Sermon 3rd April 2011

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, continues our Lent study of Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life.

Shaped for Service
(Purpose Driven Life)
A Children’s Church leader (not in our church!) was discussing the Ten Commandments with a group of five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to "honour" their father and mother," the leader asked, "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?" Without skipping a beat one little boy answered, "Thou shall not kill."

Today’s ‘purpose’, the fourth purpose in ‘The Purpose Driven Life’, is ‘Shaped for Service’, and I think it’s closely linked to the second purpose, ‘Formed for God’s family.’ As Gill explained a couple of weeks ago, when we become other Christians become our brothers and sisters; the church becomes our spiritual family. And family relationships can be very tricky; loving, yes, but also very awkward at times. Sibling rivalry in particular, going back to Cain and Abel, can be very intense.

One way of building up relationships is to adopt an attitude of service, to be willing to serve each other. If we are willing to serve each other and genuinely recognise each other’s needs, we can become more like the loving family that God intends us to be.

That makes service sound very inward looking, but it isn’t. We are also God’s servants in the world.

St Teresa of Avila wrote:
“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion
is to look out to the earth,
yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good
and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.”

It is through Christians, that is through people like you and me, that Christ’s love is shown to the world. God has called us to serve the world.

Now if you’ve already read ahead to Purpose No 4 in the book, you may have noticed that the actual wording of the purpose is, “You were shaped for serving God.” And what I’ve been talking about so far is serving each other and the world. But it is through serving each other and the world around us that we serve God.

The idea of being a servant now seems very out of date. When I hear the word, I think of TV series like Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs. The wealthy lords and ladies lived in their splendour, with dozens of servants pandering to their every whim. If the servant was lucky, he or she would have had a kind master or mistress who treated them well, but in a very paternalistic way. Another image is that of servants in the old colonial days or apartheid South Africa serving their white masters. The relationship was very one sided; all the power was with the master, and the servant had none. The servant was totally at the beck and call of his master.

On the other hand servanthood in the church is very different. As Christians, we have a lord and master, Jesus. But Jesus is a servant lord, the Servant Lord. There is only one occasion in the Bible where Jesus referred to himself as Lord, and that was the time when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper. We commemorate the occasion on Maundy Thursday, in just under three weeks’ time. In the middle of a meal with his followers, Jesus stripped himself, wrapped a towel around his waist, got on his knees and washed his disciples’ feet.

Jesus’ action in doing this was very pointed. Foot-washing was not primarily a ceremonial custom. It was practically important because people walked in sandals through dusty, muddy and smelly streets. People’s feet got very dirty. Not surprisingly, washing someone else's feet was thought to be a lowly task, left to the household servants in those households which had servants. But Jesus and his disciples wouldn’t have had servants. His followers would have shared among each other the jobs that servants in wealthier households would have done. For some reason or other, not one disciple accepted the duty of washing feet that evening. Perhaps they were in such a state of competitive pride that none of them were willing to do it; after all it was not that long ago that they had been arguing amongst themselves who was the greatest. Jesus' disciples weren’t going to perform this task, so Jesus did.

When Jesus reached Peter, Peter protested, “You shall never wash my feet.” I suspect he was embarrassed, seeing Jesus kneeling in front of him when misplaced pride had prevented Peter and the other disciples from washing the feet. Jesus insisted; Peter had to put aside his misplaced pride.

After washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus returned to his place. And he reinforced his point by saying, “Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord’, and rightly so, for that is what I am.” It is the only time in the Gospels that he calls himself ‘Lord’; as the disciples have just seen him wash their feet, he can tell them this without risking that they will get the nature of his Lordship wrong, for Jesus is a servant Lord, the Servant Lord. And Jesus can tell those who were so unwilling to serve each other that they too must be servants. If Jesus, their Lord, can wash grubby feet, so can they. “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

Jesus, the Servant Lord. He sets the example for us. Yes, our Servant Lord calls us to serve. But how?

In our reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Paul lists several spiritual gifts, such as messages of wisdom and knowledge, faith, healing and tongues. This isn’t the only list of spiritual gifts that Paul provides. There are a couple of other lists (in Romans 12 and Ephesians 4) that include other things, such as teacher, encouragement, giving, leadership, administrator, evangelist and pastor. Paul lists 21 in all, and I suspect his list wasn’t meant to be exhaustive. It’s a very wide ranging list, ranging from the extra-ordinary to what many would regard, incorrectly, as very ordinary. And in working out how we can serve, Rick Warren suggests we start with spiritual gifts.

He’s come up with the acrostic SHAPE which stands for:
• Spiritual Gifts
• Heart
• Abilities
• Personality
• Experiences
So let’s look at each of them in turn, starting with ‘Spiritual Gifts’.

Spiritual gifts are the set of special abilities that God has given us to serve him. All Christians have spiritual gifts, but no individual Christian has all of them. We all have spiritual gifts, but they’re spread amongst us. For that reason we need each other. We all have gifts to contribute, and no single person can do everything on their own. So it’s important to find out what our spiritual gifts are, so we can play our part in the church family.

And secondly there is ‘Heart’, the special passions God has given us. There are some things we feel passionate about, and there are others, which may be equally important, that we don’t. We can’t feel passionate about everything, so it makes sense to concentrate our energies on those areas that we are passionate about. If trade justice is your passion, then Traidcraft may be just up your street. If evangelism is your passion, then encouraging people to do Alpha is one way to fulfil your passion. And if you have a heart for prisoners, why not think about joining the team that visits Brixton prison? As Rick Warren puts it; “Figure out what you love to do – what God gave you a heart to do – and then do it for his glory.”

And the third part of SHAPE is ‘Abilities’, the natural talents that we were born with. Now I must admit to a being a bit unsure about the difference between spiritual gifts and natural abilities. Some spiritual gifts do clearly go beyond natural abilities, for example miracles and speaking in tongues; others seem, in human terms at least, to be very much the same, such as administration and teaching. Looking at the different translations of our passage from 1 Corinthians 12 itself, there does seem to be some overlap. Both the NIV, which we use here at St Paul’s, and the GNB, which we use at St Saviour’s, start by referring to gifts, the GNB to ‘gifts from the Holy Spirit’ and the NIV to ‘spiritual gifts’. But the GNB translates verse 6 as, “There are different abilities to perform service, but the same God gives ability to all for their particular service.” The distinction between spiritual gifts and natural abilities is a difficult one to draw, as they are both given by God.

James Jones, now the Bishop of Liverpool, suggests the following in his book¸ Servant. Talents are natural abilities. God gives them to Christians and non-believers alike. Spiritual gifts are given by God to Christians to build up the church. Spiritual gifts may chime in with natural abilities or not. A good teacher who isn’t a Christian has received a natural ability to teach from God, even if they don’t recognise it. But this gift is very different from the spiritual gift of teaching. It makes sense for a Christian who is a teacher to think if they should be a Children’s Church leader; they may also have the spiritual gift to teach about Jesus in a way that builds up the faith of young people. But that’s not an assumption we should make. After a week of teaching at school, God may call a hard-pressed teacher to serve in a different way.

On the other hand, you may feel that you don’t have a natural ability for a particular role in the church, such as a Children’s Church leader, but God can equip you for the task. Whatever the difference is, God does want us to use our natural abilities to serve him in the world. Some people are called into full-time ministry, but most of us spend the majority of our time on non-Church related activities, in our jobs or in looking after our families. When we serve God in the world, he wants us to use our natural abilities to the full.

The P in SHAPE stands for ‘Personality’. There are may different types of personalities; introverts and extraverts; people who like routine and those who like variety; some people work best on their own and others in teams. There is no right or wrong personality. But our personalities will affect how and where we use our gifts and abilities. We need to use them to serve God in a way that fits our personality, not someone else’s.

And finally the E in SHAPE stands for ‘Experiences’, those parts of our past, both positive and painful, which we can use to serve God better. Rick Warren suggests that it is painful experiences that God uses the most to prepare us for service. “Who could better minister to the parents of a child with Down’s syndrome than another couple who have had a child with the same condition?” he asks. He points out that St Paul had bouts of depression, and was honest about them. We can use our painful experiences to help others.

There are many ways we can serve God, each other and the world. But the starting point is to have the attitude of servanthood that Jesus, our Servant Lord, had when he washed his disciples’ feet. We all have different roles in the church. Some roles may seem more important or glamorous than others. Yet from God’s perspective this isn’t the case. Each role is valuable, and God wants us to carry out the tasks that he has assigned to us, not to compare ourselves to others.

I’ll finish with some more words from Rick Warren; “Imagine what could happen if just 10% of all Christians in the world got serious about their role as servants. Imagine all the good that could be done. Are you willing to be one of those people?”

Let’s pray: Heavenly Father. Thank you for the example of Jesus, our Servant Lord. May we be willing to follow in his path, serving each other and our community. Amen.