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Servants of
the Servants of the Servant
by the Rev. Rich Smith
May 4, 2008
Acts 6:1-6, 1 Timothy 3:13-18, John 13:3-5, 12-15
Here’s an old theological riddle, one
that I like to share with Confirmation classes, one which you might
want to try at home. It goes like this: The dog says, “They feed
me, they must be gods.” The cat says, “They feed me, I must be a
god.” Which one is correct?
Having had both cats and dogs over the years, I can
attest to the accuracy of their attitudes. Dogs do look to us at
the source of all life, and are usually quite grateful when we feed
them, while the cats seem to think it’s their right to be fed and
adored. But as to determining which one is correct, that would
depend on your definition of “God.”
After countless discussions, I have concluded that
both are correct. And both are wrong! After all, this is
theology!
God, after all, is the Source of Life, ultimately
graciously providing all that we need to live and thrive, which would
make the dogs’ view correct. But are we not also called to “serve
the Lord with gladness,” to offer all that we have and all that we are
to our Creator and Sustainer? To worship God in the way that
would please a cat?
But then, God turns all such notions on their heads,
in the same way that Jesus did when, at the Last Supper, he “got up
from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around
himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the
disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel...” The disciples
were shocked – especially Peter. In that era, people would arrive
at someone’s home with very dusty feet, owing to the condition of the
roads on which they were walking. Before they entered the main
house, the servants would wash their feet as an act of hospitality, or
if the house was too poor to have servants – or slaves – then they
would wash their own feet. But never the host. Even in
poorer households, there were proper roles, and it was beneath a host
to wash his guest’s feet.
But, that’s what Jesus did. He shattered
expectation and convention by behaving like a lowly servant, and in
essence saying, “This is what God is like. And to serve God is to
serve one another, to wash each other’s feet.” And elsewhere he
us reported to have said that the greatest among you is one who serves.
That’s a counter-cultural message, even today.
When I was sixteen, I got a job as a busboy in the retirement home that
our church built. I served beverages, cleared tables, and when
that job was done, went back to the back of the kitchen and washed pots
and pans. My youngest brother, on his way to becoming a doctor, also
worked there a few years later, also dealing with pans, but of a
different sort! The money was okay, but what I really got out of
it, I thought, was motivation. Study hard, get a good education,
go on to grad school so that you don’t have to do this kind of thing
for the rest of your life. So I did. And then in my first
church, where the Women’s Fellowship was prone to put on potluck
suppers and fundraisers, I often found myself back in the
kitchen, after the event, cleaning up. A servant. But is
that really so bad?
As an old Bob Dylan song goes,
"You may be an ambassador to England or France,
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls,
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.
Yes, indeed,
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord,
But you're gonna have to serve somebody."
Or, as Albert Schweitzer put it, “I don’t know what
your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you
who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to
serve.”
So you see what I mean when I say that the
theological conclusions of the dog and the cat are both right, and both
wrong. God serves us and we serve God; but as creatures made in
God’s image, we are called to be servants of others. As followers
of Jesus, our role is to take the towel and bowl of water, and wash
feet.
As members of the Christian church, we are all
called to do that, but the one board that is called to model that more
than any other is the Board of Deacons. Every year, early in
their terms, I sit down with the Deacons and offer them a history
lesson. How did deacons originate? Where did they come
from? What do they do? How has their role evolved in the
church? It is usually pretty instructive for those who thought
that the main role of deacons was to determine where the piano ought to
be placed in the chancel!
The book of Acts tells us that because the early
church was becoming so successful, and growing so fast, the original
apostles were becoming overworked. There was so much
administration that they didn’t have time to complete their food
deliveries to the widows and preach the Gospel. And so they got
together and divided up the tasks, began to create different orders of
specialized ministry. Eventually they devised a hierarchy.
There would be one bishop in each city, an overall admisitrator. Under
the bishop were twelve elders (mirroring the twelve apostles), who
functioned primarily as preachers and evangelists. And then there
were seven deacons, “deacon” coming from the Greek word diakonia,
meaning “servant,” and that they were, serving food at church functions
and taking food out to the poor and widowed – waiters! As time
went on, they also took on special functions in worship, being the ones
to read the Gospel lesson and serve the chalice at communion. Not
just anybody could be a deacon, for their qualifications were spelled
out in the First Letter to Timothy – “Deacons likewise must be serious,
not double-tongued, not indulging in much wine, (I’ve always wondered
what the definition of “much” was – Baptists and Episcopalians, for
example, came to distinctly different opinions about that!) not greedy
for money; they must hold fast to the mystery of the faith with a clear
conscience. And let them first be tested; then, if they prove
themselves blameless, let them serve as deacons. Women likewise must be
serious, not slanderers, but temperate, faithful in all things. Let
deacons be married only once, and let them manage their children
and their households well; for those who serve well as deacons gain a
good standing for themselves and great boldness in the faith that is in
Christ Jesus.” Different churches have insisted on those
qualifications to a greater or lesser degree over the years. In
some churches, only bonafide tithers can be deacons. At
Westmoreland, the only formal qualification is, you have to be a
member! But, note well, the main qualifications are not about
training or skills. Rather, it’s all about character!
And note also, the early church also had three more
orders of ministry, now pretty much lost, at least in a formal way –
healers, exorcists, and janitors. Yes, some churches have “parish
nurses,” and some ministers, like Sharon Graham, are hospital
chaplains. The UCC does not have exorcists, although some might
argue that just now we could use some.... As for janitors,
originally, the function of a janitor was to keep the unbelievers out
of the gatherings. Bouncers! Seems like quite the opposite of what we
want to do now. Instead, we mean to offer an extravagant welcome
“no matter who are or where you are on life’s journey” – we don’t care
if you’re a believer or not, because who’s to define what that means in
our tradition? But back then, when practicing the faith was
illegal and dangerous, you didn’t want to risk letting a spy in to your
services, someone who might then turn you in to the authorities.
So if you weren’t baptized, you couldn’t get in, and the janitors saw
to that!
Anyway, over the centuries the orders of ministry
took the form that we find them today, although they are somewhat
different in different denominations. In the Roman Catholic
Church, where a hierarchy of archbishops, cardinals and the papacy was
created above elders, deacons became an order of ministry of its own,
between the laity and the priest, with the same historic functions –
reading scripture, serving communion. In the Methodist and
Episcopal churches, deacon was a kind of provisional ordination on way
to priesthood. You were ordained deacon and could do everything
except preside at communion, and if you did okay, then after about
three years you could go on to full ordination. Among the
Presbyterians and Disciples of Christ, the diaconate is a lay office,
with specific functions, for example, being responsible for pastoral
ministry to a specific group in the church, often defined
geographically. Bob could tell you about the historic role of
deacons in the Baptist church, where the board often assumes a more
powerful administrative function.
In the UCC, what is deacon is and does is decided by
each local church through its bylaws. Many churches don’t even have
deacons, preferring more functional titles like “worship commission” or
“caring ministries.” That’s what happened in the church I
grew up in. But I remember that at one time, deacons were not
just elected, but actually ordained, in special service on Pentecost
Sunday. I don’t recall everything they did, but I do remember
that if you were a man your job was to serve communion, pass the trays
of bread and grape juice out among the congregation. If you were
a woman, you job was to prepare the elements, and clean up
afterwards. Times have changed, but not entirely. For one
of the roles of our deacons at Westmoreland is to prepare the communion
elements, assist you to the Lord’s Table, share in the serving, and
after it’s over, clean it all up, even make sure the white cloths are
laundered!
In our church, deacons also care for the caring
ministries – they deliver flowers to shut-ins, and write notes, make
phone calls, and occasional visits. One of them coordinates the
Prayer Network. And while our new Community Care group functions
on its own in providing short term care, they do have a link with the
Board of Deacons, so that the right hand will know what the left hand
is doing.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the Deacons
were more policy makers, and became quite detail oriented, to the point
of voting on whether or not the organ could be moved out into the
chancel for a certain service, but these days they are moving in the
direction of being what deacons were originally created to be in the
early church, diakonia, servants. That’s in line with my
vision for what all church boards can become, not just policy-makers
and decision-makers, but actual practitioners of ministry. For
example, the Board of Christian Education would at it’s heart be
educators; the Board for Membership and Fellowship would be
evangelists, welcomers, hosts; the Board for Community Action would be
Missionaries and prophets. The point is, that we could probably use
fewer people devoted to being the deciders, and more who are engaged in
ministry, less church work and more the work of the church, which is,
in the words of the UCC Statement of Faith, to be “God’s servants in
the service of others.”
Fred Craddock once observed that we sometimes assume
that responding to the call to serve is like taking a thousand-dollar
bill and laying it on the table: “Here I am Lord. I’m giving it all.”
And so you do like Albert Schweitzer, or Pat Tillman. But
Craddock goes on to say that those momentous times are rare, indeed.
Most often God sends us to the bank and has us cash in that thousand
dollars for quarters. We go through life spending twenty-five cents
here and fifty cents there: listening to a stranger’s troubles instead
of hurrying on our way; giving a cup of water to a shaky hand in the
nursing home; looking after a friend’s child so that the friend can
look for a job; cleaning up after coffee hour; making sandwiches for
Martha’s Table, tutoring in math at Marie Reed school. It’s not always
grand or glorious. Most often, service is carried out in small and
simple ways, ways we might neglect if we did not recall that God also
offers love to us in much the same way, like washing feet.
In all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the
recent visit of the pope, it was easy to lose sight of the fact that
one of his many titles is, “The Servant of the servants of the servants
of God.” It is supposed to be a reverse hierarchy – the
pope serves the priests who serve the people who serve God. He
symbolizes this each year on Maundy Thursday when he, like Jesus, takes
towel and basin, and washes the feet of worshipers at St.
Peter’s. The greatest popes keep that orientation in mind.
And so, according to Jesus, do the greatest of us!
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Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
1
Westmoreland Circle
Bethesda, MD 20816
301-229-7766
Email the church office: churchinfo@westmorelanducc.org
www.westmorelanducc.org
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