The Rev. Noah Van Niel
The Chapel of the Cross
Sunday June 6th, 2021
Proper 5 (B Track 1): 1 Samuel 8:4-20, 11:14-15; Psalm 138; 2 Cor 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35
On certain occasions it is the task of the preacher to stand in the pulpit and provoke their listeners with words they know will be controversial, and then to weather the blowback in the hopes that they will have stirred some holy fire in the hearts of their hearers. Today may be one of those days. For the rhetorical lightning rod with which I stand before you is this: I do not understand why so many people love Bob Dylan. Now, I have nothing against the guy and begrudge him not his fame and fortune. But there seems to be a level of appreciation for his work that I just don’t understand. Rolling Stone has him as the number 1 greatest songwriter of all time; he was given the Nobel prize for literature; even at 80 he’s still selling out concerts. I have no doubt some of you will take time this week to set me straight.
I know we have some Dylan disciples out there because a few months ago during one of our Men’s Bible Study meetings one of you mentioned in passing a song of his that, not being a fan, I had never heard before. But I was tired of not getting what all the fuss was about, and curious to try and understand it, so I dug a little deeper. The refrain goes something like this:
You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
Indeed you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody…
“Gotta serve somebody” was the opening track off Dylan’s 1979 album Slow Train Coming which was the first and best-regarded album of his so called “Christian period” coming as it did, after his temporary conversion to Evangelical Christianity. I’m not here to comment on Dylan’s peripatetic religious beliefs, but I appreciate the searing simplicity of these lyrics: “you’re gonna have to serve somebody” is a challenging refrain, it gets your attention, that’s for sure.
Part of the reason it catches your attention is because it makes you ask, “Is he right? Is this paragon of rock and roll, that art form of rebelliousness and freedom really telling me I’m gonna serve somebody? Aren’t I an independent being with autonomy and agency all my own?” Well, not quite. Dylan was tapping into the truth that we are easily guided and shaped by forces, ideas, and people, outside ourselves, often without even knowing it. Recently social scientists have found ways to track and quantify the influences and ideas that shape our thoughts and actions. People like Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at Wharton, wrote a bestselling book a few years ago titled Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior. I hope I’m not spoiling the ending by saying the results are clear: we are not so much in control as we like to think and often end up serving people or ideas we do not mean to because we are very easily influenced. This has long been the case, but now we just have the data to back it up. It’s why the author of our collect this morning asks God for help to think those things that are right and to do them. Because otherwise we are liable to think and do things that are not good and right. Because what is good and right is contestable territory. And we are easily pulled off course. As people, we are gonna end up serving somebody or something. The question then becomes, who’s it going to be? And that’s the same question our readings are asking us this morning.
It starts with the Israelites in 1 Samuel 8—a pivotal chapter in the Old Testament and the beginning of what will be for us, a long march over the next few months through the major monarchies of Israe:l from Saul, to David, to Solomon. Up until this point Israel had not had a King. They had Moses, they had Joshua and then they cycled through a destructive series of “judges.” The cycle went something like this: the Israelites would go astray, start disobeying God, and as punishment they would fall to their enemies. Then they would call out to God to rescue them, at which point God would raise up a charismatic individual to save them and then lead (or “judge”) them for a time. As systems of government go, it was not the most stable and frankly, sounds exhausting. So, you can understand when, in 1 Samuel 8, the Israelites say, “We’ve had enough of these “judges.” Just give us a King already.” But this demand amounts to calling for control over their own political destiny and rejecting God as their main authority. They know they gotta serve somebody, and they’d rather serve a King than God. After all, it seemed to work well for other nations. But, Israel was not supposed to be like other nations. They were supposed to be God’s chosen people, and enjoy a special relationship with the Almighty. Nevertheless, they want a King, and they will not be dissuaded. And that is how we get Saul, the first King of Israel; the first in a succession of promising, but ultimately flawed leaders who shine for a moment before collapsing under the weight of their humanity—insecurity for Saul, lust for David, greed for Solomon. And thus begins the long road that will lead, eventually, to the destruction and dissolution of the nation of Israel.
Who’s being served is also a question in our Gospel passage, this morning. Jesus is beginning to attract a following, and the crowds are getting intense, but he is in his element. He’s preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons. This leads some people to call him crazy and leads the Pharisees to accuse him of being demonically possessed; serving not God but Satan. This makes no sense, Jesus points out—why would the ruler of demons cast out demons? A divided kingdom, a divided house, would crumble from such instability. Jesus makes clear who he is serving—he is serving the Lord. There’s no division in that house. He’s got Satan all bound up and under his feet. The subtle implication of his comments though, is that it is perhaps the structural and spiritual integrity of those who are calling his good works demonic that should be questioned – who are they serving?
The completeness of Jesus’ service to God is juxtaposed with the equivocating service of the pharisees, and at other times in the narrative, the shaky service of even his closest disciples. Even the best of us, are at best, shaky servants of the Lord. Our commitment is incomplete; our house divided. Often we are serving God and; God and something else—something that is not God: greed, power, lust, fear, insecurity, anger, self-indulgence. All manifestations, small and large, of things that are not of God. Call it the devil, call it a King, call it sin, call it the ego, call it whatever you want, it is not God. When it comes to serving God we’re either all in or we’re not. It doesn’t matter who we are, God asks for complete allegiance. He asks for the whole thing. And that is an important reminder because it is natural for us to hold something back, whether out of doubt, or fear, or selfishness, or a need for control – or all of the above. The giving of ourselves to God and the following of God’s ways above all else is very difficult to do. That’s why the Israelites called for a King. That’s why the hardest prayer for Jesus to pray is still the hardest prayer for us to pray, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
But to serve something other than God is, more often than not, in some way, to serve yourself. And to serve yourself is spiritually sclerotic. It hardens your heart. Stiffens your neck. Narrows your vision. It turns you in on yourself. And ultimately leads to self-delusion and self-destruction. But to serve the Lord, fully and without restraint is the opposite. It is an opening up; an expansion of our hearts and our lives. Serving God and God alone is to participate in an existence that is ever widening, and will show us things we could not see or know before; the depths and riches of life, the beauties and joys of the world around you and the people in it just waiting to be discovered. To serve the Lord is to see as God sees, a vision of the human family that is unconstrained, even by the bonds of blood and kinship we value so highly: “Who are my mother and my brothers?…Whoever does the will of God [whoever serves the Lord] is my brother and sister and mother.” By pledging our service to God and God alone, we are brought that close to Jesus Christ, and welcomed into the abundant life he came proclaiming.
So, in honor of Mr. Dylan and his brief foray into Evangelical Christianity, I want to do something different today. Something we can only do because we are finally back here in body, not just mind and spirit. We’re going to have an altar call. Oh good you didn’t run away. (I see you squirming a little bit though.) You might not realize it, but we have an altar call every Sunday in the Episcopal Church. We just call it communion. And here’s the invitation: if you find yourself pledging only partial allegiance to God; if you can sense the cracks in your foundation, the instability inherent in the divided house of your heart, and you long for that stability, that strength, that big, bold, beautiful vision of existence that comes from serving God, and God alone, when you come forward to receive communion, I want you to bring that divided self, that shaky house, on up here with you and leave it on the altar as an offering to the Lord. And when you take that bread, I want you to say in your heart, “Lord, I choose you. I want to serve you, fully and without restraint.” And then come back next week and do the same thing. Because if Mr. Dylan—who maybe has a little more going for him than I gave him credit for—is right, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody. Well it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody. Let’s make it the Lord.