The Serving Community

1990 (Year A), 19 August
Pentecost 11

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

The Catholic Church 800 years ago, so I discovered on holiday, was in serious conflict with many people in Southern France. So much so that the local inhabitants took to building a castle on every hill they could find in order to defend themselves. In one city 20,000 people were killed, and when the Catholic armies set out to smash these forts they were given dispensations, by the Pope, for sins that they might commit whilst plundering all these people. When they’d finally overcome all resistance they set out to ensure that everyone would be aware of quite who was in charge in the future, so a massive cathedral was built at a place called Albi. It still stands there today, looking on the outside as if it were a cross between a great fortress and Battersea Power Station.

Inside it’s very different, covered in incredible wall paintings lovingly and most beautifully done. The message for all people is only too clear – if you are outside the church you will be confronted only with brute force; if you are inside, a believer, we offer this heavenly beauty, gold and glory. The last word in people’s creativity in their service of God.

Those twelfth century Christians, like so many before and certainly many after, including us, appear to use strange standards – at one time the service of God calls for the slaughter of whole towns, at another it means creating fabulous beauty. The forgiving amongst us would excuse such obvious contradictions by saying we and they, just got some things wrong, the more cynical would say that the service of God means little more than claiming divine authority for doing the things we want to do. There are those in the Middle East who are doing precisely that at this moment.

For ‘service’ like ‘love’, is a very much abused word. Actions are performed in the name of love and service which in reality are nothing of the kind. We all claim to be serving one another when in truth we are not. When someone knocks on our door and asks for a sandwich and I serve them with something to eat and drink, sometimes they even get a bed for the night. I serve them and I also control him. I do it automatically and have long ago stopped asking is this really what God wants. I only give what ultimately I am prepared to give – no more, and to get what he wants then he must comply with my wishes. If we look honestly at many of our claimed acts of service then we’ll find many dark and shady areas which are not very pleasant to see.

What is clear is that we are all called into God’s service. We are all called into the service of the Divine and it is our duty as individuals and as a church to work out exactly what that means for us. We are not to delude ourselves into thinking we are serving God when others can clearly see that all we are doing is furthering our own desires and power.

Now the world might see service as something that the weak are made to do for the strong and that the only way to break out of the position of servitude is to become strong yourself, so that you never have to serve again. This is not what Jesus showed us as he washed the feet of his disciples and went to his death. Christian service is not borne out of any feeling of weakness. It comes from a supremely strong commitment to do the will of God even unto death.

Nor does it seek to control for it seeks the liberation of both the server and the served, as the old collect says it is in the service of God that we find our true freedom.

But it is incredibly difficult for us ultimately to accept Jesus’ notions of service for he turns upside down all that we would normally hold to be just. There can be very few of us who don’t feel sorry for those in the gospel who had worked all day only to receive the same reward as those who came at the last. Yet the rewards for service, if there be any at all, are in God’s hands not ours. We are merely doing our duty.

And our duty takes us into the service of all creation. We must discover ways of reflection the love of God, generously to all, and we are not to reserve better service for believers than we do for those outside the church.

It is in God’s service that we find our true liberation for when in service of our creator come closest to the Divine. And the service which we are to render calls us into a relationship with him which goes beyond mere co-operation. It must reach the heights of complete unselfishness. May God give us grace to know that what we do for the least of our sisters and brothers we do also for him. AMEN