Our Servant Souls/Soles

My church has gone off lectionary for the summer.  I try not to think about that too much.  If I could change one thing about my church, I'd have us do the complete readings.  We usually leave out the Old Testament reading, and if we get a Psalm at all, it's a snippet.  Some days, we only get the Gospel or what we once called the Epistle--whichever one the sermon will be based upon.

This summer, we're hearing sermons based on our mission statement:  "we share Christ, live by loving, care by serving, and see Christ in all."  Yes, you'd think that we don't really need to delve into that mission statement deeply.  But it's come to the pastor's attention that some segments of our church are interpreting that mission statement differently enough that he feels the need to preach on it this summer.

Yesterday, he preached on the third part of the statement:  "care by serving."  We had an out of season sermon on foot washing and other ways we serve.

He reminded us that we're called to be Kingdom people for whom humility is a virtue and servanthood a way of life.  We are called not to worry about a seat at the table, but to remember whose table it is (we had Matthew 20:  1-28 for our Gospel, the reading where the mother of the sons of Zebedee asks Jesus to assure her that her boys will have a place at both the right and the left hand of Jesus).

It was a solid sermon, with a message that we should probably hear more often--especially since it's such a different message than the ones we usually get from our culture.