St. Matthew Lutheran Church

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 19, 2021

“Wisdom from Above: Humble Yourself, Serve Others” (James 3:13 – 4:10; Mark 9:30-37)

In the Epistle for today, St. James asks, “Who is wise and understanding among you?” Well, I suppose all of us would like to be considered wise and understanding. To have people compliment us on how smart we are and what good decisions we make. And in the Gospel reading for today, Jesus says, “If anyone would be first.” Well, I suppose all of us would like to be first. We like it when we’re in the top spot. To be wise, to be first, to be great–we like it when we achieve those things and are recognized for it.

The only problem is, that’s not the way it goes in God’s kingdom. If you want to be great in God’s kingdom, learn to be the servant of all. That’s counter-intuitive to the ways of this world, where people are pumped up with loads and loads of self-esteem. But in the kingdom of God, lowliness goes along with holiness. Humility and meekness are the virtues that are praised and prized. We’ll see that now from both James and Jesus, under the theme, “Wisdom from Above: Humble Yourself, Serve Others.”

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Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 23, 2018

“From Selfish Ambition to Humble Service” (James 3:13 – 4:10; Mark 9:30-37)

In this long green season of the church year, the non-festival half of the year, the Epistle reading is not chosen to go along with the theme of the Holy Gospel, as it is in the festival half of the year. Instead, it’s just a straight reading-through of a particular epistle. Thus any correlation between the Epistle and Gospel is merely a coincidence. Well, we have such a coincidence today. The Epistle reading from James and the Gospel reading from Mark do have a common theme. It’s the theme of Christians, disciples of Jesus, being called to move “From Selfish Ambition to Humble Service.”

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Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 20, 2015

“The Rhythm of the Christian Life: Repentance, Faith, and Servanthood” (James 3:13 – 4:10; Mark 9:30-37)

As I was reading through the lessons for this day, I was thinking, “What would make a good message for us to hear today, something timely and fitting and that would apply to us all? What is God’s word saying to us through these readings?” And as I mulled those questions over in my mind, what began to emerge from the lessons–particularly from the Epistle of James and the Gospel of Mark–what I began to see is this: These readings portray very vividly and plainly the rhythm of the Christian life, and that is, in these three things: repentance, faith, and servanthood. So let’s look at those things now and see how they apply to us in the daily rhythm of how we live.

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Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 23, 2012

“The Wisdom of Humble Servanthood” (James 3:13 – 4:10; Mark 9:30-37)

Who among us here today would like to be regarded as wise and understanding? OK. Who among us would like to be regarded as great, as a great person? Well, who wouldn’t? I suppose all of us, if we had our druthers, would like others to praise us for our wisdom. All of us would like to have the advantages of being a so-called “great one.” We like it when we get the perks of prestige. Being first, getting the top prize, gaining the best position of power–these are things we enjoy.

But these things can be, and often are, poison for our souls. They feed our ego, that great big “I” living inside each one of us. This comes all too naturally to us, this desire for praise and plaudits, prestige and position. So often it’s a case of me being so turned in on myself that the Big “I” crowds out other people and their needs and how I might be in a position to serve them. So often my attention to self crowds out my devotion to God and how I can serve him.

This is a problem that we should all be able to recognize in ourselves, this putting self at the center of the universe and making “Me, Myself, and I” into the new three persons of my own personal Trinity. This is our problem, even as Christians. For we still have this old self-centered sinful nature to deal with our whole life long. Thus we need to have our self-centeredness forgiven, and we need to have our minds transformed to think in new ways about life–and then to actually live that way, to put it into practice. And this new way of thinking and living is what we might call “The Wisdom of Humble Servanthood.”

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