Service Isn’t Optional

The first time I tried driving off-road solo, I got stuck. The Dodge I still drive has its oil filter at the bottom of the engine in front of the oil pan in an exposed place, so I had to be careful about straddling rock formations. However, I had already done some rather technical driving of a kind that I’d never done before and was flush with my own success, and thus was moving a little faster than I probably should have been. By the time I saw it, I was going too fast to go around the rock, and so straddled it with my front tires. It was an impressive bang, and I thought it may have been the frame and I’d be fine, but the oil pressure light came on and I had to stop the engine. I found the oil filter smashed and a line of engine oil in the dirt trail behind me.

Not smart enough to have an extra filter and oil with me, I at least had prepared for the chance that I might have to hike out and look for help. I put on my backpack and began what I knew was going to be a long, hot hike. One I’d have to repeat to get back and get my truck.

That is until, after about 30 minutes of hiking, a white Jeep Wrangler came lumbering up the trail from the opposite direction. The driver stopped to ask if I was okay, and when I explained my situation, he was pleased to drive me into town to get a new filter and oil and then return me to my now abandoned vehicle. What a relief that was for me.

We spent the next few hours together (turns out I’d have had a much longer hike than I’d anticipated). During that time, I learned that Mike had only weeks before lost his wife to cancer, and this had been his first trip back to the trail since her death. He just had to get out of the house. Mike discovered that I was an Orthodox priest and Navy Chaplain, and so began to share things he hadn’t talked about with anyone since his wife had died. We’d both only thought that we’d go have an enjoyable afternoon, we both discovered that God had other things in mind.

This story came to mind while preparing for this coming Sunday’s commemoration of St Mary of Egypt, because we know St. Mary’s story only because a priest-monk named Zosimas was wandering around in the desert as part of his monastery’s prayer rule for Holy Lent. He had been looking all his life for a saint from whom he might learn, but when he finally found one, it was she who needed him. First to hear her confession, and then to return with Holy Communion.

I’m sure that as he was wandering in the desert praying, Father Zosimas thought that he was in control of whether he turned left at the gypsum bush, or if he turned right at the yucca. All the time, however, it was God who was in control.

Part of the difficulties with our modern Christianity is that we often look at the world through the same secular materialist eyes as others who have no faith. We see a flat, mechanical world that functions independently of any outside spiritual force. We’ve lost our sense of wonder and the connection between the world, its Creator, and ourselves. We’ve lost our sacramental view of the created world. Worse, we treat God like an emergency resource. Break glass in case of emergency, and even then only to make ourselves feel better. Having lost our awareness of God in the everyday, and lost the sense of awe and mystery of being itself, we think that we’re the ones calling the shots. We say our prayers, but do we believe God hears them? Do we act like He does?

God answers prayer. Both Mary and Zosimas finally found what they were looking for, though perhaps not in the place, manner, or form that they expected. When we are unable to see God’s intervention and involvement in our lives and think we do only what we want independently to do, we fail to see how God uses our decisions. We pray that his Kingdom come and His will be done, but then we live our lives as if He didn’t even exist. He couldn’t possibly actually seek to influence—or even care—whether I took that off-road drive that day, whether I busted my oil filter or not, could he? And yet it is just those every day, mundane decisions that put us in a position to do God’s will and to make His kingdom come. Fr. Zosimas thought he was going into the wilderness to be alone to pray, and look what happened. He met a saint. He served a saint.

Not only does God answer prayer, but He will cover great distances to meet our needs. He bridged the gulf between Creator and creation in the Person of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ. That was a huge gulf. It is fundamental to Jewish and Christian theology that God, as Creator, is wholly other, completely outside of creation. And yet Jesus—of one essence with God, the second person of the Holy Trinity—stepped into our humanity. And then, as if that weren’t enough, he chooses men and women, who like Zosimas are themselves seeking God and His will, and he sends them into the wilderness to bring God to us—often without even realizing that that’s what they’re doing. I expect that Zosimas didn’t anticipate having a saint ask him for anything, just like we never know what may be asked or required of us. So, we must always be prepared to serve whomever God puts in our path because we may be the instruments He chooses to do his will.

God answers prayer, and he goes to great lengths to meet us and our needs. He does all of this out of His infinite love for each of us, because He “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” He does this so that we ourselves can become God-bearers to others, so that we do not seek to be served but to serve, to show to those around us the love of our Savior by loving them—by becoming a slave to all.

This final week of Holy Lent we should all reflect and try to think of which man or woman in our life we are unwilling to serve, the person to whom we cannot imagine being a slave. That person is the one we are called to serve, he or she is Jesus in disguise and my inability to humble myself to his service is what is blocking my access to the kingdom of God. Jesus says as much in his sermon on the mount when he says “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”  It should be our goal in Lent and always to heal our relationships and to serve one another, even that guy.

Of course, this isn’t easy, and it isn’t something we should expect to be able to do on our own. I know I can’t. That’s why we pray, and ask God to help us, to give us the strength and wisdom to do it. And if we pray, we know from the experience of St. Mary and Fr. Zosimas, that God answers prayer and that He will go to great lengths to do so. He already has, and He always will.