Servants, Not Owners: Wednesday of Autumn Embertide (1 Corinthians 3:5-11)

September 16, 2026, Autumn Ember Day I, Wednesday of Autumn Embertide, Day of Discipline, Denial, and Special Prayer, Season after Pentecost

John 4:31-38, Psalm 99, 1 Corinthians 3:5-11, Numbers 11:16-17, 24-29

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you on this first day of Autumn Embertide.

Two days ago, on Holy Cross Day, the Church looked again at Jesus Christ lifted high upon the Cross. We heard that the place which looked like defeat became the place of his victory, and we prayed for grace to take up our own cross and follow him. Now the Prayer Book gives us three Ember Days, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, set aside particularly for prayer for those called to Holy Orders. Ember Days may also be kept with fasting, not because fasting earns anything from God, but because prayer, self-denial, and dependence belong naturally together.

Their place after Holy Cross Day is fitting. The Church does not first ask what kind of leaders will be successful. She looks at the Crucified Lord and then asks what ministry beneath his Cross must look like. The answer begins with a truth that is simple enough to say and difficult enough to live: the Church belongs to Christ. Her ministers are servants, not owners.

That is the point Saint Paul presses upon the Corinthians in our primary text. The congregation at Corinth had become divided around favorite leaders. Some said, “I follow Paul,” and others, “I follow Apollos.” Earlier in the letter Paul exposes the foolishness of those divisions. By the time we reach chapter 3, he asks in verse 5, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.” (1 Corinthians 3:5, ESV)

Paul’s answer matters. He does not say ministers are unimportant. Paul and Apollos really preached, taught, baptized, suffered, traveled, and served. God used them. But Paul refuses to let the Corinthians turn servants into owners, celebrities, or rival centers of loyalty. They are “servants through whom you believed.” Their usefulness is real, but it is received. Their assignment comes from the Lord.

That distinction matters because Christian ministry can become tangled with ownership very quickly. We speak of my parish, my ministry, my people, my program, my vision, or my success. Some of that is harmless shorthand. A priest truly has responsibility for the people entrusted to his care. A ministry may bear the marks of years of faithful labor. A congregation rightly loves particular pastors and remembers the good God has done through them. But the moment my ministry begins to mean my possession, something has gone wrong. Christ did not shed his blood so that the Church might become anyone else’s property.

Verse 6 makes the order even clearer: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:6, ESV) Paul really planted. Apollos really watered. Their actions matter. God ordinarily works through human servants rather than bypassing them. Sermons must be prepared. The sick must be visited. Children must be catechized. Candidates for Holy Orders must be formed. Congregations must worship, pray, give, forgive, teach, serve, and carry one another’s burdens. But life itself remains God’s gift. Paul can plant the seed. Apollos can pour water upon it. Neither can command a dead thing to live.

That is both humbling and freeing. It is humbling because we are more limited than we would like to admit. We can preach faithfully and someone may remain unmoved. We can teach patiently and someone may wander. We can labor for years and see little visible fruit. We can organize well, communicate clearly, visit faithfully, pray earnestly, and still discover that much remains outside our control. Yet the same truth is freeing, because if God gives the growth, then we do not have to pretend to be God.

Verse 7 states it bluntly: “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:7, ESV) Paul is not denying the value of human beings or faithful work. He is destroying the fantasy that the life of the Church finally depends upon the brilliance of its servants. The minister is not the source of grace. The preacher cannot regenerate a heart. The priest cannot make the sacraments his private possession. The bishop does not own the Church. God gives the growth.

Then verse 8 guards us from the opposite error, as though our labor therefore does not matter: “He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.” (1 Corinthians 3:8, ESV) We are not sovereign, but we are responsible. The fact that God gives the growth does not excuse laziness, carelessness, false teaching, or unholy living. Servants will answer for how they served.

Paul’s point also frees ministry from competition. The Church is not strengthened when pastors compare attendance, budgets, visibility, programs, or reputations as though the Kingdom were a leaderboard. Congregations are not strengthened when one faithful minister is made to feel small because another is more visible. If one plants and another waters, another person’s faithfulness is not a threat to ours.

This is especially important when we think about Holy Orders. The Church does not need copies of one personality. She needs faithful bishops, priests, and deacons with different gifts serving the same Christ. Some will preach with unusual power. Some will be especially gifted in pastoral care. Some will teach patiently over decades. Some will administer well. Some will serve quietly where few people notice. Faithfulness will not always look impressive.

That is one reason Ember Days matter. The Church is not merely asking God to give us more clergy. We are asking him to give faithful clergy, servants whose doctrine is true and whose lives are holy, who remember that the Church belongs to Christ. The first Ember Collect asks God to fill those called to ministry with “the truth of your doctrine” and clothe them with “holiness of life.” We need both. Sound doctrine without holiness can become cold and destructive. A pleasant life without sound doctrine can lead people away from Christ. The Church prays for servants shaped by truth and holiness together.

Verse 9 gives Paul’s great summary: “For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.” (1 Corinthians 3:9, ESV) Three times the sentence points away from human ownership and toward God. God’s fellow workers. God’s field. God’s building. The servants work, but the field is his. The builders labor, but the building is his.

Numbers 11 gives us the same truth from another angle. Moses is carrying a burden that has become too heavy for him. God tells him to gather seventy elders, and the LORD places upon them the Spirit given for the work. The burden is shared because ministry was never meant to depend upon one exhausted man. Then Eldad and Medad prophesy in the camp, and Joshua wants Moses to stop them. Moses answers, “Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29, ESV)

Moses does not treat the Spirit’s work as something he must control in order to preserve his own importance. He wants more of God’s people empowered for God’s work. That is the opposite of possessive ministry. Healthy Christian leadership does not ask, “How can I remain indispensable?” It asks, “How can the gifts Christ gives his people be recognized, formed, and faithfully used?”

Numbers 11 also rejects two opposite fantasies. One is the fantasy of the indispensable leader, the servant who imagines everything depends upon him. The other is the fantasy that if we can simply recruit enough willing people, spiritual ministry will take care of itself. Moses needs others, and all of them need God.

The same is true in the Church. No bishop can carry a diocese alone. No priest can carry a parish alone. No deacon can bear every work of mercy. No vestry can sustain the life of a congregation by administration alone. And no congregation can say, “We have clergy, so ministry is covered.” The burden is shared because the gifts are shared, and the gifts are shared because God gives them.

That does not mean every sense of calling should be accepted without discernment. The second Ember Collect asks that the Church, “under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may choose suitable persons for the ministry of Word and Sacrament.” God calls, and the Church discerns. A private desire for ordination is not self-authenticating. Doctrine, character, gifts, maturity, and fitness must be tested. But discernment should never become fear of the gifts God is raising up. Sometimes part of our responsibility is simply to notice grace in another person and say, “I see gifts here. Have you considered whether God may be calling you to serve his Church in some particular way?”

Our Gospel from John 4 widens the picture still further. The disciples have returned with food, but Jesus says in verse 34, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” (John 4:34, ESV) Even the Son, in his incarnate mission, speaks in the language of being sent and accomplishing the Father’s work. Christian ministry cannot be about self-invention when our Lord himself speaks of faithful obedience to the one who sent him.

Then verse 35 says, “Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.” (John 4:35, ESV) The disciples are thinking about food. Jesus is looking at people. The harvest is already before them. They are being invited into work God has prepared.

And verse 38 says, “I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” (John 4:38, ESV) That is an Ember Day word if there ever was one. We are always entering work we did not begin. Someone prayed before us. Someone preached before us. Someone taught the faith before us. Someone built, gave, served, visited, repaired, endured, and kept the doors open before we arrived.

Every one of us entered a harvest we did not plant. The faith did not begin with us. This parish did not begin with us. The Gospel did not begin with us. We have received a treasure handed down through generations of servants, most of whose names we will never know.

And if God is gracious, others will enter into our labor. Some child not yet born may one day worship because people in this congregation prayed, taught, gave, and remained faithful now. Another priest may one day stand where I stand. Another generation will inherit what we build and what we neglect. We do not need to control that future. We need to serve faithfully in the part of the field assigned to us and trust God for the growth.

Paul changes the image in verse 10: “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it.” (1 Corinthians 3:10, ESV) Again, Paul begins: “According to the grace of God given to me.” Even his apostolic labor is grace before it is achievement. Paul works, but what enables the work is given.

Then he adds the warning: “Let each one take care how he builds upon it.” Ministry is not ownership, but neither is it casual. If the Church belongs to Christ, then we should be even more careful with what belongs to him. We do not get to redesign the faith around our preferences, build congregations around personality, or treat doctrine as raw material for whatever seems effective. A servant takes care because he is handling another’s property.

Verse 11 gives the immovable center: “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 3:11, ESV) That is finally why we are servants and not owners. The Church does not rest upon Paul, Apollos, a bishop, a priest, a denomination, a program, or a personality. The foundation is Jesus Christ.

Here the nearness of Holy Cross Day matters again. The Lord to whom the Church belongs is not a distant proprietor protecting his status. He is the Son who gave himself for his people. His authority is not less than absolute, but his lordship is revealed in self-giving love. That means ministry beneath him can never be reduced to control, visibility, or the preservation of our own importance. The closer we stand to Christ, the less room there is for treating office as possession.

That is especially searching for those of us who exercise leadership. We can begin by wanting to serve and slowly become attached to being needed. We can call something stewardship while quietly fearing what will happen if another person can do it as well as we can. We can speak of succession in theory while resisting the very people God may be raising up to carry the work after us. The Cross exposes that fear. Christ does not need us to make ourselves indispensable. He calls us to be faithful.

And that is good news, because our limitations do not threaten the Church’s future. Christ was Lord before any of us entered his field, and he will remain Lord after our part of the work is finished. We are free to give ourselves fully without pretending that everything depends upon us. We can prepare others, share responsibility, rejoice when another servant flourishes, and eventually release what was never ours to possess.

And that foundation is not merely an idea. Jesus Christ is the crucified and risen Lord we celebrated on Holy Cross Day. He gave himself for sinners who could not save themselves. He bore our sins, rose from the dead, calls us to repent and believe, and makes us his people by grace. We do not build the Church by improving upon that Gospel. We build by remaining upon the foundation God has already laid.

That means our first need is not to become useful servants. Our first need is to belong to Christ. Ministry cannot reconcile us to God. Ordination cannot forgive sins. Service cannot become a substitute for faith. Before we plant, water, build, preach, teach, or lead, we come as sinners to the Savior. Christ saves us by grace, and then he gives his redeemed people work to do.

Psalm 99 keeps that service in the proper atmosphere. “The LORD reigns; let the peoples tremble!” (Psalm 99:1, ESV) The Church does not gather around the greatness of her ministers. She gathers before the holy King. The psalm repeatedly declares, “Holy is he!” Ministry beneath that throne cannot finally be about our renown. We serve in the house of a holy God.

So on this first Autumn Ember Day, let us pray exactly as the Prayer Book teaches us to pray. Let us pray for bishops who remember that the Church belongs to Christ, for priests who preach Christ rather than themselves, and for deacons who make the servant heart of Jesus visible in works of mercy. Let us pray for those discerning Holy Orders, that ambition may be purified, gifts rightly discerned, character tested, doctrine made sound, and every genuine call received as grace.

Let us also pray for the Church that must discern those calls. Let us ask God to make us neither gullible nor cynical, and to give us wisdom to recognize gifts, courage to name weaknesses, patience to form people well, and humility to remember that vocation is ultimately his gift before it is our decision.

Then let the same truth come home to all of us. Ember Days are especially for prayer for those called to Holy Orders, but the principle reaches every Christian vocation. Whatever Christ has placed into our hands is stewardship, not possession. Our families, gifts, opportunities, ministries, resources, and years belong finally to him.

On Friday we will hear Paul tell the Ephesians that Christ gives ministers “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:12, ESV) Today we begin one step earlier. Before we ask what ministers are given to do, we remember whose servants they are and whose Church they serve.

Paul planted. Apollos watered. God gave the growth. We are God’s fellow workers. The field is God’s. The building is God’s. The gifts are God’s. The Church is God’s. And the foundation is Jesus Christ.

So let us hold every ministry with open hands. Let us plant faithfully, water faithfully, build carefully, pray for those whom God is calling, and leave the growth to him.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.