Servants Entrance

Not so long ago wealthy homes had servant’s entrances for “the help.” These were the ways the hired servants would come and go to do their jobs for the master of the house. Servants were and are looked down upon as inferior. But there’s no getting around it that the servants are the ones that do the work that others don’t want to do – work that needs to be done. There is still a servant class in America, usually filled by current immigrant minorities who clean our buildings, drive our cabs, and pick our fields. I wonder if the rest of us have forgotten what it means to serve?

And yet those who go by the name of Christian have been given pretty explicit guidance by our Master in regards to being servants. He says, don’t hire them, be them.

“The greatest among you will be the servant of others.” Matthew 23.11

And “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

“Even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as ransom for many.”

This Man, this Ransom, says to be my follower is to put your beliefs into hands and feet and show your belief by what you do. In fact, what you do is what you believe.


We have looked upon the Church as the place where we attend. So church is a place and if we are good Christians we will attend church, at this building we call church. We attend and a chosen few lead the activities that we attend. The minister is the head leader or most chosen and that’s why we pay him – to do the ministry. I hope you are either smiling or grimacing at this characterization. Because it’s really not true. Although we have acted like it is true for many years in the modern church. This obviously wasn’t true for much of the history of the church and it can’t be true today if the church is going to fulfill its mission in the world.

Don’t get me wrong – coming to worship together is important. I remember some years ago at church camp we were planning a evening worship service and someone suggested that for Holy Communion we do a representation of the Last Supper, recruit counselors and kids to be disciples sitting around the Table and I would serve the sacrament. I didn’t get excited about the idea of kids in bathrobes and bedsheets as disciples. I thought it would be just a cheesy skit. But we went ahead with it. We gathered for worship, sang some songs, had a message, and then did the Last Supper skit. As a part of that skit we had a couple of the disciples wash the feet of all the campers. And as that was wrapping up we began the words of institution of the sacrament. And I don’t know how to capture this in words what happened except to say that as I watched the kids washing each others feet, their was no giggling or distractions as you might expect, but rather there was just this holy quiet. And I heard my own voice saying, “He took the bread and gave thanks and said this is my Body which is broken for you.” And I all can say is I felt the Holy Spirit just wash over us there. The sense was so powerful I almost wept. I know God showed up. And it was in the breaking of the bread and the washing of feet. Worship is loving God and each other and reminding us who we are, that we are sent out to serve as His hands, his feet, his body.

See, the church is not a building but the church is the people who. . .I say “who” because I want to qualify this, the church is the people who serve. Truly, if the church is just the people who show up, you might have something there but you really don’t have the Jesus Way of the Church. Jesus said all my followers will be servants.

The Apostle Peter took this a step further and said, in effect, we are all ministers, we are all priests.

“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.” 2 Peter 2.9

If we are all ministers then we are all supposed to do ministry. Ministry is not just the job of the paid professionals. Ministry is job one for everyone here. Some have called this the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Part of this teaching emphasizes that we can all go directly to God through Jesus Christ. Jesus has brought us near to God by his grace. We don’t have to rely solely on paid professionals to pray for us, study for us, and do church work for us. We can all do that. But the bigger emphasis is on how if we have been saved by grace, we have also been saved to do good works in Jesus which he has prepared for us to do. God is waiting for us to go crazy with service.

What we often have in the church is not crazy service, but polite passivity. Like I said, if we show up once in awhile, we show our agreement to these doctrines and we approve of the whole idea. But when are we going to get our hands and feet involved?

In the business world they have this idea called the 80/20 Principle. It’s simple. In most businesses, eighty percent of the work is done by twenty percent of the people. That’s why many businesses struggle to get by. But when a business gets eighty percent of the people doing good work, well, you’ve probably got a great business going there. Many people have observed this 80/20 Principle in the Church. I’ve heard some of you express this frustration, even if you haven’t called it by this name.

Our apathy and our idea of the church as the place where I just show up once in a while is standing in the way of us really being the Church, the Servant Church that the One the prophet Isaiah called “the Suffering Servant” had in mind. Remember the Parable of the Talents? It’s a story Jesus told about a master who gives each of his servants a certain amount of money to be steward of. Two of the servants use the money to benefit their master. One of the servants is afraid to do anything and so just sits on the money. When the master returns he congratulates the first two servants for their initiative and hard work and the additional money they produced. But the master turns to the third servant and hears his story of how he was afraid to mess up, and so, did nothing. The master doesn’t say, its okay, you’re just not as good with stuff as the other two. The master doesn’t say, I understand, you’re an introvert, not an extrovert. Or even, hey its okay, you’re just not as talented as the others, I didn’t expect much out of you. No, the master calls the third servant, “wicked” and “lazy.” Because he did nothing with what was entrusted to him.

We’ve got to start being more assertive and bold with not just what we believe but what we are going to do about it.

You may remember last winter we had a lot of snow around here. The one storm in February was particularly bad. We paid to not only have our parking lot plowed many times but we had to pay to have snow trucked away. So, in the Spring it came as a delight to learn that we were eligible for Snow Emergency Grant Money from the federal government. I thought it was worth a shot so I began the application process. Let me offer this caveat: if you have never applied for a grant from a government agency, ask yourself, do I really need this grant, before you begin. Because the process can be daunting. Anyways, I filled out a lot of paperwork and online work and attended some meetings and made phone calls and was told through the process by several officials that everything looked in order. Until I received a call in late September from someone in the FEMA office in Washington who told me that we were not eligible for the grant because, and I quote “you are only a church.” I am guessing what the man meant by that. He meant that we are a group of people who meet weekly in a building for purposes of their own. While perhaps harmless, we serve no greater good to our community and certainly no greater good that the Federal Government is interested in.

This is what I read into his statement, to which I responded, “Oh but we are serving our community,” and I proceeded to “prove” our community value.

The Federal Government may require us to prove that we are “more than a church” to really matter, but I’m saying that to serve our community is the Church. If Hicks isn’t here then there is no place for senior citizens to meet every day through week. There is no place for the Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts. If Hicks isn’t here then many people who have needed rent money, food, and clothing maybe don’t get it. If Hicks isn’t here then there are kids and youth who miss out on groups to belong. If Hicks isn’t here then there are a couple hundred less people giving witness in our communities of what faith in Jesus Christ is like.

But we only scratch the surface. We need to stop making excuses and get off our butts and do something. You are the ministers! You are the chosen people. You are a holy nation that, if it learns to serve, won’t be stopped.