4th Sunday in Lent
March 26, 2017
1 Samuel 16:1-13; John 9:1-41
Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGror0aMkrE
This Lenten season we are going through and exploring the
vows we make when we join the church and that we reaffirm at a baptism. We
promised to faithfully participate in the ministries of the church through our
prayers, by praying for the church, for its ministries, for the congregation,
and for each other. We promised to faithfully participate by our presence, by being here. Not every time the doors are
open, but consistently and faithfully showing with our bodies that it is
important to come worship together and be the body of Christ together. We
promised to faithfully participate by our gifts, by giving our time, talent,
treasure, and testimony to build up the church, to build up the body of Christ,
so that the ministries of this church can
happen and so that the good news and love of Jesus Christ is spread
throughout our community and the world. By sharing our resources, we become
more than the sum of our parts as we share the gifts God has given to us.
Today
we are going to focus on the fourth vow, which is to faithfully participate in
the ministries of the church by our service.
The best four-letter word I could come up with for service is work. I even thought about just
misspelling the word ‘serve’ by leaving off the silent e at the end! Serve and
work are similar, yet slightly different. To serve is to work with a purpose
and to work for someone. When we
serve, we work for God. We serve each
other, because by doing so we serve Jesus. We serve the church, the body of
Christ, because that’s what God calls us to do. Deuteronomy 10 says, “What does
the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in
all his ways, to love him, to serve the
Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the
commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you
today, for your own well-being.”[1]
There is a lot in the Bible about serving God. A couple chapters later in
Deuteronomy there’s the instruction that “The Lord your God you shall follow,
him alone you shall fear, his commandments you shall keep, his voice you shall
obey, him you shall serve, and to him
you shall hold fast.”[2] And
Jesus references these verses when he tells Satan at the end of his forty days
in the wilderness, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”[3]
Serve only God. Serve God with all
your heart and with all your soul.
What
does it mean to to serve God? To serve means to be useful, to be helpful. Are
we helpful to God? Do we allow ourselves to be used by God? Do we work for God?
And is the work we do what we want to
do or the work God wants us to do? If
we’re true servants, then we do what we’re told. We go where we’re told, we do
the work we’re told to do, we follow instructions and obey. We don’t get to
decide what to do, we don’t get choose our work based on how interesting it is
or how fun it is. We do the work we’re told to do. That’s what serving is. It’s
washing dishes. It’s taking food to those without homes. It’s sweeping and
mopping the floor. It’s bringing a glass of water to someone who's thirsty. It’s being focused on the other person and on what needs doing,
regardless of whether it’s a task you like or not.
The
customer service industry has taken off lately, with old sayings like “the
customer’s always right” and new sayings like “service with a smile.” Now, we
know the customer is not always right, and we know it can be taxing to forced
to smile. Yet these are business models designed around the consumer. Give them
what they think they want, regardless of whether it’s the best for them. Make
it the most positive experience it can be. My sister’s degree is in hospitality
leadership. That didn’t even used to be a thing! Now you can formally study
leadership in the food and beverage, lodging, and convention and special events
industries. There is training in how to serve the customer. I remember a deacon
at my sending church, years ago, and hearing her call to ministry. She was
second career and previously had worked high up in management for Pepsi. She
said her personal slogan was “Service with a smile.” And then one day after she
said, “Service with a smile,” she heard God whisper back, “But know whom you
serve.” Know whom you serve. When you work in the service industry, you may
think you’re serving the customer, right? My sister at her hotel serves the
guests. My husband, a field engineer, goes out to different customer sites each
day and serve his company’s clients. And both their employers want happy
customers. They want returning customers; they want customers who won’t be
calling them with complaints. Yet who do we really serve? As you go up the
chain, at the top is God. Know whom you serve. You serve God.
God
calls all of us into service. And no two people serve God the exact same way.
Because of our baptism, because we belong to God, we promise to serve him and
him alone. In our baptism is an anointing, just like Samuel anointed David to
be the next king over Israel. We are set aside for a specific task as well. It
may be Sunday school teacher or to set up communion or to feed the hungry. The
ministry may change over time. God called me to teach in Nicaragua, and then to
seminary at Duke, and now to serve him here, as a pastor in Maryland. God calls
each of us, individually, into service, and he calls our church into service,
too, as the body of Christ. I may be the only one, but my favorite part of the
baptism liturgy isn’t the part that the parents or the person being baptized
say; it’s the part the congregation says and the promise the congregation
makes. At a baptism, the congregation pledges to “surround the person with a
community of love and forgiveness, that they may grow in their trust of God,
and be found faithful in their service to others.”[4] We
promise a community of love and forgiveness, so that each of us might grow in
our trust of God and be found faithful in our service to others. Enabling and
encouraging faithfulness is important, because what we do for the least of
these, our brothers and sisters, we do for God.[5] In
serving others, we serve God.
The
training we get in how to serve God we learn here at church and in our family.
It’s an ongoing course of study. We do what needs doing, we offer to help out
and then do what we’re told. Our leaders are servant leaders; they lead by
serving and they do a lot of behind the scenes work and a lot of grunt work and
spend a lot of time in prayer carrying their worries to God. My previous
appointment fixed and served dinner once a month at the local homeless shelter.
Maybe a week or two after I started that appointment it was our turn and so I
went to the church kitchen that evening and asked how I could help. I was told
I could wash the dishes, so I did. The church was large enough and I was *only*
the associate pastor, that I was not immediately recognized. It wasn’t until
after I was washing dishes I overheard one church member whisper to her
husband, “I think that’s our new associate.” I came in and offered to help; it
meant washing dishes. Not my favorite task, but it needed doing. So I did it. That
was how they needed me to serve, so I did.
Too
often we get caught up in qualifying our service. It may be that we put limits
on ourselves, like I’m only willing to serve in this way at this time or I
won’t serve at all. Sometimes we put conditions on our service. Sometimes
that’s reasonable, some of us have health conditions which mean we shouldn’t do
heavy lifting or stand for long periods of time. Those of us with young
children do need to make sure we spend the time and energy our children need us
to have for and with them. Other times, though, we put conditions on how we’re
willing to serve, without any good reason other than that I don’t like washing
dishes, so I refuse to serve that way. Period. We limit our availability
according to our preferences, rather than our need. Or, we pass judgment on those whom we are serving, forgetting that everyone we serve is a beloved child of
God, everyone we serve is service
done to God.
The first international mission trip I went on was with a medical
team to Honduras, where we traveled to different villages who didn’t have any
access to medical care and set up a clinic for the day. We saw very poor people.
The second trip was in
college and with fellow students to a Methodist church in Mexico. Our job was
to paint the church and the parsonage. It felt significantly less meaningful.
The people of Camargo, Mexico, were not as poor as the people who lived in the
Santa Barbara mountains of Honduras. Yet on both trips we were there to serve
God. We were there to serve. It was
not our place to judge who needed it more.
Judging
is the same problem the Pharisees got caught up in in our Gospel reading this
morning. It was another long one, about the man born blind and so, therefore, it’s
assumed that someone must have sinned or else he would have been born normal.
Beloved, there are many reasons for diseases; sin is only one of them. There’s
a book I can recommend you if you want to read about more reasons. Anyway, the
Pharisees wanted to judge. Who sinned? Who’s at fault here? And then because
Jesus healed him, the Pharisees judged Jesus. Jesus obviously isn’t from God
because he broke the Sabbath law and worked on the Sabbath; he healed this man
on the Sabbath![6] We have a tendency to be
like the Pharisees and judge those whom we serve. We sometimes even judge God.
Yet God says that Jesus came into this world to save it, not to condemn it.[7]
And Jesus even says, “Judge not, lest you be judged.”[8]
That is not our place. Our place is to serve, not judge whether the person
we’re serving is worthy of it or whether it’s how we like to serve. I’m reminded of what Jesus says in Luke 17:7-10:
“Suppose
one of you has a servant who is plowing or looking after the sheep. When he
comes in from the field, do you tell him to hurry along and eat his meal? Of
course not! Instead, you say to him, ‘Get my supper ready, then put on your
apron and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may have your meal.’
The servant does not deserve thanks for obeying orders, does he? It is the same
with you; when you have done all you have been told to do, say, ‘We are
ordinary servants; we have only done our duty.’”
We are only doing our duty, serving the Lord our God with
all our heart and with all our soul. We serve. We are not the master; we are
not God. We go where God sends us and we serve God in that place. May God grant
us the grace and the love to continue doing so, all the days of our life, in
all the places God leads us to, with all the people God brings alongside us as
co-laborers in his vineyard. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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