Sermon prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church—the Morning Promise Service—9/2/01 

by Gregory S. Kaurin, associate pastor for spiritual care and development

 

Texts: Proverbs 25:6-7, Luke 14: 1, 7-14

                                                    

The Sermon--

Servants of Prestige

 

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Do you know of whom I am in awe, every time I encounter him or her?  A good waiter or waitress!  You know the kind I’m talking about.  They put you at ease when you walk in, make you feel welcome, like you’re a guest, and not an inconvenience in their restaurant.

 

I was once a waiter—of a kind—very briefly.  I did a two-month summer stint in a Pizza Hut® Restaurant.  It was a horrible experience, partly because I wasn’t a good waiter—(and my tips showed it).  But also, I found it to be a terrible experience of people and basic inhumanity.

Don’t get me wrong; there were many wonderful people, and forgiving customers… very forgiving customers.  But in that brief experience I learned what it’s like to have a job that assumes the generosity of people’s tips by paying less than minimum wage, and then expects machine-like perfection with precise efficiency …even from teenagers, for goodness’ sake!  I learned what it’s like to have people come in with the attitude that they’re paying good money to treat you less than human …at least compared to themselves.

Ever since then, I’ve been a pretty good tipper, even if the service is a bit slow; I can usually see good reason for it.  And since then, I find it almost heart-wrenching to see how some other customers are treating their waiters.  You’ve seen it, too, haven’t you?

And I’m not talking about pickiness.  I think it’s perfectly fine to ask how crisp the lettuce is today, or if you can have the salad dressing in separate dish placed on the left side of your plate. 

But some people never look their waitress in the eye.  They return her smile with their cold distance and their impatient sighs, and their total lack of understanding or human forgiveness.

 

Tell me, have you ever said grace over your restaurant meal?  Maybe you have.  But have you ever thanked God for the hands that prepared it, or the hands that brought it to your table?  Have you asked God to bless all the hands that have handed your Big Mac Value Meal through your car window: that teenager looking toward college, that single mother trying to make ends meet, or that retiree trying to fill his day and supplement his Social Security check?

 

Christians, in the world: we are always guests, we are always servants.  Jesus said, “When you come into someone else’s house, when you come to dinner, come as a guest.  Don’t assume a greater importance than you actually have.  Stay aware that even the slaves and paid servants around you, if they weren’t so busy, have enough human dignity and importance to sit in the seat of honor beside you.”  Perhaps you never pictured Jesus saying this about restaurant etiquette.  I believe it applies, and that applies well-beyond dinner tables and restaurants.

We are Christians.  That makes us different, or at least it suggests that we carry a peace and an assurance with us that affect how we treat others.  We are guests.  Servants.  Even as leaders, even while we try to inspire things in others like: quality, punctuality, productivity and efficiency.  Even as leaders, we lead as servant leaders and as guests among dignified guests, whether they are employees or customers.

 

Sadly enough, we all know that those people, who demand great attention in the world, get it.  Sure enough, people who are snotty and picky with lots of sarcastic attitude,  or those loud, obnoxious and over-assuming people, …they get attention they’re looking for, and people do try to answer their demands …up to a certain point. 

Some might mistake that attention for respect.  But think about it.  It may work, but is that really how you want people to think about you?  Is it really “respect”?

Phil Collins has a song about a young man who carries a gun.  Others would say the same thing about their demanding attitudes, that they carry it (they carry this gun, or they carry this demanding attitude) to get the respect, and to keep others from walking on them.  In the song, the young man says, “Without it, I don’t get it, so that’s why I carry one.”

Baloney.  Fear and condescension do not earn respect.  It gets attention for the moment.  But the attention it gets is a very thin curtain over disgust and a total lack of respect.

 

So, even in those times and places when think we’ve paid good money, we have not bought the right to walk all over people’s feelings, or to treat them as mere objects for our comfort, pleasure or convenience.  Jesus taught us, not who is our neighbor.  He didn’t waste his breath trying to define who we’re supposed to treat with kindness and dignity.

Instead, he taught us how to be neighbors.  He taught us that we are not only paying customers when we walk into a place of business, or when we walk into a schoolroom, or a shopping mall.  We are also a neighbor to, and a guest of, this waitress, or this sales clerk.  We are Christian customers, students, employers.

So, we are called to be Christians, to be neighbors.  Even in those places we might not think of it, we’re still called to extend the kindness, welcome-ness, understanding, and forgiveness that God first gave to us.

 

There is a better way to encourage good service, and even pleasant service, anyway.  An old proverb says that you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar.  I really do think the better, and the Christian, approach to encouraging good service, and a more enjoyable life, is to point out and thank people for their hard work.  I’d even say that it’s a kind and Christian thing to write a letter of appreciation for good service.  Notice who your waitress is, or who that helpful floor clerk is, and later send a note to the company.  Let them know!  And then sign it with “God’s blessings.”

You can still ask for your salad dressing on the side with politeness while looking her in the eye, starting the request with please and ending the exchange with thank you.  Return his smile.  Wish them all a good afternoon, too!

We need to be keenly aware that we walk this journey, and we feast at this banquet beside others, and we are served by others who are not inferior to us.  They, too, are honored guests beside us, and yet they are serving us.  They make pretty good examples for us.

There are times when we might be the ones sitting at the table and paying the bill, but as Christians, we are always, even then, servants to those serving us.  We are called to serve up the peace and forgiveness of Christ through our words and actions.

 

Believe it or not, we may even need to consider briefly how this attitude plays out in church, even here at worship.

Many of us have carried this customer attitude with us into our places of worship.  I’ve used this attitude at church conventions and elsewhere.  We have this idea that we pay this church—maybe we don’t even do that, maybe it’s enough that we simply walked into that gathering—and for that we expect to be served.  Sometimes I almost expect to be served the way I want, with the kind of music, sermons and atmosphere that most affect me.

I certainly understand people who look for the church and worship experience that feeds them best.  I think that’s important.

But what’s a little harder are the few people that actually walk away personally offended when they don’t feel they were fully “service-d” by that church or in that worship service.  Personally offended, as though their way is the way.  “The customer comes first.”

 

After our last vacation and on our way home, Pauline and I were in the special services line at the airport.  (We’ve become pretty familiar with this line lately; it’s the one you get in after you’ve missed a connection.)  We were waiting for our turn to be re-booked.  The woman ahead of us was very upset. She wanted to get into Seattle in time for her nephew’s wedding rehearsal, and no matter how hard the woman behind the counter worked for her, nothing was good enough.

Soon, everything was that agent’s fault, as if she was the one who sent the "alleged” thunderstorm that delayed our flight.  Literally, this customer wanted the agent to cancel someone else’s ticket on the very next flight so that she could take that place!  Angry that she wasn’t given an individually chartered jet, Pauline and I had to listen to her complain behind us all the way to the hotel on our shuttle.  She muttered, “What ever happened to ‘the customer comes first’?”

I wanted to turn to her and say, “Lady, it’s not the ‘customer’ who comes first; it’s the ‘customers’ who come first.  Your ticket was no better than mine and yet that agent heard your need and got you on a flight on another airline six hours before my flight!  She worked hard for you.  Are you so blinded by the end of your nose?”  We walk this journey and we fly this flight beside others.

 

Some of you may have read the religious column by Rabbi Mark Glickman in Saturday’s Tacoma Tribune.  He tends to write a bit tongue-in-cheek.  I sometimes like that style, and I occasionally like what he says. 

He was suggesting, that in worship we need to take a more humble approach and consider that worship is a community effort, and not stylized to individual tastes.  Moreover, we each need to discover what I might be doing that keeps me from experiencing full worship in that place.

Some of us, and I include myself, have a tendency to wear critical attitudes that prevent us from actually worshipping.  We need to do our best in worship to keep in mind that these words are a prayer, that this imperfect music is trying to speak truths, and was written by somebody with worship of God on his or her mind.  And, more important, Christ promised that the Holy Spirit would be present—not when the music is good, or when the pastor is on fire, but—whenever two or three gather in his name.  Whenever!

Sometimes we forget that we are guests of prestige only because the host, God, has invited us each up.  But even then we remain guests among other guests, and servants alongside other servants.

 

Now, let’s go back into the world.  What about being even more obvious with our worship and Christianity in the world?  What about preaching and evangelism in workplace or in school?

Let me suggest that we take this one step at a time.  Let’s all learn humility, kindness and gentleness first.  The last thing I’d want is someone arrogantly pushing Christianity into people’s faces, and holding it against them like it’s some kind of deadly weapon of respect.

Your Christianity is nothing to hide.  It’s something that is a part of you that has a prominent place and priority.  It ought to be at least as natural as talking about your husband or child or parent or job or pet parakeet.  At least.  But Christ approached his world, not as though he owned it, not condescendingly.  He approached it lovingly.  He was angry when appropriate, but individually he welcomed even the most offensive kinds of people and treated them as his guests of honor.

He ministered and served those that social order said he was above.  Then he pointed them to the Father who inspired his kindness, acceptance and forgiveness. 

This is preaching at its finest.  It is evangelism, because “evangelism” means, “good message.”  Not a scary, bullying message, it’s a good message.

 

He came into the world, not as if he owned it, or as if he were the guest of honor, but instead Christ emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant, and even dying for it.  In a similar way, we Christians do not own the world.  We are guests in it.  We are called to listen, to care, accept, and forgive and then to point to a new way.  Amen.

 

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