A life of service

2 Samuel 6:1-5

This scripture about king David dancing in the streets seems like kind of a strange story for Confirmation Sunday except for one thing: David was king because that is the role God called him to. He lived to serve God. Serving God is basically what Confirmation day is all about. Now, you’re probably not chosen to be a king (honestly, we don’t have much use for any more of those). The truth is that most of you are going to end up doing work that the outside world undervalues. Most people in our church have fairly normal lives, by which I mean nobody is going to write a book about you. Having a family? Normal. Working a job for somebody else? Normal. Sitting down for coffee with friends? Normal.

            None of us are Iron Man. That would be exciting. Probably you are just going to shop at the Farmer’s Store, or another similar place somewhere else in the world, and you’ll go home to supper and your favorite TV shows. If you compare yourselves to king David we’re going to come up looking seriously under-productive.

            But, here’s the thing: God doesn’t really care about that. God calls us to serve in different ways, but he calls all of us. More than that, the person serving in a perfectly normal role—who is actually living this life that looks so un-exceptional to the outside world—often finds exceptional joy and fulfillment in it. As much as we remember David, most of the good things we recall happen before he was king—when he was a normal shepherd boy. That’s when he defeated Goliath with a sling and a lion with a staff. When David does well it is because he is a servant, and when he does poorly it’s because he fails to be a servant. This is all God is ever calling us to be—to enter into servitude for the sake of a world that needs it.

            So your perfectly normal life to somebody on the outside might be exactly the kind of life that God would look at and say, “Well done. Well done.”

            In 2 Samuel 6, David is at his best, showing his love of God with abandon, dancing in the streets, making a complete fool of himself. In those moments, David demonstrates that being a servant doesn’t always mean being sour or pained; sometimes it means being joyous. God calls us all to different roles at different times.

            Last week I preached on Mark 10 at Confirmation in Pembina (and it’s been a long week, so forgive me for reusing some material), but this is all well and good because Mark 10 lays out the fundamental commitment of our faith that applies any day. Jesus says, “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.” To be a Jesus-follower is not to be set above earthly concerns. Instead, to follow Jesus is to get your hands and your feet dirty for the sake of sharing the good news. Today, Confirmation Day, is celebrating not the completion of your classes but the beginning of a life of servitude to Jesus. That’s maybe not what you signed up for, but it is exactly what it is. Sure, it seemed like the last couple years were the part where you were expected to be somewhere, to do something, and to complete more sermon notes than you’d probably like, and having done that it feels like you should be able to relax and coast for awhile. But it’s exactly the opposite. You might not be old enough to go off to college or a get a full-time job, you might not be mature enough to care for a family on your own or make financial decisions for those you love, but today you are nevertheless being called to an even-more challenging vocation: You are called to stick up for the lowly and the downtrodden, to live your faith out-loud not just by saying, “Yes, I believe in Jesus” but by living your life as if that matters. Confirmation was not the test; life is. Confirmation is just the launching pad.

            David served by being called as king, but it is no less holy a vocation to be called to clean sewers, change light bulbs or mow lawns; let alone the calling of servitude it takes to have a family. As long as David ruled by way of service he was OK. I realize David was before Jesus, but the rules were exactly the same: service is the key to a life of discipleship. To follow Jesus is to serve how Jesus served. If Jesus knelt and washed feet, then we wash feet. If Jesus went to the abused and the hurting and the rejected and the poor and the criminals, then those are the people we go to. If Jesus rejected violence and hatred, then so do we. If Jesus walked the road of the cross, then that’s the path we walk—dying daily to sin and rising as a new creation. We are called as Christians to be servants of the needy, to go to the littlest, the lost, the lowly, the losers, and the dead, and to give them back the humanity that’s been taken from them. We are called to be servants who bring the gift of Jesus—both in words and actions—to be the hands and feet of Jesus to a world that needs it.

            It is a big job. In fact, it’s an overwhelming job, an impossible job. But, as one ancient Jewish maxim says, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to walk away from it” (Pirkei Avot 2:21). Jesus will complete your work. Your job is to simply stick with it. You are to be servants, and the difference between a servant and a free-person is that a servant cannot walk away. You are servants to the good news that Jesus Christ came, died, and rose again so that you would have eternal life. It’s the best kind of servitude there is. But it is a kind of slavery, because you cannot get away from that promise. You may drift away from the church. You may rarely, if ever, talk about your faith. It does not matter. You are still a servant of the gospel, and the harder you run away from it the tighter God will hold you. And you will be reminded of it, perhaps even hate it, in the moments where you are more desperate and most in need of a Savior.

            So, it’s just better if you embrace the life you have been called to. Otherwise you end up like David with Bathsheba. It seemed like fun at the time. Attractive woman, all the power in the world to make her his, and the opportunity to do it. This is what we call temptation. And it’s tough sometimes to remember that there is a reason not to give in to temptation beyond “My parents or my pastor or my community thinks I shouldn’t.” There is a reason, and it has everything to do with service. You were created to serve; not to take the biggest slice of the pie you can manage, but to figure out how to give away the greatest portion of pie that you can.

If you reach for that temptation you become enslaved to something other than God—a different God, a God who promises you nothing in the end. That attractive Bathsheba? She’s going to get old and wither. Those drugs that take the edge off your life? They’re going to make you forget to care for those you love. We could run down the list of vices in this world, and that’s not what today is about, but it is all tied in with a life of service to the things that matter.

God knit you together before you were born, and most of you were baptized before you had any control over your bowels—let alone the capacity to understand what it was that was happening there—and now you are confirmed into this faith by virtue of being here today. You didn’t really have a lot of control over that path that led you here, which is why today is in one way a dangerous day. It’s dangerous if you think that today you are free to do whatever you please. Instead, Confirmation is just the beginning of a life of service. If we imagine that what matters today is your ability to confess a few words of faith in front of the congregation, if we think that it’s our convictions and our good hearts that make us good, Christian people, then we misunderstand what it means to be a servant. We are God’s property, and so our little confessions to that effect are only the difference between a slave that knows she’s a slave and a slave that doesn’t.

Today, you are members of the church, which means that you are bound to something that matters. It is a great paradox of the life of faith that it is through servitude that we find freedom. Martin Luther, who should probably be quoted at every Confirmation, said that “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none,” and “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.”

            So, in my best impression of Luther’s Small Catechism, let me ask you that all-too-familiar question: “What does this mean?”

            It means you have a ton of responsibility. You are not just the future of the church but also its present. You are the living hands and feet of Jesus in the world. Big-time pressure. But you are also free through the love of Jesus and today you confess that even though you are not perfect people nevertheless we have a God who satisfies you, calls you his own, and redeems you as the perfect creatures you were made to be. This is what it is to be a follower of Jesus. It seems backwards. It is not graduation. It’s servitude. Today you are servants. But, here’s the important thing to remember: I, a pastor called by the gospel, am just as much a servant as you. So, today, I will serve you communion. Tomorrow, you serve the world. That’s how this works. And it’s the same thing every week. Today, you and I and everybody else here are reminded that we are in this together. All servants. That’s what being a Jesus-follower is all about.