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October 27, 2019“Our United Methodist Membership Vow: Service”1 Peter 2: 4-5, 9, New International Version

As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

…you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

I came into the church office the other day to find some of our good folks engaged in service. You could say that the task they were doing was right at the intersection of dull and boring. It was routine, detail-oriented, and allowed no room for creativity. I thanked them for what they were doing. One of them replied, “This looks like work, but it’s really a blessing. This is our fellowship time; we have fun together.”

Huh. Service sounds so bland. It’s work, after all. And yet here were workers engaged in service, and they were happy about it. What’s going on with that?

For stewardship season, we are working our way through our United Methodist Membership vow that we will offer our church our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness. This is service week, and I want to look at it through the lens of the priesthood of all believers.

The doctrine of the priesthood of all believers goes back to Martin Luther, the church reformer of the 1500’s. It’s the idea that regardless of a believer’s occupation, every believer is a priest. Our scripture this morning is the basis for that. Luther believed that the farm hand and the

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dairy maid were also priests. In fact, plowing the fields and milking the cows was sacred work. Just like the priest in a church, God has called every person to tasks that suit their gifts and serve the Kingdom of God.

This has huge implications for how we live. Now, all that we do—the office, the workshop, the kitchen, the garage—is a ministry that honors God! Further, your service to the church isn’t as a mere “volunteer.” You are a minister of the gospel. The priest, or the pastor, serves God in imitation of Christ, the high priest. Every person who serves God is also a priest, no matter their task. Your work, in IT, engineering, a restaurant, a hospital, your home, the church office or the kitchen is a ministry that serves others, and so serves God. We do it in imitation of the self-giving of Jesus.

Jesus served us, and ended up giving up his life as part of his service. This points to the fact that service is sacrifice. We have to give up something of our own lives to be built into God’s house. We have to give up our agenda and plans for God’s agenda and plans, and that can be painful! We want to resist! You may have your own ideas about how to use your Sunday morning, your money, your time, but priestly work involves turning all that over to God for God’s use.

How do we do that? How do we negotiate all the competing demands on us? How do we imitate Christ in the midst of our busy lives? How do we set priorities?

This is the daily walk of faith. This is why we need to pray, and why we need to worship and read scripture. We have to listen to God every day, and heed where he is leading us to use our resources and time. God calls us to priestly duties, but he also calls us to self-care. Finding the balance between giving yourself in service and renewing yourself with rest, fun, family and friends is a daily path to walk for people of faith. You need to be close to God to walk it well.

I have just said that service is sacrifice, but service is also joy. This is the great mystery of grace: when we give of ourselves, our giving is often transformed into joy!

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Dangerous Hope Mission did a service project of cleaning up the yard of a church member. A young man who had never participated before tagged along with friends. He worked hard, and he had fun. When he ran into Nancy recently, he made sure she knew that when there was another project to work, he wanted to know, so he could be there. Let that sink in for a moment. A teenager gave of himself, and discovered it was joy, and longs to continue to give of himself. That may be one of the biggest acts of evangelism this church has accomplished in a while!

When we participate in the life of Christ with our sacrificial service, we carry our crosses. That’s hard, and can be painful. But carrying a cross always leads to the Kingdom of God, those times and places where the veil between this world and the next is thin, and joy and love and peace and hope seep across into human experience.

Our scripture says we are “like living stones… being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood…” We are living stones in that we are full of life. We actually experience the joy, hope and peace that comes about because of our service.

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But we are also living stones in that we are life-giving. We shine with the wonderful light of God into other lives so that the joy, hope, and peace go beyond us into other lives and into the world. Again, that’s the mystery of grace. God’s grace multiplies our gifts to become love for the world.

“…like living stones…(we) are being built into a spiritual house…” Other translations say we are being built into a “holy temple.” If the temple is the Kingdom of God, then service is how we participate in building it. So we not only experience it, we create the Kingdom of God with our service. The church is an outpost of the Kingdom of God on earth. Your service is your participation in building that Kingdom. And together, with all our gifts, God comes closer to us and to our community.

Whether you have ever realized it or not, you are a priest of the church, a minister of the gospel. Jesus calls you to give yourself to his service, in imitation of him. And when you do, you are Jesus to others, and you help him built his Kingdom on earth.

References:

The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume XII. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998. “The First Letter of Peter,” by David L. Bartlett. See pgs. 262 –

269.

https://tifwe.org/unpacking-the-priesthood-of-all-believers/