Matthew 20—“THE SERVICE SECTOR”
The COVID-19 pandemic rudely reminded us that the people who make the world run are not the people who run the world. The people who really make things happen are the people who make things and do things for others—the people who serve.
Those people—the people who serve our children and our elders, our sick and our disabled, who deliver our meals and our babies, who drive our taxis and buses and trains and drive our economy—we cannot live without them. As we learned as the pandemic wreaked havoc in hospitals, funeral homes, and graveyards around the world, we can’t even die without them. They are the “essential workers.” The essential work that they do is the work of service.
Much is made of the work that AI, robotics, and the Internet of Things is doing for us. But high tech gets low marks when we are most in need, because it is when we are most in need that we need people—not things—to do things with us and for us.
That is, we need people who serve.
Matthew 20 treats of service—of those who serve, and of those who are served. In his words and in his deeds, Jesus reminds us that the coming of the Kingdom is all about people serving and being served.
Our chapter begins with a story likening the Kingdom of Heaven to a regime of labor relations in the service sector (20:1-16). Later, the Zebedee Brothers’ mom tries to get Jesus to give preferential seating to her two sons; Jesus refuses, explaining that the choice of who gets the best seats in the Kingdom is a decision above his pay grade (20:17-23). The other apostles are outraged by Mother Zebedee’s kibitzing, but Jesus seizes upon the dust-up as a teachable moment to drop some knowledge on his crew about what true leadership is, and how it is so unlike what passes for leadership everywhere else and among everyone else (20:24-28).
Then, as soon as Jesus has declared that he has come not be served but to serve (20:28), he is immediately called upon to do just that. Two destitute men, though blind, clearly see their opportunity to be served by the “Son of David”—an opportunity they stubbornly refuse to be denied (20:29-33).
Then the Evangelist “drops the mike” with the last verse of the chapter: “So Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed him” (Matthew 20:34). Here we see a recurring theme in the Gospel of Matthew about those who follow Jesus. As Matthew tells it, there are those who follow Jesus so that he might serve them with compassion (see Matthew 9:36; 14:14; 15:32), and there are those who are called to follow Jesus so that they might serve others with compassion (see Matthew 10:1; 14:16; 15:36).