Like a Servant for the Very First Time

I watched the passion again last night. I hate that movie. It is fantastic, well done and life changing, but I hate watching it. I like the way it moves me to worship the Lord but those 2 hours are tough for me. I hadn’t seen it since last February when I saw it in the theater on Ash Wednesday, the day it came out. The first time I tried to watch every bit of it and not cover my eyes. I felt it was important to take it all in. This time I didn’t even try. I spent a good amount of time, head in hands.

The thing that got me the most this time was JC’s servant hood. There was a flashback where he washed one of the disciple’s feet. A perfect example of servant hood. But there was more. An even better example of servant hood was the way he took our sins. I don’t mean to sound cliché or cheesy, but I really never realized that side of the cross. It was the ultimate act of servant hood.

Servant hood is something that we have skewed in the modern church. The idea today is that if you hand our bulletins at church, or if you play electric guitar on the worship team that you have done your service. I am not knocking those things. They are both vital parts of making ministry work. My point is that people have lost touch with the service lifestyle that Christ embodied. He would not have stopped at ushering, for fear of burning out. Why can’t we live like that?

For the past few weeks there has been a small problem at church. There is the always pleasant smell of dead rodent coming from underneath the stage. If you were up there, you probably noticed it. Don’t have a very strong sense of smell and even I got a whiff of it. If I had to guess, I would say that at least 10 people told me about it. “Thomas, it smells like something died under the stage.” “Thomas could you have Sam (our church maintenance guy) take a look and see if there is something dead under here?” “You really need to get Sam up here to get whatever’s down there out.” This went on for at least two weeks. I am quite confident that JC would have taken a different approach. Let’s face it, no one, not even Sam, wants to pull dead rodents out of cramped stages. It is never fun. I have to believe that my Lord, the one who suffered every lashing depicted in the Passion, would have done something like this to serve his brother. If you are one of those people who said something to me or anyone about the smell, please do not take offense at this. I feel equally ashamed because I did nothing more than relay these messages to Sam. I personally felt ashamed of myself. I think of myself as a servant, but so rarely do I do something that no one would notice, that I don’t have to do. Jesus did not have to die, but he did, for me, and everyone else, and so many of us did not notice what an act of service that was.

I said a few weeks ago that this was one of the areas of my life that I need to work on. I know that the Lord is confirming that in me now. My service is not complete, when I lead worship, or preach. God wants more than that, and I will serve him.