Define Service
by Jared Johnson
What’s the first image that comes to mind, your mental knee-jerk reaction, when you hear “service?”
Do you picture a uniform?
Do you imagine a restaurant table?
Do you envision Jesus knelt over a bowl of muddy water in a dimly lit room some 10 or 12 hours before He was stabbed by railroad spikes?
There are thirty-one definitions of “service” on Merriam-Webster’s site! (That counts every main and sub-definition given.)
We’re thinking about service this month and this one always sticks in my craw a little, not because I don’t like it, but because to my ears we have abused the word nearly out of existence. When the very same word means everything from…
“quality of interactions with restaurant employees” to
“bull impregnating cow” to
“politician grifting populace” to
“roadside building where I put gas in my truck” to
“singing with Christian brothers and sisters on Sunday morning”
...and so much more in between, we’re either being lazy or lying to ourselves a little bit.
Merriam-Webster said service was first used in 1200s English in the sense of “being at someone’s command.”
Maybe that scrapes off some of the word’s euphemistic veneer.
For all our profligate verbal use of “service,” supposedly being at someone else’s command, I, just for me, see and hear a whole lot of selfishness, even defiance. Rather than ”being at someone’s command,” I see and hear far more “I’m’a do what I want.” We verbally say “I’m serving” but our actions say, like Frank Sinatra’s 1969 song, “I [do] it my way.”
Our military personnel take an oath to defend our Constitution. Just last week I saw a news story that a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman defected to Russia when he realized he was about to be criminally charged; so much for serving. Sounding ½-way familiar, I soon found several double-agent / arrested for “national security” espionage stories from the last 10 years or so. Those individuals put uniforms on, but they were not “serving.” Well, they were serving themselves. We get suckered into plucky, by-their-own-bootstraps stories about politicians and then somehow after decades in office we also cluck our tongues, telling ourselves we’re surprised, at their multi-million-dollar, even multi-billion-dollar, net worths.
I can’t remember the last time I had a truly bad experience at a sit-down restaurant. But when did you last walk into a fast-food spot and the counter workers couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge your existence? Besides Chick-Fil-A and one specific McDonald’s near my office, that happens nearly every time for me. How often do we serve our phones rather than the human standing right in front of us (whether at a fast food spot, a restaurant, or just in our own kitchen at home)?
There was a key, giveaway line in a movie some years ago. Wesley worked on Buttercup’s farm with an always-willing-to-do-more attitude and he had exactly one phrase he’d say in reply to everything: “as you wish.” Watching that show’s opening montage, you’d be forgiven for thinking he was incapable of uttering anything else. Wesley was at Buttercup’s command. There’s an incredibly rich Old Testament word that displays that same ready-to-help attitude.
At risk of boring you to tears (it’s why I’m not a preacher), this word shows up over 800 times in the Old Covenant but following is one particular use of this specific word. Jake gave his boy Joe a direction and Joe replied with this one, singular word at the end of Genesis 37.13. First, please read the setup in verses 12 and most of 13 so you have context. The remainder of verse 13, Joe’s one-word answer, appears in 5 different translations below the quote.
Soon after this, Joseph’s brothers went to pasture their father’s flocks at Shechem. When they’d been gone for some time, Jacob said to Joseph, “Your brothers are pasturing the sheep at Shechem. Get ready, and I’ll send you to them.” ...
Genesis 37.12-13 (NLT)
... “I’m ready to go,” Joseph replied. (NLT)
... “Very well,” he replied. (NIV)
... “I will go.” (NASB)
... He answered, “Here I am.” (NRSV)
... “I’m ready,” Joseph answered. (HCSB)
For just one word, that’s impressive variation. That word, especially in King James / New King James Bibles, typically shows up in unhelpfully outdated English as “behold.” Vernacular in 2024 just might have its best one-word approximation in “notice!”
If your memory wasn’t already jogged by NRSV’s rendering, look at it again. Yeah, it’s the very same word Isaiah gives answering God Himself on His throne in chapter 6 verse 8. “Who’ll go; who should I send as my messenger?” “Notice me! Send me!” “HNH” / “Hinnay” is an incredible Hebrew word that’s most often spoken by God Himself but is used frequently enough by His people.
As we think of service through the rest of this month, let’s think about it and approach it in the sense of “being at someone’s command” and not just let a word leave our lips on autopilot, unthinkingly perpetuating tired stereotypes.
Each and every day, we’re “at someone’s command” for various reasons. That fact often rubs us the wrong way in our human nature selfishness and in our culture’s “rugged individual” obsession. But that’s just the way life and relationships often work in God’s created order.
Young parents are at a little one’s “command” when their little bodies have a need that they can’t fulfill on their own. Sleep is nice but young parents learn to go without because the new little life in their home has acute needs, often, that demand to be met – parents are “at the command” of their infants.
As much as it pains me to admit this, I’m “at someone else’s command” every time I drive down roads surrounding our house. Our local area’s population has exploded in the last 15 years and with so many people, so many more people, on our roads, we no longer enjoy free-flowing traffic. Roads that were, just a few years ago, easy to travel suffer gridlock several times a day. (Full disclosure: by “gridlock” I mean those infuriatingly insufferable characters who think 32mph is somehow acceptable in a posted-40 zone! The arrogance! The audacity!)
Whether we’re at someone else’s command in an overt way (military officer ordering a subordinate, employer directing an employee), or if we’re at someone’s command indirectly through situations or circumstances (parents meeting a baby’s needs, traffic flow), accommodating situations and “rolling with the punches” is just part of how God has ordered His creation. We can’t always do what we want. We’re not kings/queens of our own domain. We aren’t in charge. How often do we experience frustrations & heartache because of that fact? God has created reality the way He wanted (yes we now feel sin’s corruption but His design isn’t completely overwritten) and “rolling with it” comes with the territory. I remember Dallas Willard saying that “reality is what we run into when we’re wrong.”
Obviously, Jesus set the perfect and indisputable example when “Instead, he gave up his divine privileges [and] took the humble position of a slave ... and died a criminal’s death on a cross” for us (Philippians 2.7-8, NLT).
I’m curious about this question: when Jesus died on the cross, was He at God’s command, or at ours? “Even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10.45, NLT, emphasis added). “... Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame…” (Hebrews 12.2, NLT).
Day after day, Jesus submitted. Did He submit only to God’s plan for creation’s redemption, or did He also submit to the needs of all the people around Him? Did Jesus have to heal Peter’s mom-in-law? Did he need to fulfill the Syrian-Phoenician woman’s request about her daughter?
That can be a very deep theological question and we’re already about 1,300 words into this issue so I won’t give a slew of supporting details, but I will say I don’t think Jesus *needed* to show empathy and compassion as often as He did. Denying Himself and meeting others’ needs was, is, simply part of His character.
Jesus put Himself at God’s command. He even put Himself at our command. He served perfectly. There was no euphemism to Jesus’s service.
This week, how can you and I put ourselves at someone else’s command, especially if/when “it’s not my problem” and “we don’t have to?”
