10 . The Way of Service
“You can always give without loving, but you can never love without giving.“
Amy Carmichael
READ
Luke 22:24-27, Luke 9:46-48, 1 Corinthians 14:26
Luke chapter twenty two verses twenty four to twenty seven, and Luke chapter nine verses forty six to forty eight. Read also, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians chapter fourteen, verse twenty six.
CONSIDER
Why do you think such similar statements by Jesus appear twice in the same gospel? Note the different ways Jesus addresses the issue at hand: using a child in the first instance and gentile kings in the second. Why did he do that? What outcomes may result from each?
LIVE
How might you intentionally rewire your values to ensure that you’re resisting the world’s attitude to greatness?
Where are you deliberately serving others?
Try incorporating some secret acts of service into your life.
The Way of Service
Great ones are all around us, only we rarely notice them. Our world is a topsy turvy world, a place where those whom God considers great rarely get noticed.
Aspiring to greatness isn’t the problem, it’s a natural human instinct; the problem seems to be the kind of greatness that we admire. Jesus wants his people to reflect Heaven’s values not the values of our Fallen world.
A celebrity is simply a person celebrated by others (hence: celeb-rity), and the kind of people we turn into celebrities reveals the type of behaviour and characteristics a culture admires. Jesus’ community, the church, is meant to be an alternative system to the one around us: ‘the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them…’ Jesus says, before concluding ‘it shall not be so with you.’
Greatness, and its accompanying rewards of honour, authority and power ought to be given to people who serve others humbly (22:27) in the hidden place; or to those who refuse to be interested in being considered ‘great’ in the first place (like children).
Living in a culture so influenced by Christ’s teaching as ours, these ideas have lost some of their original ‘shock factor’. The fact that we expect our leaders in government to ‘serve’ rather than ‘rule’ and that we call them ‘ministers’ (servants) or even the Prime minister (first servant), is the result of the revolution Jesus brought to the world.
However for Jesus’ teaching to be obeyed, it’s not enough to change our language. We must first work it out at the level of each individual heart. If we’re to have any hope of creating communities of Great Ones, each of us must commit to obeying and pursuing the Way of Service for ourselves.
How to grow in Greatness ?
As often, the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. We need to retrain our hearts to unlearn the patterns of our flesh and the consumerism of our society. What’s your plan to rewire your heart?
A one off act of service isn’t enough. Jesus confronted his disciples on this issue multiple times and so must we. Routines and rotas for service help us here. Do you have one, are you on any service teams?
It’s much easier to ‘serve’ doing things everyone notices and that we enjoy than it is to serve by getting our hands dirty doing menial tasks. Jesus washed feet, it wasn’t pretty. When did you last associate yourself with the rough stuff of life like this?
Seeking God’s attention and living only for God’s approval is a large part of what true greatness requires. On the subject of giving Jesus said: “don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” A similar principle ought to be applied to serving. Fight the natural instinct of your flesh to draw attention to what you’ve done, allow God to see and reward you.