Jesus Served Us that We Might Serve Others
Today we hear about two of Jesus' disciples who wanted a greater share of acclaim when Jesus achieved his ultimate triumph. Jesus reminded them that the path to glory came in being a servant, just as he came not to be served but to serve. In Romans 8:1-10, St. Paul helps us to see how we can gain the mind of a servant. April 3, 2011.
The Seminary Chorus was on choir tour last week, and most of you know it’s part of my job to go along on those tours. So this past Thursday I was at a shopping mall in Syracuse, NY, waiting for the coach to pick the choir up after lunch. I was sitting there on a bench when a man walked into the mall, and he was in a hurry. He had some sort of travel bag draped over his shoulder. The bag must have hit the door, and a pile of papers flew out and landed on the floor in front of me. He kept walking. I said, “Sir, you dropped something” but he didn’t hear me. You know what I did then? I didn’t do anything; I just kept sitting there. I didn’t shout louder; I didn’t try to catch him—he was older than I am, and I could have caught up to him. I didn’t take the papers to the customer service desk in case he came looking for them later. Finally, I picked the stuff up—a couple of old magazines—put them on the bench where I was sitting, and walked away. And what I did—really, what I didn’t do--bothered me the rest of the day.
Does it ever bother you when you just sit there and do nothing? I’m sure it does. Why is it that we have so much trouble when it comes to helping people; people we don’t know and people we do, people at school and work; even people we share our homes with. It happens too often that we sit on our own personal benches in our own personal shopping malls and decide we’re just too important or too involved to pick up the papers an old man drops. We can see this fault in others. We listen to the Gospel this morning and wonder what in the world made James and John suppose that they were better than the other disciples. We know what Jesus thinks about this attitude. We heard him, Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. But then we go right back to our bench in the shopping mall and decide we’re too good or too busy to pick up some old magazines.
It’s so frustrating. It makes you want to kick yourself. Why do we act this way toward other people when we know it’s wrong? Why can’t we be better at this than we are? We’re not the first Christians to feel this frustration. Long ago St. Paul admitted to the Christians in Rome that he had a real weakness in this kind of situation. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. That’s how I felt in the shopping mall last Thursday and I’m guessing most of you have felt the same way more often than you can count.
When Paul wrote to the Romans, he did more than admit his problem. He offered a solution, and the solution is in the second lesson for today, from Romans chapter 8. There’s nothing very warm and fuzzy here. I don’t have any visual aids to keep you awake. But if you want to be the kind of servant Jesus wants you to be, if you want to show the kind of love to others Jesus showed to you, then listen up.
The problem comes with the sinful nature
The problem here actually began in the Garden of Eden. Paul doesn’t mention the Garden of Eden here because he assumes we know about it, but this is how it goes. When God created the universe he gave everything. He created a task and then he equipped everything he created with the ability to carry out the task. He wanted planets to move around the sun so he created centrifugal force. He wanted the sun to warm the earth, so he created fire; he wanted fish to swim so he created water and gills. God wanted his human creatures to think about life on their planet in the same way God thought about it, and he gave them the ability to think that way. The Bible says God created the first two people in his image. Adam and Eve weren’t as wise as God or as powerful, but their character was like God’s. The way they thought was perfect, just like God’s thoughts were perfect.
Well, you know the story. Adam and Eve gave in to the serpent who was really the devil, they ate the fruit, and they lost the perfect nature. What replaced it? The Bible calls it the sinful nature or the sinful flesh. Thanks to Adam and Eve, we don’t have the perfect nature; what we have is the sinful nature. And that’s where Paul starts. He creates two categories, like he’s setting up two columns on his laptop. He called the first column the law of sin and death. I’ll try to make that a little easier. Let’s call this first column “The mindset of the sinful nature” or “This is the way people with the sinful nature think.”
The mind of the sinful man is death,Paul wrote. Human beings are obsessed by death. They may not always admit it, but they really are. You know why? They’re just not sure of what’s on the other side of the grave. A voice inside of them—that’s their conscience, the only thing that’s left from the image of God—that little voice tells them there’s hell to pay on the other side of the grave. The only way they can see getting themselves out of hell is to work frantically to do what God wants them to do and to make up for what God doesn’t want them to do. And that’s when God becomes the enemy. God is the one who makes them do what they know is impossible. With the mindset of the sinful nature people start to hate God; they shake their fist at him in frustrated rage. They see him as an impossible-to-please father or a cold-hearted boss. This is exactly what Paul meant when he wrote, the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. You can imagine what this leads to. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. People who are angry at God can’t hope to do anything God likes.
Can this be true? People controlled by the sinful nature can’t please God? The philanthropist who gives millions to the starving poor isn’t pleasing God? The volunteers sifting through the carnage in Japan aren’t pleasing God? All the billions of people on earth who do good and kind things every day can’t please God? If they have this mindset of the sinful nature, they can’t please God. Paul wrote, those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires. I’ll change my story. Let’s say I picked up the old man’s magazines and went running after him. Let’s say I caught him and handed him his magazines with a pat on the back and a smile. But what if I did all that only to impress the seminary students who were standing around? Would what I did have been pleasing God? You know the answer and you get the point.
The sinful nature is kind of like our ancestry; there’s nothing we can do to change it. I am Caucasian. I can dye my hair and even my skin, but I can’t become Black. I can learn to speak Spanish, but I can’t become Hispanic. I can have plastic surgery on my eyes, but I can’t become Asian. And I cannot get rid of my sinful nature. The sinful nature is in me, and we can’t to do anything to get rid of it. Do you ever have frustration dreams, the kind of dream where you know you need to do something, but you just can’t do it? I know I have to preach, but I can’t find my robe or I can’t put it on or I can’t get the microphone on right. The church is full, the hymn is over, everybody is waiting for me to walk into the pulpit, but I can’t get my robe on right! You wake up from those dreams and you’re exhausted. And that’s what life is like with the sinful nature—except that it’s not a dream.
The Spirit gives us a new mindset
The sinful nature is a big problem. But I said there were two columns in this lesson. In the first column Paul wrote about the law of sin and death. In the second column he wrote about the law of the Spirit of life. Here’s what Paul wrote, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
So what does this mean? It means that God found a way to get us out from under the control of the sinful nature. Do you remember what Paul said about the mindset of the sinful nature? The sinful nature hates God because God demands the impossible. Well, what God did was to get rid of the demands. He stopped expecting the impossible from us. And here’s how he did it. God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. He condemned sin in sinful man in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us. In other words,Jesus lived his life the way God expected us to live our lives and then he offered his life to make up for the life we hadn’t lived. God called it a deal: Jesus for us. But it wasn’t easy; this was no lark in the park. Jesus had to give up the rights and privileges he has had as God. He endured pain, he was humiliated and rejected. He even died. Jesus had all this in mind when he told his disciples, The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
And God did more. He put his Holy Spirit into our hearts and gave us a new mindset. With this mindset we know and believe that there isn’t a reason to be angry with God. More than that, we know and believe there is a reason to thank God and love him. Listen to Paul again. Those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. When Jesus and his Spirit live in this new mindset, when we know our sins are all forgiven, well, here’s Paul again, if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.When the Holy Spirit lives in us he leads us to love living our lives the way God wants us to live. Paul told the Christians in Galatia, The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And those are exactly the qualities we need as we live our lives in our world.
The frustration we sometimes feel isn’t going to go away completely. Our sinful nature is going to stick to us until we die and go to heaven. There’ll be times when we sit on our benches and don’t move a muscle to help anyone. But what Paul wrote to the Romans, he could also say to us.You are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit. The mindset of the sinful nature doesn’t need to control us anymore. Jesus has given us a new way of thinking. He did it by bleeding and dying and rising again and he continues to do it with the power of his Spirit. He lived the life of a servant so that we might be able to be servants, too. He lived for us to enable us to live for others. He loved us so that we might desire to love others. Think about that the next time you’re sitting on a bench in a shopping mall and an old man drops his magazines. Amen.
Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on April 3, 2011
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