A Call to Serve –
Serving Where You Sit
IntroductionWhat does the call to serve look like for a Christian church today? First, it is critical to note that the serving community is not an end in itself. An inward-looking community (self-serving) will eventually implode. Christ gathered his disciples together to serve a purpose larger than themselves, to pioneer God’s coming reign in which all things will be reconciled. A loving community is all about serving each other – caring enough to invest oneself in the “thin lines of healing.” There is no other way to serve as Christ has called us and there is no other way to have true community if we don’t answer our call to serve. The apostle Paul wrote, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6). Words and ideas, forms and structures, ministries and programs can take us only so far. In the end, it’s a matter of whether we will lay down our lives for one another. For Christ’s followers, this is not just a matter of obedience but the distinguishing mark of our witness as true servants of Christ. Jesus says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34–35).
Romans 12:3-13 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7 if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8 the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. 9 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. ESV
James 2:1-4; 8-9 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. 2 For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, 3 and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” 4 have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? 8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. 9 But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
Colossians 3:23-24 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:31; 13:1-13 31 And I will show you a still more excellent way. 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
A Call to Serve – In Conclusion
I will conclude the biblical description of a call to serve with what will be perceived as a radical and possibly extreme story – but aren’t these radical and extreme times that we are living in?
In early Christian literature, there are many stories of the first, second, and third-century church living out its calling and commitment to serving God and one another as a community – valuing one another as the family of God. For example, sometime around AD 250, a marvelous thing happened in a small church in the rural town of Thena, just outside the Roman metropolis of Carthage in North Africa: An actor converted to Christ. We do not know his name, but let’s refer to him as Marcus. Marcus’s conversion created a stir in the church in Thena.
Ancient theater performances in were typically dedicated to a pagan god or goddess, and the plays often ran as part of larger public religious festivals. Scenes portraying blatant immorality were commonplace. All this proved rather troubling to the early church. Christian leaders, such as Tertullian, spoke out in opposition to the idea of believers going to the theater: “Why is it right to look on what it is disgraceful to do? How is it that the things which defile a man in going out of his mouth, are not regarded as doing so when they go in at his eyes and ears – when eyes and ears are the immediate attendants of the spirit? You have the theater forbidden, then, in the forbidding of immodesty.”
So when “an actor converted to Christ in third-century Carthage, the church demanded that he quit his profession. Remarkably, Marcus did just that. However, he now faced an economic dilemma, since he was no longer gainfully employed. So, instead of acting, Marcus opened an acting school. This apparently created quite a stir among Marcus’s fellow Christians, and the surviving letters exchanged by his pastor and the church’s bishop paint a portrait of the church truly living out its strong group family values. Marcus’s pastor, Eucratius, naturally wondered how it could be acceptable for Marcus to teach others what he himself was forbidden to do. Yet Marcus had already made a tremendous sacrifice to follow Jesus. So Eucratius wrote to his spiritual mentor, Cyprian of Carthage, to ask “whether such a man ought to remain in communion with us.”
Cyprian’s reaction to Marcus was unequivocal: “It is not in keeping with the reverence due to the majesty of God and with the observance of the gospel teachings for the honor and respect of the church to be polluted by contamination at once so degraded and so scandalous.”
No compromise. No drama teaching. Marcus must either leave the church or quit his job – again.
This story has the “serving community-family of God” written all over it. It is Cyprian’s conviction that “the honor and respect of the church” must take priority over Marcus and his acting academy. Marcus, on his part, finds himself answering to the church for his whole vocational and financial future. Cyprian’s handling of Marcus’s dilemma grates harshly against modern social sensibilities, since we tend to prioritize the needs and goals of the individual over the viability of any group to which he or she belongs. But for all his hard-nosed strong-group convictions, Cyprian is not unaware of the suffering Marcus will face. As Cyprian’s comments clearly demonstrate, the intense emphasis on personal holiness that characterized the North African church had a beautiful complement: a genuine concern for those whose livelihoods might be adversely affected by assenting to the church’s demanding moral standards. In short, Cyprian tells Pastor Eucratius that the church has a call to serve – they should provide for Marcus’s material needs: “His needs can be alleviated along with those of others who are supported by the provisions of the church. . . . ” Accordingly, you should do your very best to call him away from this depraved and shameful profession to the way of innocence and to the hope of his true life; let him be satisfied with the nourishment provided by the church, more sparing to be sure but certainly beneficial. And if this is not enough, Cyprian concludes by telling Eucratius that Cyprian’s church will foot the bill if the rural church in Thena lacks the resources to meet Marcus’s basic needs: “But if your church is unable to meet the cost of maintaining those in need, he can transfer himself to us and receive here what is necessary for him in the way of food and clothing.”
Cyprian made sure that the church’s call to serve would include becoming the economic safety net for any brother or sister whose finances were adversely affected by their willingness to follow Jesus. Why? Because the church was family, and this is what families in the “ancient world did. The conviction that church members should answer their God-given call to serve one another by meeting one another’s material needs is, of course, central to the New Testament understanding of church family life: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (1 John 3:17).
This is not what we are asking of Reunion. But it is certainly what the call to serve and the heart of a genuine servant of Christ is capable of. In context, can we recapture at Reunion the biblical vision for an authentic Christian community through the loving, serving, equipping, caring, sharing, teaching, mentoring, and discipling model that characterized the early church?
In answering Christ’s call to serve, ask yourself the question, “Are you serving where you sit?” Read the rest of Dr. Stephen Isaac’s teaching, “Where do You Sit, Where do You Serve?” HERE.