Gotta Serve Somebody

What follows is the manuscript of a sermon I preached on June 9, 2024 at Stewart Memorial UMC in Buffalo, TX. Thank you, once more, to this lovely congregation for welcoming me and tolerating my occasional presence in the pulpit!

The lectionary texts used for this sermon are 1 Samuel 8:4-20 and Mark 3:20-35.

Pastor Andrew and I had a professor in Divinity School who liked to make song references—some of which went over our heads. But one of his favorite songs to mention was a Bob Dylan song called “Gotta Serve Somebody.” And that song really came to mind as I started diving deeper into these texts for today.

You see, in this song, Bob Dylan names a bunch of possible professions, possible stations in life—he says you might be a socialite, a gambler, a soldier, a construction worker, a politician, even a preacher…but “you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” “Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord,” Dylan says, “But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” And both of our texts today are about whom we choose to serve. So much of our lives, in fact, is about whom we choose to serve.

First we have the people of Israel, despite dire warnings, insisting that God give them a king. Samuel seems to take it personally, but God reassures him that it’s not the prophet they’re rejecting. It’s God. The people of Israel are so eager to be “like other nations,” to be like everybody else, that they are giving up what sets them apart. They’re giving up the unique privilege of being ruled by the one true LORD.

Now, Jesus knows something about being unique. Our gospel text tells us that people think he’s crazy. He has been eating with tax collectors and sinners, showing grace to people who’ve made mistakes. He has been healing on the sabbath, saying that the letter of the law is not as important as its spirit. He has been gathering disciples, preaching to crowds, casting out demons. He’s not worried about anyone’s approval but God’s.

So when his family tries to restrain him, he doesn’t care. He says that the followers of God are his family. Now, this doesn’t mean he is rejecting his biological family—we know that his mother Mary and his brother James remain important parts of his life and ministry. But he won’t stop serving God just to please them. He won’t give in just to fit in.

You see, something really special can happen when we decide that worldly pressures won’t make our decisions for us. When we choose to live by God’s rules of love and forgiveness, seeking fellowship with others, we can form a community of joyful servants. At its best, the church facilitates this, helping connect people to a group of believers who support and encourage each other—the way a family is meant to. We don’t always succeed, but God opens that possibility for us when we follow Jesus’s example of love…instead of the world’s example of isolation and discord.

Sadly, Israel gives up its chance to be a community following God, because they want to be a kingdom following a king, like everyone else.

Now of course, Israel isn’t choosing one political system over another—they’re choosing to have a human as king instead of having God as their king. Like Bob Dylan says, they’re gonna have to serve somebody. But even though we’re lucky enough to have democracy as our political system, we also have rulers in our personal lives. Every day, we choose whom we are going to serve.

And if we are honest, we choose rulers other than God all the time. Maybe we choose to let the desire for wealth rule us—which Jesus specifically warns against. Maybe we make idols out of status symbols and trends. More and more, we let social media rule our attitudes, our self-esteem, and our time—I’m definitely guilty of scrolling too much! Perhaps we are ruled by our political divisions and our zeal to defeat the other side. We might be ruled by our desire to be presentable, our desire to be productive, and of course, our desire to fit in. But these rulers won’t lead us to prosperity, and they certainly won’t lead us to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Indeed, those earthly rulers, like many of the kings of Israel, are tyrants. They impoverish our lives. God describes worldly kings extensively in our passage, detailing how they take away the gifts God has given us.

God even goes so far as to say that these earthly kings will enslave the people. As we see so often in the Old Testament, the text emphasizes that God is the one who brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt! That, along with love and mercy, is the top line of God’s resume. It’s God’s greatest qualification for kingship. God is the great liberator.

So we have this stark contrast, this question that should be easy to answer: will you choose the enslaver or the liberator? The answer should be so obvious, and yet, Israel chooses the enslaver over and over again—and so do we.

Yes, as Paul tells us, humanity has been enslaved to sin and death. That is why we need Jesus to set us free. Only he is capable of reclaiming us. As Jesus declares in our passage from Mark, he is sent by God to overthrow the devil’s kingdom. He is sent to “tie up” that “strong man” who holds us captive. He gives us a second chance to choose whom we will serve.

Just as Jesus welcomes us into a community serving God, he also offers an individual life of serving God. And as Pastor Andrew often says, it’s awfully hard to be a Christian by yourself. These two things go hand-in-hand: serving God as a family and serving God with the daily choices we make. So I invite you to reflect on your everyday life. What do you prioritize? Where do you spend your time, resources, and energy? How are you embracing the community of love that Christ offers? Who is your king? Because in the end, you’re gonna have to serve somebody. Let us pray:

O God, the author of peace and lover of fellowship, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom. Defend us, your humble servants, so that we may not fall prey to the powers of this world; but be ruled by you alone through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Collect adapted from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, pg. 99.)