Mark 9:33-37
When I was ordained a Deacon of the church, a friend told me the title only confirmed what everyone already knew I was. I was a Deacon inside with a heart of service, diakonia. That doesn't mean I am particularly saved any more than anyone else. It simply means that there is a part of me that wishes to serve others and that the church recognized that. Of course it involved a considerable amount of theological training in the seminary. Leave it to the church to create such elaborate and cumbersome requisites to confirm what is in my heart. I assure you, no such training was required in the early church of any deacons, priests or of the Apostles.
The heart of this passage though is all about service to others. It has nothing to do with guilt or reparations or penance. It simply is stating that whoever wishes to be first would be the one who serves all. It immediately quashes the personal desire to be first and lets you focus on the others. I can tell you that at the very least, it yields a very happy heart. Long before any reflections on service or nay assessing of the whole experience, there is a a great joy in your heart simply from doing for others. This was true whether I was stirring cauldrons of soup, lifting boxes, witnessing in a small mountain Dominican Republic village or pounding sheet rock for Habitat for Humanity. It brings such joy to your heart it can barely be contained. It's as if you have found the true meaning of life.
Perhaps it is the true meaning of life. Aside from finding out the particulars of who you are as a person and having an intimate relationship with your creator, God created us to serve others. This is an extension of serving and loving Him. For this I believe we are richly rewarded and blessed. In serving our brothers and sisters, we are loving the one who created them. God smiles.
Diakonia!
When I was ordained a Deacon of the church, a friend told me the title only confirmed what everyone already knew I was. I was a Deacon inside with a heart of service, diakonia. That doesn't mean I am particularly saved any more than anyone else. It simply means that there is a part of me that wishes to serve others and that the church recognized that. Of course it involved a considerable amount of theological training in the seminary. Leave it to the church to create such elaborate and cumbersome requisites to confirm what is in my heart. I assure you, no such training was required in the early church of any deacons, priests or of the Apostles.
The heart of this passage though is all about service to others. It has nothing to do with guilt or reparations or penance. It simply is stating that whoever wishes to be first would be the one who serves all. It immediately quashes the personal desire to be first and lets you focus on the others. I can tell you that at the very least, it yields a very happy heart. Long before any reflections on service or nay assessing of the whole experience, there is a a great joy in your heart simply from doing for others. This was true whether I was stirring cauldrons of soup, lifting boxes, witnessing in a small mountain Dominican Republic village or pounding sheet rock for Habitat for Humanity. It brings such joy to your heart it can barely be contained. It's as if you have found the true meaning of life.
Perhaps it is the true meaning of life. Aside from finding out the particulars of who you are as a person and having an intimate relationship with your creator, God created us to serve others. This is an extension of serving and loving Him. For this I believe we are richly rewarded and blessed. In serving our brothers and sisters, we are loving the one who created them. God smiles.
Diakonia!
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’
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