"but whoever would be great among you must be your servant." - Matthew 20:26b

Augustine wrote: "So deep has human pride sunk us that only divine humility can raise us." This point was not lost on St. Martin, the famous soldier-saint of France. The story goes that one day he was praying and there appeared to him a figure robed like a king with a jeweled crown and gold-embroidered shoes. The voice said to him: "Martin, recognize him whom you see. I am Christ. I am about to descend to the earth and I am showing myself to you first." A couple of minutes later, the voice went on: "Why do you hesitate, Martin, to believe me? I am Christ." Martin replied: "The Lord Jesus did not foretell that he would come in purple and crowned in gold. I will not believe that Christ is come unless I see him in the dress and in the form in which he suffered." At that point the figure disappeared, and Martin realized it was a temptation of the devil.

We often speak of the "glory" of Christ. We do not so often remember that Christ, by his death on the cross, has infused the word with new meaning. Christ’s glory is not that of some potentate or tycoon. As Isaac Watts wrote:

But in the grace that rescu'd man,
His brightest form of glory shines;
Here, on the cross, ‘tis fairest drawn
In precious blood, and crimson lines.

I said this point was not lost on St. Martin. But it has been lost on many of our Lord’s followers who were not so eager to serve as to engage in one-upsmanship. In our lesson today, for example, we see the sons of Zebedee avidly contending for first place in the heavenly sweepstakes. So Jesus says to them:

"You know the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

This must have been a hard saying for James and John, and it is no easier for us. Even in the Church there are people who try to lord it over others in a way that Jesus never did. Indeed within our churches we often find such patterns of dominance and submission to be institutionalized. This is the issue I address today.

We need to begin by remembering that the ministry of the Church is committed to each and every one of us and to all of us together. In his First Epistle, Peter borrows language applied by the Old Testament to ancient Israel, and he uses it to describe the ministry which we share. He says to the Church of his own day and to ours:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Peter makes no distinction between clergy and laity. He does not say that some of us are priests, but he says that all of us together are a royal priesthood. We are meant to be a community of people who worshipfully make God central in our lives and use our gifts for the service of men and women. "You are a royal priesthood," Peter says to all of us.

But in subsequent centuries that imperative was obscured, and complex orders of clergy emerged. By the sixteenth century, the clergy had become the ruling class of the Church, and for all practical purposes they were considered to be the Church. It even became unnecessary to have a congregation in order to celebrate the Mass. But the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther recovered the New Testament conception that the priesthood is committed to all believers. Luther said that we are all baptized into the ministry and that laity should have a role in Church government. Then John Calvin, a generation later, called not only for lay participation in Church government, but for a vital sense of lay ministry in the worlds of work, politics, education, and family life.

Of course the Reformers did not abolish the clergy. They believed that in order to overcome ignorance of faith and superstition about religious matters, the Church must insist on clarity of preaching and teaching about the gospel; they delegated the ministry of Word and Sacrament to those whose calling and education prepared them for this task. But what they did abolish was the distinction between clergy rulers, on the one hand, and lay subjects on the other. When they ordained candidates to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, they did not presume to think they thereby conferred some special grace or status or power on their clergy. Instead, they understood ordination to be a rite of the Church whereby some members of the body were appointed to special tasks. In the way that the arm or hand or tongue labors for the body in its specific way, so too, these members were to labor for the Church in the specific tasks of preaching and teaching.

Indeed, so far from the medieval notion of clergy rule was the Protestant conception of ministry that Calvin could say the act of ordination should be looked upon as one of the principal modes employed by God to school men in humility. The Reformers believed that all ministry derived from God who was present in Christ, the great high priest. So, when they looked for models for ministry, they looked to the life of Christ. They understood from Scripture that Jesus had for all time defined the shape of ministry by his own sacrifice and by his word to the sons of Zebedee: "I am among you as one who serves." The Reformers grasped that Jesus was a king who had turned this world’s understanding of kingship on its head by emptying himself, taking the form of a servant and leaving the royal robes in the closet. To this they drew a corollary, that their king’s royal priesthood must share his qualities, that servanthood must define the shape of the Christian community, and that its leaders must be servants of the servants of God.

It is asked by churches which practice apostolic succession: What is the authority for the ministry of the Reformed churches? They point to the fact that all of their priests have been ordained by bishops who were ordained by bishops and so on in a continuous line all the way back to St. Peter. In this way, they believe, special priestly gifts have been transmitted from generation to generation. In answer to their question, our tradition responds that the ultimate authority of its ministry, clergy and lay, has the same basis as did the authority of the first generation of apostles - the authority of lives devoted in service to their Master. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that when the Christian group at Antioch sent representatives to a meeting of church leaders in Jerusalem, it sent with them a letter which read: "It seemed good to us to choose men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ." As Halford Luccock reminded us, those early Christians grasped the very genius of the Christian gospel. "Here," they wrote, "are men who have risked their lives." That now, as then, is the final authority of Christianity in its appeal to the world. It is the final authority of discipleship, the ultimate credential of all ministry. It is the proof of the cross, of lives given entirely to their Master in a service. There is no other comparable authority for ministry. There never has been and there never will be. It was the original authority of Jesus who said he had come to give his life as a ransom for many. It is the authority of the humble servant.

This is what it means to be a royal priest of the great high priest. "I have given you an example," Jesus said after washing the feet of his disciples, "that you also should do as I have done to you." Paul wrote to the Ephesians that there are many gifts and ministries, but they all have a common denominator. They all are grounded in the ministry of Christ who took the form of a servant. Paul wrote to Philippi: "Have this mind among yourselves which you have in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, emptied himself, and took the form of a servant." To understand this is to have a ministry no matter how small one’s apparent gifts may be. To misunderstand this is to have no ministry. It matters not how great one’s gifts are if they are not offered as Christ offered himself.

We have said a word about how our gifts are to be offered in ministry. Now let us say something about where they are to be used. It is important to offer our talents not only in the service of the church’s committees and boards, but also at our workplace, at home, and in the wider world, wherever we are. Martin Luther said:

If you are a craftsman, you will find the Bible placed in your workshop, in your hands, in your heart; it teaches and preaches how you ought to treat your neighbor. Only look at your tools, your needle, your thimble, your beer barrel, your articles of trade, your scales, your measures, and you will find this saying written on them. You will not be able to look anywhere it does not strike your eyes. None of the things with which you deal daily are too trifling to tell you this incessantly, if you are but willing to hear it; and there is not lack of such preaching for you have as many preachers as there are transactions, commodities, tools and other implements in your house and estate; and they shout this to your face, "My dear, use me toward your neighbor as you would want him to act toward you with that which is his."

Luther believed the ministry of a barrel maker is every bit as important and valid as that of a parish minister. In no way could it be construed as inferior. In no way was the priest entitled to lord it over the worker. Who was the greatest? Both were great so long as they served their Lord.

To my mind it is the saddest feature of the contemporary Church that we have lost a vital sense of lay ministry. By and large the Church takes much too limited a view of Christian service. We eagerly recruit people necessary to maintain ourselves as an institutuion, but we do not equip you to be ministers in the world, in your daily lives within your occupations and public life. A decade ago, the National Council of Churches presented the results of its "Listening-to-Lay People Project." The report concluded:

Lay people continue to see themselves in their expected role of servants of the institutional church. No one proposed that the church should see as its major task to encourage and enable its laypeople to function as crucial change agents in the various institutions in which they live and work. So accustomed are laypeople to turning to the church as the place where they live out their faith, that they go on separating their secular lives from their faith. They worship God in their churches, and serve the churches as best they can both in their institutions and service projects. But they do not find, nor seem to expect, much inspiration or guidance from the church at the most crucial levels of their lives - where they carry out their daily work and influence.

This report is all too terribly true! Not long ago one of our very talented and dedicated young members was elected to the school board. She came to me to say she would have to give up a position on a church committee. She was very apologetic and seemed to feel quite guilty about it. "I want to serve the church, but I just won’t have as much time for it this year," she said. I responded: "But if you serve well on the school board, you will be serving the church faithfully. You will have an opportunity to minister in a way few other people do." Then we talked for a while about what it might mean for her to minister in her new position. Even so, I could see when she left that she was reluctant to believe her new position could be considered a valid ministry. How very sad!

Luther and Calvin suggested that ministry happens whenever a person tries to make a connection between his life and faith. If you try to analyze situations which arise at work, at home, or in the community in terms of your Christian responsibility, then you have a ministry. Ministry means leading a life of service wherever you may be.

Of course, often it is difficult to relate our faith to our life. Consider your workplace, for example. Some questions arise which can be answered quite easily, questions like: Should I cheat my partner or defraud my customers? But when your questions become more difficult, the process of relating the gospel to the world becomes more complicated. Suppose, for instance, you are a manager ordered by your company’s higher-ups to implement a policy which you are sure will have adverse social impact. What do you do? Where does your loyalty lie? To your company? Or to society? What is the basis for your choice? Last year our men’s study group spent some time trying to relate Christianity to very specific instances of business decisionmaking. How necessary that is, and yet how frustrating it can be when we cease to content ourselves with glib generalities and get down to hard specifics.

But while the work of lay ministry is not very easy, it is vital and necessary if the Gospel is to permeate the world. James Gilliom reminds us of a rule in the early New England churches which stated:

If any person or persons shall be guilty of speaking against the minister - in any shape, form, or manner - or of speaking against his preaching, said person or persons shall be punished by fine, whipping, or banishment, or cutting off of ears.

Not many congregations today would cut off the ears of a person for speaking out against a minister! Yet, as Gilliom goes on to say, there is another kind of brutality which takes place when the body of Christ has all its lay members cut off, and the clergyperson is expected or wants to do their work. It is brutal for the body of Christ because its most important members are those who spend their time in the wider world. It strangles Christian fellowship and prevents it from remaking the world.

All of us, you see, are Christ’s ministers. Each of us has a role in sharing with others the Good News. Each of us has a calling, however dimly we may perceive it. "You are the light of the world," Jesus said to all of us. Rejoice, then, that the Gospel of our salvation is entrusted as much to you as to me. Claim your ministry! Remember that we share equally in an inestimable inheritance. By the devoted quality of our lives, let us give proof of this inheritance. We are, together, a royal priesthood. Royal not in that we can claim some special prerogative, but royal because we are servants, wherever we may be, of the Servant of servants.