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The Jewish scholar and rabbi, Naftali Brawer, tells a story I’ve always remembered of the time he visited a synagogue in Jerusalem for the Kabbalat Shabbat service; this is a ceremony with origins in the mystical traditions of medieval Judaism, a ceremony of ritual and song welcoming the Sabbath, personified as a queen. Rabbi Brawer had heard of this particular synagogue full of young people, famous for its lively services, and he wanted to see it for himself and discover why it was packed all the time.
When he arrived, he struck up a conversation with one of the regulars: small talk, introductions, stuff like that. But then Rabbi Brawer asked, very reasonably, a simple question: “How long is the service? When will it be over?” An understandable question, he was a visitor in town just wanting information. He didn’t think anything of it. But the answer he received wasn’t all that friendly; in fact, it was a bit rude. For when he asked how long the service would be, the man just looked at him and said, “If that’s the kind of question you ask, you really don’t belong here.” Not the friendliest response; I doubt that guy was on the welcome committee. Yet it didn’t run Rabbi Brawer off. Instead it made him stay. In fact, he returned every week after, even though the service lasted about two hours.[1] Because he understood what he meant; he understood that if he wanted really to experience what was so special about the place, then he couldn’t be just some spiritual tourist, some religious consumer, somebody just merely interested. “If that’s the kind of question you ask, you really don’t belong here.” Rude on the surface, but maybe it wasn’t rude in truth. Maybe it’s just what needed to be said, what he needed to hear. And maybe it’s what we need to hear too.
Now I suggest this—that maybe we need to hear it too—because, quite simply, Jesus talked like that. Forthright, even sometimes acerbic: Jesus talked this way on occasion. It’s the fruit of biblical illiteracy to think Jesus was constantly nice, constantly gentle in every word he spoke. Jesus—I seem always to be reminding people—was a rustic Jewish carpenter possessed of a rather scorching prophetic fire. Upsetting his listeners was something he often achieved. His first time preaching, for instance, the congregation tried to throw him off a cliff.[2] He didn’t measure his words to men; rather, he plainly spoke the truth even when it got him in trouble, even when bound and beaten before Pilate. “You people worship what you do not understand,” Jesus said plainly to the Samaritan woman.[3] “[Y]ou say, ‘He is our God.’ You do not know him,” he said to the elite and faithful of his day.[4] Jesus was that sort of guy; he wasn’t always nice. Yet he was and is the way, the truth, and the life, and his is the only name under heaven given to us by which we are to be saved.[5] And so, it’s important that we are people mature enough and strong enough to hear the hard words of Jesus—because he is truth—the hard words of Christianity and the Church too. It’s important that as Christians we’re grown-up enough to hear God tell us things we don’t like to hear, to read in the word of God things we don’t like to read, and to hear from the Church things which convict us, which challenge us. “If that’s the kind of question you ask, you really don’t belong here.” What if somebody here said that to you? Now to be clear, I hope no one does; but what if they did? Would you run off mad, maybe tweet about it or leave a nasty message of our Facebook page? What would you do? And would you be right? It’s a tricky question. And that’s because truth is often like a slap in the face. Which, of course, is why so many of us like lies.
In today’s gospel, Jesus is tired of dealing with the religious pretensions and hypocrisy of the elite. He just told a rather depressing story about a rich man who just never gets it, that he ought to have befriended and helped the poor man just outside his door. Frustrated perhaps, he then turns to his disciples and tells them to live kingdom lives: have faith, he says; forgive inexhaustibly just as the Father forgives—yes, even that guy you’re thinking of right now; live in righteousness, without scandal. Turning to his disciples, to those who’ve chosen to follow him, he tells them, in substance: just be Christians. But then he says on top of it, “And don’t congratulate yourselves about it!” Instead say, “‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we’re obliged to do.’”[6] He’s saying to his disciples—and maybe he’s saying it to us too—that they shouldn’t think about all the merit they’ve stacked up or the credit they’ve earned just yet.
It’s like what a wise monk told me on the last day of seminary: “You haven’t done the Church any favors yet.” Maybe Jesus is telling us to resist the temptation of self-congratulation—because that’s just what the Pharisees did, you see. Because self-congratulation is spiritually blinding.[7] And maybe that’s the lesson for us, that we need genuinely to embrace what it means to be a servant so that we can still see Jesus. Maybe it’s the case that the reason we don’t see Jesus, the reason we have a hard time keeping faith, is because we’re not serving as we ought to; we’re too busy asking what the Church can do for us. Maybe that’s the deeper spiritual point, that we need to remember that to be a Christian is to serve. But that’s truly to serve—to put oneself at the complete and not just extra-curricular service of the Lord and of neighbor. You know what I mean: when we sign-up to serve just enough that it doesn’t cut into our normally scheduled lives; when we treat adult Christian service like a high school kid treats service hours; when we serve simply because it makes us feel better, more than because help is needed. What Jesus is saying is that as Christians, we must always practice the faith, that it’s not extraordinary or heroic for you or I to live like a Christian at all times; rather, it’s expected. He’s saying that when Christians serve, they don’t just do things; more significantly, they put themselves in the service of others; being a servant isn’t a part time job, but fulltime; real Christian servants don’t just help when it’s convenient for them to help; they help whenever they’re called upon; they don’t choose the times of their service; they choose to be servants. And then they stay humble, because they know what God did for them; they remember the cross. And because they know they couldn’t pay that back in a hundred-thousand lifetimes, our salvation by grace from a well-deserved damnation.
And so, what does this mean for us? The questions, of course, which we ought to put to ourselves are about our service. Are we genuine servants? Do we serve God or others or the Church only when it’s convenient? It’s like the guy one time who told me the reason he couldn’t to Mass every Sunday is because he’s got two kids, you see, and there’s so much going on. Poor guy didn’t know who I was, until I just smiled and told him about my four kids and my saintly wife and called him out manure he was shoveling. Are we really servants? Do we show up when called upon? Is my service about my own ego, or is it about truly helping others? These are questions I ask myself daily. I hope you ask them too. I also hope I’m willing to let the Church call me out on my rationalizations and justifications; I hope I’m not so immature that I can’t be criticized and told the hard truth of things. And, again, I hope you are too. I hope we’re a community of servants that hear the truth and accept it and live it. Because that’s the only way we’ll remain a Christian community and not devolve into a club. If we remain humble servants, always ready to help both God and each other. Amen.
[1] Naftali Brawer, A Brief Guide to Judaism, 140
[2] Luke 4:29
[3] John 4:22
[4] John 8:54-55
[5] John 14:6; Acts 4:12
[6] Luke 17:1-10
[7] John 5:44; 12:42-43
© 2019 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield
