Dr. M. Taylor Bach

Philippians 2:1-11 Mark 10:32-45

Sometime ago I told you a story about when I was working with a group of foreign students. I asked those foreign students what they were most fascinated with about our country. Their answer shocked me. Most of these students were from Latin America and came from countries of great poverty. Their answer was, “Even your servants have servants.” Have you been good to your servant lately? Have you eaten at a restaurant lately? They said, “Servants in our country are those who wait on us and who feed us and any of your people can go to a restaurant and have a servant serve you.” They said, “Not only that, after their servant serves you, those servants can go to a restaurant, sit down and get served by other servants. So even your servants have servants.” Wow! I'd never thought of it that way. Had you? That is fascinating. Of course, they saw us as wealthy. I know that in this tough economic time, some of you may be suffering and all of us may be fearful but we still have servants. I won't ask you to raise your hands but I bet if I asked you how many ate at a restaurant this week, I bet most of you in the congregation would raise your hand. So you had a servant waiting on you.

The scripture that Jill Parsons just read is about greatness. Have any of you ever aspired to do something great, to get noticed or recognized and to be great? Did you think about that as a kid? Did you want to be a hero, perhaps, and do something wonderful? In that scripture, we are told that if you would be great in God's eyes, you have to be as a servant. You have to serve others. Servants are generally considered lowly. Servants are generally considered humble. So we are not to be arrogant. We've talked about that frequently as I give these sermons on relationships. Relationships aren't served when we take a superior stance with a partner or with a work companion or with someone else. Our relationships are served when we try to serve one another.

When I have young couples come to me for premarital counseling, I also have to caution them that you don't give 50% to the relationship. Each one of you has to think, “I give 100% to this relationship even if my partner isn't capable of giving 100% back.” If we serve, then the relationship is built. So we have to constantly think of how we can serve. I have to constantly do an examination of conscience as to how I am serving or not serving in my relationships. I've got plenty of room to grow in that as I suspect many of you do, too.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. It is the day traditionally we honor our soldiers. We thank them for doing what? &Serving our country. And it is important that we look at those of you who have been in the military as servants of the country. Why did you get in the military? Some of you might have been drafted and didn't go in voluntarily. But once you were there, didn't you serve? If you were defending the country, you were servants of the country. One of the things that has made me most proud of our country in recent days was an interview with General Petraeus. He was saying what has turned the tide in Iraq was not all the Al-Qaeda that were killed but it was that in the surge, our soldiers began to live with the citizens. They began to rebuild schools. They reconnected water lines. They reconnected pipelines so that the people had fuel and warmth. They showed the people that they weren't there to harm them. They showed the citizens by living among them that they were there to serve them, make them safe, help them to create a democratic government, and they were there for the best interest of the people. That is what has changed the tide. All of us realize that was done with incredible risk. To mix in with people who weeks before were shooting at you. Weeks before they were creating ieds which would blow up your humvee and kill you. Now, our soldiers were serving them in Iraq and that is what has made an enormous difference according to this general.

We can be exceptionally proud of our soldiers who are there. They went there with the idea that they would protect us from terrorists who might harm or kill us even on our own soil after 911. But they were there to serve the people that they protected, not only us but the Iraqi citizens themselves. That is amazing. I believe that has been the mindset of all of our military throughout the ages. Our military has been there to serve. That is the way it should be. When our country was founded, it was founded on Christian principles. It was Christians by and large who were the framers of the documents that formed our country - the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Yes, some of them weren't all that wonderful in their own personal moral life, and yet, they created a marvelous country; a country that they served well and a country that we all want to serve.

We now live in a world that is extremely in need of servants. If we Christians are going to make this a better place, we need to think about how we can serve. I recently saw on television where there are 6.76 billion people in this world. 856 million of these live in poverty. They go to bed each night with there bellies distended, flies circling their heads, wondering where their next meal will come from, whether they will even have a next meal or will they be too weak to get up and look for it. Some of them send their children out to scavenge garbage dumps to see if they can find a morsel of food there. It is a sad situation. The statistics show that over 50% of the world's population subsists on less than two dollars a day. Over a billion subsist on less than one dollar a day in American dollars. 30,000 children die every day because they don't have enough to eat. 30,000 daily! As I speak, imagine in this short time that I speak, how many children are dying at this very moment? These aren't faceless people. These are people with faces. These are children with names. These are grownups with faces. These are someone's sons, someone's daughters, someone's parents, someone's brother and sister, and they are suffering greatly at this very moment. Eleven million children will die this year below the age of five. That is astounding. And why will they die? They will die because of their poverty. And we are the nation whose servants even have servants. Now we read that one out of five people in Ohio are in financial difficulty and daily wonder if they will be impoverished. Many of them have lost their jobs because of our economy. They are hurting severely. They have lost their homes.

It is a call for us to do something. Maybe the only thing that we can do is contribute to Our Christian World Mission (OCWM), where our denomination is partnered with Church World Service to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and provide shelter to the poor. Maybe that is the only way we can help. But I challenge you to use your imaginations to figure out other ways to help. We are a creative congregation. We've got great imaginations. Albert Einstein says, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” So let's wrack our brains and see if we can't figure out how we can contribute to alleviate poverty and suffering in this world. Maybe first of all we should do this in our own nation where we hear about elderly people eating dog food because it is cheap and all they can afford. We hear about persons in nursing homes having no one to visit them or be with them. These things are real. These things are happening. They happen while our servants have servants! We are a wealthy nation even in this time of financial crisis. We cannot become less generous. We cannot become less giving. We cannot ignore these incredible problems in the world. We have to do something about them.

Since I have been here at Pilgrim, I have not pushed hard on this because I thought we first needed to get our house in order. We had to learn how to love one another. Do you know what? We have made great strides in that. As I see you interact with each other before and after the service, I know there is a whole lot of love here for one another now. You do reach out. You are kind to each other. You care about each other. When someone is sick, you pray for that person. Some of you visit people. It is now time we go beyond our walls. It is now time that we respond, not only as Pilgrim members but as members of America, the land of the free, the home of the brave. This is our chance. We celebrate today the soldiers - the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and Marines who have served our country. But we can't stop there. We have to be those who serve. Love always finds a way.