"Seven Habits of Discipleship: Service"
Josh. 5:9-12; Ps. 32; 2 Cor. 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Rev. Ryan Jensen, Associate Pastor
March 14, 2010
Today we find ourselves in week number four of the seven week series studying the Habits of Disciples. Prayer, worship, and Bible study have been examined and now we have another habit on which to dwell. With this habit, I thought we might play the game where I say a word and then you shout out the first thing that comes to mind. But given the number of people and the risky and unpredictable nature of this game, perhaps we should just say the word silently to ourselves. Ready? What is the first thing that comes to mind when I say the word, “Service?” Having been a waiter for a few years in college, the first thing that came to my mind was the service industry; restaurants and hotels. Some of you surely thought of the armed services, which around here brings to mind the Coast Guard, Navy and maybe even the Air Force. With regard to the air and what it can bring, we also might think of the National Weather Service. There are also service hours, service stations and people in churches serve communion and serve on committees. But today, how do we discuss service in a way that differentiates it from all other forms? What is the difference between a Christian service provider and a service provider who makes no claim on religion at all?
This turns out to be a little more complicated than what we might expect. The church that protested and split from the Catholic church about 500 years ago claimed and continues to claim that you cannot do anything to earn God’s favor. Reformed churches believe that there are three phrases that make this point, these being: faith alone, grace alone, and scripture alone. By faith alone, we are saved. Through God’s grace alone, we are redeemed from sin. And through scripture alone, we have the authoritative Word of God through which we receive and interpret God’s revelation. So there we have it. Faith, Grace, and Scripture alone. Service is not really a part of that plan. Not at first, anyway. Using a metaphor related to card playing, we do not consider God as one who cashes out piles of service chips. If that were the case, everyone would try to outdo one another in seeking God’s favor. We would send up our works and God would send down grace in direct proportion. Revelation from God is rather a one-way street. Grace comes only from God at the discretion of God’s will.
Looking at things from the opposite direction, there are many pitfalls in believing that we can provide service for the purpose of earning points with our Creator. For example, I might pray all day long but for God, I am no better off than the person who rarely prays at all. We as a church could serve more meals to the homeless than McDonalds does to the world, and we will still not be any better off than the people who consume those very meals. So why pay attention to the habit of service at all? Why do anything when we can simply rest on faith, grace and scripture?
It was not long ago that I discerned a call to ministry and thus, to seminary. After working in the church as a layperson and serving with youth for almost seven years, I felt that the Spirit was tugging at me to further my understanding of God and God’s church. For those who take this track, we learn Hebrew and Greek, study church history and polity, write numerous papers on ethics and theology, and so on and so forth. Upon completion of our studies, we take our version of the bar exam. After those five exams are passed, we seek clearance from our presbytery of care and the presbytery of call. If that goes well, we may then seek a call in a particular church or some other area of ministry. And should we clergy wanna-bees finally jump through all the hoops and become ordained ministers, our best hope is that we will joyfully stand on the same ground as anyone else who follows Christ and lives by faith, grace, and scripture alone. Our efforts do not score extra points with our Creator.
All of this makes me wonder how I would have felt if someone had said to me, “You know man, you can’t really force God’s hand on anything, so don’t trouble yourself with seminary and all of that church stuff. If God wants people to learn and believe, then God will take care of it. If people have faith, trust in God’s grace, and read their Bibles, then they are as good as they ever will be.” How would any of you feel if I told you, “Don’t bother yourselves with those 150 homeless and hungry that will show up at our doors tomorrow looking for a warm breakfast. Instead, just tell them to have faith, accept God’s grace, read their Bibles and send them on their way. That’s all they really need.” Well, we know that this is not how it works. And this seems to be the point that James is trying to make today.
James asks, “If someone is freezing to death because they have nothing to wear and starving to death because they have nothing to eat, what are you going to do about it? Are you just going to say ‘Go in peace and good luck to you,’ or are you going to help them?” James says to us all, “If you talk the talk then walk the walk. Faith without works is dead.” Well, okay James, but where do we go with that? Do we now claim, “We come to God through faith, grace, scripture, and now works alone.”?
Within the context of the story, the “faith without works” statement comes after James admonishes his fellow disciples for showing favoritism to those who are well to do while being rude to those who have little. Love your neighbor as yourself, he reminds them. No matter who they are. And if you truly love them, then we will all be able to tell through the actions that you take. Both the wealthy and the poor are equally deserving of our love.
Scholar, Scott Jones, points out the differences between the Christians of James’ time and Christians of today. He writes, “Christians … do not walk the streets in dangerous parts of town or befriend junkies and gang members. Yet, they think abstractly that those persons need a relationship with Christ, and they wish that someone would find a way to tell them how bad off they are.” How do we feel about that statement and how do we respond to it? Especially when some feel strongly that panhandlers and the homeless should be swept off the streets? Do we always feel compassion when serving the homeless in the mornings and sheltering families at night? Do we combine compassion and a faithful risk in leaving this building to serve our neighbors in the places where they reside?
A USA Today columnist recently addressed this issue speaking of the church and its place within the context of modern-day social justice. Speaking of a world where “…there can be no lasting peace until each person has the opportunity to partake in the world’s prosperity,” he writes, “Teenagers get this. They line up at my church to volunteer to build Habitat houses, serve meals and go on all sorts of mission trips. The churches that can help members tap into the joy that comes from service to others are churches with a future.”
So on one hand, we have a scholar who encourages us to take a serious look into in ministering to those such as junkies and gang members. On the other hand, we have a columnist who suggests that there is actually joy to be found in reaching out to those same kinds of people. Furthermore, the columnist suggests that congregations who reach out effectively will be the ones swimming upstream in a river of decline and disinterest. I wonder: Can this really be accomplished? How difficult is it leaving our safe and familiar environments to go out to serve others? Is it worth the trouble and the risk? Or are we simply trying to protect ourselves and guard our fears in asking these kinds of questions?
Before Mobile and before seminary, I was a church worker and youth leader in Franklin, Tennessee. I joined an interim minister in trying to care for the people of that congregation. In the beginning, I had little idea of what to do and how to do it. But I was hopeful and ready to get things going. Having done the same job for a few years in my hometown, I decided that I needed to reach out to a guy I knew from a mission trip that I had taken to the Mexican border. So I called Alex and asked what he and his organization could do in setting something up for us.
After much deliberation and training, we ended up taking about fifteen youth and adults to Monterrey, Mexico. Monterrey is roughly the size of Chicago and about a four hour drive from the southern-most tip of Texas. Alex arranged it so that we would be sleeping in people’s homes that were scattered all over a portion of the city. We would then meet together each day to work construction in the mornings and to carry out a Vacation Bible School program in the afternoons. It was tough work. It took a lot of planning, preparation and training. I aged exponentially the week of the trip as I felt the pressure of being solely responsible for the safety and well-being of each of those teenagers and their parents. But it was worth every bit of it. We encountered something there that can never be duplicated in our own backyards. We encountered God in ways that we’ve never known and through stories that we’ve never lived. It was faith-filling and yes, we tapped into that joy that comes through service to others.
Despite the work, the anxieties, the fundraising and the risks, we returned to Monterrey the following year. And we returned after that. Upon our third journey, we had about twenty five youth and parents who made the weeklong trip. Was it faith alone that moved us to go? Was it the need to respond through works that moved us to respond? I don’t really know. Perhaps faith without works is dead. Perhaps works without faith are useless. All I know is that we learned valuable lessons from these trips and from other service projects, and formed incredible relationships that caused our faith to grow.
The first lesson we learned is this: The poorest of the poor should never be the only people we seek in extending Christian service, love and care. The people we encountered in Monterrey were neither the wealthiest nor the poorest. And it didn’t matter to us or to them. What mattered was the fact that something special was happening with all of us. Whether it is the homeless of Mobile, the residents of Appalachia, or the person living next door, the love of Christ is to be extended to everyone.
The second is that the gifts of money, time, talent, and prayer are all forms of service and equally needed in our efforts. In yesterday’s paper, Kristin Campbell wrote about a philosophizing teenager who said, “Everyone has too much of something, whether it’s time, talent, or treasure.” This statement is one that is both true and one that leaves us without excuse. As followers of Christ, we must ask ourselves, “What do we have too much of that we may share with others?” If we have enough time for prayer, then that gift of time is needed just as much as any other. We can all be equal partners in Christ’s service.
The third lesson is that short term service projects and mission trips do matter. A man that I used to work with in mission once said he would often hear nationals saying, “I can’t believe that youth from the USA would take an entire week, and travel so far, just to be with us. We should be willing to serve and be as generous as them.” He also mentioned that he never heard one person saying, ‘I wish they would have just sent us the money.” Through the example of Jesus, we know that relationships make all the difference.
James challenges us to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked. The reading from Colossians challenges us to consider how we go about in clothing ourselves. We are reminded, “As God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” Combining these characteristics with our call to discipleship, I think that we become faithful servants not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is who we become. We become joyful disciples who share a common passion in serving others so that they too may know the goodness of God’s grace and enjoy the benefit of God’s works in this world and in the world to come.