February 2, 2006
Serve
Epiph 5B / Mk 1.29-39
So, as Mark tells it, Jesus and four of his colleagues stop by Simon Peter’s house after church for what some call “the thirst after righteousness.” It is one of the more delightful reminders that even after twenty centuries, we’re all pretty much alike.
Jesus, after preaching his heart out at the synagogue over at Capernaum and astounding everybody with his authority, is probably a mite weary. So he goes home with Simon and Andrew, and takes James and John along. When they get there, some of today’s readers may be startled to learn that Peter has a mother-in-law. Now don’t lose sight of this, for this is where I’m headed this morning.
It’s Peter and the tradition, of course, that all of us are usually most concerned with. But his mother-in-law never seems to get all that much attention. With Peter’s having given up his livelihood to follow some itinerant preacher, she may not have been all that pleased for her daughter and their family. Perhaps later on when he hit the big time, more or less, one might have said of her what the late senator Hubert Humphrey once said in aside, Behind every successful man, he remarked, one finds a surprised mother-in-law. But not now in this story.
Anyhow, when they get there, it’s no wonder they find that she is not well, that she “lay sick with a fever.” And, like so many of us guys, they just stand around in the kitchen wringing their hands and mumbling, “What’s for lunch?” Not so with Jesus. He put his special skills right to work. As Mark tells it, “he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her; and she served them.”
This gospel lesson is entirely about healing, but there’s a simple line in it that I find for the moment, more interesting. The line is — “And she served them.” It can so easily be overlooked. Partly, because it’s so often the way things go and had been going for generations and have been going ever since right up to now. It seems that there’s always one person in most every domestic relationship of whatever kind who takes the mantle and does the scut work while the rest of us stand around and watch the ball game.
But more than that and whatever, it’s the kind of willingness to serve that makes some of us not stand around, but stand apart. And it’s this will to serve that turns the servility of resignation into the servanthood of leadership.
One of the signs that makes for an outstanding church is whether it’s people are willing to serve, not just that they serve, but that they choose to serve. Jesus came among us as one who made that choice all the way from the humility of riding on a jackass to the suffering servanthood of hanging on a cross. And the model of all that he witnessed all the way from his vocational wilderness encounter with Satan to the Garden of Gethsemane was that such servanthood is purely and simply an act of the will, a matter of choice. He was very clear about that and thus, he never confused his role with his identity.
“When the lead persons in any enterprise habitually confuse role and identity, losing sight of the common humanity they share with the people they lead, an artificial distance is opened up between the leaders and the led, and everybody suffers — nobody more than the leaders themselves. Pomposity in a leader encourages phoniness and posturing all through an organization. Self-importance cuts off the leader from the people at all levels, and it sabotages the caring and truthful relationships that can energize family units and whole systems.”* And this most emphatically includes the church, especially the church. Any possibility of servant leadership is hopeless and only accelerates the current and growing malaise which is crippling the church.
True servant leadership not only can enrich a congregation, but it can turn a church away from an obsession with itself to an obsession to love and witness and serve the cause of peace and justice among our colleagues in all the churches and in the nation and in the world. For these, as well, are acts of the will, ministries that a church deliberately must choose and inspire others to choose. Further, it is a remarkable and profound way to evaluate all levels of ministry. It has always been essential. As my low-steeple Baptist preacher friend Will Campbell has said, it is what it means not just to be the church, but aggressively “to church.” It has never been more important.
What we do and who are in our sense of place has deep and intensive meaning. Nearly every choice we make, from the way we greet and welcome those who come in our doors to the way we pray about our corporate vocation as it may be most current for us, whatever, affects our health and purpose and ministry.
Having said that, you can start with whatever pain and sacrifice it takes by surprising your mother-in-law. Either her or a reasonable facsimile.
*Bennett Sims, “Servanthood: Leadership for the Third Millennium,” Cowley Publications, p 19
St Ann / Epiph 5B / Mk 1.29-39 / 5ii06 / JLD
Jesus, after preaching his heart out at the synagogue over at Capernaum and amazing everybody with his authority, is a might weary. He needs to quench what some might call the “thirst after righteousness.” So he goes home with Simon and Andrew, and takes James and John along. When they get there, some of today’s readers may be startled to learn that Simon (aka Peter) has a mother-in-law.
The Church of Rome has, I suspect, never cared much for this story in Mark’s gospel. They’ve a penchant for claiming Peter as their founder and first pope and at the same time making it big for all their clergy to remain celibate as, I suppose, they like to presume was he. That Simon Peter had a mother-in-law doesn’t speak all that well for the possibility of himself keeping such a vow, nor for the Bible giving the idea of celibacy on the face of it all that much “to do.”
It’s Peter and the tradition, of course, that all of us are most often concerned with. But so far as his mother-in-law goes, nobody seems to offer her all that much attention. Before we go on, we might at least give her what one-time Senator Hubert Humphrey said in aside, and that is that behind every successful man, one finds a surprised mother-in-law. With Peter’s having given up his livelihood as a fisherman, she was surely no exception.
Anyhow, when they get there, they find that she is not well, she “lay sick with a fever.” And, like so many of us guys, they just stand around in the kitchen wringing their hands and mumbling, “What’s for lunch?” Not so with Jesus. He put his special skills right to work. As Mark tells it, “he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her; and she served them.”
This gospel lesson is entirely about healing, but there’s a simple line in it that may be immediately more relevant. “And she served them.” That can so easily be overlooked. Partly, because it’s so often the way things go and had been going for generations and have been going ever since right up to now. It seems that there’s always one person in most every domestic relationship who takes the mantle and does the scut work while the rest of us stand around and watch the ball game.
But more than that and whatever, it’s the kind of willingness to serve that makes some of us not stand around, but stand apart from others. And it’s this will to serve that turns the servility of resignation into the servanthood of leadership.
One of the signs that makes for an outstanding church is whether it’s people are willing to serve, not just that they serve, but that they choose to serve. Jesus came among us as one who made that choice all the way from the humility of riding on a jackass to the suffering servanthood of hanging on a cross. And the model of all that he witnessed all the way from his vocational wilderness encounter with Satan to the Garden of Gethsemane was that such servanthood is purely and simply an act of the will, a matter of choice. He was very clear about that and thus never confused his role with his identity.
“When the lead persons in any enterprise habitually confuse role and identity, losing sight of the common humanity they share with the people they lead, an artificial distance is opened up between the leaders and the led, and everybody suffers — nobody more than the leaders themselves. Pomposity in a leader encourages phoniness and posturing all through an organization. Self-importance cuts off the leader from the people at all levels, and it sabotages the caring and truthful relationships that can energize family units and whole systems.”* And this most emphatically includes the church, especially the church. Any possibility of servant leadership is hopeless and only accelerates the current and growing malaise which is crippling the church.
True servant leadership not only can enrich a congregation, but it can turn a church away from an obsession with itself to an obsession to love and witness and serve the cause of peace and justice among our colleagues in all the churches and in the world. For these, as well, are acts of the will, ministries that a church deliberately must choose. Further, it is a remarkable and profound way to evaluate all levels of ministry, and it has always been essential. As my low-steeple Baptist friend Will Campbell has said, it is what it means not just to be the church, but aggressively “to church.” It has never been more important.
What we do and who are in our sense of place has deep and intensive meaning. As a parish, we are in a significant and challenging transition to which God has brought us, not only in our own life, but in the life of this diocese, this southeastern province, and in the national church, itself. Nearly every choice we make, from the way we greet and welcome those who come in our doors to the way we pray about our corporate vocation as it may be most current for us, affects our health and purpose and ministry.
Having said that, you can start at whatever pain and sacrifice — if you’ve not already — by surprising your mother-in-law. Or a reasonable facsimile.
*Bennett Sims, “Servanthood: Leadership for the Third Millennium,” Cowley Publications, p 19