I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power. – Ephesians 3:7

Today's Scripture Reading (April 8, 2021): Ephesians 3

Mandy Ashcraft in "Small Orange Fruit" writes that "everyone holding a check pad is an aspiring something-else." Maybe that is true, at least to a point. I had a friend who worked as part of the wait staff at an upscale restaurant in college. I remember being amazed as we counted his tips when he got home from work in the early morning hours. He may have been paid minimum wage, but the truth was that he would have probably worked the job for the tips. He was well compensated for the time that he put in at the restaurant. But he was putting himself through school to become something else. In the case of my friend, he was aspiring to a technical career in the television industry.

At the age of 19, Chris Pratt was "discovered" while waiting tables at "Bubba Gump Shrimp Company" in Maui. It is a safe assumption that Pratt wasn't planning on working at the Shrimp Company for the rest of his life. It was a stepping stone to something else. And I doubt, but maybe it would be an interesting question to ask, that even on a bad day, working on a Hollywood set, that Pratt wishes that he was waiting tables again. I am not saying that I don't know waiters/waitresses who are fantastic at their job and love the challenge of providing service to people. But people can also be, well, idiots, and most people that I know who wait tables would jump at the chance to do something else. And some of the best wait staff that I know have made that leap. Waiting tables is stopping place on the road to someplace else and being something else.

I have never waited on tables. But I have had my stopping place occupations, including working at McDonald's and pumping gas at full-serve service stations. But they were just stops on the road to something else. And we have all had those stops, and maybe we are still on that journey.

But I have waited on tables (yeah, I know that I am contradicting myself.) I have worked for almost the past thirty years in some pastoral capacity. Or, as some would say, I am a minister in the church. And the Greek word that we would translate as "minister" (diakonos) is the same word that is translated here as "servant." And that word, according to A. Skevington Wood, finds its root in classical Greek literature as meaning "a table waiter who is always at the bidding of his customers."

I know several pastors who seem to be in a power grab, proud to be a church leader. But the truth is a little different. We, and really this includes everyone who professes to be a Christian, are just people content to wait on the tables of the church. Oh, and we are not aspiring to be anything else.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ephesians 4