Sermon: The Way of the Servant
October 27th, 2019 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: 1 Kings 12:1-17; Mark 10:42-45
1 Kings 12
In addition to the Gospel reading today, we are also continuing to move ahead in the broad biblical story of God at the Work in the world. Last week we considered the life of King David – how he brought unity and God-centeredness to the kingdom of Israel. We remembered how David danced with all his might before the Lord, and in that same spirit, we worshiped with singing and trumpet and cymbals and joyful sounds as we thought about worshipping passionately, with all our hearts and all our souls and with all our strength.
In the Old Testament story I’m sharing today, from 1 Kings 12, that unity and God-centeredness is falling apart – and it has been less than 75 years. The throne of the united kingdom of Israel was held by David for 33 years. Upon his death, it was passed to David’s son Solomon, who reigned for 40 years. Both David and Solomon took on large building projects in Jerusalem, as well as building up other cities throughout Israel – palaces with gold goblets and other lavish furnishings, military centers with chariots and shields and swords. Solomon builds the magnificent Temple in Jerusalem, for the Ark of God’s Presence to have a permanent place, with massive processions and celebrations to go with it. With all his grand projects, his fame, his international alliances sealed with many marriage alliances, Solomon’s household grew. The Bible says that to feed his household for one day required 185 bushels of flour, 375 bushels of meal, 10 grain-fed cattle, 20 range-fed cattle, 100 sheep, plus a bunch of deer, other game, and some chicken, duck, etc. One day’s food! Of course the only way Solomon saw to sustain this was to put stiff taxes on his people, and the only way he saw to accomplish the building projects was to conscript all the young men into forced labor.
Gradually Solomon begins to get pulled away from a God-centered life. His heart begins to turn away from the Lord God; he becomes more interested in serving himself and his family, than serving God or serving his people. Solomon even has worship sites built for the gods of all his foreign wives.
Our story today begins as Solomon has just died and his son, Rehoboam, is set to become king. But the problem of the harsh taxes and forced labor has become unbearable for the people, so they gather before the new King Rehoboam with a request. They say, “Your father made life hard for us—worked our fingers to the bone. Give us a break; lighten up on us and we’ll willingly serve you.” Rehoboam replies, “Give me three days to think it over, then come back.”
In the meantime, King Rehoboam talks it over with the elders who had advised his father when he was alive, men with experience and wisdom: “What’s your counsel? How do you suggest that I answer the people?” They say, “If you will be a servant to this people, be considerate of their needs and respond with compassion, work things out with them, they will always be your servants.”
But Rehoboam didn’t like the advice of the elders, so he asked the young men he’d grown up with who were now currying his favor and seeking seats in the king’s court. “What do you think? What should I say to these people who are saying, ‘Give us a break from your father’s harsh ways—lighten up on us’?”
The young guys he’d grown up with said, “These people who complain, ‘Your father was too hard on us; lighten up’—well, tell them this: ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist. If you think life under my father was hard, you haven’t seen the half of it. My father thrashed you with whips; I’ll beat you bloody with chains!’”
Crushed Down
Two very different words of advice in dealing with people who feel crushed by the world, by the demands of life and the demands of their leaders. Today in the U.S. we have labor laws to help protect people from oppressive, exploitive work, and we have a system of representative government that determines our taxes and oversees how the funds are spent. Of course, it has its failures, but it is a far cry from living under a single, all powerful dictator king. Yet still many people feel crushed by the burdens they are carrying. You may feel crushed by financial burdens, by debt or by shrinking income. You may feel pressed down by the expectations of those around you, who depend on you in a variety of ways – to feed them, to provide care, to counsel them and guide them. Perhaps you are shouldering the weight of difficult decisions. In your job, you may be feeling pressured by a boss. Those who are older may feel pressured by their children, or just by the physical and health-related realities of aging.
Today we open our church as a shelter for men who have felt crushed by life – perhaps losing jobs, losing homes, losing connections to family support. This past week Lisa Reshkus spent some time at the Tent City in Milwaukee. She spoke to a woman who had experienced the crush of abusive relationships, the weight of fear that led her to flee into homelessness. In the wider world, we hear reports of Kurdish people, abandoned by US troops that had provided protection, now being crushed by Turkish forces. There are those on our southern border, caught between violence and poverty and the nearly impossible beaurocracy of seeking safety and asylum.
If this balloon represented all those people – those people who brought their plea to King Rehoboam, and well as all those people here in this room, in this community, in Milwaukee and around the world – that are experiencing the pressing load of injustice, of struggle, of hardship. The decisions of leaders, or others with power over them, pressing down hard till they feel they will burst. [burst balloon]
Floating Free
These people long to be freed, they hope, they cry out, they plead with judges or social workers or immigration officials or with whoever will listen; they plead with God. In the story of 1 Kings 12, they plead with the king. And three days later the people show up, just as King Rehoboam had directed when he said, “Give me three days to think it over, then come back.” The king’s answer is harsh and rude. He rejects the counsel of the elders and goes with the advice of the younger set, “If you think life under my father was hard, you haven’t seen the half of it,” he says to them, “My father thrashed you with whips; I’ll beat you bloody with chains!” And Rehoboam turns a deaf ear to the people.
When the people of Israel realize that the king hasn’t listened to a word they’d said, they stood up to him and said, “Get lost, descendant of David! We’ve had it with you, son of Jesse! We don’t have to be loyal to David’s family; we can do what we want. Let’s get out of here, Israel, and fast! From now on, Rehoboam, mind your own business.”
Again, if this balloon represented the people, all they want now is to be floating free [release balloon] – no demands on them, no crushing expectations. These are the ones who just want to run away, to live off the grid, to shake off the powers and laws that restrict. This is the kind of cultural shift we saw in this country in the 60s, when the younger generation sought to throw off the institutional structures and traditional expectations to live freely – flower power!
More recently there has been the desire to shake off the encumberance of truth – believe whatever you want, truth is whatever you want it to be. Advertisers making stunningly false claims in order to sell their product and make a buck. Drug companies are starting to be held accountable for those false claims after thousands and thousands have been crushed by drug addictions. Politicians have embraced that freedom from facts to push conspiracy theories and fabrications that simply serve their own agendas. I realize politicians have always had a slippery relationship with the truth, but it seems to have gone from a dusting on the roads to black ice! (www.washingtonpost.com, trump-claims-database)
The whole thing is pretty depressing, pretty discouraging. So many world leaders today are like Rehoboam – impressed by power, by domineering, by demeaning, degrading others. The advisers display an immaturity, impressed by jokes about sizes of little fingers, jokes about beating people bloody. We, too, hear those kinds of ‘jokes’ about killing someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, about lynching, jokes about very real military dangers being simply a sandbox scuffle. It is disheartening when people’s pleas for the world to take a look at their very real needs are dismissed, disregarded, discounted. And if we are feeling this discouraged, I wonder how God must feel? What is God going to do with this brokenness?
Tethered to God and Community
What God does is call us to a different way – neither the way of crushing and being crushed, nor the way of being adrift and floating free. The elders give Rehoboam the advice to be a servant to his people. The people offer that if the king listens and cares about their needs, they will serve him. The way God designed us to live with one another is the way of service, of servanthood.
God not only directs us in that way, God shows us that way. When Jesus’ disciples were fighting over power and influence, Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people and throw their weight around, officials flaunt their authority over those under them and let power go to their heads. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others, and to give his life in exchange for many who are held hostage.” Jesus showed us, in his living and in his dying, that the way we are to live is the way of serving one another.
This balloon represents that servant way of life. This balloon is neither crushed nor floating free; it is gently tethered. It is free to move and dip and bob in the wind, but it is held secure by a cord to that which is sure and sound and true. We are to be like a tethered balloon, living each and every day with Jesus as our King. Jesus lifts us up out of the crush of sin. He retrieves us from aimless lives. He gives us the task of being servants in this world, tied with a cord of love to our Lord and to one another.
There is a reason we use the phrase “family ties”. We are tied to one another in a family, for better or for worse, the ties are love, the ties are caring, the ties are serving. In the church family, we are also to be tied to one another in love and care and service. That is why we start up the prayer chain when one of us faces a crisis. That is why we share around potluck tables and fellowship tables with one another, why we care for this space. That is why we open our church today to homeless guests, because we are tied to one another in community, to be servants.
The Hebrew word avodah, means to worship, but it also means to work, or to serve. Our primary mission is to worship God, which is serving God and serving one another. In worship, you strengthen your ties to God, to Jesus who came to serve and teaches us to be servants in the world. In your worship you strengthen your ties to others and to the world. Then Jesus invites you to go out and make service your worship. Make me a servant, too, Lord!
Closing Song: “Make Me a Servant” # 653
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