One church in Cincinnati that I know of regularly sends out teams to engage in servant evangelism. Sometimes they hand out bottles of water to passersby or wash car windows in parking lots or rake lawns in the neighborhood, all of it for free. From this project and the book about it came the term “servant evangelism.” I know some of you youth have participated in such projects that we have done here in Lima. (Steve Sjogren, Conspiracy of Kindness. 1993.)
One task the Cincinnati church took on was walking into a restaurant or business, bucket in hand, and asking, “May we clean your restrooms for free?” When they explain what they are doing, things get real quiet. The manager goes into shock. One manager said “This kind of thing hasn’t been done for hundreds of years.”
In your mind’s eye, maybe you can imagine yourself stooping down to scrub the toilet or clean the sink, brightening up a place that no one has paid attention to for a long time. It’s not the kind of job that people want to do even for pay, let alone for free. But you do it to show God’s love.
When the mother of one man heard that her son was doing this, his mother said in astonishment, “What? Steve is cleaning toilets? Now I know there is a God in heaven!” It was the last thing she expected from her son. Serving others in this way may catch them off guard. One thing for sure, it takes humility. Oh, and it may change your physical posture.
For the past three weeks we have been using the book of James to discover the kind of extreme makeover that Jesus would give us.
• We have already learned that Jesus would give us big ears so that we can hear His word.
• He would give us dirty hands as we live out what we have learned from His word.
• Last week we saw that Jesus would pierce our tongues to bring the power of the tongue under His control.
• Today we are going to discover that Jesus would give us hunched backs.
That sounds like a strange makeover, doesn’t it? Why would Jesus want us to have hunched backs? Maybe you have known a person with a hunched back that people made fun of. Our society expects people to stand straight and tall and proud. But it is just that attitude of pride that Jesus wants to challenge. He wants to give you a hunched back, not literally, but an attitude that willingly bows in submission to God and demonstrates humility.
The temptation of pride affects all kinds of people. I read of a preacher, Reverend Obadiah Franklin, pastor at Zion United Brethren Church, who prepared a sermon on "humility," and then filed it away. According to the story, he wanted to save it for a special occasion when he could impress a lot of people. (http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/7533.htm)
Many of the things Jesus taught contradict the way we think. One book we have at home calls the Kingdom of God The Upside Down Kingdom (Donald Kraybill). We tend to think that people who are rich and own big houses have made it to the top, but Jesus said, “Many who are last will be first.” (Mt. 19:30) We tend to think that CEOs who get multi-million-dollar salaries and fly around in private jets must be great, but, Jesus said “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” (Mt. 20:26) We tend to think that those who have other people running around serving them have arrived. But Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be first must be your slave.” (Mt. 20:27) These words sound foreign to our ears. Jesus turns our view of things upside down. He teaches us that the path to greatness is humility. It becomes clear that if we are going to have the hunched back that Jesus recommends, we need a makeover.
1. Humility puts us right with God
Not long ago, when we visited a young mother’s home, she pulled out her Bible from under the coffee table where she keeps it open to James 4. She said she reads these first two verses every day. And she read them to us. Listen as I read them.
These first verses of Chapter 4 describe a battle that is going on. Notice the words conflict, disputes, friend-enemy, humble-proud, submit-resist, double-minded. It is as though we’ve got an action figure that refuses to bend in the position we want it to. Bend. NO. Straight. /Humble. NO. Proud. /Submit. NO. Resist.
People in our society are not comfortable with some of these words. Words such as submitting, yielding, obeying, and surrendering sound foreign in our culture. Instead, we talk about winning, succeeding, overcoming, and conquering. The word humility is not in our vocabulary much.
Why? Because of our pride. We don’t want to admit that we’re just creatures and not in charge of everything. We want to be in control. The Bible says that God has created us for his pleasure. Eph. 1:5 says, “Because of His love God had already decided that through Jesus Christ he would make us his children- this was his pleasure and promise.” And we read in James 4:5, “God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us.” It is his plan and pleasure that we turn our attention, our worship, to him. He longs for fellowship with us.
But when we look at v.3, we see that our tendency is to do things and get things for our pleasure, not for God’s pleasure. “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”
And those pleasures we go after get us into all kinds of trouble. (.v 2.) Some people have wanted something so badly they have actually murdered someone. Remember the story of the woman in eastern Ohio who wanted a child so badly she murdered a pregnant woman to get one? (v.2) Some people have wanted things so badly they yell and scream and throw tantrums. James calls these people adulterers. If they claim to be in relationship to God and do these things, it’s like breaking the marriage vow. When we sin we break God’s heart.(v.4) You can’t act like that and be a friend of God. Verse 6 makes clear that pride gets in the way of a relationship with God. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble,” he says. If we are going to be the kind of people that fulfill God’s purposes, then we need an extreme makeover, one that gives us a hunched back, so that we are permanently bowed in submission to Him.
That kind of response requires us to humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord. II Chronicles 7:14 says, “If my people who are called by my name, humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
James 4 asks us to repent of our pride and submit ourselves to God. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he will exalt you. Humility puts us right with God. Are you in need of that kind of makeover?
2. Humility builds each other up
In verses 11 & 12, James warns these Christians against speaking evil against one another. Why would they be doing that?
You may recall the time when Jesus’ disciples got into an argument about who would sit next to Jesus the king when his kingdom was formed, because the one with the most authority would have the most power. That was when Jesus told them (Lu. 22) that the leader must be like one who serves. And Jesus went on to say, “I am among you as one who serves.”
And in John 13, we see how he demonstrated his willingness to serve. Can you imagine a better expression of humility than stooping down to wash the feet of these disciples? The mouths of the disciples must have dropped open when he told them that what he did was an example of what they should do. “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet,” he said. And that is why next Sunday night this congregation will hold its love feast and we will take the hunched back position of humility and try to obey Jesus’ command. Our participation in love feast and washing each other’s feet demonstrates our commitment not only to Jesus but to each other.
But that is not the only time or the only way we show humility. Humility is the expression of an attitude. And I have seen it expressed in this congregation in many ways. I hope you have seen it too.
Humility shows itself when a teenager grabs an umbrella on a rainy morning and goes out to meet someone coming in from the parking lot.
Humility shows itself when an adult stoops down to clean up a mess that a child has made.
Humility shows itself when our janitors, who are not paid, spend 3,4 or 5 hours cleaning the church.
Humility shows itself when people who are not janitors stoop to pick papers up off the floor to help keep the place clean.
Humility shows itself when we sympathize rather than laugh when a leader makes a mistake in the worship service.
Humility shows itself when we take the time to visit lonely people in rest homes or the sick and injured in hospitals.
Humility shows itself when we stop asking “Who’s going to meet my needs?” and start asking “Whose needs can I meet?”
There is an interesting verse in Galatians 5 that reminds us there is no room for pride in the family of God: “Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day is out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.”
If you read about the ideal traits or characteristics of the Church of the Brethren, you will find a list that includes things like piety, simplicity, integrity of one’s word, loving service to others, community, peace, and humility.( http://www.cob-net.org/faqs.htm)
Humility is not something to be proud of; it is a characteristic of people who have humbled themselves before God.
3. Humility invites outsiders
Lest we think the practice of humility only goes as far as these four walls, I want yet to remind us that the expression of humble service can be inviting to those on the outside.
At the end of Acts, we read that the ship the apostle Paul was traveling on wrecked at sea and he, along with a boatload of prisoners, were dumped into the sea. They all hung on to pieces of wreckage and everyone made it safely to an island. And they were cold. One of the most interesting images to imagine Paul, stooped over, going about finding firewood to keep everyone warm. As you read this story, you see that this act of kindness had a surprising end. First, the wood he gathered had a snake in it which jumped out when the fire got hot and it bit him, but Paul shook it off. And second, the people of the island who saw it expected him to die and when he didn’t, they thought he must be a god. How else could he survive that kind of attack? As a result, the people on this island not only treated him royally, but his act of humility and kindness in providing that wood for the fire gave him opportunities to minister to these people in ways he would never have had otherwise.
People who have offered to clean bathrooms in places they wouldn’t ordinarily go sometimes have found similar results. No, no one ever said they were gods. But in one case, when they were cleaning the restroom, a doctor came in and asked what they were doing. He admitted that he too was a Christian, but not a very devout one and before he left they prayed with him, right there in the rest room! And the doctor did most of the praying, asking God to touch him and renew his life.
In another case, a woman heard the group ask for permission to clean a restroom and later asked a member of that church, “What kind of Christians are you who clean toilets to show God’s love? This sort of Christianity sparks my interest.”
Today I want to challenge someone to consider doing a radical humble act of kindness and take the toilet cleaning kit here on the altar table with you. You might knock on the door of someone in an apartment close to you and tell them that you’d like to show God’s love in a practical way or go to some business establishment. This is not just to take home and clean the family toilets but to do a servant evangelism project.
Conclusion
A hunch back makeover will change your life. If you have already humbled yourself before God and allowed him to change your heart, then begin praying for other ways to express humility. Look for ways to serve each other. And let your humble acts of kindness be an invitation for others to find out who Jesus is. Show God’s love in practical ways.
