Oh! brethren, if we, however imperfectly, have taken into mind and
heart that picture of Him who was and is amongst us as 'One that
serveth,' how sharp a test, and how stringent, and, as it seems to
us sometimes, impossible, a commandment are involved in the 'even
as' of my text. When we think of our grudging services; when we
think of how much more apt we are to insist upon what men owe to us
than of what we owe to them; how ready we are to demand, how slow we
are to give; how we flame up in what we think is warranted
indignation if we do not get the observance, or the sympathy, or the
attention that we require, and yet how little we give of these, we
may well say, 'Thou hast set a pattern that can only drive us to
despair.' If we would read our Gospels more than we do with the
feeling, as we trace that Master through each of His phases of
sympathy and self-oblivion and self-sacrifice and service, 'that is
what I should be,' what a different book the New Testament would be
to us, and what different people you and I would be!
There is no ground on which we can rest greatness or superiority in
Christ's kingdom except this ground of service. And there is no use
that we can make either of money or of talents, of acquirements or
opportunities, except the use of helping our fellows with them,
which will stand the test of this model and example. 'It is more
blessed to give than to receive.' The servant who serves for love is
highest in the hierarchy of Heaven. God, who is supreme, has stooped
lower than any that are beneath Him, and His true rule follows, not
because He is infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, or any
of those other pompous Latin words which describe what men call His
attributes, but because He loves best, and does most for the most.
And that is what you and I ought to be. We may well take the lesson
to ourselves. I have no space, and, I hope, no need to enlarge upon
it; but be sure of this, that if we are ever to be near the right
and the left of the Master in His kingdom, there is one way, and
only one way, to come thither, and that is to make self abdicate its
authority as the centre of our lives, and to enthrone there Christ,
and for His sake all our brethren. Be ambitious to be first, but
remember, _Noblesse oblige_. He that is first must become last.
He that is Servant of all is Master of all. That is the only mastery
that is worth anything, the devotion of hearts that circle round the
source from which they draw light and warmth. What is it that makes
a mother the queen of her children? Simply that all her life she has
been their servant, and never thought about herself, but always
about them.
Now much might be said as to the application of these threadbare
principles in the Church and in society, but I do not enlarge on
that; only let me say in a word--that here is the one law on which
preeminence in the Church is to be allocated.
What becomes of sacerdotal hierarchies, what becomes of the 'lords
over God's heritage,' if the one ground of pre-eminence is service?
I know, of course, that there may be different forms embodying one
principle, but it seems to me that that form of Church polity is
nearest the mind of Christ in which the only dignity is dignity of
service, and the only use of place is the privilege of stooping and
helping.
This fruitful principle will one day shape civil as well as
ecclesiastical societies. For the present, our Lord draws a contrast
between the worldly and the Christian notions of rank and dignity.
'It shall not be so among you,' says He. And the nobler conception
of eminence and service set forth in His disciples, if they are true
to their Lord and their duty, will leaven, and we may hope finally
transform society, sweeping away all vulgar notions of greatness as
depending on birth, or wealth, or ruder forms of powers, and
marshalling men according to Christ's order of precedence, in which
helpfulness is preeminence and service is supremacy, while
conversely pre-eminence is used to help and superiority stoops to
serve.
One remark will close my sermon. You have to take the last words of
this verse if you are ever going to put in practice its first words.
'Even as the Son of Man came, not to be ministered unto, but to
minister,'--if Jesus Christ had stopped there He would only have
been one more of the long roll of ineffectual preachers and prophets
who show men the better way, and leave them struggling in the mire.
But He did not stop there: 'Even as the Son of Man came ... to give
His life a ransom for many.'
Ah! the Cross, with its burden of the sacrifice for the world's sin,
is the only power which will supply us with a sufficient motive for
the loftiness of Christlike service. I know that there is plenty of
entirely irreligious and Christless beneficence in the world. And
God forbid that I should say a word to seem to depreciate that. But
sure I am that for the noblest, purest, most widely diffused and
blessedly operative kinds of service of man, there is no motive and
spring anywhere except 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me.' And,
bought by that service and that blood, it will be possible, and it
is obligatory upon all of us, to 'do unto others,' as He Himself
said, 'as I have done to you.' 'The servant is not greater than his
Lord.'