Christian Public Service

CHRISTIAN PUBLIC SERVICE

(Preached at North Mymms 1995)

First of all, may I say what a delight it is to welcome you all to this ancient parish church for your Annual Civic Service.

This year it is a particular delight, insofar as the Chairman of the North Mymms Parish Council is a regular worshipper at this church, together with his wife and family.

As I look round, I see a variety of faces which I also know, but not necessarily as regular worshippers at this church.

Some of you are involved in Local Government as Parish or District or County Councillors.

Some of you are leaders of the many and varied voluntary organisations of the area, such as the British Legion, the Youth and Community Centre, the Green Belt Society, the Friends of the Earth, the Gobians Woodland Trust, the Mens Club, the Horticultural Society, the Good Neighbours Association, the Friends and Neighbours Club, the Old Peoples Luncheon Club, the Womens Institute and the various uniformed Youth Organisations.

Others of you belong to the various Sporting Clubs such as football, bowls, angling and cricket.

Then there are those of you who represent the Statutory Services such as the Police, the Fire Brigade, Health and Education.

There is no doubt that you represent a very wide cross-section of our local community life.

As leaders in Local Government, the Voluntary Organisations and the Statutory Services, you play a major role, not only in the enrichment of the lives of individual residents, but also in binding those residents together into a community of which we can be justly proud.

So on behalf of the residents of North Mymms, may I thank you for your particular contribution. Without you, our community life would be that much poorer.

This Annual Civic Service provides an ideal opportunity for you to re-examine your lives in the light of the Christian gospel and to rededicate yourselves to the service of God within our community.

And it is the subject of Christian Public Service that I wish to address this morning.

Where better can we start than from the Bible, which is the record of God's revelation of himself to human kind and particularly his unique revelation in human form in the person of Jesus.

In particular, I want to look at the very practical advice given by St. Paul to the Christian leaders living at Philippi about the year 60AD. Advice, which I believe is as relevant today, if not more so, than it was 2,000 years ago.

St. Paul writes: "There must be no room for rivalry and personal vanity, but you must humbly reckon others better than yourselves - look to each other's interests and not merely to your own" (Philippians 2.3-4)

Firstly, St. Paul says: "There must be no room for rivalry" - or as one translation puts it "selfish ambition".

Having recently listened to and read the various speeches made at the Party Political Conferences, where each party sought to extol the virtue of their own particular philosophy to the detriment of the other, one could not but wonder whether the speakers were more interested in their own particular ideologies than in the real needs of the electorate which they have been elected to serve.

Some years ago I recall being canvassed to vote for a particular clergyman as a representative to the General Synod of the Church of England. In his manifesto he listed no fewer than 18 committees of which he was a member and concluded his remarks with reference to being Vicar also of the largest Parish in the Diocese. One could not but wonder whether his parishioners came first or his personal ambition.

Of course we all have our personal agendas which we bring to the deliberations of any organisation to which we may belong, but such agendas should surely be of secondary importance. Our prlmary consideration should always be the needs of the people whom we are seeking to serve, whether as councillors or committee members. It is when the

overall good of the community becomes sacrificed upon the altar of personal self-interest that the cohesiveness of a community comes under threat.

So St. Paul says "there must no room for rivalry".

Secondly, St. Paul says "there must be no room for personal vanity".

A few months ago, I attended a major church fund-raising event at a theatre in Kingston, Jamaica. After the preceding cocktail party, my wife and I took our place in the stalls of the theatre together with the other guests. As soon as the National Anthem came to an end, we received a tap on the shoulder and were quietly ushered out of our seats and into the equivalent of the Royal Box. There we sat with the Bishop and his wife. Naturally we felt very honoured to be afforded such a privilege.

Likewise I am sure the Chairman of the Parish Council feels honoured to be wearing his chain of office for this service this morning.

To be given special seats, or to wear badges of office, or to be addressed as Mr. Councillor, Mr. Chairman or even as Vicar boosts our personal ego. Such marks of courtesy and respect obviously make one feel very important. But that is not the reason for being engaged in public service. A Christian does not seek positions of office in order to impress other people and to boost his or her flagging ego. To do so is to use other people for our own advantage. In other words, instead of serving other people they finish up serving us.

Hence St. Paul says "there must be no room for personal vanity" in addition to that of rivalry.

The real basis of Christian Public Service therefore is not to be found either in selfish ambition or in rivalry with one another. Christian Service is essentially about looking "to each other's interests and not merely your own" to quote St. Paul.

You see, my friends, that at the heart of Christian Public Service lies the practice of the virtue of humility, which alas is often in short supply nowadays. Humility which allows us to put other people before ourselves; humility which allows us to regard other people as being of equal worth, if not better than ourselves; humility which allows us to serve others

rather than to use them to serve us.

If you want a model of such Christian Public Service in life and action, I would suggest you need look no further than at Jesus of Nazareth. He did not seek to impose his own personal agenda upon others. He did not seek positions of personal fame and glory. On the contrary he assumed the role of a domestic slave with no personal rights or privileges. This is nowhere better expressed than at the Last Supper when he washed the disciples' feet - the most menial of all domestic jobs.

No wonder Peter objected. It was contrary to his expectation and it is contrary to our expectations of today.

Jesus knew this. Hence he is recorded as saying: "You know that in the world the recognised rulers lord it over their

subjects and their great men make them feel the weight of authority".

"That is not the way with you: among you, whoever wants to be great must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be the winning servant of all."

And he concludes his remark by offering himself as an example of what he means when he says "even the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and give up his life as a ransom for many".

This picks up the observation of St. Paul when he says of Jesus: "He made himself nothing, assuming the nature of a slave..........he humbled himself, in obedience accepted death on a cross".

In our work of Public Service we shall hopefully be spared physical death; nevertheless we must be prepared to face the death of our personal agendas and vanity.

We may not experience the physical pain of crucifixion but we must be prepared to experience the emotional pain often involved in service.

The pain of not having our own way. The pain of being wilfully misunderstood and misrepresented. The pain of character assassination and the falsification of the facts. The pain of being kicked in the teeth by those one is seeking to help. Such is the cost often of Christian Public Service and such were the actions which led ultimately to the crucifixion of Jesus.

So is it worth it? If I cannot pursue my own personal agenda and if I cannot claim any recognition for my own efforts, is it worth all the heartache and sacrifice if there is nothing in it for me at the end?

Again, I would draw your attention to the model of Christian Public Service as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth and the effectiveness of his work as judged by history.

I cannot better express it than in the words of Philip Brooks who wrote:

"Here is a man who was born in a lonely manger, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in an obscure village. He worked in a carpenter's shop until he was 30, and then for three years was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held office. He never went to college. He never owned a house. He never had a family. He never travelled more than 200 miles from the place where he was born. He never did any of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He had nothing to do with this world except the power of divine manhood. Whilst still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. His executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had on earth while he was dying - his coat. When he was dead he was taken down and laid in a borrowed tomb through the pity of a friend. Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone. Today he is the centrepiece of the human race and the leader of the column of progress".

He concludes:

"I am within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as that one solitary life".

And that one solitary life of service has been the foundation of a community for almost 2,000 years.

I leave it to you to judge whether Christ-like public service is worth it in the long run.

And now to that God who in Jesus reveals the true nature of Christian Public Service be all honour and glory, today and for ever. Amen.