Love ALL the People

A Sermon Inspired by Matthew 10:40-42

Final Sermon in the "Open Our Eyes" Worship Series

During the month of June, we’ve been asking God to open our eyes through this month’s worship series. Each week, we’ve considered a different way God meets us in our daily lives and invites us into the work of making disciples, the mission Jesus gave to us as His body, God’s Church.

In the first week, we celebrated the community represented in the Holy Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit—who calls us to become a loving community through the church and then commissions us to go out into the wider community of our neighborhood to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, our United Methodist Church mission statement. In the weeks that followed, we asked God to open our eyes and open our ears so that we could more fully embrace and understand that mission as disciples.

We have a hymn in our United Methodist hymnal that mirrors this journey of open eyes and open ears. The verses offer these words in song and prayer, “Open my eyes, that I may see glimpses of truth thou hast for me” and then, “Open my ears, that I may hear voices of truth thou sendest clear.” If we are following the trajectory of the hymn, then our prayer today should be for God to “Open my mouth, and let me bear gladly the warm truth everywhere?”

That’s what we would like to pray I think. After three weeks of focusing on learning from the Trinity that all people are God’s people and then practicing seeing all of God’s people and hearing all of God’s people…we might sigh a breath of relief today. FINALLY! After doing this hard work of seeing and hearing other people, finally, we get to be the ones talking! It’s our turn, right?!

Consider first these next few words of the hymn’s last verse and refrain: “Open my heart and let me prepare love with thy children thus to share. Silently now I wait for thee, ready, my God, thy will to see. Open my heart, illumine me, Spirit divine!”

Yes, we are called to share the good news of Jesus Christ and salvation with the whole world…but Jesus makes clear throughout the gospel that this truth can only be shared in love. Nothing we do will work, at least work in the sense of bringing glory to God, if it is not done in love. Before Jesus commissioned his followers to make disciples of all nations, he taught them about love. He told them to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34) and to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:39).

Loving all of God’s people is an essential requirement to going out into the world to share the name of Jesus. There are no ifs, ands, or buts! And loving God’s people means loving ALL people. The truth is that we will never look into the eyes of a person that God does not love. We will never meet a person in this world that Jesus did not die on the cross to save.

The love of God should be the force that propels us into the community around us. When the love of God is at the center of all we say and do, our lives consistently overflow with the love of Christ that we can’t help but let that love flow out of us, out of our church and into the streets, the highways, the country road by-ways where people desperately need to hear, not of God’s judgement, but of God’s grace.

But, let’s face it…there are a whole lot of other motivations within us that lead us to engage with our community. Some of them are good intentions, and some others…maybe not so much. What are some of the reasons churches give for wanting to meet and welcome new people?

We want to grow the church.

We want to keep the church doors open.

We want the church to have a future.

We want to get new members to help pay the bills.

We feel a sense of duty to do what Jesus told us to do, even when our heart isn’t really in it.

We want to convict sinners and tell people how wrong they are and how Jesus can save them.

We want to convince people to find refuge and safety in the church.

Some of these might be true for you. I know, at different points in my life, each one of these statements had been true for me. Some of these are still motivations I have to uncover and confess in my own actions as a pastor who deeply loves the congregations God called her to serve.

Still, our primary love must be God, not the church. We are called to share the love of God with the world God loves, and we have to remind ourselves that God’s love and presence does not stop when we walk out of the doors of our sanctuary.

In fact, often, we will discover God’s love wild and free in the world in ways that will surprise us and take our breath away. I am thankful for the church that raised me, the first church that let me preach, the churches that helped me learn more about myself as I began to live into my calling, and the churches that have given me the enormous privilege of calling me pastor. Still, when I remember the experiences of love that caught me by surprise and convinced me of God’s living grace active in the world, those moments have been outside of the four walls of a church. In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says that even something as simple as a cup of cold water can be a sign of grace.

Those moments of simple grace for me have been in hospital rooms and in coffee shop conversations. They have been in swimming pools and front porch swings. They have been where ordinary life meets God’s extraordinary grace, and they have been magical!

I think back to a day when I was in my first year of fulltime ministry in the church, working as a director of youth and children’s ministry. I was working to get ready for a special Christmas event, transforming the fellowship hall of the church into a 1^st century Jewish market with different activities to teach kids about Jesus’ life and ministry. I hadn’t recruited enough volunteers to help, a lesson I am still learning all the time and getting a little better at, so feel free to call me out on it! On that day, I was getting things set up at the church by myself, and I was overwhelmed. Looking up at the clock, I realized around 3 pm that I still hadn’t eaten lunch, but there was still so much to do. I took a deep breath and thought, “Okay…Go get some Subway. Take a break, and then you will feel better and more focused.” I headed out the door, and as soon as the door clicked behind me, I realized, “Oh no! I just locked myself out of the church…and my cell phone and keys are inside.” By some miracle, I had actually grabbed my car key, but I had not picked up my church keys. Defeated and trying to think what I would do to get back inside on a Saturday when it would be hard to catch other church members at home to come let me back in especially when I didn’t have my cell phone with their phone numbers was locked in the church, I decided to head to Subway anyway...What else could I do? As I pulled up to the drive thru window after ordering, the cashier handed me my meal and said, “The person in front of you paid for your meal. They said, ‘Have a nice day and God bless!’”

It might sound silly but on a day where I was stressed, locked out of a church where I was hosting a ministry event in less than three hours, and feeling anything except blessed, this simple act was a moment of extraordinary grace in my life that not only lifted my spirits but helped me experience the love of God when I needed it most.

It's that magic of love, the way God plants hope deep down in our hearts and souls even in the midst of the trials and tribulations of ordinary life, it’s that love and hope God calls us to share with the world.

Where have you experience the love of God in your life?

Where has God planted seeds of hope in your heart?

The life of a disciple of Jesus isn’t an easy path. Anyone who tells you that living out your faith in your everyday life is easy…is lying! Yes, we hope and pray that the Holy Spirt will work through us in powerful ways, but we also recognize that Jesus sent his disciples out to share the good news of the gospel without an instruction book of what to do or a script prepared with what to say. So, I know and I trust this truth…we are all doing the best we can in following Jesus with what we learn through the careful study of Scripture and prayer. That goes for me, and that goes for you!

I think Satan wins when we spend too much time arguing who is right and who is wrong. In fact, I think that 99% of the time, when it comes to our faith, asking who is right and who is wrong is the wrong question! WHY? Because the focus of our energy is on the fight rather than on the mission God called us to – the mission of the church – the mission to love.

What if the gospel is proclaimed more through our living than by our speaking? What if we share more about God’s love by our attitudes and what we do than what we say?

Yes, speaking is important. Of course, I believe that, or I wouldn’t get up at 4 am every Sunday to prepare to share the word God places in my heart.

Still, I think the kind of words Jesus asks us to share are about the hope that lives inside of us because of the gospel. The story we are called to tell over and over again is how the grace of God has transformed our lives!

In the end, it isn’t our words that bring grace to someone else’s life. It is our whole being and our whole presence. The body language we use. The choices we make when we think no one is watching. That’s part of why it’s so easy to day “We welcome everyone” but not be welcoming in practice. I have never served a church that didn’t think it was a “friendly” church. I bet you have never been a part of or visited a church that did not think it was a “friendly” church. But I would guess that all of us at some point have had a experience in a church that was less than friendly, maybe even downright mean or judgmental. Church, we have to strip away all the barriers that keep people from being able to fully participate in the life of church and experience the love of God in this place. What we think about how people live their lives, wear their clothes, or spend their time doesn’t matter when it comes to welcoming them into the body of Christ. This church belongs to God, not to us, and before we ever open our mouths, we have to open our hearts.

This is not easy to hear, and it’s even harder to live out. But it’s so important, not only for our neighbors, but for us, too! Whenever I have grown deeply in my spiritual walk with Christ or whenever I have seen the people I pastor grow in their faith, this has been the one constant truth—that growth has always be born from a place of struggle, question, or pain. We learn that from the Gospels. Jesus healed the sick, not the healthy. Jesus challenged the religious rule keepers with the scandal of grace. The hearts Jesus changed were first broken before they could be put back together by his love.

This has been true in my life. I have grown deeper in my trust of Jesus, not when things were going great in my life, but in the moments of pain and disappointment, like when Adam was so sick four years ago that he couldn’t work for eight months, and I wasn’t sure he would ever get better.

I have become more compassionate for others not when they agreed with the way I saw the world, but when their lives challenged my preconceived notions of how to be in mission and ministry. Like Jackie, a man in Nashville experiencing homelessness and living with alcohol addiction, looked me in the eyes after I had known him for over a year and served him every Thursday night at a free community meal, asked me, “Do you love me? Do you really care about me? Does God?” Jackie taught me that love looked more like being vulnerable enough sitting down at the table to eat with him and receive his hospitality as we shared stories of life than keeping him at an arm’s distance and staying behind the kitchen counter. It was a lesson that was painful at the time, because it challenged who I thought I was – “a good person helping others” – with the reality of the messiness and risk of loving imperfect people with the love of Christ.

And I have grown and learned the most as a pastor, not when people complimented me or agreed with everything I said, but when church members and mentors who loved me deeply challenged me in love or shared with me directly constructive feedback, not as demands or ultimatums, but as opportunities to think and reflect on my leadership.

Those lessons were never easy, but they have helped me become the pastor, the person, the disciple of Jesus I am today – a person who is still learning and growing, as we all are…for in faith, we have never arrived. There is always room in our heart and lives for more love, more light,  more Jesus.

So, friends, don’t shy away from the hard stuff. When you disagree with someone, I hope you can talk about it. I hope you reach out in curiosity. I hope you wonder with questions asked out loud to God in prayer. Even when after conversation and relationship you continue to disagree or think differently from each other—and thanks be to God for our diversity and differences for without them what a boring world this would be—I hope you seek to understand in love. We may all never see the world the same way, but we can choose to see each other and the world through God’s eyes of love. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, said, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may.”

So, yes, Holy Spirit, open our eyes. Open our ears. Open our hearts. May your love be the story we share with our lives.

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

Opens Our Ears to Hear

A Sermon Inspired by Matthew 10:26-39

Third Sermon in the "Open Our Eyes" Worship Series

“I’ve come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother.”

“Those who love father or mother more than me aren’t worthy of me.”

Well, Happy Father’s Day, Jesus!

I don’t think it matters when we read these sorts of statements from Jesus. They are always hard to hear. But, especially on a day where we celebrate dads for the gifts and blessings they have been in our lives, these words are hard to hear.

Why? We love to sing songs that proclaim “Jesus is King!” or that “Jesus is the name above all other names!” We will gladly tell others “Jesus is the most important person in my life.” We get that Jesus comes first, and all other things in our life are meant to come second.

But…there is something about hearing these words today, hearing Jesus ask us to really put him above all other loyalties and loves in our lives, that is jarring.

If you are thinking, “Jesus…this sounds hard!” the good news is that you aren’t alone. There are times in the Gospels when Jesus’ teaching gets sounds so hard or difficult to follow that the disciples turn to him and say, “Jesus, don’t talk that way anymore. You’re scaring people! No one is going to want to follow you.”

What is Jesus’ response? Do not be afraid. We hear it twice in today’s Scripture. Do not be afraid. This is often part of my daily prayers, “Lord take away my fear and help me trust in you.”

Now, I’m not talking about the kind of fear we get from a scary movie or standing near the edge of a tall cliff or even the sort of fear we might have experienced during these last few months of pandemic or might be experiencing right now as we experience a scary spike in virus infections locally.

I’m talking about the kind of fear we get deep down in the pit of our stomachs when doing the right thing, doing the gospel thing seems to conflict with our own personal comfort and safety.

Because, if we really hear Jesus today, if our prayer from this sermon series “Open our eyes, Lord” extends today to also become “Open our ears, Lord,” the life of discipleship Jesus is calling us to is scary! If you aren’t frightened just a little bit, then you aren’t really hearing Jesus!

Whenever I find a particular passage of Scripture challenging or difficult to understand, I’ve made it a practice turn to different translations of the Bible to read that same passage in an attempt to better hear Jesus, as I heard his words shared in different ways. As I did that this week with these difficult words from Jesus, I found the Message translation helpful in capturing the heart of Jesus’ teaching. Hear verses 34-39 from the Message:

“Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy. I’ve come to cut—make a sharp-knife cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over me, you don’t deserve me. If you prefer son or daughter over me, you don’t deserve me. If you don’t go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don’t deserve me. If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.”

These words don’t get any easier in the Message translation, but—for me—they do get clearer! I can hear Jesus better.

What Jesus is trying to teach us is that we have to be committed to Christ, above all else. That might sound easy on its surface, but as with Jesus’ difficult teaching today, when we really dig into what that means, when we really hear what Jesus is saying…this is hard work!

We might mishear Jesus if we think that the love Jesus calls us to is a competition. Jesus isn’t asking us to take out a measuring stick and prove how much we love him versus other people. Instead, Jesus is saying our love for our family, our love for everybody, is transformed when we put Christ first. Because when we put Christ first, we follow his commands, even when they are difficult. Perhaps one of the most difficult commands Jesus ever gave his disciples was “to love one another I have loved you.” We are called to love like Jesus loved. That is hard work! That is hard work we can only do when we love Jesus first. When we love Jesus first, then we can learn how to truly love others. The love of Christ transforms us so that we can love…even when its hard.

I think sometimes we forget just how hard work loving is really supposed to be. It’s a love that asks us to set aside our own ego. A love that asks us to embrace the people who drive us bonkers. A love that reminds us…we are not in this faith thing for what we get out of it. If you only come to church looking for what you get out of it, then you’ve missed the point. Worship is for God, not us. Christ’s church is for God’s mission in the world, not our comfort and happiness. If we really hear Jesus’ words today, he says loud and clear that the truth of the gospel causes tension. If we’re only comfortable, then we aren’t hearing the gospel. We aren’t hearing Jesus.

How can that be? How can tension be at the heart of the Gospel? Aren’t we all supposed to just get along? Don’t we call Jesus, “Prince of Peace?”

To hear Jesus in his own words today, “Do no think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth.”

Jesus didn’t come to bring the kind of peace that plasters a thin veneer of wallpaper over the cracks of tension in our families or the injustice of our world and society. Because that isn’t true peace…that’s politeness or niceness on the surface only.

Jesus came to bring a deep and abiding peace, the kind that acknowledges differences while staying engaged with the other, the kind of peace that says, “You matter. I matter. We both matter, so we can’t ignore our differences or pretend they don’t exist or matter either. But we can love Jesus, love one another, and acknowledge our differences all at the same time.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” True peace, Jesus peace, deep down in your heart peace, deep down in our world peace, this kind of peace calls us to be courageous in our conversations and relationships.

Whenever I need to learn more about how to be truly brave and answer the call of courage, I turn to the work of Brené Brown. Brené is a social worker and research professor at the University of Houston. For over two decades, she has studied courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She has written five #1 New York Times bestseller books. Brené often talks about the importance of choosing “courage over comfort,” which I think is phrase that really gets to the heart of Jesus’ hard words today.

In her latest book Dare to Lead, Brené talk about our tendency to shy away from difficult conversations under the guise of being “nice and polite.” In relation to our gospel lesson today, Brené is saying that we often chose the wallpaper thin, surface level peace of ignoring differences and disagreements rather than the true peace of engaging with one another even when its hard or when conversations are tough. Basically, Brené says our human tendency to chicken out…to not answer the call to be courageous, and to make ourselves feel better by thinking “Well, I’m just trying to be nice. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I’ll just keep the peace.”

But ignoring differences and dodging difficult conversations isn’t true peace, at least not the kind of peace that the gospel talks about. And, through her extensive research, Brené has learned that avoiding these difficult conversations in our relationships actually leads to diminished trust and increases in problematic behavior (like gossip and passive-agressiveness). Trying to keep the peace actually makes it more difficult to establish true, deep peace.

Brené writes this, “Over the past several years, my team and I have learned something about clarity and the importance of hard conversations that has changed everything from the way we talk to each other to the way we negotiate with external partners. It’s simple and transformative: Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

She goes on to write, “Feeding people half-truths…to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind. Not getting clear with [another] about your expectations because it feels too hard, yet holding them accountable or blaming them for not delivering is unkind. Talking about people rather than to them is unkind.”

Friends, I think we’ve been so busy trying to be nice that we’ve forgotten how to be kind. I don’t think Jesus is calling us to start fights today. I think he is calling us to get clear and be kind. To get clear that our loyalty, our allegiance is to Christ above all else—family, politics, even church. And when we are clear, we can be kind. We can choose to open our eyes to see ALL of God’s people. We can choose to open our ears to hear ALL of God’s people. We can choose the deep love and the true peace of the gospel. We don’t have to be afraid. With Jesus’ help, we can be courageous!

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

See All The People

A Sermon Inspired by Matthew 9:35-10:8

Second in the "Open Our Eyes" Sermon Series 

During our June sermon series, we are asking God this specific prayer: “Open Our Eyes.” As we read Scripture, as we pray over it, as we learn from it through sermons and personal study, we are asking God to open our eyes to the world around us—our neighbors, our community, and beyond—because Jesus has commissioned us as his disciples to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Which goes hand in hand with our extended celebration of the Season of Pentecost. Over the past two years, you have heard me say countless times, “Today is the life of the church is known as such and such day,” or “We are in the season of Lent, Advent, Pentecost, etc.” The Christian calendar may be something you are well acquainted with, or it may be something you had never heard of or thought much about. For the next minute or so, I want to share a little about this particular time right now in the Christian year, because I really think it will help us open our imaginations to what God can do in our hearts and lives and church this summer. Here’s my pastoral disclaimer: If you find this next minute immensely boring…I’m sorry! You can call me and tell me later, but don’t turn off the sermon video, because I promise (well, I hope) more good stuff is coming!

Two Sundays ago, we celebrated Pentecost, the birth of the church and the gift of the Holy Spirit. While many people think of Easter and Christmas as the “high holy” days of the year, Pentecost is right up there with them! Especially for United Methodists! The flames on our denominational cross logo, a symbol near and dear to our hearts, represent the tongues of fire from that first Pentecost. Together, the cross and flame represent that we relate to God through Christ (the cross) and the Holy Spirit (the flame).

If Advent and Christmas and then Lent and Easter are all about Jesus, then Pentecost and the season that follows is an opportunity to focus on the Holy Spirit. Not that we can or should separate out the persons of the Trinity, as if we get to pick and choose which one is our favorite. The Father, Son, and Spirit is a holy community that works together to create, redeem, and sustain humanity and creation. But, let’s be honest, we probably think about God through the lens of the Father/Creator and Jesus, the Son and Savior, way more often than we think about God through the lens of the Holy Spirit.

So, in this season after Pentecost, in the month of June, we are going to invite the Holy Spirit to open our eyes as we claim that, like the first disciples who received the power of the Spirit as a rushing wind and flames of fire, we, too, are disciples walking in the power of the Spirit. We are the Church that was born on Pentecost—empowered, equipped, and sent by God to offer Christ to the world. So, Holy Spirit, open our eyes to the world around us that we may be the church, not just for ourselves, but for all people!

Okay…maybe that was more than a minute. Back to our Scripture at hand for the day.

If our prayer is to ask God to “open our eyes,” then the first place I’m going to turn to wonder what eyes opened up by God look like is the life and ministry of Jesus. In the ninth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, we encounter Jesus as he is doing the work his Father has given him. He is travelling from town to town, preaching good news, healing the sick. And, then, the gospel writer adds this detail, “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them.”

Maybe that doesn’t usually cause us to stop in our tracks and think. Of course, Jesus had compassion. He’s Jesus! But, have you ever stopped to think about what it means to be seen with compassion? I mean…to be really seen. I think, that in our culture and in our daily lives, we rarely actually see one another. Right now, in this season of pandemic, we are literally seeing less of each other. But, even before, did we really, truly, deeply see one another?

Or did we prejudge people?

Did we look them up and down and, based on their clothes and their hairstyle and how clean they looked, make snap judgments, and put them into a certain “category” of people?

Did we ever “look” at someone and, instead of taking the time to “see” them, just think after a quick glance, “They must need Jesus!” Why? Because we see ourselves as better or more put together or as someone who has made better life choices? If so, then the truth is that we might be the ones who really need Jesus!

Because Jesus doesn’t do any of that. Instead of looking at people, Jesus sees them as people worthy of compassion and care. Do you know what it feels like to be seen in that way? For someone to see you with all your bumps and bruises and flaws, the stuff that we try to hide from others, and for that someone to still love and accept you, just as you are! Wow…that is grace. I have been lucky enough in my life to experience that kind of love through my spouse and through my parent, and it is powerful. When I realize that the love I share with Adam is just a foretaste, a sample of the way that Jesus loves me…it takes my breath away!

It is out of this extravagant love, this amazing grace, this care-filled compassion that Jesus calls the Twelve disciples to be laborers in God’s harvest. Jesus calls these disciples together as a community, not primarily for their own sake, but for mission! The Twelve aren’t called by Jesus to only tend to their own souls, although Jesus teaches them how to pray. The Twelve aren’t called by Jesus to make sure only they are right with God, although Jesus will consistently challenge them to grow in their relationship with the Father.

Instead, Jesus calls the Twelve to join him in the journey of preaching the Good News, healing the sick, casting out demons, practicing resurrection! As Christ’s disciples called together as Adamsville First United Methodist Church, Jesus invites us to join him in this journey, too, and promises that the Holy Spirit will be our guide, our power, our strength.

When we come together for worship, whether virtually or in-person, we are not only being fed spiritually. We are being shaped to be like Jesus. In worship, we are practicing how to offer Christ to the world. The songs we sing to God are the songs we are called to sing to the world. The prayers we pray are not only for ourselves and our loved ones, but for our neighbors near and far. The testimonies we share of what God is doing in our lives are the stories that Jesus wants us to go out and tell in our community so that others will know that the kingdom of God is near!

Our worship on Sundays is not the culmination of our week. It’s only the beginning! The church gathered in worship is a launching pad for disciples to be sent out into the world to be the church!

Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in our own, little church bubble that we miss out on seeing what is all around us—opportunities to share Jesus’ name with our neighbors through our words and our actions.

So, if we are going to hear Jesus’ call today and answer it, if we are going to sign up to be laborers for God’s harvest, how do we do that?

First, we have to see the people. We have to see all the people. Remember, Christ desires for all people, from every nation, to be part of his body. God’s got the whole world in his hands…not just us.

Then, we have to really see the people. Jesus didn’t approach the crowds with judgment. He approached with compassion. So, we can’t approach others with the answer of how we are going to help them already tied up in a neat, little package with a bow on top. Jesus let sick people come to him and ask to be healed. He didn’t force his healing on people. So, we don’t seek out our neighbors because we want to fix them. We come to see them.

Now, is this easy? Heck no! Every time I walk into Walmart to do my essential shopping, I promise you I have at least one unkind thought or judgmental assumption about a fellow shopper. But Jesus is still working on me! And I know he is working on you, too!

In this journey to see all the people, to approach our neighbors with compassion instead of judgement, we are going to get it wrong sometimes! We aren’t perfect. We’re human. That’s why God invented grace. But, even when we mess up, we can try again and again and again. And we have to! For the sake of the gospel!

As we embrace this journey of seeing all people with Jesus’ eyes of compassion, we might just be surprised how the Holy Spirit opens our eyes! Maybe we will find that our neighbors, the people we think we are sent to help, maybe they’ll end up helping us more than we ever help them. Maybe we’ll be amazed at the stories of strength and grace we discover when we really get to know people. Maybe, as we seek to serve others and be a blessing in Jesus’ name, we’ll discover that we are the ones who are being blessed.

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

Therefore, GO!

A Sermon Inspired by Matthew 28:16-20

First in the "Open Our Eyes" Worship Series

This month during worship, as we read Scripture together, as we pray over it, as we apply it to our lives, we’ll be asking God to “Open Our Eyes.” Over the past two months, even while we have been apart from one another, we celebrated Easter and Pentecost. Christ has been raised from the dead. The Spirit has come with wind and fire. As we prepare to return to in-person worship gradually during the summer after these high holy days of the Christian year, we might wonder, “What’s next?”

Our Pentecost questions linger…

“What should we do?”

“What are we able to do because of this wonder and gift from God?”

“How should we live?”

“Who are we as disciples of Jesus, empowered by the Spirit?”

“Where should we go in mission?”

“Who should we include?”

These are all questions the early church, the first disciples who received the Holy Spirit in that upper room asked, wrestled with, and tried to answer faithfully as they learned what it meant to be Jesus’ witnesses and to carry on his mission in the world.

These are all good questions for us to ask ourselves today! Just as Jesus asked those first disciples to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth, so he asks us. Just as Jesus commissioned his followers to make disciples, to baptize in his name, and to teach others, so he commissions us today!

As we join those original disciples in Matthew’s Gospel today in Galilee and hear Jesus’ words to “Therefore, go and make disciples,” notice how the disciples begin in a posture of worship. Our first response to experiencing the risen Christ with eyes wide open is to fall at his feet and worship. To sing out in praise that our God is holy, holy, holy. To name and celebrate all the ways our God is worthy of our praise, worthy of the songs we sing, worthy of being the desire of our heart, worthy of us spending our lives in service to God’s mission of love and grace.

Yet, Jesus doesn’t tell the disciples to stay on that mountain and worship him forever. We already know from that time Peter saw Jesus transfigured, shining in glory on a mountain, that worship that stays put in one holy place is not what Jesus desires from his followers. Again, Jesus reminds us that true worship is active. “Therefore, go, and make disciples of all nations,” Jesus says. That would be awful hard for the disciples to do if their worship never moved from the mountain where they saw Jesus. If our first response to experiencing the risen Christ is to worship, then our second response is to allow that worship to spill into the world as we go!

Today, in the life of the church is known as Trinity Sunday. As we hear Jesus commission the disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we are reminded that the work of the Holy Trinity, this mysterious and beautiful nature of God, is the work of transformation in the world. Jesus’ followers are given authority to baptize and teach so that they might make disciples for the transformation of the world.

Jesus’ words to the disciples today in Matthew’s Gospel are often referred to as the Great Commission. It’s a reminder that the work Jesus speaks of today is first God’s work. Lives are changed and hearts are transformed only through the power of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet, Jesus extends this work to his followers, asking them to cosign this mission.

“Make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world” is actually the mission statement of the United Methodist Church. It’s our calling, our reason for being, our understanding of what it is to be the church! And, today, we remember that it is an active calling. Jesus says, “GO!!!” This Trinitarian transformation business doesn’t happen when we stay still in worship. It happens when our worship spills over into our everyday lives and our everyday world.

On this Trinity Sunday, we might ask ourselves:

How do we share the love of God the creator?

How do we live in the hope of Christ the redeemer?

How do we offer the sustaining presence of the Spirit in life-giving ways?

As I consider how we embody the love of God in our lives as disciples, I keep thinking of the ways I experienced the love of God through the life of Mattie Ruth Brewer. Mattie Ruth, who passed away at 104 years old this week, was a faithful woman of God who loved her church deeply. As I prepared to share memories of her life at her funeral last Thursday, I asked the family if I could borrow her Bible, the one she read from each day. They graciously obliged, but they did make sure to point out that they would be giving me her most recent Bible. She had had many copies that she had worn out, the binding cracking, pages falling out, from her studying God’s word so diligently. As I turned over the pages of Mattie Ruth’s Bible, I found verses of Scripture underlined, prayers and notes written on slips of paper tucked between the pages, signs that Mattie Ruth didn’t only read the Bible…she sought to understand it and to live by it. But, of course, none of this surprised me. While I only had the honor of knowing her for two years, it was clear to me that the love of God pervaded everything Mattie Ruth did. The way she welcomed our children into her home as they visited her and played the piano for them. The way she always asked me about how her church was doing, wanting to know if people were getting along, if people were coming to worship. The way that on the last time I visited her in February before the virus hit, she offered me some of the Valentine’s candy her family had brought her. Mattie Ruth embodied the love of the creator God in all that she did.

Like Mattie Ruth, we are called as disciples of Jesus to share the hope of the risen Christ with our community—our family, our friends, our neighbors—through relationship. When God wanted us to know what love and hope was like, God put on skin and came to live among us as Jesus Christ. In our everyday relationships, we have the power to choose whether we will live to serve our own purposes, taking care of our own needs, or whether we will follow the example of Christ, who sacrificed his own life for our forgiveness and freedom. What sacrifice might Christ be calling us to make in our lives so that our witness of faith and our mission of love might be more authentic?

Finally, as a community of disciples called together to worship God not only in song and praise but with every aspect of our lives, we join the Holy Spirit in mission as we become the life-giving presence of God in the world. Isn’t that what it means to be the body of Christ? To be the hands and feet of Jesus serving in our neighborhood? By now, I hope you are already familiar with the growing ministry of the Come and See Community Kitchen, a community ministry that was birthed at our 2020 Vision conversation back in February. Since March 15, dedicated volunteers have been working b tirelessly to provide not only meals but, also, relationships (even the socially distanced kind) to 
vulnerable members of our community, especially senior citizens. As we return to in-person worship and our community finds a new normal in the midst of the pandemic, the Come and See Community Kitchen is also shifting and finding its new normal. I hope really soon we’ll be able to share more about what this ministry will look like as it moves into the Mason Building, giving new life and mission to this gift that was given to our congregation.

Through the words of the Great Commission, as Jesus tells us to “GO!” we are reminded that the focus of our faith is not on our inward, personal worship alone. God seeks to transform our hearts and lives as disciples, turning our focus outward to the world in which we live. Today, we remember that we aren’t just called to look after our own souls, although attending to our personal faith lives is important work. But, as the church, we are in the business of transforming the world. Jesus said, “GO!”

Even as we prepare to return to in-person worship, our worship cannot end in the Activity Building, in the sanctuary, in our living room, in whatever space we worship and sing praise. Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit demands more! If the red flames of the Spirit that adorn our United Methodist crosses are truly going to burn in our hearts as disciples, then our worship must spill out into the community and neighborhood around us. Each time you hear or pray a benediction this summer, remember…our service of worship may have ended. But our worship through service is just beginning! Therefore, GO!

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