Sermon 6/14/15
Mark 10:35-45
Apple Valley Dreams: Missional
We’ve
been talking about my dreams for Apple Valley over the past couple of weeks.
The first week, our memory verse was, “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be
given to you, Search, and you fill find, Knock, and the door will be opened to
you.” And I shared my dream that we are a prayerful
people. That we’re comfortable praying. That we’re persistent, and full of
expectation that God loves to hear what we have to say, and has something to
say back. That we’re praying, everyday, for ourselves, and our congregation,
and our community, and God’s vision to come alive in us. Last week, our memory
verse, from the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus, was, “For the Son of Man came to
seek out and to save the lost,” and I talked about my dream that Apple Valley
is Invitational. Not just that we
wait for folks who cross our paths, but that we live out in the world an
expression of the welcome of Christ, who is always on the move among the most
vulnerable.
This week, I want to talk about my dream for Apple Valley
to be a missional congregation. Mission
is one of those words we can use in a lot of ways. Sometimes we talk about
people going on a mission trip – this could mean going to build homes or
schools, or just going to a different community or country to build
relationships. In our jurisdiction, the Northeastern body of United Methodists
in the United States, for example, young people go every year on a Mission of
Peace, a mission trip with a focus on breaking down walls of misunderstanding
and separation between people. But sometimes, especially historically, and
still today, a mission trip meant a trip where missionaries would try to convert people to the Christian faith.
Historically, Christians have sometimes confused sharing the faith with sharing
a culture, insisting that new Christians needed to adopt a new language, new
dress, new traditions to be Christian. When we engaged in the Act of Repentance
at Annual Conference this year, part of our repentance was remembering and
rejecting the ways American Christians insisted native peoples must abandon
their culture to follow Jesus, often forcing native people to do so. The result
is that today people are sometimes very wary of the word “mission.” In
congregations today, you might find that there is a “mission” committee. Usually,
this is the group of folks in the church who think about how to best serve
others on behalf of the church. They do the work of outreach through service.
And finally, mission can mean “purpose” – the reason for something’s existence.
We have, for example, a mission statement for the denomination. It’s “to make
disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” That’s what
United Methodists claim as our purpose, the reason we’re in existence. More
broadly, our book of order, The Book of
Discipline says that the mission of the church is “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world
by proclaiming the good news of God’s grace and by exemplifying Jesus’ command
to love God and neighbor, thus seeking the fulfillment of God’s reign and realm
in the world” and further that that mission is carried out by “send[ing] persons into the world to live
lovingly and justly as servants of Christ by healing the sick, feeding the
hungry, caring for the stranger, freeing the oppressed, being and becoming a
compassionate, caring presence, and working to develop social structures that
are consistent with the gospel.”
When I talk about
wanting Apple Valley to be missional, I mean primarily this last thing: I want
us to be a people who are clear about our purpose, and clear about the way in
which we are meant to live out our purpose in the world. What’s our purpose,
and how do we get it done? I believe that our purpose is to share in the task
of communicating Jesus’ message – his good news – and to be a people who are
working hard, together, to bring our lives into line with the transformed set
of values that Jesus offers as an alternative to the values of power, money,
and position that the world claims most important. I believe that our mission
is to change our lives so that our values match God’s values. My dream is for
us to be a missional, justice-seeking congregation full of servants of Christ.
So what does that mean exactly? Our key verse today is
from our gospel lesson, and we have to commit it to memory even without a
children’s sermon: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and
to give his life a ransom for many.” Like I said last Sunday, when Jesus tells
us so clearly what his purpose is, our best bet is to do likewise. Jesus comes
to serve and to pour out his life for others. We’re meant to do likewise! Just
before our text in Mark’s gospel, a man approached Jesus asking what he had to
do to inherit eternal life. Jesus talked to him about the commandments, which
the man said he kept, and then Jesus told him he should sell all his
possessions and give the money to the poor and then follow Jesus. And the men
went away grieving, since he was very wealthy. Jesus then talked about how
difficult it was to enter God’s kingdom, and the disciples wonder how anyone could enter the kingdom. Jesus
tells them that with God, nothing is impossible, but that the last will be
first and the first will be last.
Somehow, just after this, apparently not absorbing the
previous conversation, we encounter James and John saying to Jesus, “Grant us
to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Jesus
presses them, asking if they could really handle all that is implied – if they
could face what Jesus will face in order to claim those honored seats – and
they insist that they can. Naturally, their claim to seats of honor causes a
fight among the twelve, who are mad at James and John. But Jesus says to them,
““You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers
lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so
among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and
whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man
came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Throughout the gospels, Jesus talks about these role
reversals, about flipping things upside down in the expected order of the
world. The exalted are humbled, and the humbled exalted. Last first and first
last. And here, Jesus, the teacher, the master, comes not to be served, but to
serve, to give his life. Whoever wants to be great must be a servant, he says. This
past week in our Clergy Book Study Group we talked about the gospel lesson from
John where Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. It has some parallels to our text
for today. Listen: “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher
and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So 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 also should do as I have done to you. Very
truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are
messengers greater than the one who sent them.”
One of my colleagues was talking about how hard it is to
do the right thing as pastors when people come seeking help. We’re a bit out of
the way here, but in more urban churches, often people seek help from the local
church, and it is hard to know what to do, what to give, how to help, how to
help in ways that will really transform people, rather than leave them in the
position of needing to ask, to beg really, again and again. We talked about how
it was hard to serve others well in these situations. And I began to wonder why
Jesus never seemed to run into struggles like this. We never see him trying to
decide whether or not to help someone. And then I realized why: Jesus never had
to make these kinds of decisions, and didn’t have folks asking him for the same
kinds of material help, because Jesus had already completely poured himself out
as an offering to others. He’d opted out
of having the power of giving or withholding charity. He’d decided already that
he would be the one relying on the welcome of others, rather than being the one
with the power to invite or not into his home. No one asked him for things
because Jesus kept no things, nothing,
for himself. Jesus tells us that to be great, the way God sees it, we must be
servants, not those who seek to be served, seek to be masters, seek to have
power. We must be servants. Jesus does this to the extreme – he gives his life
as a ransom for many. He even gives away his very life. We’re called, too, to
give our very selves away as we serve others. The less we hold onto, the less
we’ll struggle with how we’re best supposed to serve, because what we’ll have
to give will simply be ourselves, and that’s the very best we have to offer.
I’ve been working with folks from Apple Valley and other
churches for some time on understanding the differences between charity, where
those who have possess all the power
over those who are in need, choosing when and what to give, and justice, which
is God’s vision, God’s dream, for relationships that are set-right, that
reflect God’s love for wholeness for humanity. Justice is when God’s reign,
God’s kingdom, God’s dream is made a reality on earth. Justice is the work that’s
involved in making God’s dreams come true now. When I talk about our mission,
being missional, that’s what I’m hoping we can do, in our corner of the world:
work with God to make God’s dreams come true for all people. We’ve been
thinking in particular about hunger and poverty and how we can have an impact
on the need in our community. We’ve talked about knowing what skills we have to
offer – like teaching classes on canning, or gardening, or maybe evening
putting a community garden in right in our backyard. We’re meeting with Barb K
from PEACE at the end of the month to learn more about the needs in our own
neighborhoods. I hope we will develop some clear and specific plans for seeking
justice, carrying out our mission of getting ourselves in line with God’s
values. But to be a missional church, we start with our hearts. We need to seek
servants’ hearts, not seeking out what can be done for us, but how we can offer
even our very selves to God and neighbor. I dream of a missional church, full
of servants, giving even their whole hearts to the work of God. “For the Son of
Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Amen.
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