Experiencing God 238 Christian Service

A program relating to Christian Service that I have found most useful is called “Strength Finders”.  Some of you may have taken it.  This program identified your personal strengths and your areas of giftedness.  The idea behind this program is that when we serve from our strengths, we are more motivated, more passionate about what we do, and better able to serve others with the greatest amount of ease and enjoyment. Serving in those areas where we are not gifted nor have a particular interest can be both tiring and frustrating and certainly not as beneficial to those being served. 

The readings from scripture for today are about service; service and hospitality.  As God`s people, we all know that service is tied in directly with the teachings of our Christian faith, yet, it is all too easy to develop a wrong understanding of service.  Community can sometimes be a challenging place to be because it is made of people with many different gifts, different strengths, personalities, and views.  So unless we are careful, in our ministry or service to others, we can run into conflicts as to how things should be done.  Over the years, I’ve encountered a few instances where some have even moved away from Christian involvements because their view conflicted with those they were working with.

I really like what Rick Warren has to say about Christian service in his book “The Purpose Driven Life”.  He says: “Christian servants must focus on their mission, not about what others are doing.  In good Christian service, we don’t criticize, we don’t compare, we don’t compete with other Christians.”

Rick Warren says that competition among God’s servants is illogical for many reasons.  We’re all on the same team.  Our goal is to make God look good, not ourselves.  The mission cannot be accomplished unless we all work together in the common faith we share.

The first reading from Genesis is a perfect example of service and hospitality.  Abraham has visitors from the Lord.  And in the tradition of his people, he and his family offer hospitality and service to their visitors.  Abraham invites them in, gives water to wash and cool their feet from the desert sand, and then offers them nourishment. 

Abraham and his family go out of their way to prepare fresh bread, and kill the calf for them to eat.  Abraham did not do it all himself.  He worked with his wife Sarah and his servants for the preparation, each doing their own tasks for their guests.  As a result, they all found favor with God.  What if Sarah said to Abraham: “Make your own bread.  I’m busy right now.”  I don’t think that would have worked very well.  The guests would probably have got up and left.  It worked because each saw what needed to be done and contributed to its accomplishment.

Our gospel story is also about service and hospitality.  Jesus and the twelve apostles make a visit to the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  How would you like to have an extra thirteen guests for supper, and coming unannounced?  I think that in its-self would cause me to be a little frazzled.  But we must remember; these people are all good friends.  They shared the same faith. They are involved in the same mission.  Jesus and the apostles would have stopped at this home many times in the past, and they knew they would be welcomed there. They would have shared many times together; so they were all very comfortable with one another. 

And the householders, Mary, Martha and Lazarus, as they had done many times before, set out to make their guests comfortable and to feel at home.  They each set out to do the service they felt was necessary at the moment.  The difficulty that came up had nothing to do with the work that Martha was doing in the kitchen.  The difficulty that came up was that Martha got distracted by her younger sister who she thought was not being very helpful, was not fulfilling her role.  So she started to complain. 

When Martha complained to Jesus that Mary was not doing her share, she temporarily lost her sense of mission. Her focus was no longer on the service to be done, the mission to be accomplished, but on what others were doing.
For some reason when we hear this gospel, most of us picture this scene as Martha in a hot kitchen by herself, doing all this work, while everyone else, including Mary, were sitting in the living room chatting and having fun. This certainly does not fit in with Jesus’ model of servant leadership that he speaks about previously in the gospel.  What if we picture the scene with a kitchen buzzing with apostles and perhaps even neighbors who are all sharing in the tasks of preparing the meal.  And then Martha sees Mary not fitting into what she feels is her defined role.

Rick Warren addressed this issue.  It’s not the job of a Christian servant to evaluate the Master’s other servants.  Martha forgot that what Jesus needed at that particular moment from Mary was her attentiveness, her caring presence, her listening heart. 

Jesus’s words to Martha were not meant to chastise her for her lack of performance.  What she was doing was critically important, necessary and good. 

His words were to remind Martha that service comes in many forms, and at that moment, what Mary was doing was what was needed the most.   “Mary has chosen the better part which will not be taken from her.”  Jesus was challenging Martha to change the way she was looking at things.

To be a servant of Christ requires that we must often make a mental shift in our thinking, a change in our attitudes.  God is more interested in us using our gifts for His mission, versus directing others as to what we think they should be doing. 

As Christian servants, this mental shift or change in attitudes is required so that we can begin to think in the following manner about our role as servant:

·       Servants must think more about others and providing support than about themselves

·       Servants must focus more on the mission, their work to be done, not on what others are doing.

·       Servants must see their ministry as a response to serve Christ out of love, not to look or feel good about themselves.

·       Servants must see their ministry as an opportunity to serve others from their strengths and gifts, not as an obligation to be fulfilled.

St Paul summarizes these four attitudinal changes in the reading we have just heard from Colossians:  "I became a servant for the sake of the Body, that is the Church, according to God`s commission given to me, for you.  And that commission is to make God`s word fully known, teaching every person in all wisdom, so that we may present every person mature in Christ."

Perhaps this is a good message for us to hear during these changing times when our church has been challenged to embrace the new call to be missionary disciples.   Many of us may not be involved directly in those initiatives to encourage the disengaged to be a part of our Catholic church, but we can be supportive of them.  We can also be open to discover ways in which we can be indirectly involved in this mission in the places where we are currently serving.  

When I see church in this way, it is something to which I want to belong, and also something I want to share with others.  Let’s pray for its success, and also pray that we may discover how the Holy Spirit wishes to involve us in the process.