In whose service lies perfect freedom
It’s all too easy, I find, when we think about service or servanthood, to get caught up in the negative aspects of service to others.
We think of the servant/master relationship where the poor lowly servant has to do anything and everything their all-powerful, and sometimes cruel, master wants them to; and relying on that master for their livelihoods, and even their lives.
Picture the upstairs/downstairs environments, where the servants were expected to work long and hard hours for little monetary reward. And they could be thrown out of home and job on the whim of a master who virtually owned them. To maintain their livelihoods they had to bow and scrape to their “betters”.
Picture the slave trade where the masters did own their slave, and could, and did, demand everything from their “property”. Where to go against their master’s wishes, slaves risked more than their mere livelihoods, but risked their very lives.
Picture modern forms of slavery, where people are bought and sold as sex slaves, and trafficked across national boundaries; and bonded labour, where people are tricked into taking out small loans, and then forced into working seven days a week for basic rations — but their loans are never repaid and can be passed down for generations.
Unfortunately, it’s all too easy, to see negative aspects of service to God too. We can too easily confuse serving God with serving “the Church”, or, even worse, serving people in authority or of a “higher status” within it.
But is any of that the kind servanthood Jesus was talking about when he said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45)? And how does that fit with the idea of service being perfect freedom?
I think the example Jesus gives us through the pages of our Bibles gives us the answer. Jesus served those around him, but wasn’t subservient to them, or make them feel subservient to him. He served as one amongst equals; and that’s how we should serve each other.
Our service to the Church should be just the same as our service to other people, as service to equals. A Bishop might wear really fancy clothes, and carry a lot of authority, but they are still humans, not gods. The same applies to others in the Church, they are people, human people.
And in service to God, Jesus taught us to call God our Father, though he used the word “Abba” which means Daddy. Our English habit of naming God as “Father”, rather than “Daddy”, implies a different picture of service. We’re not serving a tyrant Victorian Father, but a Daddy that loves us more than we can even imagine, and our service to him is an expression of our love for him.
To my mind, serving others as equals, and serving God as Daddy, are both all about expressing love. And both are immensely liberating, freeing us to be the people we really are — perfect freedom.
Almighty God,
in whose service lies perfect freedom:
teach us to obey you
with loving hearts and steadfast wills;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.Additional Collect for The Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council
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