Sunday, March 16, 2014

Service is a joy and those who think differently haven't tried it

Scripture: John 13:1-17

            I was given orders this week to make this as short a sermon as possible [since we're showing off a baby at church and that's going to take some time]. But part of my job is to not always give you exactly what you want but what you need to hear, so consider this your Lenten discipline for the day—that can wait. Although, come to think of it, this whole baby thing does kind of color everything I read here—like I can no longer read Jesus saying “Not all of you are clean” without resisting the urge to point at Natalie, because I know different.

            There are so many other parental angles to this scripture, in fact, that it was awfully tempting to go in that direction—suddenly I have a whole other appreciation of being a servant of others—but just because it’s the life change that’s on my mind doesn’t mean it’s on yours and the fantastic thing about these examples that Jesus sets is that they can apply across many, many life events. Case in point: when Jesus talks about being a servant of all it can easily apply to raising a child, but it also can apply to teaching, going on a mission trip, visiting a loved one in the nursing home, baking bread for somebody in need, or sending a card to tell someone you’re thinking about them. Jesus came to be a servant—a “suffering servant,” says Isaiah—because servanthood is preferable to any other way of living, which is precisely why we should value parents and caregivers and nurses and restaurant staff—among many, many others. Every one of these people puts on the clothes of Christ every day of their lives.
            This is also completely at odds with our common conceptions of power. Peter doesn’t like what Jesus is doing—a king is not to serve—which is funny because if I’m Peter and Jesus, the Savior of the world, is doing something I didn’t expect I’d probably reevaluate my ideas of what a king should be rather than questioning the one who is king, but nobody ever said Peter was the brightest bulb in the box. That’s not to say he didn’t have a point, though. We expect a king to rule, not to serve; to be lifted up on a throne, not groveling at the feet of those less worthy; and we expect these things because that’s what we would do if we were in power.
            I believe this is one of the most compelling reasons to be a Christian. There are a lot of religions in the world, most of them offering something really good—some kind of reward either in our lives or in our deaths. Some believe in karma—that you get back what you have done to others. That sounds great—a world that is completely and inexorably fair—but my experience of the world suggests something different. If karma isn’t true, then we’re left with only a couple of possibilities: the first is a kind of purposelessness to the universe, and the second is grace. We believe in grace because Christians understand that all of us mess up—most days… in fact every day. We mess up when we do bad; we mess up when we try to do good; and we mess up even when we do good, because our good isn’t good enough and meanwhile we failed to do good for someone else. We are finite creatures charged with the command to be infinitely perfect. So in a way Christians are one half of the way to nihilism—we are one half of the way to believing that nothing matters and the world is purposeless—but at the very peak of our awareness of our imperfection we find Jesus Christ standing in our way, and this is why Christianity is unique: first, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but secondly because of the example Jesus gave us of humbling ourselves in all circumstances: to be the one washing the feet, to be the beggar, the outcast, the lost and forsaken; to be the poor and the stranger; and to seek out that which makes us uncomfortable because that is where God promises to be.
            I believe this is also one of the preeminent reasons why Christianity is struggling to keep its numbers in the Western world. It’s hard for powerful people who can get what they want to see the value in humility and discomfort. Christianity is a religion for the powerless; not the powerful. When you are told by media, as well as friends and family, that you are a self-sufficient person, who has worked for what you have gotten and that you deserve to be happy, healthy, and free, it becomes increasingly undesirable to live as a servant. So, on a large-scale, people have been pulling away from the Christian church, because, unlike every other area of their lives, the church is not here to provide you with a service. You may come into the church under the assumption that the church is here to feed you, but it’s not. If the only reason you’re here is to “get something out of church” then this isn’t the place for you, but you’ve probably already noticed that. The church, like everything in the Christian life, is not something we use but something that uses us. The church is about being a servant and a missionary and sacrificing for the sake of the Gospel, because we know that no matter what the commercials tell you: you don’t deserve it. What you deserve instead of a new car or a flat screen TV is to serve your friends and neighbors, even the people you don’t like.
            And then a funny thing happens. See, if your main motivation for going to church is to be fed, then you’re not going to like what we have to offer, because here you get to be the one doing the feeding and the foot washing, the serving and the cleaning. You might think this is backwards—we all work quite enough in the rest of our lives, thank you very much—so you might not even give it a try. So, you skate by, week after week, being a Christian out of a sense of duty, but not enjoying it. But every so often an amazing thing comes about: you break out of our shells and decide for reasons sometimes even you don’t understand that you will serve, and then what happens? You are fulfilled in ways you never would have imagined. That’s the spirit at work. The things that you think will be tedious—like washing another person’s feet—are precisely the things that make us happy and give us meaning. Part of the joy of service is that you make other people happy, but it’s even more than that: it makes us happy—whether others know about our service, or respect it, or not—because we are created to serve; not to lounge; and certainly not to consume.
            And I guess that brings me back to being a dad. There are a million ways to serve in life—being a pastor is one and so is being a dad; so is being an ambulance driver, or a farmer, or a sewer worker, or an accountant, or doing just about any job you can imagine. We all have different ideas about the way we should serve in this life, and all of them are good. These days vocation is basically synonymous with our work, but Luther understood vocation to be all of our callings in life—our work, and our family, and our service to our friends and neighbors, because all of these are ways that we tell people about Jesus. All of you are preachers: you preach when you wash feet, or clean a bed pan, or change a diaper, or when you visit somebody at the nursing home, or send a “Get Well” card. None of those are necessarily enjoyable endeavors on their own, but, when all is said and done, they always end up being more enjoyable than you would have guessed.
And that’s why Jesus washes feet: to show us how to live.
Amen.

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