1^st Sunday in Lent

February 10, 2008

Omaha, NE

Rev. Steven W. Plank

“Special Wait Staff”

Text: Matthew 4:11b – “… and angels came and waited on him.”

Scripture Lessons: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

Matthew 4:1-11

Proposition: We seem not to be able to escape difficult times in our lives. Sometimes those come from our own choices; sometimes from others; sometimes they just happen. But God has a way of sending us “Special Wait Staff” to care for us in times of need.

Prayer for Illumination: O Lord our God, your Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Give us grace to receive your truth in faith and love, that we may be obedient to your will and live always for your glory; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Between my second and final years of seminary I took a year off. I did an intern year, serving a very small congregation in southern Illinois as their student pastor. Now having been born and raised around Chicago, “southern Illinois” to me was about Bloomington. That’s like living here and thinking that Lincoln is in western Nebraska… which, I think, some Omahans really do believe!

The small town where I lived was memorable for two reasons. In that town of 5,000 people, there were 31 churches within a five-mile radius, 26 of which were Baptist. As a colleague of mine in a neighboring town said, “If you scratch a Roman Catholic in this part of the state, they bleed Baptist.” The second memorable thing about that area was that the county that held that town was dry. No alcohol was served in any area of the county… with one exception. You’ll swear I’m making this up, but I’m not. The town of Muddy, Illinois, population 78, had about 30 houses in it, one shop that sold hub caps (they were nailed to the exterior walls of the building for display), and… are you ready for this?... a Holiday Inn! Now, they had a Holiday Inn because Muddy was the only place in Saline County that was not dry.

One Friday evening, a seminary classmate of mine was visiting, and Scott and I decided to drive the five miles to Muddy to go to the Holiday Inn for supper. While we were looking over the menu, the waitress asked what we wanted to drink. We thought we might share a carafe of Paul Masson rosé wine. Paul Masson wines are no more, but they were a decent yet inexpensive wine… about the kind two graduate students could afford. We knew we might be in trouble at this meal when the waitress smiled as she took our drink order, dutifully wrote it down on her pad, and then, while walking back toward the kitchen, shouted, “Ed, these boys here want some Paul Mason rose wine.” With a waitress like that, we knew it was going to be a long dinner!

At the end of a Synod conference I attended the week before last, I drove over to visit my son, David, in Wisconsin at school. It was a quick visit… just stayed there on Friday and drove back home a week ago yesterday. When I asked David what he wanted to do while I was there, he, being a good college student, asked, “Take me out to eat?” So he and his girlfriend and I went out for breakfast to a favorite place of ours up there. Our waitress was good, but she was one of those wait staff people who are almost too friendly. Do you know what I mean? She came by the table often to check on us, but she always managed to sound like she was a nice old woman talking with a table of 4-year olds… “And how is everything going right now?” “Does the food taste yummy?” “You have hats and gloves since it’s so cold outside, I hope.” Well, its beats a crabby server anytime, I suppose, and at least it added to our amusement for the day.

Caroline and I were treated to dinner at a very nice, posh restaurant in town a few years ago by the company she worked for at the time. The atmosphere was amazing. The food was absolutely delicious. We didn’t have to think about the cost. And one of the truly enjoyable parts of the whole experience was that the wait staff there were incredible. Our waiter made helpful suggestions about what foods were particularly good that night. I think I counted at least three other people who, almost out of nowhere, would suddenly appear at our table, filling our water glasses, taking away dishes at precisely the right time (so that we neither felt rushed nor did we ever look around to wonder where someone was), and wiping the table cloth between courses with one of those little metal scraper things that wait staff at fine restaurants use. The servers made that experience!

We are entering into the holy season of Lent in the Church calendar. This is a time of preparing ourselves for Holy Week and Easter… a time for renewing spiritual disciplines that nurture and help us live the kinds of Christ-like lives we really want to live… a time for reconciling with those people from whom we might be estranged… a time for finding new ways to live out the Gospel faithfully… a time to renew our commitments to finding meaningful times of worship, of prayer, of silence and meditation. Lent is a time in which we remember that we are following Jesus Christ in our lives, the one who came to serve others, rather than waiting around to be served.

However, our New Testament lesson tells us about a time in which Christ was served. It comes at the end of his own Lent-like 40 days of trial and temptation and testing, readying himself for his public ministry. The temptations he faced in the desert were temptations to serve himself and his own needs to the exclusion of others… to succumb to the lure of power for power’s sake… to short-circuit God’s plan, which Jesus knew would lead to a cross, and just jump ahead to take charge of the world. These had to have been very real temptations for the Lord, coming at a time when he was tired and weakened from his intense praying and fasting. But having resisted the things that were so temptingly laid out before him as if they were succulent dishes at a sumptuous meal, the accuser left Jesus “until an opportune time,” as the Gospels put it. And then scripture says that “angels came and waited on him.”

The word translated as “angels” literally means “messengers.” They were divine messengers that were sent by the Almighty to minister to the body and heart and soul and mind of Christ at the end of his desert ordeal. Angels show up throughout the Bible, and they show up in all manner of ways. Sometimes they are clearly angelic beings of light and wonder and power and might. Sometimes they are quiet beings who come to bring a word of encouragement or guidance to someone in need. Sometimes they seem just like us… ordinary folks who just happen to do or say precisely the right thing at precisely the right time for someone who needs precisely what has just been done or said to them. “Angels” are simply messengers from God: supernatural beings, or very ordinary and very natural beings whom God uses to help someone else. Beings like… well… like us.

Two years ago I attended a week-long spiritual retreat at St. Benedict Center near Schuyler. One of the presenters that week was Dr. Kathryn Damiano, a member of a small Quaker community in Wichita. She spoke about Quaker spirituality. One of the key components of the spiritual discipline of the Friends is that you constantly strive to look for and listen to Christ in other people. They believe that Jesus is within each one of us, and if we could just make the effort to connect with that divine part of others, this world would be a whole lot better off. The challenge, of course, as Kathryn so aptly described it, is that it’s really hard to see Christ in someone who just drives you absolutely nuts! You know the kind of person. It just seems that everything they do is done to drive you up the proverbial wall! That’s when it’s most important to work hard and try to see Christ in that person, Kathryn told us… “because you know,” she said, “that you are that very same person to somebody else!” Ouch!

If we can be someone who, intentionally or not, drives somebody else crazy, we also can be someone who, hopefully intentionally, strives to serve other people as we would serve Christ… as Christ serves us… as Christ himself was served by angels… or messengers… or “Special Wait Staff.” Hopefully, prayerfully, we can spend some time during this Lenten season to hone our serving skills… following Jesus Christ, the Lord and Servant of us all.

AMEN!