Proper 21C 2013
Lamentations 1:1-6; Ps 137; 2
Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
Father Adam Trambley
October 6, 2013, St. John’s
Sharon
In the
Gospel today, Jesus discusses our service to God in terms of expectations we
might have slaves. This concept can be
difficult for us since none of us here have slaves, which we think is actually a
good thing. Most of the time we can’t
even get our children to jump up with joy and exuberance when it is time to set
the table and prepare a meal for their loving parents that have worked all day
to provide for them. We don’t even have
servants. If we go out to eat, we might
have servers, although Christians in those situations really need to have the
opposite attitude to the one Jesus describes.
A lot of waitresses and servers in some places would rather not serve
the quote-unquote Christian tables, or be on duty for the after-Church
crowd. Why? Because people who identify themselves as
Christians can be ruder, more demanding, and tip less than the plain old folk
that go out to eat. In some cases,people leave cute Bible sayings or other church propaganda instead of money fortheir tip. (Although this report from the Journal of Applied Social Psychology has a different perspective.) That’s no way to attract
people to the Kingdom of God. We’re to
be generous, as God is generous with us.
Or at least don’t tell them you’re from St. John’s.
But
back to Jesus this morning. He tells us
that our service to God should be like slaves who go do the farm work all day,
then come in to do the domestic work with a good attitude, and then, when all
of it is finished, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what
we ought to have done!”
Now this rubs us the wrong way, since we don’t like being
called worthless, and to call ourselves worthless seems to indicate an
unhealthy self-image. Certainly in one
way we are the very opposite of worthless.
God loves us and has made us his children. We could have no greater worth than to be
loved by the creator of the universe. He
made us. Jesus died for us. The Holy Spirit fills us with spiritual
gifts. If only for us, God would have
still created the universe and Jesus would have died if only to redeem us. Our worth is off the charts by any standard
of human reckoning, and if we actually believed we were as loved by God as we
are most of our problems and the world’s problems would melt away.
But at the same time, we are utterly worthless. God has made us with a purpose, to live in
the Kingdom of God. We have a commission
from our maker for service twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,
three-hundred-sixty-five-and-a-quarter days a year, from the time we are conceived
until the time we return to the dust of the earth. We’ll come back in a few minutes to the fact
that we really don’t really stay on the clock, as it were, the whole time. But we also need to realize that the job we
do when we are working, evening working hard, even working seemingly effectively,
has almost nothing to do with our own capacities, skills, or effort. We’re basically worthless.
Why do I say that?
Because everything we do is totally dependent upon God setting it up for
us in advance. At our best, we
accomplish anything only because everything has been prepared for us to the
point that we almost can’t help but stumble into it. We are like the pre-school students whose
teachers have spent hours cutting out colorful construction paper and setting
out supplies so that when we take five minutes of unfocused craft-time while
wielding a glue-stick, we come out with some beautiful holiday artwork that our
parents can hang on the refrigerator.
They probably proudly love it, just as our heavenly Father loves our
efforts for the Kingdom, but if you ask Sotheby’s to appraise the work, their
evaluation is “worthless.” Our efforts,
compared to the work that God is doing around us, are also worthless. When we do what we are supposed to do, we are
only doing what God gives us to do, but which he would have been able to
accomplish another way if he chose. If
we don’t do what we are supposed to do, our efforts fall far below worthless.
Now the tension for us is to hold both of these truths, our
supreme value as children of God and our worthlessness based on our own
efforts. Somehow if we try, we are just
able to almost grasp them both together.
Being loved by God allows us to admit our own worthlessness otherwise,
and a sense of our worthlessness allows us to let go of everything outside of
the all-encompassing love of God.
The problem comes when we try to merge them onto a human
yardstick that we can control, and we are continually tempted to do so. We decide that we aren’t so worthless, and we
try to work our way out of it. We decide
that God loves us, but we only believe he loves us slightly more than other
folks we know who love us, and not enough to want to run into his arms with
abandon. The most insidious warping of
these truths, however, allows for God’s love to water down our worthlessness so
that we all come out somewhere in the middle, which means we have an eye out
for our relative value compared to everyone else around us. Neither of God’s love nor our worthlessness allow
for human judgment. We are all beloved
children of God, absolutely, and we are all absolutely worthless compared to
God, which means we have no legs to stand on when we try to judge our own worth
or that of others – those yardsticks of judgment we make on our own are as
worthless as any other activity we try to take outside of what has been pre-ordained
for us by God.
Let’s turn back now,
to this idea that we are supposed to go do the plowing and shepherding outside
and then come in and make the meal, as well.
On the most straightforward level, Jesus is just letting us know that
all parts of our life are meant to serve him.
We don’t have a time that is just “my time.” Our work life is meant to glorify God, as
well as our home life. Our business as
well as our leisure. Our religious
efforts as well as our secular efforts.
Our community interactions as well as our family interactions. Our waking as well as our sleeping – think of
all steps in salvation God brought about with the help of dreams. All of our life is meant for God. Now having a life for God doesn’t mean we
have to be in church twenty-four/seven.
Nor does it mean that our existence should be like one endless vestry
meeting, or even an eternal ECS give-away day, which would probably be
preferable. But we are meant to be God’s
servants, doing the work of the Kingdom, even when we leave church and church
ministries and are in situations that might be harder to see what God wants us
to do or at times when we have never paid all that much attention to what God
wants us to do.
Before we are likely to be effective with anything else, we
want to think about how we can be praying in all aspects of our life. Our goal is to take the worship and prayer
that we do here in an intentional and corporate way, and make it possible to
allow that to infuse all aspects of our life.
We want to have a rhythm to our lives that lets us regularly check in to
see what God might be saying to us.
Maybe we go to an on-line daily office web-site to read the day’s
scriptures during a lunch break. Maybe
we take time each night with our family to read a Bible story and say thanks to
God for whatever good things happened that day.
Maybe we put a Bible on our nightstand and when the alarm goes off, we
allow ourselves to read a chapter of the gospels before we make ourselves get
out of bed. Maybe our alarm goes off to
a worship CD, or we fall asleep to a chant CD (the great part about being
Episcopalian is we can appreciate all kinds of inspired music, including the occasional
1970’s camp song.) Maybe each evening we
call a friend, read a verse of a psalm and spend five minutes talking about
what it means in our lives. Maybe, like
many Episcopalians, we read the Forward Day-by-Day reflections and scripture. Or
maybe we sit with God in silence for twenty minutes. If anybody is looking for
ideas, or a good Bible translation they can understand or good sources of
inspirational music, please talk to me or other folks around you at church. If we aren’t praying and reading scripture
outside of church, we are like the slaves in Jesus story, only when we are done
in the fields we don’t even come into the house, but just knock off and hit the
bar after work instead of coming home.
Once we do get home, however, and decide to give our time
outside of church to God, as well, we have to figure out how to do that. How do we serve God in other parts of our
lives? First, of course, we ask him to show us.
Much of the answer will depend
on our own particular needs, gifts, and preferences depending on where we are
in our lives. Often, though, the answer
will involve opening up our lives to people and experiences from our church
community in ways that allow them to also intersect with the rest of our life. If we love the Pirates, and have a big TV, we
can invite some folks over to watch the game, maybe including someone we don’t
know real well from church and a few friends that may not regularly attend
church. We don’t need to hold prayer
services between innings to be building relationships that God can use for his
Kingdom. Or maybe we have difficult
clients or customers or students or co-workers or supervisors. We can ask a couple people to pray for them
and offer to pray for a couple people in their workplace each day. Take a church friend and a work colleague or
two and everyone could put three first names down on a sheet of paper to pray
for. Once a week or once a month
everybody meets for dinner or coffee somewhere to make a new list and report on
how God has changed the situation. Other
ideas could be groups that help each other with home repairs, or by using the
breaks in children’s sporting events to talk about something beyond just school
fundraisers, or even gathering some folks together to play video games or watch
a sci-fi movie and then read parts of the book of Revelation and look for
similarities. The important element,
though, is to look for opportunities to take things that mean something
personally to us or that we enjoy and build on that for the glory of God. Instead of starting from “what do I think I’m
supposed to do,” we want to start with “what am I excited to do” or “what do I need
to do for me and my family,” and think about how to be God’s servant in that.
Probably the best tools we have to open our own passions and
needs up to God are our guiding principles.
By asking for God’s guidance and power, by developing loving
relationships, by inviting newcomers and strangers to join us, by doing what we
do well for the glory of God, by having fun, and by engaging the wider
community, we are going to let God into whatever we do in our lives. And
letting God into our whole lives, so that our whole lives serve him, is
precisely the point. He calls us to be
his worthless slaves so that as we give all our lives to serve him
twenty-four/seven, we will also come to know ourselves fully as his beloved
children twenty-four/seven.
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