Tilling the Soil of The Soul May 14, 2006
The Spiritual Discipline of Service
The Spiritual Disciplines are meant to be ways to draw closer to God. We meditate, not just to achieve inner peace, but to have God fill our emptiness; we fast to increase our hunger for God; we study to have our minds transformed and renewed so that we might have the mind of Christ; we practice solitude to get alone with God, we pray to converse with our heavenly Father. The danger in any of the classic spiritual disciplines is that we can use them to keep our distance from God. As one woman said “In my day, we wanted to be on the right side of God, but we didn’t want to get too close to him.” We can fast out of spiritual pride, we can pray like we were making an order at the McDonald’s Drive-thru-window, we can Study to know about God without ever knowing God… Without remembering the key purpose of the Disciplines, they can bring death rather than life. I think that this is most true with the discipline of Service.
We can perform all sorts of service for God without connecting with God. I know people who perform acts of service for others, because they don’t really want to relate to them. they are always in the kitchen at parties, because washing dishes is way easier than having a conversation. We can do this with God – we can serve him in order not to have to relate to him! In the end, God calls us to serve, but he doesn’t want our service, he wants us. And we can use our service to keep ourselves from him, or we can use it to give ourselves to him.
Jesus tells this story in Luke 15 that we often call the parable of the Prodigal Son. By calling it that, we forget that it is the story of two sons.
"There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ’Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.
"Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
"When he came to his senses, he said, ’How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father.
"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
"The son said to him, ’Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
"But the father said to his servants, ’Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
"Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ’Your brother has come,’ he replied, ’and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
"The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ’Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
" ’My son,’ the father said, ’you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ "
- Luke 15:11-32
While we often concentrate on the younger son, because we love the story of redemption, many of us might relate more to the older son. He is a son, the first-born son at that, but he has been serving his father like a resentful slave, not a loving son. If he knew how much his father loved him, how much his father wanted to bless him, he would learn to behave like a son, and serve out of love rather than duty. The older Son serves, but he never really knows that father. The older son thinks that the Father only wants his service – he is appreciated only for what he can do, but the father only wants the son to come and join the party. He loves him for who he is, not what he does.
We need to treat the Spiritual discipline of service as a way to know the Father; a way to know Jesus, rather than a duty or a penance that we arte making to make up for our failings.
Knowing Jesus Through Service
Jesus describes the day of judgment in this way:
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
"Then the King will say to those on his right, ’Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
"Then the righteous will answer him, ’Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
"The King will reply, ’I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
-Matthew 25:31-40
You can take Jesus’ statement to mean that, in the great ledger in the sky, when we do acts of service for those less fortunate than us, he counts it in the column of “things done for Jesus.” And there is some truth in that, the Bible says that to give to the poor is to lend to the Lord.
But Jesus’ statement is stronger than that – he doesn’t say what ever you did was like you did it for me, he says what you did, you did for me. While we will be judged on how we treat the poor and destitute, the sick and the lonely, Jesus is also saying that service is an opportunity to encounter him. At the last supper, Jesus says this is my body, this is my blood, and Christians have known down the ages that the table is a place where we have the opportunity to encounter Christ, here we find another place in service.
Fritz Eichenberg expresses this reality so well in his print “The Christ of the Breadlines.”
Becoming Like Jesus Through Service
I called this (sort of) monthly series on the Spiritual Disciplines, “Tilling the Soil of the Soul,” because we can use the classic spiritual disciplines to partner with The Holy Spirit to create an environment where the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control) can grow, and where the weeds (sins) in our life are easier to pull out. In other words, the spiritual disciplines help us to be more like Christ. While things like fasting and meditation, might appear to be the roundabout way of becoming like Christ, in service we are taking the direct route by obeying Jesus command to serve one another as he served us.
In John’s Gospel, we are told a little more about the last supper:
It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.
The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"
Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand."
"No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my feet."
Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me."
"Then, Lord," Simon Peter replied, "not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!"
Jesus answered, "A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you." For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.
When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. "You call me ’Teacher’ and ’Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
John 13:1-17
I think that washing the guests feet was likely one of the lowliest tasks for a servant in the house. It was left for the bottom servant on the totem pole. It appears that this time, even the lowest servant thought it was below them, so they avoided it.
Instead, Jesus – the master – takes on the garment of a slave and he washes the disciples feet. And he calls us to do the same.
I actually believe that literal washing of feet should be part of Christian practice. It was a very practical service back then, and is now a symbolic act of service and intimacy with each other. But whether you think it should be part of our liturgy or not, the heart and acts of lowly service should be there. Like any other ritual act, if you wash your brother or sister’s feet once a year, but do no other real acts of service the rest of the year, it is pretty meaningless. We are called into a life of humble service, just like Christ, …who being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God
something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death –
even death on a cross! - Philippians 2:6-8
As Jesus says, if we are his servants, we cannot think that we are better than him, so if the lowest task in the house is not above the incarnate son of God, than there is no act of service that is above us.
Richard Foster gives a great list of Service that we can practice as a discipline
The Service of Small Things
He quotes Bonhoeffer who writes in “Life Together,” “The second service that one should perform for another in a Christian community is that of active helpfulness. This means, initially, simple assistance in trifling, external matters. There is a multitude of these things wherever people live together. Nobody is too good for the meanest service. One who worries about the loss of time that such petty, outward acts of helpfulness entail is usually taking the importance of his own career too solemnly.”
The Service of Guarding the Reputation of Others
Refusing to gossip or put others down in their presence or absence
The Service of Being Served
Peter learned this service in the story
The Service of Common Courtesy
Giving people the time of day. There is much to be said about a person by how they treat wait staff and others in the service industry.
The service of Hospitality
The Service of Listening
“Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with you appearance or impressing the other, or if you are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or if you are debating about whether the word being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters may have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered. Listening, in other words, is a primitive act of love, in which a person gives self to another’s word, making self accessible and vulnerable to that word.” – Wm. Stringfellow
The Service of Sharing the Word of Life
I’ll finish with the paragraph that Foster finishes his chapter (very worth reading) with:
“Service that is duty motivated breathes death. Service that flows out of our inward person is life, and joy and peace. The risen Christ beckons us to the ministry of the towel. Perhaps you would like to begin by experimenting with a prayer that a number of us have used. Begin the day by praying, “Lord Jesus, I would so appreciate it if You would bring me someone today whom I can serve.””
