Whose Servant Am I?

Sermon

Whose Servant Am I?

Sunday, March 25, 2012

John 12:20-33 

I had just settled into a comfortable seat in a real restaurant. The lights were dim; there was no muzak, just a live piano player who was amazingly sensitive to one’s need to think, talk and be heard; my glass of pinot grigio had arrived and was just perfect. After an incredibly long and complex week I was settling in for a quiet evening all by myself – just me, my wine, my grilled salmon, and then onto a soft, cozy bed. What could be better!

 I glanced at my phone and decided to check for any last minute emails that might need answering. A final detail I wanted out of the way. As I logged onto Gmail, my waiter approached and said, “I like your cross.”

 With a distinct “please go away” tone in my voice, my eyes somewhere between my phone and the waiter’s face, I said, “So do I. I wear it every day.” (I hoped this was gently rude enough to deter him. I wanted to get back to my wine and my Gmail).

 No such luck, the waiter continued speaking. He clearly wanted to share a story that demanded my attention – full on. With a sigh, I turned my phone off; put it down, looked him straight in the eye, and began listening.

 The waiter told me that he now wears a cross too – under his shirt. He went on to explain that until recently his life had consisted of work only. He left home six days a week to come to work, and then return home to watch TV and sleep. His son, now grown, lives far away; his wife died many years ago. Recently, while driving to work he noticed St. Anne’s Catholic Church. He drove in, parked and discovered that the chapel door was open – he went into the chapel and sat there for fifteen minutes before resuming his journey to work.

 “You know,” he said, “They leave the chapel door open from 8 AM to 5 PM every day of the week; sometimes the church is open too. Anyone can go in. It’s a wonderful thing. I go in four or five times and week. I look at all the beauty around me; I listen for God; and, I pray. Each day that I go into that chapel I just feel all my troubles fall away; it’s really amazing”

 “Wow,” I said to myself; and, I wanted to drink wine and read email instead of listening to this man who wanted to share his story; his story of the peace that Christ has brought to him through disciplined reflection and worship. “Wow. Whose servant am I anyway?”

 Several weeks ago on Ash Wednesday we began the holy season of Lent. The Church has, from very early on, called its people to a time of fasting to prepare for the paschal feast at Easter. Over time this fast became fixed at forty days. We begin this forty-day season of Lent on Ash Wednesday; it draws to an end with our Holy Week celebrations.

Fasting and penitence have always been Christian practices intended, not as a means of punishment, but as a means of drawing us into a deeper knowledge of the life-changing meaning of the paschal mystery: Christ’s life, ministry, death, and resurrection. The forty days of Lent give us a time and an opportunity to vary and rethink the rhythm of our daily individual and weekly common life. It gives us a time in which we can discover new dimensions of our relationships with God, one another, and the world. It gives us a time in which we can see and understand more clearly the life we have been given by God in Christ; the life of a servant.

Today’s Good News in all of our readings is loud and clear: The road to glory is servanthood: Servanthood to God; not servanthood to this life.

In Psalm 119 the psalmist expresses so beautifully his servanthood to God when he says, “I have taken greater delight in the way of your decrees than in all manner of riches. I will meditate on your commandments and give attention to your ways. My delight is in your statutes; I will not forget your word.”

In the Letter to the Hebrews, an anonymous sermon written to encourage an early Christian community to continued faith and hope in the face of hardship, we are told: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him…”

Finally, in John’s Gospel Jesus tells his followers, “Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”

As we draw to the close of this Lenten season, perhaps it is more important than ever to recall the reflections, meditations, conversations, and other activities in which we have engaged over this brief forty day period, and to focus our hearts and our minds on our call to “repent and return” to the way of the Lord by losing our life.

When Christ says to his disciples, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself…”  When Jesus utters these words, he is calling us to be his servants; he is calling us to follow him to the cross and beyond; he is calling us to take up his cross. He is calling us to put down our cell phones, and to seek and serve the Christ in others.

Dietrich Bonheoffer in the Cost of Discipleship wrote, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time – death in Jesus Christ…”

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!”

Now, as we are just days away from Palm Sunday and Holy Week, now is the time to think hard about the ways in which we, each one of us, must die in order to become our Lord’s servant; in order to take up Christ’s cross and to lift it high so that those who are lonely and lost can enter into God’s heavenly Kingdom here on earth and beyond.

Now is the time to ask ourselves: Whose servant am I?