I'm useless! (... not to God, you're not)

 Opening Thoughts 

Do you ever feel useless? 

If so, is it because someone said you were?  Or do you compare yourself and the good you can do, with others, and it seems you don’t measure up?  Or is it that you used to be useful, but just aren’t as helpful or as able to do as much good for others as you used to?

A rock group from Winnipeg called The Weakerthans – who I’m pretty sure are not together as a group anymore – when they were together recorded a song called “Utilities” – a strange little piece, an off-beat kind of discordant lament about feeling useless, that says in part:

Got this feeling that today doesn’t like me.

The air tastes like flowers and paint.

There’s a sink full of bottles and cutlery,

and the car’s got a list of complaints.

I just wish I were a toothbrush or a solder gun.

Make me something somebody can use.

…

Got a face full of ominous weather.

Smirking smile of a high pressure ridge.

Got more faults than the state of California,

and the heart is a badly built bridge.

Seems the most I have to offer doesn’t offer much.

Make it something somebody can use.

Make this something somebody can use.

 Reading: Mark 10:35-45 

By this point in the story, Jesus and his disciples have finished their time in Galilee and now are on their way to Jerusalem. In Galilee, the disciples have seen many wonders, have been taught many things, and have had their eyes opened to the possibility of God’s kingdom coming to be, and God’s will being done on Earth as it is in heaven.  Now, on their way to Jerusalem, their expectations rise to a whole new level. 

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus.  “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”

“What do you want me to do for you,” he asked.

They replied, “Let one of sit at your right hand, and the other at your left when you come into your glory.”

“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said.  “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”

“We can,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptize with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left hand is not for me to grant.  These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”

When the other ten disciples heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. 

Jesus called the whole bunch together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you.  Instead, whoever wants to become ‘great’ among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be ‘first’ must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” 

Reflection 

Dolores was distraught.  A member of a community I served some years ago, was being told by her family who lived mostly at a distance, and by some of her friends who had the courage, and by her doctor that really she should not be living alone in the house anymore.

The house was where she had lived all her adult life, had raised a family of four, now took care of herself after her husband passed some years ago, and still wads able to welcome the kids back home for holiday visits.  They were recommending she be moved to what then was called a seniors home.  And she said the thought of it made her feel “useless.”

I’ve grown closer myself to that age since then, and recently I was talking with my sister.  A few years ago she was forced into unwanted early retirement by realignment and downsizing in the company she worked for, and now is living with her husband, similarly early-retired, in a retirement community.  They enjoy their new neighbours and the weekly rounds of activities – euchre games, carpet bowling, bridge, daily walks along a variety of beautiful trails nearby, and who knows what else.  But at the same time, she says, after working all her adult life there’s a nagging background feeling of “purposelessness” that comes with losing her place in the world, and being able to effect something good in it from her place of employment and authority over some little part of it.

Whoever wants to be, or to feel, useless or purposeless?  Especially if you want to do good?

So, we read ...“Oh Lord,” James and John said, “let us sit at your right hand and your left, to have a place of power with you to help bring the kingdom to be, and help make the world work the way God wants it to be.” 

Usually in reading this we see James and John as power-hungry, which could be true.  Heaven knows we’ve had enough religious people and whole religious traditions that think the way to save the world and do God’s will is by gaining power to be able to dominate and control.

But it could also be that what’s at stake is something even more common and therefore also more insidious than that – the idea that if you want to be able to do any good in the world and be worthwhile, you need to be a person of some substance in it – a good place in the pecking order, status, property, privilege, name recognition.  And that it’s those who have these things, who live meaningful lives and make the world go round and go right.

When one of our members some time ago was suddenly and shockingly widowed – losing a husband with real presence in the community, and her family soon after moved her to an assisted living apartment in a long-term care facility, miles from her home, her friends and her church, it seemed like the loss of too much too quickly for anything good to come of this.  A number of people thought it would be the beginning of the end for her.

What it has proven to be, though, is the beginning of a new and surprisingly vibrant chapter in her life.  In her new home, her natural vibrancy, her open-hearted delight in others, and her gratitude for all she has been given in life have blossomed, and within days of her arrival other residents of her new community were commenting on how much she brightened their lives, how she renewed their own gratitude for being where they were, and their appreciation of the goodness of God in their lives because of her.

“It’s not power and authority that make you effective servants of the kingdom of heaven on Earth,” Jesus says.  “It is being a humble and lowly servant of others.  No power or status required.  In fact, power and status are best checked at the door.” 

Sometimes this kind of humbled servitude is a chosen lifestyle.  I think of a United Church minister recently passed away, who was quite a force for good in his years of active ministry, but spent the last 12 or 15 years of his life confined to a bed and a wheelchair in a nursing home.  Active ministry was out of the question.  He let go all his positions of leadership.  Some former parishioners and colleagues probably even thought he had already died. 

But with a laptop and a good internet connection he stayed in touch with world affairs, engaged in ongoing theological and spiritual reflection on the state of the world, and continued without fanfare or much recognition to be a light, a mentor, and a servant of others’ ministries across the country and around the world.

Sometimes, humbled, place-less servanthood is a one-off occurrence.  Like the night a year or so ago when Japhia was suffering through one of her overnights in the ER.  Wracked with debilitating nausea, in vain she tried to find rest and relief in one of three recliner chairs in a treatment room as IV fluids and meds dripped steadily into her veins. 

Late into the evening, our daughter-in-law texted her a blessing, reminding her of the nearness of Jesus sitting with her and holding her hand through the night.  With her phone set up for voice-over because of her visual impairment, SIRI read the text to her.  A woman in a recliner next to her overhead the blessing, and asked Japhia if she could listen to it again.  Japhia had her phone repeat the text for her neighbour, and the woman thanked her then and later for helping to lift her spirit, bring her fresh hope, and help her get through the night.  Japhia came home the next day marveling again of how even in her illness – in fact, because of her illness and impairment, God was able to use her to bring life and hope to others – use her as a servant of the kingdom of God.

However it happens, it has nothing to do with what we think it takes to live an effective and meaningful life.  It doesn’t take power, authority, good health, or having your own hard-won place in the world. 

Those things in fact can be in the way.  As soon as we have something to lose, it’s hard not to grow protective of it and defensive – even combative against others, rather than opened-up and simply obedient to their needs.

The other night I was watching highlights of a pre-season NHL game.  I don’t remember the teams that were playing nor the players involved, but a fight broke out. 

You know the old joke, “I was watching a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.”  I think what I watched was a hockey fight, in the midst of which what broke out, was the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven on earth.

I don’t remember the teams playing nor the players involved, but there they were – two players fighting hard to prove themselves, each trying with all their might to gain the upper hand, to establish their place on the ice and on the team, to not lose ground or lose face.  The kind of thing that happens and that we give ourselves to in so many ways in so many areas and arenas of life.

At one point one of the players lost his helmet.  The other player pushed his sudden advantage.  The first player, under the onslaught, fell backwards.  And as he fell, his unprotected head hit the ice.  Hard.

Immediately, the second player stopped fighting.  Stood stock still over his fallen opponent and without having to think – without time to think, began waving to both benches to come help.  Come see to the man on the ice.  Come quickly.

One can only wonder what was racing through his mind.

Immediate and spontaneous concern for the well-being of the other, whom only a second before he had seen as a threat and an enemy, but who now was a brother in need of help.

Shock and horror at his implication in what was suffered by the other.  He was just doing his job and what was expected, but he had a role in making this bad thing happen.

The frantic desire for the other’s well-being, and wanting anything and everything that could be done to help him, to be done, right away, as soon as possible.

All divisions and divides dissolved.  All need for power and authority fell away.  All concerns about gaining the upper hand and establishing your own place made no sense any more. 

In place of all those things by which we usually measure our worth and our effectiveness in life, the only thing left was an awareness of shared humanity with someone you once saw as separate from you, and a simple, total desire to help them and to serve their well-being in whatever way you can, as quickly and completely and compassionately as possible. 

I don’t know … but doesn’t that sound like what the kingdom of God is said to be about? What it’s like when God’s love for all breaks through our normal business?  That maybe it’s one way of seeing in real life what we pray for, when we pray “thy kingdom come, and thy will done on Earth as in heaven”? 

And if a hockey player in the middle of a fight can suddenly find himself acting on impulse, without even having to think about it, as a servant of the kingdom of God, how can I not believe the same possibility is always there for me as well in any arena of life I am in?

And not on a highlight reel; that's not the point.  But in day-to-day real life. No matter where and how I am at the time.  Totally apart from any power, privilege, authority, place, authority, or status I have or don’t have.  Maybe especially when I am able to lay those things aside and let go of them, and just let myself – my true self, be found in obedient response to someone else’s need.

Thanks be to God, that none of us is ever useless to him.