Drudgery or Freedom

Am I alone in my struggle with servant imagery in relation to Christian discipleship and leadership?

The images in my head are forbidding: young Irish girls doing hard labour in the Magdalen Laundries jostle with the 'Upstairs, Downstairs' world of women and men kept in lowly estate, doffing their caps and touching their forelocks to aristocracies past and present.

Then there are the Black people in colonial (and many other) contexts, enlisted to cook, clean, scrub, polish, and wet-nurse for wealthy Whites. Indeed, inequality seems to be inherent in the concept.

Servanthood is about those with less economic and social power carrying out menial (and often unpleasant) tasks on behalf of those with more.

And if the force of the image is in 'reversals' (ie those with more power voluntarily renouncing it), then I am haunted by the observation that in ecclesiastical contexts serving God is often confused with serving 'the church' or (even worse) serving those in authority or of 'higher status' within it, and for this reason it is often those with the least power to renounce, who renounce it first and most convincingly, thus reinforcing their subjugation. And finally, there's the drudgery. I observe Christian models of servanthood implicated in many forms of ecclesiastical burnout: that of lay people who feel unable to say 'no' when yet another task is allotted; that of clergy (including bishops) who work twelve hours or more a day, seven days a week (or even 'just' six) because they feel a duty to serve, at whatever cost to their health.

So I am in search of redemption for servanthood before I can embrace it. Working on this, I ask myself, 'when am I happy to serve?' One answer comes to me immediately: when I am engaged in artistic and creative endeavour. Call it what you like – the 'muse', 'inspiration', the 'creative force', but when it comes it is like a transcendent presence, speaking through you. You embrace it with joy and follow where it leads because it works in a way that leaves you feeling enlivened, energised and fulfilled. There is no depletion (though there is tiredness). You are expanded, not made small. Serving it is like receiving a gift from beyond, and the response is, indeed, perfect freedom.

So I conclude that the only kind of servant I want to be, and the only kinds of servants I want to serve with, are co-workers: equals who are friends of a mysterious and graceful process that is beyond the understanding of us all and larger than we are, through which we come into our own.

Alison Webster is Social Responsibility Adviser to Oxford Diocese