It’s Thursday. On Saturday I travel. To Rhodes House, Oxford: there is a seminar held there. The house was bought for those who obtain a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the that place.
Which I have never visited. I live in the Antipodes: although I am a reasonable scholar and my university is a place with a good reputation, it is not in the top 100, let alone the top ten in the world. Oxford is. And they know it.
I will be travelling to the land of the elite, to learn. But in doing so, there are risks. For the elite know that they are the greater, and demand their tithe. They always have.
But that is not how it should ever be within the church. We should never be satisfied with our place or position, or take comfort in the lands or income we have in a church. We are not here to rule, but to do the work of Christ: which is to serve and save the Lost.
So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”
A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.
“You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
I talk about the elite a lot. Because in a world of credentials, I have my share of them: they are a requirement for the job I do and a consequence of having a curiosity that keeps me asking for the data, and reviewing it. Working as an academic removes a lot of your illusions about the wisdom within the university, that sheltered workshop for the mathematically inclined and socially inept.
And when I write to not be them or like them I am preaching at myself. Because having pride in one’s achievements and enjoying your status is so very human. But then thinking you can run things, that your theories will have application without testing and trialling, or using the easy and cheap measures to see if something is working rather than the had to measure… is an error. If the enlightenment scholar was told to always read the source… the researcher has to always doubt the findings he has, and test and retest his hypotheses.
And know that idle chat is just that: my fear is that at times it becomes government policy.
For we would by nature be kings, and kings make slaves of their people. May that never be. We are here to serve and to save: not to demand honour and an income.