SERVE AND CARE WITHOUT EXPECTING A REWARD

Hebrews 5:1 – 10, Mark 10:35 - 45

Teaching, medicine - doctors & nurses, police are commonly called government service. These were one time called vocations but have now turned professions. All those who work in the government ministries, offices, projects are called government servants. These government servants and these services are there for the benefit of the common people in a country. They are there to serve. However today when we look at most of them we find that the aspect of service has come out and they are more concern about comfort, facilities, money etc.

So we find that doctors and teachers would not go into the remote areas to serve. Teachers fail to teach in the classroom but do so in the tuition class. Doctors will look after you well when you go to them in a private hospital. But you wont find them at the government hospital during the weekend. Politicians come bent in two and three when asking for votes making promises, but once they are given the opportunity to serve, the very reason they are elected is forgotten.

While these are people of the world what happens when those who are called followers of Christ or Disciples of Christ miss the flavor of service in their lives. At end of our at the offering of our gifts we offer our selves for service and at the end of the service we are sent out to serve and we respond in the affirmative, but there is no affirmation after that. Just as government servants and the government services have lost the essence of what they are doing, today it is becoming with Christians, who are called to serve. Benefit and reward supersedes the service that they are called to render to fellow Christian and society. Many reasons for this can be found. The lack of love, the fear of suffering, not prepared to sacrifice, and the focus on whom we serve and why we serve is lost.

It is in this backdrop that we look to Jesus who cared and served without expecting a reward. Hebrews 5:5 tells us that “Christ did not take up upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest”, but was chosen by God. v7 tells us that he was a person who submitted to serving the father, and doing his will, with reverence. When you say reverence, it is to take hold of what God calls good.

So for an example you are given a very expensive thing to carry, and you carry it with a lot of caution. It is this kind of an attitude that one needs to serve and care. And the greatest service that Jesus was selected to do was suffer and die on a cross for us. So serving God comes out of fear and reverence for him. when serving and caring you fulfill God’s will for this world. Because to serve God you have to serve one another.

Jesus also teaches us that serving comes out of love and concern for people; people who were created in the image of God. Sin, sickness, sufferings, problems had marred this image. As Jesus served the society and restored to them new life in Christ, he was fulfilling God’s will and God’s glory and lifting his Father higher and higher. As he continued serving and caring for people, we need to note Jesus’ attitude. At times he said, “do not tell anyone”, and at times he slipped away from that place, and then he said “I am doing the will of the Father”.

Serving and caring, comes out of humility and love, Jesus taught to his disciples. The fact that Jesus was focused, he knew what was expected of him, he knew what he was to achieve, and what motivated and inspired him to go on, till he achieved the ultimate, through death on a cross. Everything was for the glory of his Father.

So Jesus says to James and John and the other disciples, serve each other and be a slave to all (Mk 10:43,44), and the example he places before them, is himself. He re-enforces this concept of serving when he does the most unexpected at the last supper in the upper room and goes on to say “do as I have done for you”. Jesus teaches them, to be humble and not to seek or do anything to achieve greatness. 

People of God, serving and caring is a very high calling, and a calling that comes from God, and we should see that we don’t miss out on the opportunity to serve one another and the wider community. Serving God doesn’t have any conditions. Serving God is a sacrifice you make. Sacrifice is to give up what you love the most, in return to love the one who called and to love others. It is a calling that does not give you an instant reward here on this earth. It is a calling that seeks to fulfill God’s will and bring a name and fame and recognition to the almighty, not to the one who serves.

As people who follow Jesus, we have many opportunities to serve God. if you take within the church, as wardens, sidespersons, as leaders of the organisatinos, singing in the choir, serving at the altar, Sunday school teachers and you can keep adding. You have many opportunities to care for people. That is one of the reasons that the Mothers Union, and the Mens guild and YF exists. To care for people.

Unfortunately for many, serving God is for ulterior motives. It is to push themselves to the front, to be highlighted and spoken of, they want to be first, to have all the attention and focus on themselves, to make a name for themselves. To be popular. They say such things will encourage people to do more. The fact that the God you serve, is the God who created you and sustains you, who’s image you carry should be a motivation and inspiration and encouragement to serve and follow.

Today people have conditions, they will say I don’t have time, they will give only the balance time they have. They will say, will you pay me, will you pay my travelling, but why should only I do, what about the other? Some will do only when given a position. For some, other activities of the world are more important.

Then there are those who say, if he is a warden, if he is the president, if he is in the committee, until this priest goes, I won’t do. for such people serving is all about themselves. People of God unless you are willing to give up your conditions and excuses, and sacrifice what you love the most you cannot truly serve or follow Christ. Mark 10:21 tells us about a rich young ruler who could not follow Jesus. And the bible goes to say, in John 12:26, If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. 

It is when you lose focus of why you serve and whom you serve, and fail to take in your hands what God calls good, you have all the excuses and conditions. To some this great calling to serve becomes a burden. People of God, it is an opportunity to look back at how we are serving God, it is a good opportunity reflect on our attitude about serving God.

Is our attitude to serving and caring like the people of the world or are we following the Jesus pattern. Let me end with a quote of Martin Luther King Jn, “The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”