I really like this time of year, something about the late afternoon sun in late summer makes me very nostalgic, seeing kids head back to school does the same thing and right now because I am back to the Spokane area for the first long visit in about six years everything is making me nostalgic.
I was in Cheney the other day outside of my old elementary school and I remembered being in the second grade classroom lining up to go out to recess. My teacher that year knew how to make lining up fun. We had all kinds of contests and criteria that helped us select and change the line order. This was important because there were two very important positions, first and last. First because you got to be the leader, you were very visible and without you there was no line, everyone could see you and had to follow you. And last because as the last in line it was your job to turn out the lights and close the door. You had to notice if anyone was lagging or got left behind. It held a lot of responsibility even though it wasn’t quite as visible.
As I think about those positions in grown up life, being first and last hold entirely different meanings. First seems to be the position that everyone is striving for, but unlike second graders we are a lot less willing to share it.
And no one really wants last place, the place where you have most of the responsibility and very little of that important feeling.
In the gospel today Jesus’ disciples seem to be having a reflection similar to this one. They are talking about the pros of being first and how to get there. Arguing a little bit about who has the best shot.
So Jesus sits them down and tells them what he thinks about first and last place. He doesn’t seem to mind that they want to be first in line, in fact he tells them how to get there, he wants them to get there. But it turns out that being first is a little more like being last than the disciples hoped that it would be a lot of the responsibility and not so much of the visibility.
He says that to be first means to be servants to others and to be loving welcoming hosts, servants even, to even the least among them.
Over time something interesting has happened with the word translated as servant here. It has changed meaning. It has entered the everyday realm. We look for service in many places nowaday and we don’t think of it as very related to God. But the word started out with another meaning. It can be translated as either servant or minister. It is sad that we have lost this meaning but I think perhaps it is helpful too.
In church we do a lot of talking about how we must be ministers in our everyday lives and in other facets of life we talk about how we must get or provide good service. At various jobs you must provide customer or community service. When we aren’t at our jobs we spend a lot of time paying for various services for our car, for our homes, for our bodies we expect excellent service, near perfect service. When the week is over, we have had five days of service, one day of ministry and a Saturday! Even though we hear that we should be servants or ministers of God’s love all of the time
This is where I tend to get stuck. How do we really marry ministry to everyday life? How can we welcome the needy in God’s name in a sincere way. What is genuine ministry and how do we do it in when we are so busy with the service part of life?
I think that perhaps the careful use of a word that can be both ministry or service by this gospel writer was a hint. Perhaps the question that we should ask is what kind of service makes a ministry?
I heard a story about service and ministry a little bit earlier this fall. There was a wheat farmer. I think down by Othello who had died sometime after he planted the wheat this past spring. The wheat had grown. And through funerals and mourning, through first months of his wife’s new widowhood people had quietly continued to care for the wheat as it grew. And as summer ended just like every year the wheat was ready for harvest. Now perhaps some of you farm here and so you know what it is like for a farm family come harvest time. It takes up a lot of time and energy, it is the central event for the family. I know some families where a daughter or son is known to come home more reliably during harvest time even than for the holidays. It is hard work but there is also some excitement in the air, something strong and familiar, it is full not only of urgency but also memory and thoughts about the future.
It must have been very hard to be a widow with the wheat ready to harvest but no farmer around to do so. The community must have thought so to because one morning after a simple prayer and army of combines set out to harvest the wheat of the deceased farmer while an army of loving friends set out to create new harvest memories with a the farmer’s wife. The men driving the combines were not preaching about God’s love, they did not sit down and gather anyone around to hear about what it means to reach out to a neighbor in the name of God. Instead quietly an efficiently they did so. The served this widow when she was most vulnerable and they filled an entire community with the love of God. It only took one morning and a bit of gasoline. They didn’t do it because they thought that they would get a better place in heaven if they did. They did it out of love for a friend and fellow farmer now gone and out of love and compassion for his wife. This is what it means to be a minister it does not have to be foreign or uncomfortable. The best ministry is reflexive. It is doing what you are moved to do and what you are confident about.
In the case of this community the most everyday service was an extraordinary ministry.
So, I ask, what kind of service makes a ministry?
Jesus pulled a little child into his lap to answer this question. A child who was too small and too neglected to go out and preach and teach in Jesus’ name, a child who had no money and could not do her ministry by donating to a safe cause, a child who had nothing and he welcomed her into the midst of great teachers and preachers into the world of the wealthy and the wise and called her the greatest representative of God. And he did it not because he expected anything back and not because he had to in order to achieve salvation, he reached out because he knew that God loved him and he knew how to share that love.
In that moment holding a child was the act of a servant and a minister. In another moment plowing a field was the act of a servant and a minister. In the life a teacher finding a way to give each child a turn at glory and at responsibility is the act of a minister. In the life of a pastor noticing the ministry being done by members of the congregation is the act of a minister. In the life of a parole officer being around before anything goes wrong is the act of a minister. In the life of a child giving a hug to the fellow child or adult that needs at just the right moment is the act of a minister. In the life of a mechanic a bit of advice about keeping a battery going in the cold winter to a family who needs their car to have an income and who can barely afford gas, much less repairs, is the act of a minister.
What is it in your life that could be ministry? Is it something that you do Monday through Friday without even thinking about it, is it a small part of something that you do Monday through Friday that you could emphasize a little more? Is it something that you love doing but haven’t done lately because it seems insignificant?
Martin Luther described the life of a Christian in this way. We are saved not by anything that we ourselves do but by the grace of God and that means that we are free, we can be lord of our lives and subject to no one but it also means that we are bound by the love of God to serve each of our brothers and sisters. He thought that this service should come to us like a reflex, like giving a gift to someone who had given you a great gift. The great gift coming from God and the return gift going from us to the children of God. Be that a gift of teaching or preaching, the gift of reaping wheat, the gift of smiling at the person in the traffic jam next to you, the gift of noticing the child who walks by your home every morning without a coat and being there one morning with one.
Being free to be a servant means that we don’t have to do certain things or minister in specific ways in order to win the love of God, the love of God is much greater than that and we have it when we are first in line, last in line or in the very center of the line. We even have it when we are off in the corner of the classroom, not paying attention to the line. Just like my second grade teacher Jesus came up with some interesting criteria for who will be first and who will be last and just like in second grade it seems that we each will take turns with both. And this is because the gifts that we have, no matter how everyday they seem, are perfect in the eyes of God and we, young or old, educated or not, strong or weak, we are ready made ministers of the love of God and ready made recipients of the same. This is good news. Thanks be to God.
Amen
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