Jesus got [the disciples] together to settle things down. “You’ve observed how godless rulers throw their weight around,” he said, “and when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage.”
Mark 10:42-45 (The Message)
The call to be a disciple of Jesus is a call to be servants. More specifically, though, we are called to be servants of the mission of Christ. As Jesus says in this passage from Mark, the mission of the Christ is to give his life away that others may be freed to live life fully. As disciples, we are called to serve that mission: giving ourselves away that the obstacles to the fullness of life faced by others may be removed. Ultimately this is what life in Christ is about: being freed in order to participate in Christ’s work of freeing others. The life of the church is not about a moral code, set rituals to follow, or getting together to have a good time. All of those things have some value, but their value is in helping us to be reminded of God’s freeing grace in Christ so that we can join in Christ’s mission to the world. To take part in that mission we need to recognize what obstacles others face that lessen their experience of the goodness of the world God created. Sickness, poverty, and unjust conditions are among the obstacles to fullness of life that are faced by people.
What might it look like for a congregation to have a servant mentality? Would you say that this is a core characteristic of St. Matthew? How might we more fully embody that call to follow Christ’s mission in the world? This is another way of framing the question of what it means to “live the love” that God has shown us in Christ. There is no single answer to what a servant mentality looks like or how we should live it. Our four areas of emphasis – within our congregational community, serving the broader community in which we live, fostering diversity, and caring for God’s creation – is a good start at identifying the types of obstacles to fullness of life that those around us face. We can continually ask how our hope in Christ is liberating in those arenas. For that, we need to be continually centering ourselves spiritually so that we might discern where the Holy Spirit might be leading. Above all, we need to continually remember to put Christ’s mission of freeing and liberating love first, and allow the structures of the congregation to follow that mission. In other words, we need to let go of our own life and the things we think we want. Then there is space for Spirit to fill us with love and lead us to live out that love.