Summer Fellowship: Servant vs. Prophet--Round 1

Submitted by Kristofer Lindh... on July 7, 2008 - 5:24pm.

The Episcopal Church, as do other denominations, has a daily office lectionary cycle, so that the gathered Body of Christ once dispersed out into the world can join together in reading the scriptures in community with one another. A significant part of my spiritual practice for many years now has been to read scripture daily. In today’s reading from the Gospel according to Matthew, there was one line in particular that leapt from the page as I read: “the greatest among you will be your servant” (23:11). There is a lot of wonderful material written these days about the ministry of servanthood, the servant church, and the servant God. The ministry of deacon holds up this image of servant quite clearly in many of our mainline traditions. For twenty years now, I have been involved in servant ministry that brought me direct connection with others and provided me with opportunities to, as the Book of Common Prayer’s Baptismal Covenant reads, “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself” (305). These opportunities to serve and enter into relationship with others, are for me as much opportunities to worship as coming before the altar for communion. It is in these exchanges that I experience the incarnate God in the world and feel connection with my sisters and brothers. It is a spiritual discipline to seek the face of Christ in those I am called to serve and be in community with. It is an act of worshiping the living God who is at work in the world through each of us.

As I serve as a Beatitudes Society summer fellow at Interfaith Worker Justice in Chicago and have gone through extensive week-long religious-labor organizing training, I have thought a lot about the differences between direct service, or what some call charity ministries, and the social justice ministries that we have been assigned to this summer as fellows. In my work to do outreach to congregations and invite them into the arena of economic and worker justice, I sometimes get responses like: that is not our thing, we are feeding the hungry at the food pantry, or volunteering at the shelter. This direct service ministry is critical. I remind you that Jesus tells us, “the greatest among you will be your servant”. People must have their basic needs met and we in the Church have a responsibility to participate in this work in the world. But wait, doesn’t the Church also have the responsibility of asking the prophetic questions of why people are without food and shelter? So which do we choose? Which is more important? Tune in tomorrow, for Round 2 of Servant vs. Prophet, to find out.

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