ.

  Paul writes to the Church at Galatia, in Galatians 5:13-14,

¹³ For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. ¹⁴ For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

   Why? And how does this happen? As John writes in 1 John 4:19,

¹⁹ We love because he first loved us.

   We are servants in response to God’s love for us, shown on the cross. “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”