Sermon

Living Life On Purpose: Service

August 29, 2004

By Rev. Tessie Mandeville

We are all aware that Jesus was Jewish, but if you did not know that and only learned about Jesus from today’s gospel, you would swear he was a Southern Baptist minister! Matthew portrays Jesus just days before his crucifixion as preaching fire and brimstone sermons. And if you grew up Southern Baptist, or fundamentalist in any way, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I remember many sermons where the preacher started off pretty calm but eventually wound himself up so much that by the end of the sermon, we knew we were all going to hell for some reason or another! Fire and brimstone sermons are meant to scare hell out of people. When I ministered in Oklahoma City I learned that there are such things as “hell houses.” These houses were promoted during Halloween and kids were encouraged to attend “hell houses” where real crimes and other atrocities were portrayed so that it would literally scare hell out of them or scare them out of hell.

The problem with this is that we learn to be motivated only by fear and the threat of punishment. We never learn to be motivated by love. Somehow I think God is actually surprised by how we use the concepts of heaven and hell, about how we use the concepts of reward and punishment to motivate people rather than love. I believe in hell but I don’t believe in hell as a physical place to which people are sentenced to be tormented for ever and ever. I honestly think the idea of a physical place of torment is incompatible with the nature of the God who Jesus revealed. I also don’t think that the concept of hell as a place of eternal punishment is biblical. The word "hell" never actually appears in the Bible. In the Hebrew Scriptures, or what many of us know as the Old Testament, the word Sheol is used 65 times, and in about half of those the King James Version (KJV) translates the word hell. In Hebrew, though, it means literally the world of the dead. It is more accurately translated as "the grave." In the Christian Scriptures, or what many of us know as the New Testament, the word sometimes translated as hell is Gehenna. Gehenna is a literal reference to the city garbage heap, where people take their trash to be burned. I believe much of the traditional, evangelical image of hell comes more from Dante's Inferno than from the Bible.

Churches have long used scriptures about Jesus coming again as a tool to motivate people into getting their spiritual act together. This parable of the sheep and goats is perhaps one of the most powerful stories Jesus ever told. It is often called the story of the “last judgment.” You know it well, because it is the story in which Jesus says, “What you did to the least, you did for me.” Notice that Jesus said this in the context of how God will separate the sheep from the goats. So is Jesus saying that those who do good are sheep and get rewarded and those who don't feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those in prison are goats and will be punished? If that is true, what about grace? This gospel asks us, demands us, to serve others and be compassionate but then it’s also interpreted as saying that if we don’t then God will send us to hell. Where’s the compassion in that?!

Notice that the ones who were praised in this story didn't even know they had done anything right. They said, “When did we do that?” When did we feed you and clothe you? They didn't do it to be rewarded. What they did was simply an expression of who they were. This is true for the others, too, who failed to be compassionate. Their lack of compassion was simply an expression of who they really were.

In Jesus' day a shepherd would probably have both sheep and goats in their flock and they would eat together during the day because their basic requirements are the same. At the end of the day though, the shepherd would have to sort them out. This sorting was necessary because each animal had different needs. The sheep had heavy winter coats and could lie down on the ground and sleep any where that was safe from predators. Goats on the other hand might freeze. They were more vulnerable. They had to be gathered closer and the shepherd would often have to tend a fire for them.

I think we have to be careful not to interpret this story through the eyes of an evangelical church that would use hell to coerce us. I believe that Jesus was simply trying to tell us that none of us get out of this world alive. And as long as we’re on this Earth, we have free will to make choices. What we have to remember is that though we are free to make choices, we are not free from the consequences of our choices. For instance, I have challenges around what I eat and the weight I gain. Well, that’s because I like crunchy food in the form of potato chips! I like warm, sweet bread in the form of donuts! So, I can choose to eat these all I want, but I am not free from the consequences of that choice, which is gaining weight. Could it be that God doesn’t want us to live with regret for who we might have helped but didn’t? Wouldn’t living with regret be enough of a hell? My parents always told me, “You reap what you sow.” This is one law of the universe which we cannot violate. God does not have to send us anywhere for us to experience hell. If free will means anything, God may have to let us live in the hells of our own making because there are consequences for our choices.

Those consequences may be that we see ourselves for who we really are, the good and the bad. Perhaps that is what Jesus is trying to warn us of. Eternity is not about God torturing us for what we have done or failed to do; it is about our having to face it for ourselves. Like those sheep and goats, we will all see clearly the good we did as well as that which we failed to do.

I believe this parable of the sheep and goats is about the way that people of God should live their lives. It is about our responsibility to uphold the least of this world. Rather than looking at this story as a threat to shape up or be punished, I invite us to look at this parable as a call to love God by choosing to live a life of service and compassion. As a call to show the same compassion to others, as we would to God, should God appear right before our eyes. Now, some people want to serve God and God alone. They just don't want to serve others. But you can't do that. The only way you can serve God is by serving others. You serve God by serving people.

The Bible has a word for this, it's called "ministry." Like the first three purposes we talked about in our Living Life on Purpose series, "worship" and "fellowship" and "discipleship," "ministry" is also a misunderstood word. Often, when we hear the word "ministry" we think of an ordained person who receives a special call, like a preacher, or priest, or a nun, but ministry is much more than this and more than these people. Ministering to and serving others simply means using your talents, your abilities, your background, and your experiences to help somebody else in the name of God.

When the New Testament uses the word ministry, it is actually the same as the word for "service." Whenever we serve others, we minister to them. In this respect, my friends, we are all ministers. Some of us happen to be ordained ministers and this is our full-time job, but this doesn’t mean that we are the only ones. We are all ministers because we are all called to serve one another. Each of us has a role to play, and every role is important. There is no small service to God; it all matters. Likewise, there are no insignificant ministries in the church. Some are visible, and some are behind the scenes, but all are valuable. I have witnessed incredible ministers in this place. We like to call them volunteers, but they are ministers! Our ministers, who are ushers, greet you, help you find a seat. They are friendly faces that our guests see and they help people feel comfortable. Our ministers, who serve communion, pray with you and bless you every week. We don’t know if or how people have been touched during the week, but here, our ministers gently touch you as they serve you bread and juice and pray with you. We have ministers who stuff the seat back of the chairs each week and they make sure to put prayer cards in the seat. Why do they do this? Because they know that sometimes, people can’t say their prayers out loud and they give you the opportunity to write them down. We serve God by serving others. We are all ministers.

In all the ways God has been revealed in this world, there has been one abiding theme in all religions and spiritual practice: the dignity and value of the human person. The ancient Chinese may have been among the first to formulate it: never do to others what you would not have done to yourself. Ancient Babylonian law commanded that we speak kindness and show good will to others. The mighty Egyptians were told, "Terrorize not a human." The Buddha reached enlightenment only when he embarked on the life of compassion as a Buddha for others. And Jewish revelation, parent of both Christianity and Islam, revealed a deep foundation of this truth: Male and female God created them; in God's own image were they created. (Excerpted from a homily by Father John Kavanaugh)

We are precious because we are the living images of God and when we serve one another, we serve the God of many names. When we live a life of service, then we fulfill one of our purposes on this Earth because we are not here simply to use resources and to take from Mother Earth; we are here to give back to Her and all her creatures.

And we do this because we are motivated by love. We don’t serve out of a sense of fear or duty, but because we love deeply. Mother Teresa said: Love cannot remain by itself—it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service. Whatever form we are, able or disabled, rich or poor, it is not how much we do, but how much love we put into the doing; a lifelong sharing of love with others.

In both Hebrew and Arabic, the root word for compassion is "womb." As the 14th century mystic and theologian Meister Eckhert put it, "Compassion is how we give birth to God in this world."

The great anthropologist, Margaret Mead, was once asked what she thought was the earliest sign of civilization. The questioner expected her to refer to a shard of pottery, or some writing on a cave wall. What she said was, "The earliest sign of the civilization of humanity is a healed femur." Then seeing the puzzled look, she went on to say, "Since the man with the broken leg didn’t die, obviously, someone cared for him, hunted for him, and protected him until he could walk again. Compassion is the first sign of human civilization." It should also be the first and surest sign of a person of faith. Jesus was one incarnation of God’s compassion. We are also incarnations of God’s compassion. We must give flesh to compassion and mercy in our world today.

We have opportunities to serve one another daily, to minister to one another in ways that only we can. And every day we make choices about how to live our lives and we live with the consequences of those choices. Each of us has a role to play, and every role is important. There is no small service to God; it all matters.

Every Thursday and Friday we serve dinner to hungry and homeless people in our Simply Supper program. As people sit in chairs lined up along the wall and wait to be served, we understand this meal is critical to getting them through the week. Just before the doors are opened and all the people come in, all those who help prepare the food and get it together, all the ministers, join hands and say a prayer. These ministers thank God for another day to serve, and after what I have witnessed all summer, I believe they say to themselves, “God, we know that you’ll be coming through this line today. Help us to treat you well.” When we serve others, we serve God.

Let me share another illustration with you about the difference between heaven and hell. The difference isn’t really all that great. In both places, everyone sits around in a circle, and there’s a great big pot of ambrosia in the middle of the circle. This ambrosia fulfills all longings for whoever eats of it. And each person sitting in the circle is equipped with a very long spoon so that they can scoop up some of this delicious ambrosia. Now here’s the difference: in hell, people scoop up the ambrosia, but always fail to get any of it into their own mouths because the spoon’s handle is too long. No one here is ever satisfied, but they eternally struggle. In heaven, every person uses his or her long spoon to feed someone else, and everyone is eternally satisfied.

Compassion is how we give birth to God in this world. All God wants is for us to love God and to show our love for God by serving others. We are all ministers. Let us be people who serve one another, who put our compassion in action, and may the whole world know us by our love.