Saying For Today: The place of honor is the place we serve, not the place we seek to exercise some sense of self-importance.
Open to the Light
Today's Saying - The place of honor is the place we serve, not the place we seek to exercise some sense of self-importance.
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Peter Robertson, in The Abbot's Shoes: Seeking a Contemplative Life -
In the very earliest days of my sojourn at Our Lady of the Southern Star Abbey, I was taken on something of a guided tour and formally introduced to any of the monks we met along the way. When we came to the toilet block, the floor was being scrubbed by a quite nondescript, even dishevelled person, dressed in old brown overalls. Clearly not (I thought) a headmaster, bank manager or successful entrepreneur. I was eager to be moving along, keen to meet the house's "important" occupants. In the very best way possible, the toilet cleaner helped to turn my world upside-down. John was a priest and one of the community's scholars. At that time amongst his many responsibilities was the education of those monks destined for the priesthood. Later in his life, he became the abbot.
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When a pastor, I drove up to a church building to meet another pastor who served that congregation. He met me outside, coming from a restroom with cleaning cloth in hand. He said he did this cleaning regularly and anonymoously, for, although the church leader, he needed to engage such work to be one of the many.
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In the Gospel of Matthew 26.20ff (NLT), the mother of James and John - disciples of Jesus - requests Jesus to let her two sons sit at the place of honor in the coming end-time kingdom - one on his left, the other on his right. Jesus confronts the sons, who had apparently asked their mother to make this request. Jesus says it is for those it is chosen for. So, he denies their request. The story continues...
When the ten other disciples heard what James and John had asked, they were indignant. But Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom [means of freedom] for many."
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In our readings today, the abbot-to-be and the pastor model for us this wisdom teaching Jesus gave his disciples about leadership and notoriety. We desperately need such men and women, persons willing to serve and not seek power over others. We need persons who offer themselves to exercise power with, not lord it over.
And we each can inquire: How may I embody servanthood in my daily life? One place to begin is not thinking ourselves too good to engage wholeheartedly in the tasks of everyday life. Another way is to welcome small ways daily to assist others through kindness and goodwill. No task is too apparently insignificant to be a means of prodigious Grace. This means, in Grace, no task is trivial. The place of honor is the place we serve, not the place we seek to exercise some sense of self-importance.
Last, in doing the common tasks well and with wholeheartedness, and without seeking credit, we participate in co-creation and solidarity with all. In this, we put into practice our interdependence with all creation and other humans who share this planet with us. With this perspective, washing dishes, raking leaves, caretaking for a loved one, cutting the grass, mopping the floor, cultivating the garden ... becomes liturgy. And, likewise, the job we engage for pay becomes sacramental. Hence, all done becomes holy, and we, so fulfilled in the act itself, need nothing outside the act to fulfill us.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
