Transcribed from the Sermon preached October 19, 2003

We serve ourselves best by serving others. This is a fundamental tenent of Christianity. If you have ever been in church when a mission trip returnes home to report, then you have heard someone say, "I feel like I gained as much as I received." This is a cliché but it is true. Our culture is oriented toward convincing us that individual desire and consumption is our reason for existence. Where there are some basic needs we must meet in order to enjoy life, consumption as our whole reason for existing has resulted in an incredible number of anxious people.

To serve other makes us feel like we are connected with something larger than ourselves. When we serve we are connected to something larger than ourselves. When we serve in love, we are connected to God. Ultimately, the goal of the Christian life is service to others, and of all God’s creation. However, being a servant can be complicated.

There are times when you may need to be served. Many people wind up joinng the church and becoming great servants because they were first served in a time of need by a Christian. It is entirely possible that the cure for our sickness and need is to serve someone else, but it is also probable that at certain points in our lives, we will all need to be served. Ultimatly it is through the fact that we have been served by Jesus that we are Christians, and in turn reach out to serve others as he serves us.

There is also a time when the true servant knows when to stop serving, when serving means not intervening. A Zen monk sent his teenage student into the woods to watch a cacoon. The young man watched as the butterfly’s wings began to break through their silken fibers. He watched and waited and watched, but he grew impatient. Unable to simply observe the butterfly, he reached down and helped the butterfly out of the cacoon. The new butterfly flew a short distance, then fell to the ground and died. The young man went back to his master and asked what happened. The master said, "The struggle you helped him avoid is what would have enabled him to build the strength to fly in the future." Sometimes being a servant means prayerfully standing by and not intervening. The important thing is for our attitude to be one of service, to want what is best for the other person.

The liberation perspective has emphasized the need of the poor and oppressed to claim their own space, voice, identity and calling. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "It is OK to want to be a drum major. We all have the drum major instinct. But be a drum major for peace. Be a drum major for justice." Sponsored by St. John’s, the mission of Partners for Peace is to accompany those oppressed people who are struggling to transform their own communities into more just, free and humane places to live. This is a great mission which is a necessary component along side more traditonal forms of charity and service.

At Northminster in Salinas one year I went with the youth to Tijuana to build a house for a poor family. There were eight hundred North American middle class Christians there to build houses, and they all camped in this giant rock quarry. I talked with the leaders one night and learned that the owner of the rock quarry allowed us to stay there for free. "What a great Christian man he is!" someone said, and we all agreed. The next day we went out to begin our work and we met the family for whom we were building the house. Since I speak Spanish I spoke with them quite often. It turned out that the father worked part time for the rock quarry, but he didn’t earn enough to build his own house.

I do not believe this was some kind of snow job on the unsuspecting Gringos. The owner of the rock quarry didn’t even know this worker’s name, much less that he was getting a house built. It just goes to show what Reinhold Neibuhr has said, "Charity combines genuine pity with the display of power, and the latter element explains thy the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice." Church service needs to be about social justice too.

I believe what Jesus is calling the disciples to is a radical transformation of both our heart and society. He is telling his disciples that heirarchical thinking is not a part of the Glory of God. He wants love in our hearts, and justice in society. Love will translate to justice on a social level, though it may not translate into a meticulous calculation of who is entitled to what. This, I think, is an interesting point in our day, both locally and globally, when we are stuggling with how such a diverse population can coexist in harmony. Reinhold Niebuhr again, talking about the value of love in establishing social harmony: "Where rights and interest are closely interwoven, it is impossible to engage in a shrewd and prudent calculation of comparative rights. Where lives are closely intertwined, happiness is destroyed if it is not shared. Justice by assertion and counter-assertion therefore becomes impossible. The friction involved in the process destroys mutual happiness…The spririt of mutuality can be maintained only by a passion which does not estimate the personal advantages which are derived from Love must strive for something purer than justice if it would attain justice."

There is a time for calculation and balance, and there is a time for more. Jesus did what we all need to do whether we were going to do it or not. There are times when we need to be served. There are times when serving means letting go. There are times when we ought to stand up and stake our claim, when the servants need a balance of power. But ultimately, we are best served when we love and serve others. I believe the servant heart Jesus is talking about encompasses each of these ways of being. May God grant us as individuals and as a congregation the wisdom and love to be powerful servants.