Servants and Servanthood
by Foy Valentine
Servants.
It`s a word straight out of yesterday.
Like shepherds and slaves, kings and princes, concubines and burnt offerings, chariots and cherubim, the word "servant" is so much a concept out of the past that it requires translation. For people living in an age of personal computers, remote controls, automated teller machines, fast foods, instant coffee, and jet air travel (I`m writing this at 30,000 feet going nearly 600 miles an hour), the word "servant" needs to be pondered, thought about, considered. After all, not many people in today`s world would tell you that they have servants. Certainly none in our acquaintance would admit to being a servant. How demeaning. How unAmerican. How humiliating. How common.
Still and nevertheless, let`s think for a little bit about servants and servanthood.
Servanthood speaks of subjection to a master. It implies bondage. It connotes obedience. It mandates discipline. With this simple definition, service has to be understood as situated at the very heart of revealed religion.
God got himself involved in creation because it is his nature to serve, to reach out, to bother himself, to give.
Israel, God`s peculiarly called people, were people ordained to serve, to carry the burden of the law, to bear the rejection of the prophets, and through trials and tribulations to keep alive the impossible dream of ethical monotheism until, in the fullness of time, the Messiah could come and bring light to us Gentiles. [I just discovered while studying my Sunday School lesson-gasp- that the word in the New Testament that is often translated "gentile" is the world ethnikoi. It seems that in Jesus Christ the light of God`s salvation has been brought to us Ethnics. So there; you thought I had forgotten all my Greek. Actually, I never knew enough of it to brag about.]
In the incarnation, God took on himself "the form of a servant." This, Christians believe, is God`s consummate Godlike act.
Servanthood is at the heart of personal salvation. Jesus teaches that all who save their lives will lose them and that those who lose their lives for his sake in service to others save them. Please, please consider Matthew 25:31-46. In this heart-to-heart talk with his disciples on the Mount of Olives, our Lord, calling himself by Isaiah`s suffering servant name, the "Son of Man," tells of the great judgment day when the Lord will receive the redeemed, "blessed of my Father" and give them the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world because, he says, "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me… Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
And, conversely, the disobedient, compassionless, non-serving losers will hear him say, "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal."
Serious stuff. Strong doctrine. Mandate to serve.
Servanthood is at the heart of church. When we are true to our high calling from God in Christ Jesus, the church is everlastingly giving itself away, reaching out to the needy, handing out tickets to freedom for those in bondage to money, success, things, youth, beauty, sex, gadgets, guilt, failure, anger, or a never-ending search for new nerve endings to stimulate.
Servanthood can and should be exercised in Jesus` name at a personal level in loving service to wonderful little children in rundown apartments~ with the aging in nursing facilities, with the poor, with the hungry on downtown streets, and with the homeless, some of whose dreams of decent housing are coming true through service with Habitat for Humanity.
There is also another kind of servanthood.
It is less direct, but it is larger and longer lasting.
It is work for justice which is love at a distance.
When God`s people establish justice, undergird public education, champion fair taxes, reject institutionalized sexism, band together to vote out corrupt politicians and vote in men and women of integrity, strengthen separation of church and state, and support public righteousness~ they are serving God.
When God`s people join together to turn back the metastasizing malignancy of gambling, to reject the self-serving manipulations of the death-dealing tobacco merchants, and to compel an accounting from those who would foist off on us cheap goods made by exploited child labor in wretchedly poor third world countries, they are serving God.
When God`s people combine their voices to speak up and to speak out for the poor, the hungry, the abused, the weak, and the vulnerable, they are serving God.
And when God`s people, individually or collectively, provide with their financial resources a stewardship of compassion and ministry that begins in time but reaches forward for good toward eternity itself, they are serving God.
By serving as salt and light and leaven in the real world of blood, sweat, tears, raging animosities, and broken relationships, believers can rise to new heights of effectiveness and of joy, for it is more blessed for believers to give in service than to receive.
Our work is cut out for us.
Inasmuch….
[Editor`s Note: A shorter version of this utterance was printed in the first issue of Connect, a new journal of the Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas where l am a member.]
