Mass readings for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Isaiah 53.10-11 Psalm 33 Hebrews 4.14-16 Mark 10.35-45
Jesus calls us to become servants. I sometimes think that is a pretty hard ask. Not just because it might strike us an unappealing role to take, but that it’s hard to understand what it means to be a servant. What is a servant in Jesus’ conception? Does it entail servility, a kind of humbling that goes beyond humility and towards humiliation? Well, I think not. Rather, there is a dignity that we’re to take on in becoming servants, servants to others, to each other, but first and foremost, servants to Christ, servants of God. And we must remember that Jesus himself declared that he did not come to be served, but to serve. And so, whatever this service is that we must offer, it is of a piece with Christ’s service. That is ennobling service; and the most trusted, most reliable servant is called, not “servant,” certainly not “slave,” but they are known as “stewards”.
Now the disciples struggle with this idea of servanthood. It’s clear from the conversations they have that they saw themselves becoming, not servants, but masters, the new rulers of a reconstituted Israel. The picking of twelve disciples is a clear reference to the twelve tribes; with an apostle designated as a leader for each. Given that strongly held expectation, shifting their thinking to conceive of themselves as servants would prove difficult.
But another factor in their confusion is one we share. Neither they nor us have much experience of true servitude; the world of slaves and masters, lords and servants was far from the life of the common folk of the Galilee. The closest we might come is in waiting tables at a restaurant; I don’t know that I’ve ever met a professional servant, a butler or a true housemaid.
We know that in his preaching Jesus draws his imagery and analogies from everyday life. In the Galilee this is the world of farming, growing wheat, raising sheep, tending grapevines; it’s fishing in Lake Galilee. We might say all that is common to all ancient peoples, but Galileans were different from their Judean cousins to the south, different from the denizens of Jerusalem. They lived in what was a backwater of the Empire, even of Israel. They were tenant farmers, but they weren’t serfs – that is, they weren’t tied to the land and answerable to a lord who had absolute authority over them. They had the rent to pay, but most of the landowners were absentee; they didn’t live in the Galilee but in the big cities to the south. Instead of looking after business themselves they had local agents collect the rents. So, there’s no lord in his manor to go cap in hand to, with the rent, or an excuse for why you don’t have it! Galileans were also tradesmen in small villages; and so, self-employed serving a local community comprised of people only slightly above them or below them in social status. They did their work, paid their taxes, but were answerable to no one provided they lived within the law. We know about Peter, Andrew, James and John: they were fishermen, and so, they had their own little fishing business. Even Matthew, the tax collector, was an entrepreneur. Ancient tax collectors were not bureaucrats, they were independent contractors who purchased franchises from the government. This is to say, none of the original disciples lived the life of a servant. Among Galileans more generally, few could afford to keep slaves or hire servants. The farmers might take on farm labourers; but no one would call these temporary field hands “servants.”
So, their ideas about the world of servants and slaves came from a distant perspective, from stories they heard, and tales told at dinner tables. Their grasp of it would resemble ours; the way we know about it from television, motion pictures, and novels. Think of a show like Downton Abbey, or those murder-mystery novels and movies set in English manor houses – these immediately call to mind the liveried footmen, upstairs and downstairs maids, head housekeepers and chief butlers who live in a parallel, fleetingly seen subordinate society that orders and maintains a grand house for the Lord, his Lady, their family, and guests. It’s all a world of waiting on others, shining their shoes and pressing their shirts; of dinners served in uncomfortable tailcoats, of mail brought to the master on a silver tray with white-gloved hands. There is an odd kind of glamour to the life of the senior staff, but they live at the beck and call of whomever owns the house, be they considerate aristocrats or shameless cads. Ultimately, one is not one’s own master, and unlike those who make their living in the wider world, and struggle under the burdens imposed by the lords and ladies of those manor houses, they had to acknowledge their subservience every day of their lives.
But is this what Jesus is talking about?
Well, yes, but in so many other ways no. And, indeed, he is talking about us as being servants who serve his household, but we have a different kind of master: we are in the service of a servant-king. And that is integral to the Messianic promise. The prophet Isaiah, among his prophecies concerning the Messiah, and how he will change the world, speaks of the social order transformed. Yes, there will be kings and queens, but
“Kings shall be your foster-fathers,
and their queens your nursing-mothers.” (Isaiah 49.23)
This is to the say, that the standard of kingship, the measure of the mighty will not rest in how they, as our Lord says of the gentiles, “lord it over” others, but rather in how they use their power to serve as caring foster parents to their subjects.
Now, that has become part of the language of public service in our culture – the elected politician speaks of himself as a public servant; but my sense is that as the Christian sensibility wanes among our elites, they might refer to themselves as “servants of the people” but their preoccupation with power and the keeping of it, their autocratic approach that dismisses the concerns of people as being uninformed, malinformed, conspiracy-minded complaining, is evidence that they no longer grasp what it is to be a servant of all.
But for us, the model of servant-leader, be that servant-king or servant-prime minister is Christ. And should we find ourselves in leadership, it is to Jesus Christ we are to look. But even there, we must remember we are his servants. Yet not in the mould of the silent butler who patiently attends a mediocrity who carries a title; but rather we to see ourselves as noble stewards of a great house whose lord and master is also our friend, whose trust, perhaps undeserved, is nonetheless wholly given.
So, stewards. And when we talk of stewardship, we must frame our understanding in this call to serve the Lord; and our parish has been called to an examination of our stewardship. Like good stewards we are to tally up what our Lord has in this place, the treasure that is all of us. And that’s why we’re taking this census of those who are here, and who are serving our Lord in worship, in outreach, in study, in evangelizing the world and catechizing the faithful. Who are we, really? We’re certainly not all those who claim the name “Christian” yet never serve a day in the Lord’s house, who call themselves “Catholic” yet neglect the stewardship of the treasure that is our gospel faith. We’re looking for those who are consciously and gladly part of the household staff.
And what I’ve said today is a caution not to understand this as a matter of what we’re willing to give from what belongs to us. Everything belongs to God; so, render unto him what is his? Well, more be a good steward of what he has placed in your particular care. We then bring this all together; the Lord’s real treasure found in the hearts and minds of us all.
We’re all part of the household, we’re the ones who make it run, but unlike the staff at Downton Abbey, we’re not mere subordinates. We’re stewards, servants of a very special kind who are managing all that we have together, knowing that all of it is the Lord’s. So, we’re attentive to how we manage it, how we see that the house is kept clean, and the work of worship happens; how the fields are maintained, a healthy harvest brought in year upon year.
But strangely enough, while servants here, we are also the served; we are the family in residence, and we eat, not below stairs in the kitchen, but at the master’s table, as friends, as brothers and sisters by adoption, as the family bound in mutual service and love, stewards of an inheritance to which we are also heirs.
Amen.