"Proper Ambition"
Following Christ's example of service
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Text: Matthew 20:20-28
On Friday, I picked up a copy of The National Post, and on the inside of the front cover, there was this headline and I clipped it out: “Lawsuit against God tossed over lack of address.” The article goes on to say that there was a senator in Nebraska who decided to file a suit against the Almighty. His suit charged the Almighty with having caused havoc on the earth. It stated that the Almighty is the source of floods and earthquakes and diseases and disasters and corruption and war, and there should be a cease and desist order placed on the Almighty for the good of humanity. He went on to say in his suit that the Lord is known by many different names and hides behind them, but it is basically the same God who is pernicious, and who needs to be stopped immediately.
Interestingly enough, the suit was thrown out by a judge, who said it was “frivolous,” and more especially, that it couldn't be served because God has no known address and they wouldn't know where to deliver it. So nothing happened. But I thought about this. Maybe it is not so humorous after all. Maybe there are people who identify with the thought of the senator from Nebraska. Maybe there are people who see God as pernicious and evil, the source of conflict and disaster. They put at God's feet the evil that happens in the world and want to blame the Almighty for what has been done.
I thought it was a shame this didn't come to trial. Maybe, once and for all, we could deal with this kind of thinking. You see, it is known in theological and philosophical circles, as “theodicy,” the belief that God is omnipotent and omnipresent, and that everything happens with God's “okay,” therefore disasters and wars and sin and evil are then put at the hands of the Almighty. But I would like this to go to trial, because I would like contrary evidence to be given.
The contrary evidence I would give would be based on the Son of God, based on the incarnation of God, based on what Christians call “the word of God.” Jesus Christ's teachings, examples and personality reflect a very different deity than the deity of those who believe in a theodicy. The God that we see in Jesus Christ is a God of service and love and passion, a God of power and forgiveness, a God who seeks to rescue humanity from its plight, not throw it into one, a God who seeks to save that which is lost, a God who is willing to give of his very being for the sake of his creatures and his children. The God that we find in the person of Jesus Christ, then, is a very different God than the God we find espoused by the senator from Nebraska.
I want to look at this God, the God of Jesus Christ, specifically today, because this is Mission and Service Sunday. It is a Sunday when we look at the mission of the Church in its entirety, not only here at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, but in the United Church of Canada and beyond. It is a moment for us to look at what constitutes mission and what constitutes service. My friends, I believe that to understand mission and service, we need to understand the God who moves it and inspires it. If, after all, the God that is being put on trial by the senator from Nebraska is the God that we serve and for whom we have a mission, then I would suggest we can just stand back in awe and do absolutely nothing. But, if this is the God that we find revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ, then I think it is a God who calls us to mission and to service.
Nothing could be more fitting than today's text as our source of inspiration regarding the nature of the God we find in Jesus of Nazareth. In these very passages, in the whole of Matthew 20, we find Jesus talking about the God who calls us to be the first and the last, and says those who are last are first. He does so by setting out what I believe is the purpose of the mission of the disciples, the purpose of those who seek to follow him.
Many years ago, when I lived in South Africa, I had a good friend whose father owned a vineyard in the town of Stellenbosch in the Cape. Every now and again my friend would invite me to stay at the winery and to spend time with his family. It was one of the most glorious experiences of my life. We would have the most awesome food. We would drink the best of the wines - not too much I would add. We would wake up in the morning and the sun would be shining against the Franchhoek hills, and the green of the valley would sparkle like an emerald. We would get up at the break of dawn, we would be given a beautiful meal, we would say our morning prayers, and the sun would shine on the end of the white gabled buildings of the vineyards - it was serene.
After breakfast, the owner asked me if I would like to go with him, and we got into a truck. We drove into town, about 10 miles away, just as the sun was coming up and in the distance, lining the street, were hundreds of migrant workers all looking for a job for the day. The truck would pull up, and one by one they would get on until there was no more room for them. My heart began to sink. It was a time when there were many migrants travelling all over the country, people of colour, unemployed and away from their families, having no hope, but just wanting a day's work, or an hour's work, and they jostled for position to get on the truck. I don't think my heart has ever sank more than when I sat in the cab of that truck and we drove away, and I looked back in the mirror and there were all the workers that we hadn't hired for the day standing on the roadside getting ready for the hot sun of the autumn days.
I think, then, that I understand what the parable of the vineyard is all about. When Jesus told this parable, he talked about an owner of a vineyard and just like what happened 2,000 years later, there were people looking for work to come and pick the grapes. But when they were given their pay, they started to grumble. Those who had been there from the very beginning of the day were paid one denarius, and those who had only worked for one hour and had been brought on later on in day were paid the same amount. They actually came to the owner of the vineyard and complained and argued. In fact, the phrase used to describe their behaviour is, “They had an evil eye,” toward the landowner. Why? Because they felt they had been treated unfairly. The owner of the vineyard said to them, “No, did I not agree to pay you, those of you who I hired early a set amount? And am I not giving you what I promised? Have I not made an agreement with these people who were hired later on in the day to come, and have I not paid them what I promised to pay them? So why are you angry? You are mad, because you see other people prospering, you see other people getting work.”
You see, I think I understand this parable, because there were people who lined the streets in South Africa and waited all day, not because they didn't want to work, but because no work was available for them. They stood out in the sun all day, waiting to be hired. Well, that is exactly what happens in this parable. There were people waiting all day to be hired and the owner of the vineyard wanted to honour them for waiting. But those who had worked all day were envious, bitter and spiteful about what they had seen. Jesus uses this parable and says that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
What was he talking about? Some have suggested that Jesus was talking about the relationship between Jews and Christians. Jews, who had a long covenant relationship with God, were now envious that there were Christians - people who now belonged to the covenant but had only just started to belong to it because of the worship of Jesus. They were angry that they had been there all long, all throughout the history of God's work, but they were being treated in the same way as the Gentiles. Some have suggested that there was a problem in the early Church, that there were some who had been there a long time and they were upset that some youngsters had come in and started to take over and were treated with the same respect, kindness and honour.
You know, that happens in churches. It happens in all institutions. Some new person comes along and assumes a position of authority or power or leadership and others who have been there a long time are going, “Just a minute, now. We have been here from the very beginning and you are rewarding this person who is coming in later. It is just not fair!” Jesus understood this, but what he understood more than anything else was the importance of grace. You see, the owner of the vineyard was gracious. The owner of the vineyard was being kind. No one was losing anything, but there were those who were envious because they saw somebody else prospering.
It is no coincidence that right after the passage on the vineyard, Jesus predicts in Matthew for the third time that he is going to die and that he is going to give his life for many. Later on he actually says, “The Son of Man has not come to be served, but to serve.” In other words, God is gracious and God is kind. Sometimes it is just hard to see people prospering when, in fact, God is gracious and treats us equally. What God wants, then, and the purpose of his mission is to be like his Son. And to follow the Son means that you can't say, “I am better than anyone else. I deserve more than anyone else. I am more important than anyone else.” Rather, it is a ministry of service, of self-giving love, of not being wrapped up in your own self, but recognizing and enjoying others becoming part of the covenant relationship. In other words, the purpose of the mission of the Church is not about us and the rewards that we get, it is about Christ and following his example. After all, if the Son of Man would give his life for the world, how much more, then, should we follow his example?
But there is more. Jesus is teaching us here about the nature of the mission. In a village where I ministered some years ago, something really terrible happened. Someone from the village won the lottery. When he won the lottery, he also won a very expensive European-Swedish automobile. He had a lot of money in his bank account and his life changed. You see, this man was an ordinary man, and his wife was an ordinary woman and his son went to an ordinary school. In fact, they were very popular and well-liked - so well-liked that the man used to sit on the bank's steps on sunny evenings in the summer with his buddies and just talk to the neighbourhood. Sarah Palin would call him “Joe six-pack,” or something like that.
He was just a nice, ordinary guy. No sooner had he won the lottery than he was shunned. His wife went to the bank to do her banking and all of a sudden, this ordinary person who used to meet everyone and chat, because you meet everybody in the village in the bank (until they closed the bank - but that is another story!) would go there and be made fun of about how long it would take her to take her money out of the account and how the line-up would now take three times as long. The boy, who was a member of the local baseball team, was now shunned and left on the bench for no reason, except that he had money.
I love the phrase of Gore Vidal, who once wrote, “Whenever a friend of mine succeeds, a little bit of me dies.” Well, there are a lot of people who were envious and felt that way. They hated the lottery winner because he had done well. People can be so envious, and despise the success of others so much, that it eats away at them. I think I understand, then, the passage about James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were following Jesus and had their mother come to Jesus and say, “Can my sons receive preferential treatment? Can they have a high place with you? Can they, when you go to heaven, sit at your right hand?” She wanted them to be elevated, to receive praise, to be well-known.
I know how Jesus must have felt. In my final year of high school, I was appointed as a Scout Master of a troop in New Brunswick. Trust me, they were desperate if they needed me to be a leader of those young men. I think I had only ever earned two badges in my whole life! But they needed someone to lead the troop, so I agreed along with a friend of mine, Mark, to lead the scout troop. One of the first things we had to do was to appoint a “sixer” and a “seconder” for the troop, so we appointed two boys.
After about 24 hours, the mother of the boy that we chose as the seconder, which is the lower position, came to see us. She said, “I want my son to be the sixer; I don't want him to be a seconder.”
We looked at her and said, “I am sorry, ma'am, there is nothing we can do.”
So she went to the car and brought her husband in. He was about six-foot-four, and he looked at us and said, “My wife wants you to make our son a sixer.”
We looked at him and said, “We're sorry, there is nothing we can do. Sorry, they've already been appointed.” So they went off in a big huff.
The next week, she came back with a plate full of chocolate brownies. She put them right under our noses, and they were gorgeous. We looked at these brownies, and I tell you, she was that close to getting her son to be a sixer - that close! But we held off, and proudly, I say, we said no to the brownies. We were going to hold our line.
The next week, the priest in whose hall we met came and visited us to try to inform us of the pressure he was under now from the mother to make the son the sixer and not the seconder. So my friend and I decided then to do what all politicians would do: We would form a committee to think about it. So we did, and the next week we called the mother in and said, “Yes, we are prepared to make your son the sixer.” Her face lit up. We continued, “There are two conditions: The first is that he is here every single week to set up an hour before all the other boys come and for an hour afterwards to tear down and put everything away. Oh, and by the way, he must come to the jamboree in March in Fredericton for six days and provide leadership.”
It just so happened that their family vacation to Florida was at exactly the same time as the jamboree - and we knew it! The mother then said, “On second thought, I am quite prepared to have my son as a seconder, thank you very much.” And it was all over!
In other words, some people want a position of power and authority, but when it comes time to serve, they think twice. Jesus says to James and John and their mother, “If any one of you wants to be the greatest, you must be the servant, the doulos of all. If you want to follow me, then you must be prepared to drink from the same cup from which I am going to drink, the cup of service, the cup of sacrifice. That is the nature of serving our God.” It turned up-side-down radically all the expectations, all the desires, of those who saw God in another way.
What does this mean for us? What are you and I to do this Mission and Service Sunday? Well, clearly, we must understand that to serve God does not mean to be elevated to a higher plane; it means to follow in the example of Jesus of Nazareth and to serve our fellow human beings. It means to make sacrifices.
I love what Tim Keller, the Senior Pastor of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, says: “Service begins when applause and thankfulness end.” True service doesn't do it for itself; it does it for others. It doesn't do it for self-aggrandizement; it does it for the God who has served us first.
When I look at the Mission and Service Fund of the United Church, so often its work is unheralded, rarely mentioned, often neglected. But if you go to the website, www.ucc.org, you will be amazed at its work. Everywhere, from Angola to Zimbabwe, from A to Z, across all continents and countries in this world, the United Church has partners with whom it works. Many people don't know that it provides more help for the poor in Canada than the Salvation Army does. The United Church and its Mission and Service Fund has positions available for doctors, educators, nurses and helpers in various places throughout the world, and if you want to serve, go on the website. The positions are there; there are opportunities.
There is one other fact that you may not know. The largest donor to the Mission and Service Fund is Timothy Eaton Memorial Church. You! Now, I say that not for you to get puffed up - that is not the nature of my message today. It is a call to continue your commitment to service and to have a sense of mission - not just mission through the Church, not just mission through the institution, but to find in your own life a mission. A mission that commits you to the cause of Jesus Christ, as Christ has committed himself to you.
A number of years ago, I was standing in a mall in Ottawa - Collingwood Mall. Many of you who know Ottawa will know it. In the middle of one of the aisles, there was a booth where they were selling lottery tickets. There, standing in the line-up, was a member of my church. He looked at me - he didn't know me very well - and said, “Padre, say a word for me.”
I said, “Sure. Take that money and give it to the food bank.” Not what he wanted to hear! Everyone in the line-up laughed - except him! I smiled. He's reminded me of that many, many times.
You see, sometimes we do things for ourselves and we want God, this omnipotent being, to step in. But the God who we follow, the God who we call the God of Jesus Christ, is the God who says, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” The God who says, “I have not come to be served, but to serve.” The God who gave his whole life for the sake of the world and who is the source of our mission. Amen.