When the Sunday to ordain and install officers rolls around, usually the pulpit is filled with lofty words to the elders in the crowd...to those who have put their time in as a deacon and now deserve the higher office. As one who has spent most of her ordained life working with deacons, I am here to tell you that, if there must be a hierarchy here, the higher calling surely is to the optional and absolutely necessary office of sympathy, witness and service, the office of deacon: an office whose duties are incumbent upon all of us to fulfill, ordained or not, as a part of the Christian community...an office derived, in part, from the cries, long ago, of neglected widows in the life of the early church.In response to those cries, "...the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, 'It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables. Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task, while we, for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word.'"
The twelve, no doubt, were right. They could not do all that needed doing in the early church. It was not humanly possible for them to carry the responsibility of proclaiming Christ crucified to the world and attend to the detail of social existence in the city of Jerusalem. It was not remotely practical for them to meet the daily needs of widows--be they Palestinians or Hellenists--while plotting out the next missionary journey. It was neither wise nor prudent, they thought, to cut short a prayer for the sake of waiting on tables.
So, at least in the Reformed tradition's understanding of church order, the ordained offices of the church--minister of the word and sacrament, elder and deacon--took shape, not primarily around the holiness of the person, or by means of apostolic succession, but around the various jobs which needed doing and the gifts given: preaching, teaching, administering the sacraments, ruling the church's life and offering sympathy, witness and service to those in need. No one person could do all of that! The twelve, no doubt, were right!
Nevertheless, there is something not quite right, which sticks in the throat and lingers in the ear, as the apostles' words are heard to order the life of the early church and, as it has happened, to reorder the life of the church in these latter and reformed days. "It is not right," Luke tells us they said, "that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables."
Perhaps the twelve only meant to say, "Our gift is preaching while another's gift is cooking." Such was a note which obviously needed sounding by the time Paul wrote his letter to the church in Corinth, reminding them that all gifts were necessary and of value: "Now there are a variety of gifts," he writes, "but the same Spirit ...varieties of service, but the same Lord...varieties of activities, but the same God who activates...To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." With those words we will begin our service of ordination today, we who still need reminding that our God delights in variety and has use for all. So perhaps the twelve meant only to say, "Serving tables, important as it is, is not our forte."
Or perhaps they intended to imply simply that the more urgent task now was proclamation, while the ongoing task of attending to the poor simply required more than they, personally, had to give at the moment. Even Jesus said something about the poor always being with us, meaning an extravagant response to the Word-made-flesh in him might momentarily take priority. Moreover, this care of the poor had always been a part of synagogue life, while the preaching and teaching of Jesus as the Christ was radically new, and needed the best they had to give from the beginning. Priorities, then, rather than the ultimate importance of one task over another, might have been the reason behind this remark of the twelve.
Still, there remains in the apostles' words a hint of hierarchy or, more accurately, a slight suggestion of deprecation, as regards the simple rendering of service, as regards what became the basis for the office of deacon, as regards waiting on tables. Or at least I thought it to be a hint, a slight suggestion, until I noticed a footnote in the New Oxford Annotated Bible which takes this hint, this suggestion, and almost leaps to assure the reader, despite the fact these seven chosen to wait on tables are "traditionally regarded as the first deacons," nevertheless, this Oxford scholar makes haste to assure us: "Their functions are more like those of presbyters or bishops, for Stephen teaches and does not merely wait on tables." Hmmm.
Where has he gone, so early in the church's life, this One who came not to be served, but to serve? Writes one theologian, "To work in the personal service of another human being is, once more, the least coveted role in human society....It was scandalous for Jesus to interpret His own role, and to present the terms of discipleship, by using this model [of a domestic servant]. But He did so with the personal service of the table waiter firmly in view."
Why? For the most part and in the first place, waiting on tables is a thankless job. Like the ten lepers who were healed, nine times out of ten, the one being served has a more highly developed sense of entitlement which tends to override any mere humble expression of gratitude [not to mention overriding the humanity of the server]. Ask any homemaker of an evening when supper happens to be a little late or a bit on the burned side or not quite what the family had in mind! Ask a waiter with ten tables who happened to forget that the dressing was to be on the side. Been there, done that...and had that done to me.
Or to push "waiting on tables" into service as a metaphor for much of behind-the scenes church life, ask the sextons of our church home, for instance, how often, beyond the orders they receive, any of us think to say "Thank you," when things are well kept. Or ask Elly Deekin how often critique on the other end of a telephone when a number does not add up rather than gratitude for details attended. Or consider the congregant, in no particular state of need, who is quick to point out how the church's care has not lived up to his or her expectations. Or keep in mind how freely critique flows of a committee whose conclusions may not coincide with one's own, but whose months of labor, on our behalf, go uncommended by us all. Or to take this thankless response to a more ultimate level, most any good Christian can be prompted, by an unpleasant turn of events, into a prayer of more outrage than of awe toward the God who came to serve. But the point, this morning, is not so much about the attitude or the gratitude of the served. Rather it is to underline the necessarily thankless nature of the role of servant, and so the office of deacons, and so the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Says Karl Barth of the diaconate in relation to the offices of the church, "...the work of a powerful preacher or evangelist, a dignified leader of worship, a successful pastor or a learned theologian, can so easily be encircled by an ambiguous glory, in which their character as service is easily lost, and the Christians active in these ways seem rather to achieve a superior mastery and control over [people] and situations." [It is not right that we should neglect the word of God to wait on tables.]
"But," he goes on to say, "the things done in diaconate, e.g., caring for the sick, the feeble, and the mentally confused and threatened, looking after orphans, helping prisoners, finding new homes for refugees, stretching out a hand to stranded and shattered fellow-men of all kinds, can obviously never be more than drops in a bucket, and are usually done in concealment, so that by their very nature, no great glory can attach to them, and they can be undertaken and executed only as pure, selfless and unassuming service, which might well be hampered or even totally spoiled by even occasional attempts at domination."
In other words, being a deacon is intended to be an office shaped by hidden and so thankless acts. The service we render another in need--especially as that one is invisible and neglected in a well-healed society: sick, feeble, elderly, homeless, lonely, hungry--if the service rendered that one is for Christ's sake, it must be a service done in hiding...a service which is utterly personal and yet, at the same moment, completely anonymous...a service given no glory in the world, just as His service was given no glory, but a cross. Perhaps this is why, when the Nominating Committee is seeking elders, it may have to ask nine folks to get eight yeses. But when they go asking after candidates for the diaconate, chances are they may ask thirty people to fill ten vacancies! Because, you see, there is an honor which accrues to the office of elder: "It is not right that they neglect the word (or the ruling of the church's life) for waiting on tables." But when it comes to table service (I have a field to plow, I am sorry, I cannot serve...I have a father to bury, I am sorry, I cannot follow): we know implicitly that our hands must get dirty and the details of human need must be remembered and the endless cries of the least of these must quietly be met, and our lives will never quite be our own. Moreover, no one will be there to pat you one the back, or point to your achievements, or celebrate your gifts. Only Christ will be there.
Hence there is only one comfort to give to the deacons in the crowd this morning concerning their necessarily thankless office... hence there is only one word to speak to each and every one of you in this congregation who are more involved than anyone will ever know (that's the point)cin the upholding of the fallen, the binding of the wounded, the comforting of them that mourn: that Word is Jesus Christ. Christ alone will be there, and that is all you really need to know or trust if you are to fulfill this lowly office of sympathy, witness and service, of waiting on tables. He has preceded you and meets you in the broken lives now given into your care (When did we see thee hungry or lonely or in prison?)...He is with you, by your side, and will not abandon the one in his service (I came not to be served but to serve...lo I will come to you, I will not eave you comfortless)...He is in you as you represent him through hidden acts of sympathy and witness and service, to all who wonder if God has forgotten them (Not I, you will say, but the grace of God in me). And that is enough. No thanks needed!
The point--having only one to make--can now be well taken. For the twelve, in their very deprecation of what became the office of deacon, namely the task of table service, preserved for that office its essential nature--its thanklessness--and thereby its discipleship to him who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant...its service of him who humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Thanks be to God!