Inheritance, Week 4: Service

This weekend is the fourth Sunday of the season of Lent, this six week period during which Christians all over the world do a kind of spiritual spring cleaning to prepare us to receive the story of Christ’s resurrection at Easter and maybe to find new or deeper meaning in it. As I think I said in one of my earlier sermons in this series, the observance of Lent is not found anywhere in scripture, but it probably dates back to the first century in one form or another. 

We’ve all heard of “giving things up for Lent,” these practices of self-denial. And that can have real value in our spiritual growth. But I think Lent is not fundamentally about that. Self-denial is meant to help us look inside ourselves and gently remove the obstacles to deeper relationship with God. So for this Lent, I decided to preach a sermon series on some of the tools and practices we’ve inherited from Christians before us to help us grow in our spiritual lives and our faith.  

Each week of the series, I’ve talked about one Christian spiritual practice, and I’ve tried to emphasize that there’s more to these traditional practices than we often assume. The first week, I talked about worship, and how worship is more than what we do here on Sunday mornings; it’s a way of shaping how we see the world, and our attitude toward life.  

The second week, I talked about prayer, and how prayer is much more than just talking to God. Certainly, that’s one form of prayer. But prayer is simply spending time consciously in God’s presence, and there are all kinds of ways to do that. Talking to God can be prayer; singing can be prayer; wordless silence can be prayer; reading scripture or poetry slowly and contemplatively can be prayer; sitting at your kitchen table watching the steam rise off a cup of coffee – that can be prayer. And conversely, if it doesn’t help us become more aware of God’s presence, it’s probably not prayer for us. That doesn’t have to be discouraging; just find another way to pray.  

Last week I talked about fasting, and how fasting is not just abstaining from food, but from other things as well. Fasting, in whatever form we do it, can help us distinguish needs from wants; it can help remind us that God holds us up even when we don’t have something we think we need. Fasting reminds us how much we really do have even when we don’t have everything we want. It helps show us that God is truly with us, always.  

Today I want to talk about service as a way of living out our faith. And like those other practices, I think there’s more to serving others, and more ways to serve others, than might initially meet the eye.  

A lot of you know I used to work at Denver Urban Ministries. We were located on East Colfax in Capitol hill; we offered a food pantry, employment services, utility assistance, legal help, some free nursing care, stuff like that: we had a bunch of services for people in need. One morning I was working in intake, which is pretty much what it sounds like – people would come to us for help and we would sit down with them one on one for a few minutes, figure out what they needed, and whether we could help.  

My first client for the day was a man who looked like he was in his late sixties, early seventies. He was thin as a rail, carried himself very upright. He had this kind of dignity about him; he was polite but reserved, held himself apart. I imagine that dignity was one thing that helped him endure his situation. He was out of food, didn’t have any money to buy more; he needed help paying his electric bill. It turned out we could help him with both things. And as he was waiting to go through the food pantry, we were making small talk. I told him that I was about to go to Chicago for few days. Immediately, his reserve was gone. He got this big smile on his face. He said, “Chicago? That’s where I’m from. Are you going to the art institute? You going to hear some music? Where are you staying?” I told him, and we talked for a few minutes more. Then he went into the food pantry, got his food, and walked out the door.  

Later that day, I looked up at the front entrance and there he was, the same guy: he came back. But this time, instead of asking for help, he brought something for me. He had gone onto the internet and found 20 or 30 pages worth of material about Chicago: the city’s history, sights to see, restaurants, places to hear good music. And he had printed that information, punched holes in the paper, and bound it neatly in a folder. He sat down at my desk and he paged through it and he showed me his favorite things. And then he gave me the folder, and he said, “When you get back I want to hear all about it!” 

So for me, here’s the question: in our interaction, who was serving who?  

When that guy walked into DenUM, first thing that morning, I was just doing my job. We had some food to give away; we had a little money to help with utility bills. My job was to figure out whether people qualified for that assistance and give it out if they did. But that man, he was the one who took the time – he wasn’t at work, nobody was paying him –  he took his own time to go home or go to the library or wherever it was to look those things up online. Then he printed them and bound them and made a special trip back to give them to me so he could share something he loved with somebody who six hours before he didn't even know. I mean, printer ink, that’s not cheap, not for a man in his situation. Printers are not cheap for a man in his situation. Paper is not cheap; colored folders are not cheap. None of it is if you can’t even buy groceries. But somehow he used whatever painfully limited resources he had to give me a gift.  

Who was serving who? 

In our scripture reading this morning, the author of James writes, “Be doers of the word, not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.” 

I think James is onto something important here. He’s talking about the relationship of belief and action. And the short version of what he says is that if we truly believe something, then that belief will shape our actions. Action for James shows us who we really are as God’s people. It’s not that action shows other people anything. I mean, maybe it does, but that’s not what James is emphasizing. He points to how acting on our faith by serving and caring for others reminds us of who we are. James says, “if we just hear something about Christian faith and don’t act, we’re like people looking in a mirror. As long as we’re looking at ourselves, we can see what we look like. But the second we turn away, we forget.” Serving others – for James that’s how our faith is truly engrained in us. That’s how we remember who we are.  

I think that in giving that gift to me, my client at DenUM remembered who he was. Not who society told him he was: a man too poor to afford groceries, a man who couldn’t keep his lights on without help. In serving, he remembered: he was someone who had knowledge to share; a man who unselfishly took time to help me enjoy his favorite city.  

And maybe there’s another level to that interaction. He served me, for sure. But maybe I served him too. Not by getting him food and utility assistance; I mean, I hope that helped. But that was transactional; that was just he business we were in. Maybe I served him by receiving the gift of his help. Maybe I served him by valuing him for who his actions told me he was; by having the common sense for once to just let somebody give me something.  

I think for a lot of us, it’s pretty easy to serve others by giving at least some of our time or our money. It tells us a good story about who we are. It feels good. It’s much harder to accept help. But I believe that accepting help can be its own form of service, and it requires its own form of discernment and restraint. Givers require receivers.  

The world needs our service and we need the service of others just to exist. Because no matter what our culture tells us, we are not isolated individuals. We live in community: human community and the greater community of creation, or we don’t live at all. Serving others and being served invites us to recall that our world is not comprised of us and them. It’s just us, even though some of us have a pretty hard time getting along with ourselves. (Election year, anyone?) I think the sooner we realize that, the better off we will be.  

Some of you might have known the Rev. Fred Venable. Fred was a Methodist Pastor who served in Colorado and Idaho. He died about 10 years ago, and I was blessed to know him in the last few years of his life. Fred was a delight. I hope that when I get to the age he was when I knew him, I enjoy life as much as he did. Fred was a military veteran; I think he served in Korea. One day, he and I were talking, and he told me that a week or so before, he’d had breakfast at Denny’s. After he ate, he got up and went to the counter to pay, and he was wearing one of those black retired veteran caps, you know, with the service insignia on it. There was a guy in line at the register who turned around and saw his hat. And the man said, “Sir, I appreciate your service. I want to buy your breakfast.” Fred told me, “I didn’t need the help. I can afford breakfast at Denny’s. But I could see that he really wanted to help an elderly, retired veteran. So I let him. And I thanked him. It helped him feel good, and it made me feel good to help him feel good.” 

I think the spiritual practice of service can help show us the joy of freely giving our time and ourselves to do things for other people. But more than that, service can help us see that we live in a kind of sacred economy, where even as hard as life can be, we only exist because the world itself serves us – and we can join that flow; to give and serve and nurture others and creation. And as we do, we will remember who we are. We will recall our place in that sacred flow that holds the world together.