Servant Ministry

Before the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council revised the Mass of the Latin Rite for the Churches in Communion with Rome, there was a wonderful symbolic ideal that was conveyed in the normal vesture of the bishops of the Church.

When celebrating a Pontifical High Mass (the most solemn form of the Mass for a bishop) the bishop-celebrant would wear a dalmatic beneath his chasuable. The dalmatic is the vestment proper to the diaconate in the Latin Rite, and the insistence on the bishop wearing the vestment was two-fold.

First, it was intended to serve as a visible catechetical aid, teaching that the bishop possessed the fullness of the ministerial order of the Church.

Second, it was intended as a reminder to bishop and people alike that the bishop should never dispense of his servant heart.

Sadly, often people who pursue ministry do not have a servant heart. In fact, their hearts are filled with a desire for everything except service. It is a sad but true reality that, while the Church is the divine Bride of Christ, she also has very human institutions that have been and can continue to be corrupted throughout history.

In the Old and New Testments, God wanted pure offerings and sacrifices. The choicest of gifts in the Old, drawn from the firstfruits. In the New Testament, he gives his only Son, a full partaker in his divinity and our own humanity, to be both priest and victim, oblation and sacrifice. He came with boldness and all of the qualities of a charismatic leader of our own time (well, all the positive ones, anyway!), but he also came with a heart of service, and he commanded us to follow his example.

Within our Synod, the organizations we are in communion with, and the Church throughout the world, many are considering the calling of God upon their life. Indeed, God has placed a general calling to redemption through the atoning and substitutionary death of Christ to each of us, but to all of us he also has a gracious arm extended, leading by the working of the Spirit as we walk the path of this life. Each of us has a vocation. For some it is marriage, for others the single life. Some are called to consecrate their singleness through the sacrifice of celibacy. Others are called to ordained ministry, celibacy not withstanding. Whatever callings God has placed on our lives, our every action as redeemed and regenerated servants of our God should flow from a desire in the depths of our hearts to serve our Lord by being servants to those who have no-one else.

We should expect nothing in return... in fact, we would do better to expect derision and despisement. We should expect self-sacrifice and at times the sorrow that the enemy would instill in our hearts to wreak havoc on our obedience to God.

We must be willing to embrace all those who come to us and seek new life in Christ, and we must be willing to embrace with equal love and passion those who have no idea that they need to seek that new life. We must be ever-ready to help whomever we meet, for as we are told time and time again by the saints of ages past and by Christ himself, when we serve others in need, we serve Christ.

The foundation and capstone of our every thought and deed should be the calling to servanthood, humble servanthood, that abides in every page of the Scriptures. It calls us to clean a table and iron a shirt, to place a dollar into a tin can and to give a sandwich to a homeless person. It calls us to go beyond our comfort zone - that in and of itself is a damnable illusion of Satan - and pursue radical discipleship, a servant discipleship.

This afternoon, after leaving the Hospital where I minister full time, I went to downtown Indianapolis. Generally there are a large number of panhandlers on the street in the downtown area, so I tend to park carefully and avoid large crowds - for they are usually working together and the local police often issue warnings about panhandler scams. Today, however, I parked on the street at a meter. I went down the street to buy a few items for Saint Alban's House at the religious supply store... some incense, charcoal, and thank-you notes to send out in light of the outpouring of kindness in the wake of my grandmother's recent death.

As I returned to my car, I encountered a man sitting across the street for me while I was waiting for a crosswalk light. He was sitting in the shade (it as about 85 degrees in Indianapolis) in front of Nordstroms, a large and relatively swanky department store. He was disheveled, and he was tapping a small can with one hand, holding his glasses to his eyes with the other hand. From across the street, as I took in the site, I saw person after person come and go by the man, men and women with money to spare, who simply chose to ignore the man.

As the crosswalk turned green, I began across the street, but my eyes remained fixed on this man. People continued to ignore him, and as I drew near to the curb, I noticed something... I noticed that he was crying. I don't know why, and it was probably none of my business. He looked no better or worse than any of the refugees we see on television today after Hurricane Katrina. The Spirit moved me to do something beyond dropping a dollar with him.

I knelt down to him, placed a dollar into his cup, and then I looked him straight in the face and I said to him, "My brother, I don't know what is wrong and I know that a dollar won't go very far, but I want you to know that I care." He assured me that the dollar would help, and I really didn't know what else to do. I made the sign of the cross over him in blessing and began to rise up. He stopped me. "You came down to my level to speak to me like a human being. You ministered to me more than you can know." I thought I was going to cry.

I do not share this story with you to boast... I share this story with you because in your own city, town, burg, hamlet, or even house there may be people in need of you being willing to get down on your knees with them and reach out to them, and to share with them the embrace of Christ Jesus.

Each of us is called to do this gladly as servants of our Savior. Our ministers are called even more so to do this with joy. The servant ministry is the foundation of our worldy outreach... if we are not servants, we cannot properly lay claim to being the people of Jesus Christ.

Liturgy is wonderful. It has its place and time.
Adoration is wonderful. It likewise has a proper role in our life.
But the fundamental baseline that separates us in Christ from the world is that we joyfully embrace the shunned and the downtrodden, and hold them tightly in the arms of Christ's love.

May God pour his grace out upon us all to live this calling more fully. May he doubly pour it out upon those who call themselves his clergy... for to whom much is given, much is expected.