Sermon 14
A Sermon at Wonersh by Colin
Sowter in 2004
Our
Church Values - A
Servant Heart lies at the heart of discipleship
Today we’re
looking at the third of our Values in our Vision and Values programme,which I hope we all have
on the little card.
As we sit let’s
pray:
Lord, as we think about vision, we pray that you will
be our vision.
As we think about values, we pray that we may have the
mind of Christ. Amen
Today’s subject, and today’s passage
cut right across the culture in which many of us have grown up
Our 1st reading said serve one another in love (repeat)
our card says
a Servant Heart lies at the heart of
discipleship
a Servant heart do we see ourselves as servants?
Many of us in
church today have been brought up to the opposite – to be leaders or masters,
not servants
from our early
days at school we strove to be form captain, captain of a sports team,a prefect, head boy or girl There’s nothing wrong with
these things, and it’s right that we encourage our children to achieve,
but there’s a danger that we grow up thinking
that we’re better than other people and as we go into a job, that aim to achieve can dominate
our career I naturally think of a
life in business, where one strove to become a manager, a director, a
managing director and so on
most of you can apply the same mentality to
whatever you’re doing, or have done, in your career or in your private life
where you run something or help to run something. There’s nothing wrong with working hard to
achieve promotion, as long as it’s fair to other people, and we don’t trample
on them
There’s nothing
wrong with wanting to earn more to provide for our family, as long as
we don’t let it get a grip on us, as long as we keep things in perspective. But
there’s a very real danger that, even as Christians, we let that
culture determine how we live and think Pete Thompson the missionary said
something very interesting a few weeks ago. He was talking about culture,
particularly the contrast in cultures between his English upbringing and the
people of
He said Culture
is like wallpaper. You live in it, but you don’t notice it until it’s
changed as we live in a culture of striving to get on, to be nearer
the top of the pile than the bottom, to have more people working for us
than above us in the hierarchy, it’s very easy
to let that influence the way we think and live.
Which is why we
have to stop and think very carefully when we look at our third value – to have
a servant heart and when we
read today’s passage – serve one another in love the more we’re a master
in some aspects of our life, the more we have to work at being servants
in our Christian and church life (and these shouldn’t be in s separate
compartment from out work loving others, serving others, sometimes putting
others before ourselves – not being trampled upon like a doormat
or are there times when we should accept even
that?
Our 2nd
reading said We ought to lay down our lives
for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in
need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Let us not love
with words or tongue, but with actions
Quite
a challenge, which this 3rd value calls us to face up to. We
had some lovely illustrations of this at
Some of the
full-time students were desperately poor, many of them over from
Jesus said our
love should be so great that we would be willing to lay down our life for
others- there’s a challenge! and that can have implications on our lifestyle
– how we choose to spend our time, perhaps how we choose to spend our money
what we do and don’t do, what we say and don’t say, where we go and don’t go
what we do for other people in place of things we might do for
ourselves at a cost to ourselves, perhaps even as a doormat – as I was
thinking about this, it occurred to me that
a doormat might be the way in for some people Paul said to
the Christians at Corinth We are your servants for Jesus’ sake
our card says
a Servant Heart lies at the heart of
discipleship
If our aim is to
serve and love others, that must challenge us every day of our lives. Does it?
Let’s step back
for a moment, and think of our relationship with others in the light of our
relationship with God our relationship with God
We can think of
ourselves as Christians, followers of Jesus
We can think of
ourselves as children of God, not in the general sense that God is
father of all, but in the special sense of having been born again into his
family
Amazingly, we can
think of ourselves a friends of God – Jesus said You
are my friends if you do what I command – what a mind-blowing description –
a friend of God!
But there’s
another description which we shouldn’t ignore – servants of God
At the beginning
of some of his letters, Paul describes himself as a servant of God
Rom 1.1 Paul, a
servant of Jesus Christ
Titus 1.1 Paul,
a servant of God
and he includes some of his readers Paul
and Timothy, the servants of Jesus
Other writers do
the same Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ
James, a
servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ
These giants
of the Christian faith described themselves as servants – that’s the way
they saw their role
And in those days,
a servant was not just a paid employee – often they were slaves belonging
to their master. The Greek word can also be translated slave or bond
slave
Revelation speaks
of bond men and free men – servants are the opposite of free men servant,
slave, with no rights in relation to the people they served
And yet this is
one of the great paradoxes of being a Christian.
There’s a
wonderful prayer:-
God, whom to
serve is perfect freedom
(repeat)
God has given us free
will, to choose to go his way or to reject it but also God is in control. God forsees and
predestines (to use a bible word) things we do
This is not the
time for a sermon on predestination and free-will
God is sovereign,
we have free will suffice it to say that we understand God best when we
balance both – when we hold them in tension – when we wrestle with how
these two work together
We had a lot of
discussion on the Ministry Team about a word on the front of our card [ ] – our vision . God’s love compels us to reach out. Does it? That word ‘compels’ implies that we
have no choice; yet we know that we do have a choice
2 Cor 5 14 says Christ’s love compels us talking about the ministry
of reconciliation which is given to Christians
AV The love of
God constrains us
God’s love compels
us, constrains us, so that, of our own free will, we feel bound to do what he
wants us to do of our own free will,
we feel bound to do what he wants us
to do . That’s the truth, that’s the paradox God,
whom to serve is perfect freedom
We’ve talked about
our relationship with God but we can go one step further. We can better understand our
relationship with God if we look at Christ’s relationship with
his Father. Jesus was the Son of God but he said
the Son of Man did not come to be
served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many
and in Phil 2.2 we read
Your attitude
should be the same as that of Christ Jesus Who, being
in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing, taking the
very nature of a servant
Jesus was a servant and he calls us to be
servants Those are some aspects of our
relationship with God – servants of our own free will and they help us to understand our
relationship with other people
Jesus said Whoever wants to become great among you must be
your servant and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all must be
your servant
must
be slave of all
must be – doesn’t that
suggest the same compulsion in serving others as we have in serving God? of our own free
will, feeling bound to do it
The description I
like best of an ordained person is a minister because that word minister
means a servant, to minister is to serve as Jesus came not to be
served, but to serve
But that
description doesn’t only apply to those who are ordained – it applies to all of
us – whatever our role in the church, we’re here to serve.
I once played golf
with a statistician working in the field of road transport and his job was to
make a cost benefit analysis of building a new motorway in terms of the cost
of building it compared with the savings which would be made
by having it by quicker journey times for businesses, by a reduction in
injuries (where the cost of hospital treatment would be saved) by increased
convenience to private road users (very difficult to put a figure on) and by a
reduction in deaths
What is the
financial value of a life? Well, the statistician would say that a young person
with his or her life before them would contribute so much to the
economy,
so much in taxation and so on but, and this is the frightening
thing, what is the financial value of the life of an older person?
Unfortunately the
value is negative! An older person costs more for medical treatment and
care, and they receive a pension. In purely financial terms, people of my age
are a liability not an asset!
Now, of course,
nobody would think in that way (I hope!) but it does raise a challenging
issue for us as members of a church community – are we an asset or a liability?
Not in financial terms (although we do have to pay the diocese quite a
lot of money for each person on the electoral roll – so we can actually
be a financial liability). But
we’re thinking in terms of what we give to the church community compared
with what we get from the church community
It’s absolutely
right that some people, the elderly or the sick, those in need, they get
more than they give in terms of love and care and help and support and
all the things we can do for our fellow Christians
But what about the
people who give little, but take from the church those who could
offer to help, but never get round to it those who whinge and moan,
by saying that things are not exactly as they like, as if they
were the only people that mattered. It’s
a problem of our consumer society where we shop around to find exactly
what we want irrespective of other people. That’s fine if we’re buying a
washing machine or a joint of meat, because that doesn’t affect other people
but other things come into play when
other people are involved
Our 1st
reading said Love your neighbour as yourself. If you keep on biting and devouring each
other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other
and that’s exactly
how a church can be torn apart today, and how a vicar can be destroyed, by
people who think selfishly, who give little but are actually a problem and a
liability to the Christian community Contrast
that with members of the church who are giving, giving, giving all the time giving
time doing things in the church,
whether it’s in activities or in the church
building , helping and supporting people in need, putting themselves out
for the church community
Just one example
only last week – someone
who was doing something for the church on Sunday evening, as a result of which
he had to leave home at 4 o’clock the next morning to fly off to his business
commitments abroad, he didn’t complain, he
didn’t even point it out, or ask if it could be changed – he accepted it and
did it. One of literally hundreds
and thousands of examples of people who make real sacrifices for the
good of the church and the people in it, serving God by serving the community of
the church
As our card says
a Servant Heart lies at the heart of
discipleship
Then there’s our
relationship with other people outside the church
I won’t say much
about that, because we shall be covering it when we come to Value 6 Serving
others enables us to share God’s heart with our neighbours
It’s a tremendous
Christian witness to the community when outsiders see members of the church
putting themselves out for the sake of other people –people to whom they have
no obligation whatever except in the sight of God.
Yes, God does
want us to witness to our faith by speaking about him when the right
opportunity arises, but what we say will often be more effective if
people have first seen what we do or, deeper than that, what sort of
people we are .
Many people have
turned to God because they have seen Christian people living out the Christian
life – it challenges them to say ‘there’s something different about that
person – I’d better find out what it is’
God calls us to
show his love by serving members of the wider community so that, when
they think of the church they think of it as a body of people who love
and serve them.
To sum up, this
third of our 6 values challenges us in 3 areas –
1st,
and this is where it must start our relationship with God - being a servant of
God, being a bondslave, following the example of
Jesus and experiencing tremendous freedom as we try to do so
2nd, our
relationship with the community of the church - putting others first, being prepared to suffer ourselves for the
sake of fellow Christians
and
3rd our
relationship with other people -
showing the love of God to people who don’t know the love of God
May God help us to
think about this 3rd of our values, to work out what he is
calling each one of us to do and may we experience the joy and freedom which
come from choosing
to be a servant.
As we sit, let’s
finish with a prayer of St Ignatius of Loyola:
Teach us, good
Lord,
to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost;
to fight and not to heed the wounds;
to labour and not to seek for any reward
save that of knowing that we do your will.
Amen.