Walk in Love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. - Ephesians 5:1-2
Many weeks of the year, that sentence transitions us from the Liturgy of the Word to the Liturgy of the Table, inviting us to offer our whole lives to God. As we are able, we bring forward bread and wine and money to represent our best efforts in this life. Humbly, we place them on the altar to be blessed, broken, and shared to nourish our community for serving the world.
This year, we are using the lens of Walking in Love to frame our conversations about our stewardship of Trinity community’s life and livelihood. Walking in Love is active and relational. It’s not something we can do alone. As Christians, we journey on at least two dimensions simultaneously: our spiritual journey with God, and our physical companionship with our neighbors inside and outside our church building.
Our readings today, starting with Job, take us right into our relationships with God and one another. So let’s jump into Job.
We have been reading from Job for a few weeks. In the true flavor of the lectionary, we have had enough bits to give us a sense of what’s going on. Now we’re in chapter 38 and we are coming to the end of the book. We have been listening to Job whinge about his health, his life, his persecution, his unfulfilled desire for prestige and power and respect. After 37 chapters, God has had enough of Job’s complaining.
The voice thunders from the whirlwind:
"Where were YOU when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Do YOU understand how all creation works together?
Did YOU hear the morning stars sing together and the heavenly beings shout for joy at the moment the earth was born?" (Job 38:4-7)
SIT DOWN and get over yourself!!
One could call that an invitation to humility.
Jesus has a similar message for his disciples.
For a little context, the three verses immediately before this passage are the third time in as many chapters that Jesus tells his disciples about his impending arrest, trial, torture and execution, and resurrection. Each time he tells them, the disciples fixate on some dimension of power. Power the way they understand it, in the terms of the world. The first time it’s about Jesus as Messiah, coming as a conquering violent warlord. This time it’s about how the power of this world is lorded over people and the great leaders are tyrants, by the world’s definition.
Each of these three times, Jesus sits his disciples down and offers a corrective teaching: “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35) and then “whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all” (9:35) and, this time, “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all" (Mark 10:43-44).
We sense Jesus’ exasperation,
You’re not getting it! We come to serve, not to be served! We are not about accumulating power and wealth and influence for the sake of domination. Quite the opposite, we are “about descending into the power of servanthood for the life of the world” [1].
He goes on to say that he is being offered as ransom for the life of the world. That phrase gets mistaken as a transactional explanation for salvation, Jesus’ life for ours. Let’s look at it a little more closely.
A ransom is something of great value that is offered in exchange for the freedom of a captive. If we confess that we are attracted to the world’s ideas and desire for greatness and power and prestige, we are spiritual captives. [1] Jesus offers a ransom.
Mark talks about the salvation Jesus offers as a way of health and liberation. The liberation that Jesus offers is an invitation to follow him into true servanthood, which is defined by humility and generosity and love. That’s what he shows us.
He does not show us the domination of the world. He shows us how to live as servants. And he calls us to that servanthood as an antidote to the shiny allure and spiritually empty promises of greatness and power in our world.
As Walking in Love implies, servanthood equals action. Servanthood looks like showing up where there is a need that our gifts can fill. It can look like a lot of different things because… we all have different gifts. Some of the ways that servanthood looks like here at Trinity:
Our Community Lunch ministry takes a whole team of people every month who offer what they can do to cook and serve and welcome and spend time with our guests
We use our voices, sometimes our written voices to advocate for human dignity. This week, WHEEL has asked us to contact our City Council to ask that the city budget for next year include $500K to replace life-saving services of Mary’s Place daytime drop in center when it closes in March. This is a vital service for women in our city who live outdoors.
Humbling ourselves to learn about the on-going effects of Doctrine of Discovery and slave trade, how Trinity benefited, who owned this land first, and how we can participate in reparations work
Meeting our neighbors in Trinity Listens conversations or by dropping by for one of our Living Rooms are ways we can offer our gifts of friendship and connecting
One more, our worship services are shared ministry of many people who offer gifts to joyfully welcome people at the door, read aloud, carry things publicly, prepare our spaces to be beautiful and ready and organized, share food and drink with others both at the altar and at our fellowship afterward
Servanthood is showing up where there is a need that our unique gifts can help fill. No one of us has to do all of it, or should do all of it, but we all can do some.
When we offer ourselves, following Jesus’ example, serving with humility, generosity and love, we open ourselves to relationship with God, the giver of all things. When we humble ourselves to encounter another human being, to feel what they feel, to understand what someone else is going through in life, we are expanding our common humanity. We are walking in love.
These next few weeks as we continue to talk about Walking in Love, we will always be talking about relationship, about Love as a verb. At some points we will talk a little more about money. Not to make each other uncomfortable but to acknowledge that when we offer our whole lives to God we are offering our gifts of treasure along with our talent and our time.
We choose this gift of joy and gratitude, this sacrifice, to follow the way of Jesus who shows us that greatness comes by committing ourselves to humility, generosity, and love.
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[1] Gratitude to the SALT Project blog for preachers for this phrase and for the clear explanation of ransom:
https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/salt-project-lectionary-commentary, for 22nd week after Pentecost, accessed 10/19/2024.
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