The Shadow of Servant Leadership

(John 13:1-15)

I first met Norman Menter, just about thirty years ago, in the spring of 1978. At the time, I was in my senior year of college and all but convinced that I wanted to attend seminary in the fall. However, I decided to go out to Ohio for a visit to the campus, just to be sure.

It wasn’t my first trip to Columbus, though. You see, fours years earlier, as a freshman in college, I had attended Capital University, a Lutheran school located just across the street from the seminary. So I was well acquainted with the area, and to some extent with the seminary itself as well, and this was actually one of the reasons why I was considering returning to Columbus in the first place.

In making arrangements for my visit, the admissions office informed me that they would have someone waiting for me at the airport, and that I didn’t have to worry about accommodations, either, because they would simply put me up in one of the seminary’s guest rooms and I could take my meals over at Capital’s student center, which is where all the seminary students who lived on campus ate.

Finally, I was told that someone named Norman Menter would be the driver waiting for me at the airport. When I asked how I would know him, the person I was talking to said “not to worry,” the airport wasn’t all that big and he would find me.

And sure enough, once I arrived and went to pick up my suitcase, there was an elderly man standing by the luggage carousel holding a sign with a single word – “Seminary” – scribbled on it. He was short (he stood maybe up to my shoulders) and slight of build, wore glasses, and what little hair was left on his head was thinning and snow white in collar. He was also wearing what I eventually discovered was his normal attire: a short-sleeved white dress shirt, a thin blue tie and matching blue dress pants with black shoes. His clothing was neat and well-kept, but certainly not expensive. In fact, the items looked like they had all been purchased off the rack at Sears or J.C. Penney’s. (I know that because that’s where my own clothes usually came from!)

The only time he wore something different, I learned later, was in winter when, as a concession to the cold weather, he added the blue suit coat that went with the pants. And only when it rained, or the temperature hit single digits, would he ever don a rain slicker or overcoat. Otherwise, it was always the same – as near as I could tell – short-sleeved white shirt, thin blue tie, blue dress pants and black shoes.

We kind of spotted each other immediately; for me, his sign of course was a dead giveaway; while, for him, I think I must have had “prospective seminary student” written all over me. He quickly showed me to his car, insisting that he put my over-sized suitcase into the trunk himself, and we then enjoyed some small-talk during the pleasant 15 minute drive back to the seminary.

I don’t remember much about that first conversation. But I do remember him bemoaning all the road repairs that were going on around town after a particularly harsh winter, and then advising me on the best way to remove any fresh asphalt from your car that had been kicked up while driving on a freshly-paved road.

Once we arrived at the seminary, he briefly stopped by a utility closet in one of the main hallways to pick up a stack of clean towels and sheets, and then took me across the courtyard to one of the dorms, and showed me my quest room up on the third floor. Once he had me situated, he then took me back into the main building for my appointment with the academic dean, Dr. Ted Liefeld. And thus ended my first encounter with Norman Menter. (As it turned out, he was running some sort of errand when I needed a ride back to the airport for my return flight, so a student took me over instead.)

Right from the beginning, though, I kind of got the impression that Norman Menter was sort of a “go-fer” around the seminary, probably a retired gentleman from the community, I figured, who just wanted to stay active. You know, one of those faithful individuals that every church organization seems to attract; just a “regular guy” who wanted to simply find a way to help out and serve in his later years.

Several months later, when I returned to the seminary as an incoming student, I encountered Norman Menter again. At the end of a long registration table where we discovered our room assignments and also registered for our classes, he sat alone with a map of the parking lots on campus in front of him, ready to assign us to our parking spaces and issue the decals for our vehicles. He was still the soft-spoken, unassuming man I remembered, and it was kind of reassuring to see that he was still finding a way to stay active in his retirement and also serve the seminary community.

I remember asking someone at the time, purely out of curiosity, about Norman Menter, and all I got back was that he was the “unofficial assistant” to Dr. Fred Meuser, the seminary president, which is what I had already pretty-much surmised on my own. But if this was the case, he certainly had a far-ranging job description. Because his duties, in addition to taxiing people back and forth from the airport, assigning visitors to their guest rooms on campus (including making up the beds before they arrived and stripping them down after they left), and being in charge of the vehicle assignments for the seminary parking lots, also seemed to include just about every other odd job you could possibly imagine.

In fact, as the weeks went by, I observed that he actually did a little bit of everything, including troubleshooting maintenance problems when they arose, even though the seminary had a facility manager and several others on staff as well to handle these kinds of issues.

So the thought even occurred to me that, perhaps, Norman Menter was a retired electrician or plumber and that’s why he was always so willing to “chip-in.” On the other hand, maybe he was a retired school teacher, I thought. Because there was something about his appearance and bearing that also made me think of that possibility as well.

Coincidentally, I ended up rooming that first year on the third floor of the same dorm, and directly across the hall from the same guest room, that I had stayed in the previous spring during my visit. And since it was still being used as a guest room, I would occasionally see Norman Menter in the hallway, whenever a prospective student or visiting dignitary was in town. On those occasions when the guest happened to be female, he would always seek out my roommate or me, just to be sure that we knew this since the bathroom on our floor didn’t have a lock on the door.

On one such occasion, while we were both in class when Norman came by, we found a note, instead, slipped under our door. It read, “Gentlemen, we have a young lady staying across the hall this evening. Beware of ‘double exposures.’” In fact, I still have that note somewhere in my papers…

But, then, several months into that first year, I was sitting in the chapel one Wednesday morning with the rest of the student body after worship, and Dr. Meuser, our president, stood up to say that he was pleased to announce that the seminary’s board of directors had approved a campaign to raise money to endow a new faculty position. (For those of you who may not know what this means, as I didn’t at first, it refers to providing the kind of financial resources that will support the salary and research needs of a member of a university or graduate school faculty. In this case, the new position at the seminary was going to be called the “Norman A. Menter Chair of Pastoral Theology.”

And with that, everyone in the chapel applauded and turned around to look at the rear of the room where a short, slight, white-haired old gentleman stood quietly against the back wall. Apparently this Norman Menter, and the Norman Menter I knew were one-and-the-same!

At first I was stunned, and my mind immediately started racing.

Why, on earth, would you endow a faculty chair in honor of a retired electrician or plumber; or perhaps even a school teacher? It just didn’t make any sense to me at the time.

So now I renewed, in earnest, my investigation into the true identity of this mild-mannered, rather ordinary-looking old gentleman that the seminary wanted to name a faculty position in pastoral theology after. And this time it didn’t take very long for me to get the “scoop” on Norman Menter since the entire seminary community was now buzzing with the exciting news of this honor that was about to be bestowed on him.

It turns out, as you might have guessed, that Norman Menter was not a retied electrician, or plumber, or school teacher, or anything else I might have imagined. Oh, he was retired all right. (That’s about the only thing I had gotten correct!)

It seems that he was a retired pastor, which, of course, makes perfect sense. But not just any retired pastor. Rather he was Dr. Norman Menter, the former senior pastor of one of the largest congregations in the state, also the former and longtime president (now we call them ”bishops”) of the Michigan District of the American Lutheran Church (one of the predecessor church bodies that merged to create our present-day ELCA), and even a former Vice President of the entire ALC. In other words, this was no ordinary pastor, or individual. This was a well known and well respected leader in the Lutheran Church; not only in that part of the country, but nationally, even internationally as well! Respected enough, that his admirers chose to honor his faithful years of service in ministry by endowing a faculty position at the seminary in his name.

To be perfectly honest, this discovery was truly mind-boggling for me. Because there was absolutely nothing about this man’s appearance, or demeanor, or the way in which he spoke or interacted with you that would ever give you even the slightest hint or clue that he was such an accomplished person. He was so ordinary and average, and obviously quite modest as well.

In other words, I simply couldn’t reconcile in my mind the image of the little, old man who was always running around the seminary campus, with his arms full of sheets and towels, and pitching in wherever needed… with someone so famous and respected. It just didn’t add up. Every important, or semi-important person, I had ever met – including most of the professors on our faculty, I might add – let you know in no uncertain terms that they were important! And that certain things, like shoveling snow or running errands, were clearly beneath them.

Nor I couldn’t even begin to imagine a former bishop making up guest beds like an ordinary maid, or ferrying prospective students back and forth from the airport like a typical taxi driver. It just didn’t make sense…

Until I began to learn about the concept of “servant leadership,” that is. Early in my seminary studies, you see, we were taught that the call to pastoral ministry, indeed the call of all the baptized, was a call to servanthood. The kind of servanthood epitomized by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

In our gospel this evening, we have John’s account of the Last Supper that Jesus ate with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion. We might have thought, especially given what was about to happen, that Jesus would have chosen to be served by his closest followers that evening; that he would have appreciated it if they would have taken care of his every need – knowing full well the suffering and degradation he was going to experience in just a few short hours.

Instead, however, our gospel says that, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.” And then, as we heard, Jesus poured water into a basin and got down on his knees to wash and wipe the disciple’s feet. Normally, the job of a lowly servant or slave.

They, of course, objected to Jesus “lowering” himself in this way. But Jesus insisted. “You do not know now what I am doing,” he said, “but later you will understand.” And after he was finished, had put his robe back on, and had rejoined them at the table, he added, “Do you know what I have done to you? …if I, your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.” That is, the call of every Christian, especially the leaders among us, is a call to servanthood. To lower ourselves and to serve others in any way we can.

The Apostle Paul, perhaps, put it best when he wrote in this past Sunday’s reading from Philippians, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.

Now, I was soon to learn at seminary, that everyone on the faculty and in the seminary administration certainly believed in and talked about servanthood. And I am sure that they also did their best to follow our Lord’s example as well. But only one person truly lived it out (in my estimation, at least), and that was Norman Menter; the towel-carrying “go-fer” and taxi driver, who just happened to also be a former bishop. No one else even came close.

Now there were perhaps those who could describe and articulate the concept of servant leadership far better than he ever could, I suppose. But Dr. Menter let his life and his actions speak for themselves, and they spoke vividly. Indeed, they spoke volumes…

While I have, admittedly, told his story many times before, as much for my own benefit as that of my congregations, I had never done what I just did the other day. I actually “Googled” the name Norman A. Menter, and the variation, Dr. Norman Menter, and, between the two, I got five “hits.”

Of course, at Trinity Lutheran Seminary’s web site you can find mention of the “Norman A. Menter Chair in Pastoral Theology” as well as the former and current faculty members who occupy it. And Capital University’s makes mention of the “Dr. and Mrs. Norman Menter scholarship” which was established by Norman and Phoebe Menter “to reflect their deep and abiding belief in the work of Capital University.”

And two of them were links to congregational web sites that described, in their histories, the role played by Dr. Menter while he served as president, or bishop, of the old Michigan District of the ALC.

Faith Lutheran Church in Saginaw, Michigan, for instance, recalls how, on October 1, 1950, Dr, Menter had dedicated the former garage which had been converted into their very first meeting space. And Trinity Lutheran Church, in Delta, Ohio, notes that, 15 years later in 1965 (obviously Dr. Menter was still serving as district president!), when they decided to leave the Missouri Synod and join the ALC, Dr. Menter was the one they contacted, and who subsequently helped them make this transition.

The final link was interesting, however. It took me to a “free” entry at “Ancestry.com” and a listing of the name “Norman A. Menter” from the 1930 U.S. Census. Since this Norman Menter’s wife’s name was also Phoebe, and in 1930 they were residing in Wayne, Michigan (a suburb of Detroit), I was pretty confident that it was the same one. But the interesting thing for me was the date of birth that was listed… 1898. Which means, of course, that when I first met Dr. Menter, 30 years ago, he was already 80 years old (!), but still working fulltime as the “unofficial” assistant to the seminary’s president and “official” go-fer for the seminary community. At an age when most people, including most pastors, are living in places like Florida or Arizona, and playing golf and otherwise taking it easy, Norman Menter was showing up for work at the seminary, Monday through Friday, good weather and bad, and on weekends as needed, ready and willing to do anything and everything they had for him to do. Talk about servanthood!

After I graduated from seminary and moved away, I didn’t hear anything more about Dr. Menter for a few years, until one day I read his obituary in an issue of The Lutheran. It seems that his wife, Phoebe, preceded him in death, and that Dr. Menter, himself, eventually ended up living in a Lutheran nursing home in Columbus, not all that far from the seminary actually.

And not content to just sit around even in that environment, he apparently continued to serve at the nursing home as a chaplain’s assistant, helping out wherever he could, especially taking communion to the other residents, until he was well into his 90’s!

In the verses immediately following our gospel this evening, Jesus said to his disciples, regarding servanthood, “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

Obviously Norman Menter knew what Jesus was talking about, and took our Lord’s example to heart. He truly was a servant leader. And for that, this otherwise short and slight man, who looked so ordinary, nevertheless stands as a giant for all those who aspire to be disciples of Jesus Christ in their own lives.

Amen