Our Vows: Service

I'm gonna go out of order here. Normally this would be gifts, but I really want to go ahead and cover service before I lose the train of thought that I have for it. So thank you for your patience (or whatever it is) and indulgence.

One of the vows we take (or should) is the vow to support the Church, the Body of Christ as a whole, with our service. So what does that mean? I know that for me, many times it brings to mind the images of helping others, and mission work either overseas or on short term mission trips. These are all great things, but it seems that in some ways we have glorified the idea of being a missionary to almost a rock star kind of status. Does that make sense? We like to bring in the people who are called to Africa and to China and the Middle East and hear what they have to say and we look at them with a sense of awe many times...I know that I have felt that way when I think about people that have done such things. I'm not saying that we shouldn't respect them or anything like that, but I think there is more to this vow of service than that.

The story comes to mind of Mary and Martha. These two ladies were the sisters of Lazarus. They were friends of Jesus. In fact they had him over to their house on at least one occasion. Having Jesus over would have been a pretty big deal you know? So Martha begins to do exactly what Roni or Mom would do--she starts to clean and work. She is cooking and getting everything ready for dinner while Jesus and the guys are hanging in the living room doing what they do. I imagine that Jesus was teaching and the guys were listening. Maybe he was just hanging out and sharing some stories from the road--like we youth ministers tend to do when we get together. Whatever it was that he was doing, Mary was right there with them. She was sitting at Jesus' feet listening to him and just taking in what he had to say. So here is poor Martha who is running around like crazy, doing women were expected to do at that time, she was doing the serving and playing hostess.

Now I have been around both Roni and Mom as they are doing this kind of thing, and I can tell you, they are not exactly relaxed in doing this. In fact they are a little stressed about it. They would like to have a little help in fact. This is where we find Martha. She is working her tail off and all she really wants is a little help from her sister who is going against what tradition and custom says she should be doing. So Martha understandably goes to Jesus and asks if he will please send Mary to help her. "I've been working all day to make sure that everything is the way it is supposed to be and she is just sitting here not lifting a finger to help, Lord. I am serving here."

At this point Jesus gently rebukes Martha. "Martha, you are serving you're right, but you see Mary has chosen the better part of this deal." This makes it sound a bit like Jesus is telling Martha that her serving is not important. That however isn't the case. What we can take from this as far as what our vow of service means is this: in order for us to have an attitude of service like Jesus (which we should), we must also sit at His feet and learn from Him what it really means to serve others.

Philippians 2:3-8 Paul talks about the attitude of service that Jesus had. He willing left behind (at least temporarily) being an eternal part of the Trinity in order to carry out God's plan of salvation and redemption for humanity. He died on the cross in order to see God's plan fulfilled. He did the things that had to be done, not just the parts that He wanted to do.

I don't think there is any better example of this found in Scripture than in the beginning of chapter 13 of John's Gospel. Here Jesus knows that his time has come. This is it, his last meal with the disciples. They are of course all there: Peter, John, James, Andrew---Judas. Jesus knows what will happen to himself and these men in the next few hours. He knows that all of them but John will run away when he is arrested; he knows that Peter will deny him three times, likely all within earshot of Jesus, when pressed about being associated with him; he knows too that Judas will soon be going to see the leading priests and collecting 30 pieces of silver in return for his betrayal of Jesus. And yet, Jesus does something that is amazing.

Jesus stands up, removes is robe, wraps a towel around his waist, fills basin with water and begins to wash the feet of these 12 men. Think about what that means for a second. These were men who walked everywhere they went. They either wore leather sandles or were barefoot. The roads were dusty to say the least, their feet would have been sweaty from walking and the heat of the day. They would be caked with dirt and who knows what else. They would smell. They could have fungus on them. This was a common courtesy extended to guests in the Jewish custom when they entered the house. It was however done by the lowest of the slaves, and not by a Jewish slave even, that is how bad it was. And yet Jesus, the Lord and Rabbi for these 12 men takes it upon himself to play the part of the servant and wash their feet.

He knew what was about to happen, who would deny him, runaway from him and betray him, and yet he did it anyway. This is the attitude to service that Paul is talking about in Philippians 2. It is service in it's purest form. As a my friend Zac said "it is the performing of certain tasks which are motivated by Love, not by any desire for self-fulfillment or gain." It is the kind of service that we are vowing to offer when we say we will support the Body of Christ with our service. Peace and Love y'all.

Crash and Bash

So Tuesday night I was talking to Boo about what she wanted for supper. She informed me that what she wanted was Rama Noodles (Ramon Noodles for the uninformed). I told her that she needed to pick something else 1) because I didn't know if we had any and 2) I didn't want to fix them if we did. So we began to discuss this a bit.

I picked up my fists and told her, "I've got your Rama Noodles right here: this is Rama (my left fist) and this is Noodles (obviously my other fist)." Boo looked at me and raised her 6 year old fists to me and said "Oh yeah? Well this is Becky (left) and Sally(right)." Not exactly great and fear inspiring fist names, you know? So I said "Oh yeah? Well this is Thunder (left) and Lightening (you know)."

This exchange continued for a couple more namings. I had Crash and Bash, and Boo had Thunder and Crash I think. And then she ended it. She finally told me "Well this is God (left) and this is Jesus (right)." Really how do you top that? All I could tell her that I really didn't think it was right to name our fists God and Jesus, as in many ways it seemed a bit counter to what they are about--especially that whole turn the other cheek part. Something just wrong about having a fist named Jesus. Peace and Love y'all.

The Game within the Game

Ok, so I am about a day or so behind on everything with my blogging, so I will try to get caught up here today. In case you didn't know it, there is a huge pop culture phenomenon taking place this Sunday in Tampa, Florida. That phenomenon will be called Super Bowl 43 (I can't remember all the letters to do it in the Roman numerals, sorry but not really). I blogged about this early last week about the Cardinals being so unexpected and the Steelers having such tradition, so that is not what this will be about this week.

No I wanted to go with the other part of the Super Bowl: the Commercials. You know that you will watch at least part of the game (ok, the broadcast) for no other reason than to see the commercials that are being aired. And why not? Most times they are the best commercials that we see all year. This is where companies really pull out all the stops and go big or go home. Granted it's not always successful, but hey you might as well give it a shot.

This year the cost for a single :30 second slot in the game is a measly $3 million. Or as Walt Mueller of CPYU put it, "$100,000 per second." That's a lot of money. And the thing is, businesses pay it just to get thier product out there. This is due in large part to the fact that we are so very consumer driven at this time in our culture. These businesses know that if they are willing to dish the cash, people will see their product. And whether the ad is the best or the absolute worst, someone is going to see it and will give theat product some kind of chance thus making the ad a (small, marginal) success.

Now on a lighter note, here is a video of last years top 10 Super Bowl ads. These should be a taste of what we will be seeing again this year during timeouts, between quarters, after punt returns and kick returns, while the teams are in the huddle, and while there is still time left on the play clock...basically every possible chance.



Again, I'm taking the Cardinals 31-24, and a co-MVP of Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald. Peace and Love y'all.

The Escalator

So I didn't ever get around to doing a random thing last week, and then I happened to come across this one today. I thought it was both funny and really very true as a message about how we seem to view exercise sometimes. Hope you enjoy this one.



Isn't that just too true though as far as how we might react to getting stuck on an escalator? It's supposed to be about the convenience and even though all they would have to do is walk a few steps, it's like they have forgotten how it should work. Anyway, I just wanted to share this and a couple of thoughts. Peace and Love y'all.

The Beard

So I was looking at this list today of pictures of celebrities that had made "bad choices" in what they decided to wear out in public. For the most part, I don't really care what they are wearing or what not, but this picture of Joaquin Phoenix grabbed my attention. I knew that he had retired from acting to follow a career in music, but I wasn't sure about his new look until I saw this. So It got me thinking about what else he could do with a beard like that. Here is what I thought of.

10) With that beard he could be getting ready to play the Unibomber in some kind of biopic.

9) He could be getting ready to move to Seattle and join a grunge band.

8) He could be heading to the Pacific Northwest to give up both movies and music and become a lumberjack.

7) It could be that he has started trying to live his life according to the Torah.

6) As a supporter of PETA he could be starting a refuge for small animals on his face.

5) It could be that he just really likes being single and would like to stay that way.

4) He is just a really big fan of Cousin IT and plans to enter various Cousin It look-a-like contests.

3) He thinks that the Taliban look is the height of fashion.

2) He is hoping to be part of a relaunch of the old show Grizzly Adams.

1) He's just a really big fan of Jack's beard from the show LOST.

Peace and Love y'all.