Servant Spirit

Count the many major roles you’ve filled in life.

Child, student, employee, volunteer, friend.

Maybe spouse, parent, sibling, caregiver, adviser, leader and protector.

Maybe aunt, uncle, grandparent or mentor.

And at a more mundane level, we’re all consumers, patients and clients.

If you’re still counting, you’ve probably run out of fingers by now.

Each title there implies a relationship with someone else.

Child/parent, student/teacher, friend/friend, and so forth.

Each role carries a set of obligations.

And each requires a certain level of commitment and effort for success.

A number of us here might add the role of public servant.

We don’t all have the word servant explicit in our titles.

But all of our roles involve some kind of service.

So we’re all servants.

Serving the other person in each of those relationships.

Doing at least the minimum things we’re expected or obligated to do.

Or failing in that relationship.

A friend told me about an experience he had when he began his public service career.

He went to a seminar for newly appointed leaders.

And a prominent speaker there gave the group his three key rules for government executives.

(Or executives in any large institution.)

  - Show up at work.

  - Keep your hands out of the till.

  - And keep your hands off the employees.

No lofty talk of dedication, commitment, excellence or achievement.

Just a warning to meet the barest minimum obligations.

My friend says he was shocked and appalled at what he heard.

But now, thirty years later, he gives that old seminar speaker some credit.

My friend says he’s seen a number of executive ousted in the last thirty years.

And all were for violation of one of those three embarrassingly-low standards.

Meeting the bare minimum service level may be enough to avoid total failure.

But surely we aspire to higher performance in our own roles and relationships.

And especially in our one most important relationship.

The one we hear about in today’s Gospel.

Our master/servant relationship with God.

Jesus tells us, 

Don’t expect thanks for doing just the absolute minimum.

You’re obliged to do at least that much.

You’re an unprofitable servant if that’s all you do.

So how can we go beyond the minimum in our master/servant relationship with God?

What service does he want from us?

He wants us to show real dedication and commitment; pursue real excellence and achievement.

And to bring that servant spirit not only to our direct relationship with him.

But to all the many roles and relationships of our lives.

Tuesday, 32nd Week in Ordinary Time

Lk 17:7-10           Read this Scripture @usccb.org