Hab. 1:2–3; 2: 2–4

2 Tim. 1:6–8; 13–14

Luke 17: 5–10

This morning my sermon will be about Servants, Slaves and Sons. As so often happens, the best starting point is not a text from the Bible, or an anecdote but a painting.

In this instance it's a painting which many of you will have seen because it's no further away than the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. I had hoped to have a large colour reproduction available this morning to show you, but in the event there wasn't one available, so you'll have to make do with a black-and-white copy of it taken from a book, and if it encourages you to go and see the original for yourselves, then so much the better.

The picture is called Hogarth's Servants, and it was painted by William Hogarth who lived from 1697–1764, and whose house in Chiswick you must have passed many times when driving down the A4 just beyond the Hogarth Roundabout.

The picture shows the heads of six people, three women, two men and a boy. It's more of a household document than a group portrait, since only their heads and shoulders are painted and fitted onto the canvas in the most convenient position. We know nothing about any of them except that the older man is probably Ben Ives who had a loyal admiration for his master's work and one day buttonholed David Garrick the actor who happened to be visiting the house and said, showing him one of Hogarth's paintings, "There sir! There's a picture. They say my master can't paint a portrait and does not know what true beauty is; there is a head that I think must confound and put to the blush all his enemies."

What the picture of Hogarth's servants suggests to me is that we have here a small group of people who were profoundly contented to be in the relationship of servant to someone whom they both admired and trusted. Hogarth, we understand, could be a difficult person at times and made many enemies amongst those in whose circles he moved as he painted portraits of his contemporaries. Not the least of his enemies was his next-door neighbour, Lord Burlington in Chiswick House. So there were probably times when his servants found him a bit of a pain to work for, and were perhaps even tempted to go and work for Lord Burlington down the road.. But the important thing for our purposes is that their particular relationship to him did not depend upon liking but upon their trust in and faithfulness to him.

Now the Bible is full of references to servants. Our own word deacon comes from the Greek word for servant. In fact the words translates servant in our Bibles includes not only the Greek and Hebrew words for domestic servant but also slave and boy. God often calls his chosen people Israel his "servants"; the Prophet Isaiah describes the coming of someone who will be God's Servant to carry the sins of the world on his shoulder, a prophecy most strikingly fulfilled by Jesus Christ himself; and of that same Lord Jesus Christ, St Paul says in his letter to the Philippians "In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus: His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave".

Now modern man, and the world to which he belongs, in their enthusiasm to rid the world of slavery and its many abuses, have committed the classic mistake of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The world in fact has convinced itself that all servant/master relationships are wrong in themselves.

Let's be clear that if this were in fact true we should have to abandon the whole Christian revelation and look elsewhere for our salvation. For the Bible makes it very clear indeed that in the first instance, it is only as the servants of the Living God that we and our lives on earth can make any kind of sense at all. That's why, incidentally, so many people nowadays complain that "there doesn't seem to be much purpose in life". Of course there will be little or no purpose in life for those who have deliberately shut their eyes to the only Person who can give it purpose and direction in the first place, that is, God himself.

Of course earthly masters don't always set a good example in the treatment of their servants. There are good and bad masters as there have always been, for that matter, good and bad servants. But if we insist on look at only at the bad side of things like servanthood we shall lose sight of the many good things which can come out of it, at least so far as the servants themselves are concerned. So let's look at some of these good things

First of all, being a servant carries with it a certain status. "Status" literally means "a place to stand firm on". To be able to say "I serve the Lord Jesus" immediately provides a standpoint which means that everyone knows "where you are coming from". To lack status is to lack self-respect. To have a status changes us from being relative Nobodies into becoming absolute Somebodies.

Following on from that, our servanthood provides us with a measure of security. Remember the Prodigal Son who worked out that he would be better off as one of the hired servants of his father rather than eating the left-overs in the pig-trough where he now found himself. "How many of my father's paid servants have more food than they want, and here am I dying of hunger!", he said to himself, and for that reason and no other to begin with he decided to return to his father and ask to be taken onto his domestic staff.

Thirdly, servanthood provides us with discipline. Literally, of course, "discipline" means "learning-process" and those who submit to it become disciples. Like servanthood, discipline has become a Boo-word. Discipline is mistakenly linked in people's minds with the very opposite of freedom, and freedom of course is the Hooray-word of the present age.

If that's what how you think of discipline then just pause a moment whether you think young people today exercise enough self-discipline; then go on to ask yourself how you yourself managed to achieve so many excellent things in your lifetime. Did they just happen by your doing whatever you felt like doing at a given moment? Let me suggest that everything worthwhile that you or others have achieved in life, whether at work, at play, at home or in the church, was the result of self-discipline – saying "No!" to our feelings: actions like turning off the television to do our homework; forgoing your Sunday lie-in so as to be with God's people in church; and putting down that fascinating novel we're reading in order to write a thank-you letter which we owe someone.

This leads on to the fourth benefit of servanthood. It increases both our own self-esteem and confidence, as well as other people's opinion of us.. After a while, if we learn to do any job really well, what seemed to us at first to be an unremitting bore becomes, as we get better and better at it, something we take pride in, even if we don't actually enjoy every aspect of it.

But there's even more to it than that. For if we prove ourselves to be faithful and diligent servants in small matters, the likelihood is that our master will trust us with much greater and more important ones. Servanthood which started with scrubbing the floor will progress by stages to polishing the silver, being given responsibility for others and finally being entrusted with the keys to all the doors and cupboards in the house. What is equally certain is that if we skimp over the simple jobs, nobody is going to trust us with anything else – we shall have given ourselves a life-sentence as floor-scrubbers.

Moreover, in our experience as God's servants the story doesn't end with our emancipation as servants being given the run of the house by our Heavenly Master. For our Master in Heaven wishes to become our Father in Heaven. Think again of the Prodigal Son. He came home to his father prepared to become his servant; instead (and much to the annoyance of his older brother) he was immediately reinstated to full sonship. It was as if his return, together with his willingness to be accepted on any terms or none, served to undo all the mischief which he had done himself and others during his absence from home.

For God, in calling us to his service, never intended that we should remain mere servants. It was always his hidden plan from the beginning that we should be become his sons by adoption and fellow-heirs with his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Sonship not servitude is the destiny he had in mind when he created us.

Of course, in our baptism we were made "a member of Christ, the child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven", so in one sense our sonship is already an established fact, a fait accompli so to speak. The parable we have been using this morning of progress from servanthood to sonship breaks down precisely at this point because sonship is not something which we earn but is the free gift of God made possible by the sacrifice of His only-begotten Son Jesus Christ upon the cross "for us men and for our salvation". It's one of those instances where, because we inhabit time whereas God inhabits eternity, it means that we can't press the imagery as far as we might like to. However, the fact remains that whilst we should see ourselves both as servants and as sons of God, it's important to give each its due weight.

St John, in his First Letter, has something helpful to say about this, so let's allow him to have the last word. "My dear people" he says "we are already the children of God but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed; all we know is, that when it is revealed we shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is"

And what is he really? Jesus Christ is the Son of God who willingly became the Servant of God in order that he might become the Servant of Man so that you and I might become, like him, the sons of God. Unless we too are prepared to become servants as he did we shall never, in the end become really and truly sons like him, as St John promised us we shall.

If we are willing to become servants, then we shall find ourselves being treated, and becoming in reality, more and more like sons. If, however, we refuse to become servants – then we shall find that we've allowed ourselves to be turned into – Nobodies!.