Sermon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrIwUAgaAFY

Mission

What is the mission of the church? Or as one pastor put the question for what purpose does your church exist? You may have noticed by now my preoccupation with mission. Every organization should know why it exists. Mission brings focus, clarity, vision, and makes teamwork possible. I was reading the Twelve keys to an Effective Church by Kennon L. Callahan and He made this statement. “Indeed, the first and most central characteristic of an effective, successful church is its specific, concrete, missional objectives.” Did you catch that, “the most central characteristic…” That would be an important thing. As we have all heard it said “keep the main thing the main thing.”



One of the things that a mission should do is to lead us beyond ourselves. Our mission should be to more than to just our members. Let me provide an example of how fixated our thinking is on members. While at annual conference a person asked me “how large is your church?” The answer she was looking for was the number of members. I could have answered that question in many ways. For example the size of the sanctuary, the number of acres for the campus, number of parking spaces, or class rooms, this would be our physical plant. The other answer would be our average attendance in worship, and Sunday school, and bible studies, or our number of members. But both of these answers focus on how large the church is not how large our mission is. I will grant you this we often talk of these things because they are easy to quantify. We know these numbers. But how large our church is can be defined in how many non-members we reach. It could be measured in our mission field.



Here is a good question and I almost never hear it asked, “How many people are you serving in mission?” The mission that I read in the Gospel is serving. When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God he says the “first shall be last and the last shall be first.” If we want to be great then we must serve! I am so very proud of the great things that this church does. From the clinic, to share, to basket ball, to summer camp, to UM ARMY, and this past week to VBS. I personally have come to find that in serving I have found life. I know as we serve together we will continue to find life in Jesus Christ.

Feeling Guilty

This past week I was driving the church suburban. It needs to be driven occasionally and checked for maintenance issues. As I was driving it, I noticed that the inspection sticker seemed to be out of date. I noticed it but was unable to take it in for an inspection until the next day. As I drove I became aware of every police officer on the road. I was wondering; would the next officer notice and pull me over and give me a ticket? As I drove the sight of an officer made me feel guilty. I was driving with guilt on my mind. The next day when I took the suburban in for its inspection I found out that the inspection sticker was valid. Turns out it was good through 2013. There was no need for a new inspection! The feeling of guilt left me.



This incident reminds me of how some people feel about church. The sight of a church can make a person feel guilty. The sight of a priest, a cross, a steeple or any other sign of God can make us feel guilty. The irony is that under the blood of Jesus our guilt has been taken away. As believer in Christ we have been set free. Sin has been defeated, yet often guilt nags at us. At a deep level this guilt is able to obtain a foothold in two places. One is in our lack of trust in God, and two is in our mentality of self-accomplishment. Both are places of spiritual warfare.



Under the spirit of self-accomplishment, the short answer is pride. Pride is a sin. When my niece was two years old, she used to tell me, “I can do it me own self.” She would say that when she wanted me or other adults to leave her to her own devices. And, sometimes she was able to accomplish the task; but there were other tasks she was unable to accomplish. Often we can be like a two year old. We are unable to see, because of our pride, our inability to solve a problem. The problem we will never be able to cure is our atonement for sin. Only Jesus can atone for our sin. Atonement for sin was accomplished on the cross.



Our second issue often is our inability to trust in God. I think we are unable to trust God because people have let us down. So we wonder, “will God let me down as well?” Faith can be difficult if we are wondering, did God really take care of my sin? Does God really love me? The good news is that the answer is always yes! God is worthy of our trust! God loves you and loves me and God has taken care of sin. We just need to accept that

God has done the work. We need to accept it as a gift.

To return to the analogy of my inspection sticker guilt: God has placed a new inspection sticker on me! I no longer need to feel guilt for my old sins, Jesus has declared me clean. There is one step in this whole removal of guilt process, we must accept God’s gift as a gift. I did not deserve a new “inspection sticker”. In fact I could not have passed the inspection on my own, but God offered me the “Jesus inspection sticker” I just needed to accept it. So I encourage you to grab hold of God’s forgiveness and let go of your guilt as I let go of mine.

Hospitality

Strangers and Hospitality




Here in Crockett we recognize the need for hospitality. People in the country seem to be more hospitable by nature. There could be several reasons. One is that we just don’t see as many people. In big cities there are people all around but here a new person is novel. So we are more interested in a new person. I think a second reason is that we seem to know our need for one another better than people in the city do. We understand the value of a friend. Third is that we just may be curious. We may also just have more time. More time for each other as apposed to being rushed as city folk are. For what ever the reason we seem to be willing to be more hospitable. That is a good thing.

In the gospel it talks about offering a glass of cool water. In the biblical times that is a saying. It is a saying not just about water, but about offering hospitality. To offer someone a cool cup of water is to offer them hospitality. More than just water is being offered, your friendship is being offered. You were offering the person shelter and protection. You were offering them love. It makes since when you think about it. In a desert land water was life itself.

That is what one of the church’s jobs is; to offer a cup of cool water. We are to offer hospitality. What is funny about offering a cup of cool water is that today in Crockett is would that be understood as an offer of hospitality? I think not. It would just be a cup of water. The challenge is to understand the needs people have. The challenge is to speak their need language.

I know that our congregation is a people that believe in hospitality. We believe in welcoming strangers, and inviting them into our company. So how do we do just that thing? We need to look at our church as though we are the stranger. That is a hard thing to do, but often a valuable thing to do. I invite you to look at our campus and see what it says to a stranger. What does it say to a stranger who is not like me? What does it say if you are in a wheelchair? What does it say if you use a walker? What does it say if you have children? What does it say if…..? Well you get the idea. I invite you to think about what says to you “you are welcome to be here, and we want you here.”

What do I own?

What do I own?For much of my life I considered working and earning a wage for the work I did as the way of the world. Earning a wage for working was only right. And that meant that how I spent what I had earned was up to me. Then one day I began to consider that I should give to God a portion of what I earned. I saw it as biblical and understood that I should do it just for that reason.
But as time has passed a new understanding of what I own and what is mine has begun to creep up on me. I have come to understand that my gifts and talents are from God and that God has given me talents to be used for God and for people. Then I came to understand that my earnings are His, and that the opportunities that come my way me are of His making as well. So what do I really contribute to this equation? I show up and try? Yet often I am not even giving my best effort. Well, I never did when I worked for money. When I worked for myself I often worked just hard enough to get by. Then things changed for me.
I find a much more beautiful world when I consider it all a gift: Each day a gift; each person and relationship a gift; the abilities I have, and strangely enough the things I don’t have--all gifts. The irony here is that when I was holding on to what I thought I owned, I felt I never had enough, and I was always trying to acquire more, but in letting go of ownership of all these things, I have come to find I had too much. I find that my talents are for other people, my gifts to be given away, and my soul is in a place of joy and serenity. And working hard, it’s not hard when I am just paying attention and being present in the daily divine appointments that have been made for me. In owning nothing I have come to possess all I need. I receiving gifts, I have been able to live as one who is beloved of God, because I finally understood myself to be beloved.

Moving To Crockett

This past week has been a week of unpacking and saying hello; of meeting new people and trying to find my clothes in one of the many boxes scattered around our new home. But just the week before was a week of saying goodbye. That is the way of life; we say hello and we say goodbye. Several years ago while living and going to seminary in Kentucky, I made the deliberate decision to make friends. I made those friends even knowing that there would come a painful day of saying goodbye. Life can be filled with bittersweet memories, but I think often these are the memories that mean so much.
As I was saying goodbye in Kentucky to my spiritual mentor Reg Johnson, he commented that being a professor at seminary was difficult because he had to let go of students who had become friends. He knew that all seminary students arrive with plans to leave. He could close his life off to making new friends as a way to avoid the inevitable pain of letting go, but it would also cause his heart to grow cold. So he had made the deliberate decision to open his heart to new friends. I had been one of the people who received so richly from his experience. So I made the decision that I would also open my heart to making new friends. This is a decision that opens us up to the possibility that one day we will be hurt by saying goodbye. But it is also a decision that opens us up to the possibility of knowing friendships that leave us all the more rich.
So as I unpack boxes, put things on shelves, and hopefully find my clothes, I trust that I will make new friends here in Crockett. Friendships that grow over time spent together as we come to know each other’s strengths and each other’s flaws; friendships that grow through loving and caring for each other through good and difficult times. I believe that Reg was correct in saying that friendships start with a deliberate decision to make friends. I also believe that friendships are so worth it. For in the end, friendships are the only things that we are able to keep and to take with us.