Servanthood:

Breaking the Me-first Mind-set

Zephyr United Methodist Church

Early First United Methodist Church

March 19, 2006

Rev. Eddie Smart

Luke 22:14-27 (NRSV)

When the hour came, he took his place at the table, and the apostles with him. ¹⁵He said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; ¹⁶for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God." ¹⁷Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, "Take this and divide it among yourselves; ¹⁸for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." ¹⁹Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." ²⁰And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. ²¹But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table. ²²For the Son of Man is going as it has been determined, but woe to that one by whom he is betrayed!" ²³Then they began to ask one another, which one of them it could be who would do this.

²⁴A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. ²⁵But he said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. ²⁶But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. ²⁷For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.

I discovered in last Sunday’s reading in our Lenten devotional book, The Sanctuary for Lent 2006, a prayer that I have read elsewhere. While it is “tongue-in-cheek,” it reminds us that it is difficult to be faithful in our Christian journey. The prayer goes like this:

“Dear Lord, / So far today I’ve done all right. / I haven’t gossiped; I haven’t lost my temper, I haven’t been greedy, grumpy or nasty or selfish or over-indulgent. / I’m really glad about that... / But in a few minutes, O Lord, I’m going to get up out of bed, and from then on I’m probably going to need a lot more help! / Thank you, Lord. Amen.”

What a list! Gossip, temper, greed, grumpy, nasty, selfish, over-indulgent. I believe that all of these have something in common. They all come out of a “Me first mind-set.” You know–the mind-set that says it is ok for ME to go through the fast-check lane at the grocery store with 33 items in MY basket.

When I was gone a couple of Sundays ago, I spoke to a group of women about those things that are obstacles to our knowing God’s grace. Put more simply I talked about the three letter word–sin. I talked about a long list of sins that included:

Murder - remember Jesus said being angry with your brother or sister makes you liable. (Matthew 5:22)

Addiction and abuse - we know families who are stressed by drug abuse. Do we know anyone who abuses food?

There is Lying and Gossiping - saying something that you know is not true or something because it make us look better.

Stealing or coveting - wanting or taking something that is not yours, like money, cars, diamonds...copyrighted material.

We talked about laziness, pride, disobedience...The list goes on.

All of these have something in common. They all come out of a “Me first” attitude. They come out of the idea that “I am the most important person in the world and that everything else is measured by how it fulfills what I need or want with little or no regard for anyone else.”

Oh, it comes to us so naturally. When a baby comes into this world, it does not stop to think if it is inconvenient to its parents to cry for milk at 3:00 a.m. Babies have this expectation that their every desire will be met.

It was fun around our house this past Christmas. We had a 3 year-old and a 2 year-old learning what sharing is all about. It is so hard at that age. The 2 year-old was sleeping in her own bed in the same room with her parents. Early one morning she woke up before them. Confined to that bed with the netting material that surrounded her, she played happily. Then at one point with noone else to bother her, all alone she thought, she started practicing I guess. She started saying over and over again, “Mine. Mine. Mine.” She was not distressed or unhappy. She was just saying, “Mine.”

In this passage from Luke’s gospel, the disciples have just completed what we now call the Last Supper. Jesus has shared with them in the Passover Seder meal, but Jesus has made some changes. He speaks of the bread as his body and the wine as his blood...the body broken for them and the blood poured out for them. Jesus also reveals that one of them will betray him. We look back on this as a dramatic time in the life of the disciples.

What are they doing following such a dramatic moment? Luke tells us that a dispute breaks out. They are arguing with one another. Over what? Which one of them is the greatest. Which one is number one, número uno, the most important? Luke says they actually get into a dispute. Sounds to me like they were saying, “Mine, Mine, Mine!”

Jesus was not impressed. He said some sit at the table while others serve. He wanted to know who is the greater, the one who sits at the table or the one who serves?

 He then answers his own question with “the one who sits at the table.” Then he got their attention. With the next statement they surely must have stopped to think about their argument. For then Jesus said, “But I am among you as one who serves.”

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” In other words have the same mind-set as Jesus.

“Who, though he was in the form of God...” He was essentially God. His character was the character of God. His nature was the nature of God.

 Though Jesus was the infinite God...He “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” He became essentially a slave.(Philippians 2:5-7) As James Harnish put it, “Living with the mind-set of Jesus means living with the mind-set of a servant.”

 Late one evening a professor sat at his desk working on the next day's lectures. He shuffled through the papers and mail placed there by his housekeeper. He began to throw them in the wastebasket when one magazine--not even addressed to him but delivered to his office by mistake--caught his attention. It fell open to an article titled "The Needs of the Congo Mission."

   The professor began reading it idly, but then he was consumed by these words: "The need is great here. We have no one to work the northern province of Gabon in the central Congo. And it is my prayer as I write this article that God will lay His hand on one--one on whom, already, the Master's eyes have been cast--that he or she shall be called to this place to help us." The professor closed the magazine and wrote in his diary: "My search is over." He gave himself to go to the Congo.

   The professor's name was Albert Schweitzer. That little article, hidden in a periodical intended for someone else, was placed by accident in Schweitzer's mailbox. By chance his housekeeper put the magazine on the professor's desk. By chance he noticed the title, which seemed to leap out at him. Dr. Schweitzer became one of the great figures this century in a humanitarian work nearly unmatched in human history. Chance? No. Providence. A man with the mind-set of Christ–the mind-set of a servant.

   Dr. Albert Schweitzer was eighty-five years old when Andrew Davison visited his jungle hospital at Lambarene, on the banks of the Ogowe River. You can imagine the deep and profound effect of that three-day visit, which included opportunity for some leisurely conversation with that great humanitarian, theologian, musician, and physician. But one event stands out in a special way.

   It was about eleven in the morning. The equatorial sun was beating down mercilessly, and he was walking up a hill with Dr. Schweitzer. Suddenly Schweitzer left them and strode across the slope of the hill to a place where an African woman was struggling upward with a huge armload of wood for the cookfires. Davison watched with both admiration and concern as the eighty-five-year-old man took the entire load of wood and carried it on up the hill for the relieved woman. When they all reached the top of the hill, one of the members of their group asked Dr. Schweitzer why he did things like that, implying that in that heat and at his age he should not. Albert Schweitzer, looking right at all of us and pointing to the woman, said simply, "No one should ever have to carry a burden like that alone." A man with the mind-set of Christ–the mind-set of a servant.

Maybe that’s why toward the end of his life, Albert Einstein removed the portraits of two scientists--Newton and Maxwell--from his wall and replaced them with portraits of Gandhi and Schweitzer. He explained it was time to replace the image of success with the image of service.

At this point I thought I would say something like, “The choice is ours. Will it be mine, mine, mine, or will it be serve, serve, serve.” But the choice may not be in our power.

Yesterday I was listening to a tape of a sermon by Dr. Thomas Long preached in the Duke University Chapel almost two years ago. Dr. Long is currently the Bandy Professor of Preaching at Candler School of Theology Emory University. In that sermon, Long quoted the theologian Arthur McGill who says we may not be able to make that choice. McGill said, “Whether people serve themselves or serve others is not entirely in their power to choose. It is a function of the kingdom to which they think they belong.”

Whether we live with the mind-set of a servant, which is the mind-set of Christ, or the Me-first mind-set says something about the kingdom where we hold our citizenship.