I live on a university campus where the division between the servers and the served is very marked. Most of the served are still in their teens. They arrive in school every day brought there in a large SUV, driven not by their parents but an employed driver. It is said that this man's job is also to act as a bodyguard in case the student becomes a victim of kidnapping. The windows of the vehicle are also blacked out so that the occupants of the van cannot be seen. Some of the vehicles spend the whole day on the campus waiting until the end of school.
While the student is attending class, the driver just hangs around all day doing nothing except chatting and smoking with other drivers. For me, it is not a very edifying sight especially in an institution dedicated to promoting faith and justice. It is very vivid picture of the haves and have-nots(to which some would add a third category, the have lots). When one goes outside the campus the picture becomes even more striking with tower blocks looking down on ugly slum housing.
All in all, it is not really the picture that Jesus painted of what a world based on the reign of God should look like. The reign of God exists wherever God's will is being done. And God's will clearly involves a world where as we wrote about earlier, where people live in the world and not off it.
Jesus spoke a number of times about service and said that he himself had come to serve and not to be served. Do we really take this teaching seriously? Even where Jesus himself is concerned?
Actually our world is full of service. I often think there are kinds of service - service from below, service from above, service of brothers and sisters.
Service from below is the one we normally associate with the world. It is the conventional way of looking at our society. There are people 'serving' us everywhere and sometimes we actually call them 'servants'.
It was very clear in the television series of many year ago called 'Upstairs, Downstairs'. This series spoke about a well-off family living in a big house somewhere in London in the late 19th or early 20th century. It was a typical house of the time with about four storey - three floors and a basement. The 'ground' floor was actually the first floor and reached from outside by a flight of steps and the main front door. On this floor were the dining room and reception rooms of the house. On the upper floors were the bedrooms. This whole area was the 'Upstairs' and where the family lived, ate and entertained.
At the bottom of the house was the basement, reached by a separate 'trade-men' entrance. Here was found the kitchen, the pantry and the bedrooms(such as they were) of the staff. Such a house had quite a large staff in those days including the butler, the cook, the various maids with different chores assigned to them. This, of course, was the 'Downstairs' the area of the servants. The distinction between the two groups could not be clearer.
Perhaps, in our day it is not quite so marked but it is nevertheless very much the scene in most parts of the world today, even though there may be a veneer of democracy. Among the services from below are the thousands of people who look after us and whom we so often take for granted - the people working in our supermarkets, stores and shopping malls; the people who take care of our deliveries, of removing our waste, of cleaning our streets...The list is endless. They are the people 'below' who make life comfortable for us all.
There is then what I like to call service from above, although it may not always be seen as service or some of those engaged in it might not like it to go by the name. I am thinking of all the professional people who are engaged in providing us with different kind of needs. I am thinking of the doctor, the lawyer, the architect, the banker, the engineer and so on.
We need these people at various times to 'serve' our needs in various ways. The big difference between them and the service from below is that often are far more prosperous than those who call on their 'services'. As an example: I go to his place perhaps by walking or by public transport; he, on the other hand, will go home at the end of the day driving(or even being driven) in an expensive car, something which the patient could in no way afford.
It is clear that, when Jesus spoke about 'service' he was thinking about neither of these. What is service according to the mind of Jesus? For me, the service that Jesus gave was what I would call 'love in action'. And by 'love' I mean here a deep concern for the well-being of the brother or sister. It is a relationship of equals, neither from above nor from below. It is put very well by Jesus himself when, at the Last Supper, he got down on his knees to wash the feet of his disciples, something that would normally be done by a 'servant from below' when people came in to the house from outside.
The disciples, especially Peter(who saw himself as a leader?) were very upset. It turned their world upside down. But Jesus was not debasing himself. On the contrary, he said to them: "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord - and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done to you". - John 13:12-15 -
It means that no matter what our position in society, we are called on to devote our energies and skills to the well-being of our 'superior' brothers and sisters. We do not just 'serve' to scrape together a living nor do we 'serve' in order to enjoy a high lifestyle(literally)at the expense of others, our 'patients' and 'clients'.
And it is here I would like to include an aspect of service which I believe to be very important. A number times in Mark's gospel especially he tells us that Jesus spoke and acted with "authority". We read, for instance: "The people were amazed at his teaching because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law". - Mark 1:22 - Now, of course this can mean that Jesus, unlike the Scribes, spoke with a power emanating from himself. But there is another meaning to the word which I learnt of many years ago and which I would like to share with you.
The word 'authority' comes from the Latin verb 'augere' which means 'to make something grow'. So one can say there are two kinds of authority - overpowering and empowering. The first is the kind we associate with all kinds of dictators and so-called 'authoritarian' figures which may be anything from the president of a country to a bossy school teacher. But clearly that was not the authority of Jesus.
Jesus' was an "empowering" authority - the result of his authority was that people were stronger, better, were healed and liberated, enabled to do things they could not do before. As a result of Jesus' authority, they were bigger than before.
And so that is exactly what we are called on to do and to be. To be empowering servants, to use our particular gifts and talents to make life better for other people, to help them be everything that they can be. Wouldn't our world be a wonderful place if we all acted in this way?
BY REV. FR. FRANK DOYLE S.J. (1931 to 2011)
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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