Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

This week in our series on Church Practices, we’re looking at serving together.

Why is Christian service such an important part of our practice?

What is it that makes Christianity a faith that is so obsessed with serving, whether it be serving our Lord, serving one another, or serving the surrounding culture?

Well, the answer to that is actually pretty simple.

The founder, author and perfecter of our faith, our Lord Jesus Christ, both modeled and spoke extensively on this.

You could say that service is one of the foundational values of Christianity.

Jesus’ idea of service stands in stark contrast to the ideas that suffuse our world.

Jesus’ understanding is divine—it comes from God—the world’s understanding is human, it comes from the fallen, selfish heart of man.

My sermon is a little different from normal today.

Rather than starting with the Bible, I’m going to start with where we find ourselves—with Australian culture.

So bear with me, we’re getting to the Bible in good time.

The way of the Dragon

As I was preparing for this sermon, I came across a book called “The way of the Dragon or the way of the Lamb.”

The reference to the Dragon and the Lamb comes, of course, from the book of Revelation, where Satan—the Dragon—and the world system is contrasted with Jesus—the Lamb—and his bride, the church.

Kyle Strobel explains that “the way of the dragon is power and strength for the sake of control and or domination.”

This is the way of the world—to use some form of power and strength to control others.

We see it every day.

It is not that the world doesn’t engage in service—of course it does.

But the motive and the means of that service are at odds with the way of the Lamb—the way of Christian service.

Examples of the way of the Dragon

Let me present some examples of the way of the Dragon, from popular fiction and from the headlines of the last couple of weeks.

Mrs Maisel

First up, a fictional example.

Mable and I have been watching a show on Prime called The Marvelous Mrs Maisel.

It’s about a family of very self-centred control freaks in 1950’s New York.

It’s a comedy, and much of the comedy comes from watching events spin out of each person’s obsessive control.

Let’s watch this scene, which shows the main character, Miriam, engaging in her nightly routine.

Makeup scene from Mrs Maisel

<video> 2 min

Now, a question, was Miriam, or Midge as she’s known, serving her husband or herself or a bit of both?

[Wait for answers.]

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with making yourself look nice, right?

But Midge’s obsessive image management is a prime example of the way of the Dragon—using power and strength to control (in this case the power of beauty).

Part of the structure of the show is that, almost immediately after this scene, Midge’s husband leaves her for his secretary.

Midge’s mighty efforts to control her husband’s attention have failed.

Now let’s look at an example from this week.

Andrew Thorburn

You may have heard about Andrew Thorburn resigning from his role as CEO of the Essendon AFL club after only a day.

The reason that he resigned was that he realised that the views of his church, of which he is the board chairman, were at odds with Essendon’s values.

Many commentators are using this to point to how Christians are being “cancelled” by our culture.

But I disagree.

You see, Essendon has a clear value of “inclusivity.”

What this value means, ironically, is that Essendon is very exclusive.

(Johannes Leak capture that well in his cartoon.)

Essendon inclusivity embraces people like Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, who took the opportunity this week to label the traditionally Christian views of City on a Hill, Thorburn’s church, as “hateful” and “bigotry.”

But if Essendon includes such people, how can someone like Thorburn have any position of authority?

Thorburn might manage a job as a humble accountant, so long as he keeps his head down and doesn’t share his views with anyone.

But how can he function as CEO, someone expected to promote a value which labels Christianity as hateful and bigoted.

Thorburn chose his church over Essendon, and for that he must be congratulated.

But I wonder what made him think he could be CEO of an organisation so dogmatically anti-Christian as the Bombers football club?

Thorburn unfortunately choose the way of the Dragon—power and strength in the role of CEO—and has suffered the embarrassing consequences.

In our modern society, most of us are going to have to work for organisations whose values are at odds with our own.

So long as we can work out our own values within that organisation, that’s OK.

Does that limit our options within such an organisation?

Yes, it does.

And so it should—if an organisation has clearly expressed values we need to be able to work within them.

In the UK just this week a nurse was appropriately sacked from the NHS (their national health service), for stating that conservatives should not be resuscitated.

Her values were at odds with her organisations and she could have no expectations of keeping her job.

Now, whether an AFL football club should have such dogmatic, exclusionary values is another question.

Given the social contract that most sporting clubs operate under (heavily supported by tax-payers money), I think it is unacceptable that such bigotry is allowed in a club, but that is a higher-order question, and it has implications for tax-payer support for Christian organisations, as well.

My point is: the cultural warriors of Western Monotheism are making a big deal every time a Christian comes into conflict with modern Australian society.

But, as I said at length a month ago, we don’t need to worry.

Our strategy does not depend on having CEO positions in confused football clubs.

We don’t need to be running the nation’s media.

We don’t even need to have a huge, influential mega-churches.

These are all Dragonish tactics, not Lamblike ones.

So what does the way of the Lamb look like, then?

The way of the lamb

Let’s join Jesus and his disciples as they rest up in Capernaum, after a long, dusty walk.

“If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.”

Hmm.

Has anyone told that to Trump?

Jesus turns power and control structures upside-down, quite literally.

The leader must be the servant of all.

There is a reason for why lamb like leaders must serve, and it is very simple: freedom.

The way of the Dragon is the way of dominance and control.

It is the way of socialism, where the government controls all.

It is the way of totalitarianism, of despotism.

Look at China, Russia, Dan Andrews’ Victorian government, the Australian response to COVID, even the Roman Catholic church.

These structures of power and dominance, regardless of their stated motives and goals, are all Dragonish.

Look at the traditional family structure, where the husband dictates to the wife and the wife dictates to the kids.

That, too is Dragonish.

The way of the Lamb does not dictate.

Rather it asks for a covenant—an agreement built on respect and trust and mutual service (and, between humans, mutual submission).

Paul explains that Jesus too that approach when he refused to cling to his status and privileges as God:

Paul learnt directly from Jesus how the way of the Lamb works.

He shares a personal testimony with the Corinthians in his second letter:

The way of the Lamb is to allow God’s power to work in our weakness.

When we serve in humility and selflessness, the mighty power of God is at work.

The Dragon can rage and fume, but the weak, humble servants of the Lamb will triumph.

This is all very well, but it’s a bit abstract, what does it look like in real life?

The way of the Lamb

The first thing to note is that the way of the Lamb is not the way of a lonesome cowboy, or a heroic loner.

The way of the Lamb is the way of community.

In the book of Ephesians, Paul describes the Holy Spirit’s vision for the church.

I don’t know if you remember our sermon series on this wonderful book, but it contains so many piercing insights into how we must live as followers of Christ in a fallen world.

If we are to serve Jesus, we cannot do it alone, so Paul’s call to serve starts with a call to unity,

You can see here what it is that’s important in our service: the attitude with which we serve.

We must serve humbly, gently, patiently, forbearingly and lovingly.