1 post tagged “of servant ministry and inverted hierarchies...”

When I was a seminarian, the church I worked at listed the staff in its bulletins every week in a way that made a statement. The first person listed was the sexton (Episcopal speak for grounds keeper). The last person listed was the rector (or the pastor of the church). In other words, the name of the person with the least amount of power within the church structure appeared at the top of the staff list. And the person with the most amount of power within this structure was the last name listed. It’s not very often that I see organizational personnel schemas laid out with way, but when I do stumble upon such a layout it makes me stop…and usually smile…because this sort of inverted hierarchical thinking signals an awareness of power dynamics and an embrace of what Jesus teaches us this morning.

Today we greet Jesus in his home of Capernaum. His disciples are with him and he is trying –in vain—to teach them his countercultural ways. As usual, the disciples aren’t grasping his ideas. This becomes clear in today’s passage when Jesus asks his disciples what they were arguing about on the way to Capernaum. An awkward silence follows this question because we learn that instead of talking about the idea of servant-hood, the disciples had been arguing about their place in the kingdom and who among them will be the “greatest.”

Jesus’ response? He stops. He sits down. And then gives his disciples what has come to be a well- known pearl of wisdom: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he takes a child and says to them “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” So to follow Jesus – to follow this path of Christianity, we learn that we must strive to break out of the hierarchical schemas of success that dominate perhaps every other area of our life. When Jesus takes that child into his harms and says to his disciples – “you must welcome one such child in my name” – he is saying--within his cultural context--you must welcome the lowly, the powerless, the outcasts. Children in Jesus’ culture were considered to be at the bottom rung of society. So, in this statement, the child symbolizes those at this bottom rung – the people who were the hardest for society to welcome and to embrace.

Given the way our world is ordered, it’s not easy to enact what Jesus teaches us this morning. It seems that wherever we look, hierarchical models of success dominate – the church replicates this pattern, the university system is built on it, so many of our work places don’t embrace the kind of counter cultural thinking Jesus lays out this lesson. So how do we begin to internalize this teaching and model our lives on it?

There is an apocryphal story about a man engaging Mother Teresa in conversation on precisely these sorts of challenges.

The story goes like this…

An obviously well-fed businessman, “dripping with gold and diamonds, came one day to visit Mother Teresa, fell at her feet, and proclaimed, ‘Oh my God, you are the holiest of the Holy! You are the super-holy one! You have given up everything! I cannot even give up one samosa for breakfast! Not one single chapatti for lunch can I give up!’ (Remember they are in India – maybe we would say we can not even give up one latte for breakfast or one In-N-Out Burger for lunch). Well, Mother Teresa started to laugh so hard her attendant nuns were concerned. She was in her mid-80s and frail from two recent heart attacks.

Eventually, she stopped laughing and, wiping her eyes with one hand, she leaned forward to help her adorer to his feet. ‘So you say I have given up everything?’ she said quietly. The businessman nodded enthusiastically. Mother Teresa smiled. ‘Oh, my dear man,’ she said, ‘you are so wrong. It isn't I who have given up everything; it is you. You have given up the supreme sacred joy of life, the source of all lasting happiness, the joy of giving your life away to other beings, to serve the Divine in them with compassion. It is you – you have given up everything.’”

It is within us, this capacity relate to others, to give our life to others and to “serve the Divine in them with compassion.” But often, we don’t recognize this capacity within ourselves until with meet people whose own way of being in the world inspires us and helps us to uncover our own gifts and sense of servant ministry.

Historically, the church and people within the church have engaged in impressive examples of the kind of servant ministry Jesus tries to get at this morning. We need only look to the history of the church in our own country to see evidence of schools and hospitals and other institutions that engaged in a kind of servant ministry that enabled generations of people to better their lives. Today’s Episcopal Church in the United States does less direct social service work, but the tradition of being on the front line of education and healthcare is a major part of the indigenous Episcopal/Anglican churches’ work developing countries like Haiti, Palestine or South Africa. That said, the Episcopal Church in the United States is still very much involved in the timeless work of the church around serving the needs of people’s souls and the nurture of their spiritual lives. Sometimes students – and others ask me – “what’s the point – why attend church?” That’s when I say – “because when you participate in a church community, you are opening yourself and your soul up to being grounded in challenging countercultural lessons not necessarily taught elsewhere that will shape and mark you in profound ways. Religious tradition provides incredibly rich material and content that takes us a lifetime and more to internalize and enact. The church provides us a community to keep us accountable and help us to wrestle with the big questions of life and the difficult lessons Jesus puts before us.

Yesterday I attended an all day meeting in LA with the six candidates who will stand for election in December for two suffragan (or assistant bishop) positions in our Diocese. In the interview group I belonged to, a particular man was obsessed with asking the bishop candidates a question about the nature of humility. He felt that there wasn’t enough humility in the world and wanted to know their thoughts on humility, in addition to looking for evidence of humility in each candidate. The candidate about which I turned out to be most excited, spoke, interestingly enough, on this idea that within the church, we need to remember to function in accordance to the inverted hierarchical scheme Jesus talks about today. That’s to say, we are to do ministry – all of us, out of this idea of servant-hood. And the deacons and priests –the people farther up the traditional hierarchical scale--are to be the servants to the servants. The bishops—the people traditionally at the top of this scale—are to be the servants to the servants to the servants. Ironically and sadly, the church often gets far too caught up in its own sense of hierarchy. It too needs to be reminded of its imperfection and a large sense of purpose sometimes. And that’s why we come back to the teachings of Jesus over and over and over again.

It’s my hope that St. Michael’s – as imperfect as it can be at times – is a place where we can nurture in our selves and help to nurture in one another a sense of servant-hood and servant ministry. Here, amidst yet also apart from the hierarchies of the university and the rest of the world, we are called to meet one another as equals and to “serve the Divine in others with compassion.”

As the old hymn goes “Won’t you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you? Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.”

The Rev. Nicole Janelle