L I E) RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I VERSITY 
 
 Of 1 LLl NOIS
 
 s 
 
 NOT TO BE SERVED, BUT TO SERVE. 
 
 ^ Sermon 
 
 Preached in Westminster Abbey, on Sunday Afternoon, 
 May 14tli, 1899, by the 
 
 REV. J. ARMITAGB ROBINSON, D.D., 
 Canon in Residence. 
 
 " The Son of Man came not to bo ministered unto, but to minister." — 
 
 St. Mark X., 45. 
 
 "\ ITE lose much of the meaning of our Lord's words by 
 f f reason of their very familiarity. His most remarkable 
 utterances become by frequent repetition deprived of their 
 freshness. Long use rounds off their sharp edges. They 
 become gradually modified in accordance with certain traditions 
 of application. A portion of their meaning is assumed to be the 
 whole, and their startling sound is muffled into tones which no 
 longer jar against our ordinary conventions. 
 
 Take as an example one of His most tremendous sayings : 
 " "Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take 
 up his cross, and follow Me " (St. Mark viii., 34). What have 
 we made that to mean ? 
 
 When Peter denied Christ, what did it mean ? It meant an 
 absolute refusal to admit that he had any kind of relation to 
 Him : " I know not the Man." 
 
 When Christ took up His Cross, what did that mean, and 
 whither did he go ? He carried it to die upon it. 
 
 Could any words be found that would more strongly express 
 that the individual was to cancel himself ? that he was to refuse 
 29
 
 SER'MON. 
 
 to recognise any kind of self-interest, liowever '' enligliteued/' 
 as the principle of life ? that he was not to live for himself, not 
 to think of himself, not even to talk about himself — hardest 
 perhaps of all ? 
 
 Could any words be found to express more strongly that he 
 was to throw himself away for others ? to take up voluntarily 
 the instrument of his painful death — not even to wait until it 
 was forced upon him ? 
 
 Could any words be more violent, more utterly uncom- 
 promising- ? Was it not to declare, as the only rule of life, that 
 self-seeking must be changed into its direct opposite — self- 
 giving, to the very last breath ? 
 
 And yet we have come, by a long process of emptying 
 Christ's words of their meaning, to call it " denying ourselves/^ 
 when we refuse to buy some luxury, when we do some trivial 
 thine- that we dislike, when we abstain from certain meats on 
 certain days of the year. 
 
 And when some trouble comes upon us that we cannot escape, 
 and we take it with common patience, we call that *^ taking up 
 our ci'oss." We talk of little daily crosses — and in so speaking 
 we get as near to Christ's meaning- as the little silver cross, 
 which you hang round neck, or dnugle on your watch-chain, isj 
 to the heavy wooden cross that supported the weight of a cruci- 
 fied man. 
 
 I have chosen an extreme instance to make my meaninc 
 clear. But in scores of less striking instances we are doing the' 
 same thing. We are missing the meaning of Christ's sayings by 
 reason of their very familiarity. The one remedy is to go back 
 in each case and see what they meant to those who first heard 
 them, when they had not passed into customary phrases, bui 
 were startlingly new. Then we may get some conception ofl 
 what their true lesson is for ourselves to-day. 
 
 The text which I have chosen has suft'ered considerably byj 
 the process of familiarisation. 
 
 \ 
 
 
 /
 
 NOT TO BE SEUVEU, BUT TO SERVE. 
 
 1. The cx]n-essiou "the Sou of Mau " suggest to u^ now 
 simply one of many names of Jesus Christ. We hardly pause to 
 ask why Christ used it : why, for example, He did not in this 
 passage rather say : " I came not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister.^' 
 
 The title was a new one, so ftir as we can tell, freshly 
 fasliioned by Himself, as the mode in which He wished to 
 describe His nature and mission. It is not found as a title in the 
 Old Testament. The passage in Daniel, which we read on the 
 evening of Ascension Day, does not really contain it. For there 
 the words ai-e properly rendered " one like a sou of man," and 
 not " one like the Sou of Man," We ourselves are sons of men : 
 and ''one like a sou of mau " means one whose appearance was ■ 
 that of a man. Again, the Prophet Ezekiel is addressed by 
 God as " son of man " — that is to say, he is constantly reminded 
 that ho is a man : but he is never called " the Sou of Man,''' 
 
 The prefix "son of" occurs veiy often in the Bible, in' 
 phrases which characterise a person. Thus we have the expres- 
 sions " sou of valour,'' " sou of Belial," '* son of wickedness," 
 " sou of the morning " ; and in the New Testament, " son of 
 perdition," and " sous (or ' children ') of this world," and " sons 
 of light." 
 
 Thus we see that '^ a son of man" means.bne whose character- 
 istic (on which we wish to dwell) is that he is a man. So in the 
 parallelism of Hebrew poetry, which delights to repeat its thought 
 in heightened language, we have such phrases as : 
 
 " God is not a man, that He should lie ; neither the son of 
 man, that He should repent '^ (Numb, xxiii., 19). 
 
 " What is man, that Thou art mindful of him : and the son 
 of man, that Thou visitest him T' (Ps. viii., 4). 
 
 Accordingly when Christ spoke of Himself again and again 
 as " Son of Man,'' the first thought that would arise in the minds 
 of His hearers would be that He was asserting Himself to be 
 trull/ Man. 
 ol
 
 SERMON. 
 
 But He did not speak of Himself merely as a son of man : He 
 spoke of Himself as " the Son of Man." That is to say, He 
 claimed to be in some way a unique representation of the human 
 race. He was not merely a human being, He was " the Human 
 Being '' — the true Man, who in some way stood for all men, in 
 whom all human life was summed up and represented. 
 
 An interesting parallel to this title is a title which He never 
 used of Himself, though others used it of Him : Ho even seems 
 to have refused to limit Himself to it. I mean " the Son of 
 David. '^ Every descendant of David was, in the language of 
 those days, " a son of David,'^ just as every Israelite was "a son 
 of Abraham." But " the Son of David " was David's unique 
 representative, the great king of the future, who was to sit on 
 David's throne in Jerusalem, according to the general belief. 
 Christ claimed to be more than this — more than " the Son of 
 David,'' the Jewish king for the Jews. He claimed to be " the 
 Son of Man " — the Man for all men. 
 
 Thus we are getting at the first meaning of these words. 
 They signified that Christ was truly Man, and also representatively 
 Man. So we begin to see a reason in His use of this title in such 
 great sayings as, " The Sabbath was made for man, and not man 
 for the Sabbath : therefore the Son of Man is Lord even of the 
 Sabbath " (St. Mark ii., 28) : and again, " The Son of Man hath 
 power on earth to forgive sins." 
 
 2. We pass now to the second part of our text, and find that it 
 too has been rendered far less striking by a general change in 
 the application of words. 
 
 As a rule you will observe that words have a tendency to fall 
 in meaning — to begin high and end low. The word " knave " was 
 a very respectable word once, for it simply meant a " boy " : so too 
 the word "villain," which meant a "country man.'' Some words 
 even now may have a very high sense in one context, and a much 
 inferior sense in another. " Charity " originally meant the highest 
 of Christian virtues, purest and most unselfish love. It often 
 32
 
 NOT TO BE SERVED, BUT TO SERVE. 
 
 means now no more than giving mone}' to the poor to save our- 
 selves the trouble of really helping them. 
 
 The word " minister " is an example of the opposite tendency. 
 It originally meant the commonest form of servant : it was laid 
 hold of by Christianity to denote the high service rendered by 
 the leaders of the Church. St. Paul frequently calls himself " a 
 minister of the Gospel " ; and the term has found an abiding-place 
 of honour in the Christian Ministry. 
 
 But here we are concerned with its first meaning. If we read 
 the parallel section in St. Luke's Gospel, we shall see how 
 strongly this original sense was felt (xxii., 27) : " Whether is 
 the greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth ? is not 
 he that sitteth at meat ? But I am in the midst of you as he 
 that serveth.^^ The word ' serveth ' then is the same word as else- 
 where is translated ' ministereth.' It means serving the food, 
 waiting at table. Which is the greater — the host and his guests, 
 or the waiter ? That is Christ's question. ** But,'^ He adds, 
 " I am among you as a waiter.^' Are the words startling ? 
 They were meant to be startling. The disciples had been striving 
 for pre-eminence : they had been asking which was to have pre- 
 cedence — who was the greatest among them. Christ's answer is 
 that His standards are not as our standards. The law of service 
 is the law of life. He who most humbly renders services lives 
 the truest life. ** I am among you as he that serveth," as a 
 waiter at the table of another man. 
 
 3. We are now in a position to bring the two parts of our text 
 together again, and to look at it as a whole. 
 
 " The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister.'^ That is to say, He who is the true Man, who lives 
 the truest human life, serves others, waits upon others, instead 
 of seeking that others should wait upon Him. He came into 
 the world for this very purpose — to help, not to be helped ; to 
 serve, and not to be served. He regards others as the master or 
 
 33
 
 SERMON. 
 
 the guests at tlic table^ aud He claims as His part only that He 
 should wait ou them. 
 
 Read the Gospel through once again in the light of tin's one 
 saying, and see whether the story of Christ's life is consistent 
 with it. See how busy His days were : " There were many 
 coming and going, and they had no time, no, not so inuch as 
 to eat.'' Thronging multitudes pursue Him, all wanting help, 
 wanting healing, or wanting teaching. His was a short life : it 
 was all over at thirty-three. And the pressure of it was very 
 great. " I must work," He once said : " I must work the work 
 of Him that sent Me, while it is day : the night cometh, when 
 no man can work " (St. John ix., 4). To the last hours it was 
 the same : the night before His death. He took a basin and a 
 towel, and went round to all His disciples, and washed their feet . 
 — a servant to the last — a servant even to Judas Iscariot. It 
 was a symbol of His whole life. And later in that same night. 
 He gave Himself away to them yet more completely : " This is 
 My Body : eat it . . . This is My Blood : drink ye all of it." In 
 life and in death He gave Hiuiself to them. The Cross came 
 to interpret all this by a supreme act of self-sacrifice. " Greater 
 love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his 
 friends." 
 
 Are there any limits to this self-giving? they must have 
 asked, when He washed and wiped their feet. The Cross gave 
 the answer : No, there are no limits at all. 
 
 This, then, was the life of " the Son of Man." This was His 
 ideal for humanity : not self-extinction, but self-dedication — 
 absolute devotion to the service of men. 
 
 It was the purpose of God to renew the life of humanity by 
 making this the starting-point. When Christ left the visible 
 world and passed back into the invisible world, His life on earth 
 was not sharply broken off. It was lived on in the little band of 
 close followers, whose faith had been sadly shattered by the 
 Crucifixion, but restored by the Resurrection. They represented 
 34
 
 NOT TO BE SERVED,- BUT TO SERVE. 
 
 tlic Christ-lifo still being- lived among' men. They were filled as 
 we shall specially remember next Sunday with His Holy Spirit, 
 and inspired to lead the same life of service. 
 
 We saw last Sunday how they began as a Brotherhood bound 
 together by mutual service and helpfulness in " the fellowship of 
 the Holy Spirit." We saw the mighty force which this new life 
 exerted in the world. We need not tell again the mournful tale 
 of how it came to be broken up. We may rather ask what are 
 we doing to restore it to any measure of reality again. Two 
 things wo may all of us do. 
 
 (1.) Wo may cherish the ideal. We may study the Gospel, 
 with fresh earnestness, and learn how Christ actually lived when 
 He was amongst us in the flesh. We may go on to study the 
 Acts of the Apostles, and see how He continued to live on in His 
 Body the Church. When they were persecuted. He was perse- 
 cuted, and He cried from heaven, *' Saul, Saul, why persecutest 
 thou Me ? " When St, Peter healed a man he said " Aeneas, 
 Jesus Christ is healing thee. " He was one with them, and they 
 were one with Him. He was carrying on His own life of service 
 through their hands and feet and lips. 
 
 The Son of Man was still ministering to the needs of men. 
 The life of service was being reproduced on a larger scale in a 
 Society, the members of which formed one Body, with one heart 
 and one soul , one Body, in which individuals were but limbs, 
 not perfect in themselves, but perfectly adapted to the service of 
 the whole. 
 
 That is God's ideal for the life of man. We have forgotten it, 
 and talked too much of the rights of the individual, not recognis- 
 ing that the highest right of the individual is the right to serve 
 with all his powers the welfare of the whole. 
 
 (2.) The second thing we can all do is to strive in our own 
 
 limited spheres to carry out this life of service. Every one can 
 
 do that. Every one can serve some one. There is an infinite 
 
 variety of forms of service, just as there ar,e infinite cells and 
 
 35
 
 SERMON. 
 
 tissues in the body, all needed in working order to make up a 
 healthy life of the whole. 
 
 Some of you perhaps can do little more than try to serve those 
 in your own household, to make their lives easier, happier, better. 
 
 Some of you have larger opportunities, and of you more will 
 be required. You have control of others, from your position or 
 your wealth. 
 
 Some of you can be great strong hands of Christ, lifting the 
 fallen, staying the tottering ; righting great public wrongs ; 
 moving masses of men by deed and speech. It is not what 
 service you render that counts most ; but whether you are really 
 rendering service. 
 
 It may be that you have been accustomed to be waited on ; 
 to be served by others : and that you have largely destroyed your 
 powers of service in consequence. Doubtless you will be a very 
 unprofitable servant — especially at your first entry upon your 
 work. Yet begin : it is the only life. God will teach you how 
 to live it, if you will kneel and humbly ask Him for the sake of 
 Jesus Christ, who is at once our Servant and our Lord. 
 
 36
 
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