“For I am your servant.” Psalm 143:12

In the Bible there are almost 800 Old Testament references to servants.  It is  a major theme in God’s Word and as such demands our attention. In the New Testament, Jesus   became the Suffering Servant prophesied in Isaiah 53.   He taught his disciples repeatedly about becoming servants and His Word still calls  us to be like wise.  That also demands our attention.

One of the most popular television shows   is “Downton Abbey”, the Masterpiece Theater series about an   English country house,  home of an  aristocratic family  and the vast network of  servants which keep family and household running in the manner to which all are accustomed. Everyone is fascinated with the lives of the rich and the famous, but especially so with British high brows. This show allows American viewers to be like a fly on silk- papered walls, listening in on the very private lives of people far beyond our social reach. What makes the show so interesting is the secondary story line Downstairs, where the staff works,   resides and  serves the  Upstairs family under the eagle eye of the Butler Mr. Carsten.

I have never had a servant.  I don’t have need of any.  Even if I had a servant, I wouldn’t know what to ask of her, what to expect or how to treat her properly. As an  independent minded and more than a bit stubborn American, the notion of  having “servants”  is foreign.  I’m more comfortable doing for myself than having another person “serve” me. At those unwelcome times when I do I have to ask for help, it is not easy to let go of independence. We value that independent spirit so greatly I fear it stems from  pride more than anything else. Pride demands that we rely on our own resources, on our own control and  will  rather than on God. It keeps us from true servant hood as Jesus taught and lived throughout the Gospel.

Few or none of us come from the privileged upper class  and so we get our ideas of “servants”  second hand from  fiction.  We are also centuries away from the brutal world  Jesus walked in, a divided world of  powerful masters and a vast  society of  servants,  slaves and bond servants.   It was  far removed from the  gentility  of   Downton Abbey. Servants in ancient Israel were not like the starched maids and liveried footmen of television. It’s a world I know nothing about for   in a classless society like ours, how can we relate to being a servant when everything screams   for our  selfish  entitlement? Very simply, Jesus invites us to live very differently in the world , just as He lived differently from the world. He sets the bar  very high for his followers.

Mark.9:35 …”If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

His disciple must be last – and he must be the servant of all. He is to be the servant of servants. It doesn’t get any lower than that, does it? Today I have to ask. Have we somehow missed the core of Christ’s teaching in this area?

But you say, that’s not the case. Look at all of our Christian ministries. Aren’t we servants because we’re always  serving others? We have this outreach and that mission. We serve the poor and the community and the church, etc., etc., etc. Isn’t this what Jesus meant?

No, it is not.

What Jesus did say is that His servant “… must be the very last” and what one therefore has to assume is that in Christ servant hood is a state of being, not a condition of doing. We’ve confused two very different concepts, “the servant” and “serving.” As Christians we understand serving very well because,  well, it’s what we do as Christians, but we haven’t understood Jesus’ deeper invitation.  Jesus could not go about His father’s business unless like David, He had the heart of a servant.  We also first have to be servants before we can serve.

Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as ransom for many.”

Matthew 10:24 “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.

A servant in Biblical times was NOT like any character portrayed in Downton Abbey and certainly not like the imperious butler Mr. Carsten who rules over his domain like any great lord of the manor.   In Jesus’ era a servant was the same as a slave or bond servant. It was someone without any rights to himself, who was bound to his master in body and soul. His life was to do whatever was asked of him, no mater how lowly the request. The servant had no identity of his own, except as the servant of the one who had bought him.

This is what Jesus invites us to be – His servant – because  we are not above our master. As He was to  the Father so are we to  become.  He asks us to belong to Him alone because He is the one who owns us. We surrender everything to Him without question because we know Him as our personal Savior. It is not a matter of serving. It is a matter of dying to every independent thought, desire and deed apart from Christ.

Rom 14:8  If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord, so that alive or dead we belong to the Lord.

Mother Teresa puts it this way: “I belong to Jesus. He must have the right to use me without consulting me.”

In the Scripture from Mark, Jesus  reveals to  the squabbling disciples that not only are they to be servants, but they are to be the last of all – the servants of the Servant. Under the power of the Holy Spirit  on Pentecost, these same  disciples  later understand what  Jesus meant and they all identify themselves as servants. The epistles of James, Peter and Paul  begin with them being    “a bond servant of Jesus Christ and it is an ongoing identity with Paul.

What an unsettling  idea for those of us who still harbor the notion that we can somehow get around Jesus by our Christian acts of service!  Apart from  Christ- like servant hood, Christian serving still  tries to control, holds to its own rights,  picks and chooses  ministry, is free  to walk away  when things  get too messy,  and  calls its own  shots for how, when and whom we serve.

Oswald Chambers hits the mark painfully for me on this: “It is one thing to go on the lonely way with dignified heroism, but quite another thing if the line mapped out for you by God means being a door-mat under other people’s feet.”  The image of a door mat is extremely unpleasant and odious and I wrestle with his  choice of words.  But when I look at what The Lord did for me, how He lived and died to free me from bondage,  how could I refuse anything He asks of me, even lying down for another.

The easy response  is to serve as we’ve always served because we know how and it is really not that difficult.   However,  to   acknowledge  Christ’s Lordship over us by  agreeing  to  become  His servant without rights or consultations, binding  ourselves 100% to Him  out of love, that is much, much harder.

EAG