May 8 - Deacon - Humble Servant

May 8 - Deacon - Humble Servant - 1 Timothy 3:8-13

Diane says:
A deacon serves in a different capacity than an overseer or leader. The Greek 'diakonos' means 'humble servant.' The deacon was to do the menial work (Acts 6:1-6) so that the elders attend to things that were more important.

The requirements for a deacon were very similar, but look at 1 Timothy 3:9, "they must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience." With that commitment, the response from God is found in 1 Timothy 3:13, "Those who have served well gain an excellent standing and great assurance in their faith in Christ Jesus."

The word "mysterion" has been interpreted as deep truths in verse 9. These are things that were hidden, but are now revealed by God. To be eligible to run the church, a deacon must KNOW the Word of God and then must LIVE the Word of God.

Rebecca says:
I'll be honest, I've never much thought about the position of Deacon. Let's face it, most of us, are not that yippy skippy over menial work, 'Humble servant' is not a position of honor according to the world. Sure, it is all good and noble, but I don't see lines forming at the local Community College on Servanthood. It is a thankless position. The deacon is caught up in the business end of a ministry, a taskmaster of to do lists and cleans the dishes of the leaders that the rest of the world hoots and hollers over. He not only sees the muck and drudgery of a ministry, he rolls up his sleeves and digs in day after day after day and no one ever really notices him.

I can give you two very apparent reasons why I would not make a good Deacon - pride and ego. I don't deal well with being in the background. No one notices sweat in the shadows. Only in the sun do you ever see the little bitty beads of perspiration on the brow of a soldier. I am an instant gratification girl and unfortunately the assurance that Paul gives of gaining excellent standing and great assurance is something I know should beckon to me much louder than accolades but unfortunately my ears are still a bit more flesh than spirit, so I tend to look at the position of a Deacon with the same fear and trembling that I have for a plate of brussels sprouts - both would be hard to swallow.

As I was dissecting this passage I was handling it like someone would handle radioactive material. I didn't want any of it to rub off on me in any way, shape or form. I didn't want to hear that still small voice that might whisper "Yep that’s for you, swallow it up buttercup."

God is pretty good in that He doesn’t force feed us. He might put blaring neon signs everywhere we turn, He might incline our hearts a certain direction even when our flesh has it’s blinkers on to turn down the opposite path, but he doesn't get us in a chokehold and make us do anything. I love that about Him, but what I love more is that when He does want us to develop a certain characteristic He has this incredible way of turning our head and create an aroma around whatever He has for us that smells so tempting that regardless of the cost we will begin to mosey on over for a nibble. He did that today with me, he sautéed my Brussels sprouts in garlic and butter.

See here's the thing. I am not interested in being anyone's pack mule. There is no man out there that I think I could ever believe enough in to enjoy grunt work. If the ultimate goal of being a Deacon would lead only to serving even the godliest of men I am afraid I would still turn down the position with a polite thank you. What I realized is that being a Deacon has little to do with serving a church, or doing a grunt work, or anything really found in this realm. It's all kind of a visualization exercise for what really everything we do here is about. It is absolutely ludicrous to say "I don’t want to be a Deacon," because by every account every single person that coexists on this planet is in fact a Deacon.

See this is the thing, the church in this passage is an actual church: four walls, a leader, service times, probably a cross or two hanging on the wall. What if we just think bigger - blow that whole word of 'church' out to the largest possible scale of divine proportions and then the definition changes dramatically. This earth is the church, we are the church, this whole gamut of people and life is the zoomed out version of that church in Ephesus

And so with that very big zoom out lens on our eyes, we look at a Deacon now as living day in and day out, no matter how big or small your position may be according to the world’s standards. It is all just grunt work. President Obama, Mother Teresa, me, you, the milkman. We are all on the same level in this big grand church, each of us fulfilling our roles and doing our menial labor tasks. Some may to us seem much more important like nurturing lepers in Calcutta, or attending Peace Summits with the UN. In our small scoped eyes they seem much more important than delivering milk, or raising a son, or fixing computers. But when we zoom out to the big, big church then suddenly we are all the same worker ants doing our own thing.

It’s easy to say that all we do is to glorify God, easy to spout off Christian sayings like 'All the Glory be His' and 'may this glorify Your name,' but if in our lives we would have a hard time being a deacon and serving an itty bitty church, can we really say that we are willing to let all the glory be His? Are we really letting whatever we do be to glorify His name?

It’s easy to serve the big zoomed out church, much harder to serve the Ephesus one. The big zoomed out one has a big zoomed out God and the little one has just a man filling in those shoes and it’s easy to trip over and get caught up in judging those shoes. But I want to work side by side with Jesus, I want to get grubby and dirty with Him. I want to taste the intimacy that comes from a working relationship with my Lord. I don’t want to know my Lord by watching him at a table, I want to clean up His dishes and see how He ate, I want to know the deep parts of him that those that see Him on a podium miss. I want to hear what He would say 'after the show,' what kind of day He thought it was. I want to be so comfortable with Him that we could burp and laugh about it - as weird as it sounds those are the deep truths of the faith I want to know. And so I guess ego and pride are gonna have to go to the backburner cuz’ mamas cookin’ up a big pan of brussel sprouts. I got a craving.