Deleted Scenes: Matthew 20:24-28. Another reason to serve

People can have vastly different experiences of church life, can’t they? There are people who just drop in on an occasional Sunday service. They walk in, don’t talk to anyone, leave immediately after the worship service, and that’s it for the week. The larger a church is, the easier it is to do that. For other people, however, their church is their family. They see people from their church on a regular basis. Their closest friends are from their church and these are friendships that grow them and encourage them in their Christian faith. They are in tune with what’s going on in their church community and are fully engaged, regularly experiencing gratitude for their church. I don’t think there’s much doubt that the second description is much closer to the vision for the church we see in the New Testament. In fact, the first description, which is way too common in the North American church, would be unrecognizable and unfathomable to anyone in the first century. I would hope that anyone reading this would see that the second description is desirable and worthy of moving towards. And here’s the key for today: one of the best ways of moving from that first description to the second is through service.

There are a lot of reasons to serve, as we talked about this past Sunday. Some of the really, really big ones I can think of are:

1. It’s what Jesus is like. As we saw in Matthew 20:28, Jesus did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. We are saved because Jesus, the Son of God, is a servant who gives his life at the cross to lift us up. If we’ve received that from Him, how can we hold back our own service?
2. It’s the reason God has given us the gifts He has. The various skills and abilities we have are not there so we can enrich ourselves and further our glory in the world. They are there to build others up. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that “to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”
3. It’s how God created us to live. Right from the beginning of the Bible, even before sin entered in and infested creation, God gave humanity work to do. Genesis 2:15 says that God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden “to work it and take care of it.” God wired humans to do work that benefits others and gives order to the world. When we do that, we are being more authentically human.

But here’s one more reason to serve: serving cultivates deeper relationships with others. When I hear about people who struggle to find their place in a church, I often think that getting involved through serving in some area is one of the best ways to solve that problem. When you become part of a team, sharing in some responsibility or task, you usually form a natural bond with your teammates. 

We could also put it this way, staying with the farming illustration from Sunday: the more you sow, the more you’ll reap. If you give nothing of your time or abilities, it won’t be surprising if your experience of church life is less than satisfying. You’ve sown almost nothing. What kind of crop were you expecting? But if you sow much, if you get involved in various ways, if you habitually give to build others up in the faith, your harvest in terms of relationships and joy will likely be significant. 

Having said all that, I should make a disclaimer. There might be someone reading this who thinks to themselves, “I do give and give and give some more, and I’m burnt out. I’ve got nothing left.” Others might think back to church experiences where they invested a lot, only to endure some kind of serious church trauma that left them scarred. In fact, they were more scarred than they would have been if they had treated church as an occasional Sunday drop-in. All of that is real! To the first objection, I would say that this is exactly why we need every disciple of Jesus contributing their gifts and time, so it doesn’t all fall on the shoulders of a few. To the second objection, I would say that whenever we open our heart to anyone, we risk getting hurt. That seems to be part and parcel of living life as broken people in a broken world. However, by God’s grace, there is healing as we seek His face and ask Him to give us His heart for this imperfect church He calls His bride.

Will you consider serving in some way here at The Bridge this year? Will you consider sowing more seeds, trusting that the Lord will bring about a harvest in your life that includes deeper relationships in our church family?