Compelled to Serve

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The following is the text of my sermon, delivered Sunday, February 7, 2010 at Central Church of the Brethren. It is the fifth in a series of six sermons on our congregational mission statement.

COMPELLED to Serve
Luke 6:32-36

A friend of mine posted the following on his Facebook page last Thursday:

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. I am glad when the Lord takes the snow away. What are you glad the Lord gives, and what are you glad He takes away?

My response to him was as follows:

I just checked the weather forecast. I don’t see any "taketh away" in it, unless you’re planning to bring your snow shovel to my house and "taketh away" the 8-12 inches of snow that will falleth upon my driveway.

I made a decision a few weeks ago that I was not going to be grumpy about the weather. If it wants to snow 10 feet this winter, then "bring it on!" "Have at it!" "Don’t mess around, let’s see what you can do!"

Storms expose things, don’t they?
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Some years ago Lynette, Emily and I went to Puerto Rico with a group from seminary. Our professor was from Puerto Rico, and we saw many of the places where he grew up, and met much of his family.  A year or so later, a significant hurricane blew through and did a significant amount of damage. It cleared out a lot of trees, and exposed a lot of land. My professor spoke to his brother, and said that so many trees were down people saw the homes of neighbors that they had forgotten were there.
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Storms expose many things.
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One of the things they expose are our attitudes . . . One night, Abraham Lincoln and a friend were riding along in a carriage, in the midst of some really terrible weather. Rain was pouring down and it was cold. But inside the relative comfort of the carriage, Lincoln and his friend debated as to whether there was any such thing as an act performed with a totally "unselfish motive." Lincoln argued that there was not; that every act, no matter how altruistic and selfless it appeared, had a twinge of self-gratification.  In the course of their conversation, Lincoln abruptly halted the carriage, and without a word jumped out into the miserable weather. A pig was stuck in a nearby fence. Lincoln waded through the mud and freed the squealing animal.  When he returned to the carriage dripping wet, his friend crowed triumphantly: "See, you have proven my point. That was a selfless act."  "No," replied Lincoln, "for if I had not done it the sound of the pig squealing would have haunted me all night."

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Storms expose many things.

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A few years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and exposed the realities of urban poverty and racism. For the most part, those who could get out of New Orleans did. But for much of the population there was no way to get out, and no place to go if they could. Thousands hunkered down inside the Super Dome as the storm raged on the outside. It was an ugly scene, bringing to many of our minds some unpleasant thoughts that most would rather avoid.
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Storms expose many things.
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Just a few weeks ago, a major earthquake rocked the nation of Haiti. Hundreds of thousands were killed, most of these buried in anonymous mass graves. Thousands more will be homeless for years, as entire neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince were leveled. Most of us have always known that Haiti was a corrupt, poverty-filled island, but we really had no idea until this storm of an earthquake came.
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Storms expose many things, often because they are sudden, unexpected. But what if we could plan for storms, if we could be prepared for the things that will be thrust upon us at unexpected times, if we could walk through life with our eyes wide open to the challenges and the possibilities that exist whatever may come. If we can be disciplined in our thinking and in our preparing, then perhaps the storms that come will open up options we cannot presently see.

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One of the groups that I have joined on Facebook is The Journal of Urban Mission. One of their early postings includes these words: "Our future is urban. For the first time in history more people live in cities than in rural areas. The future of the church will be shaped significantly by the answer to the question ‘Will the Church reach the world’s cities for the sake of the gospel or not?’" It is an important question to be answered. It is Central’s question to be answered.
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What are we talking about when we say "reaching the city for the sake of the gospel?" A large tent revival? A mega-church? Several new churches? Quite possibly. Everything we are saying in this series of sermons on our mission statement are subordinate to the Great Commission of Matthew 28: Go and make disciples of all nations. In order to be a disciple, there must be some kind of invitation, a call, and an affirmative response.
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Martha Grace Reese says of her book, Unbinding Your Heart: Unbinding Your Heart is about...untying the knots that keep us from living exciting lives in the Spirit. It’s about unbinding the Good News that God adores us and everyone else, that God has shown this to us through Jesus Christ. [Unbinding Your Heart] is unabashedly about evangelism: faith sharing.,,It’s intended for members and pastors of churches who want to share that joy with people who don’t know it.
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"Reaching the city for the gospel" is this, and more! Ultimately it involves living and recognizing people’s lives and needs in the midst of a very complex urban environment.  Urban areas bear the brunt of the world’s poor; this is especially true in Roanoke. Having been pastor of a very rural congregation, I can say with some authority that rural poverty is a very real circumstance as well, that needs the creative attention of Christians in those areas. Urban poverty differs in just the magnitude of people who live in urban areas, or who move to urban areas looking for relief. What does it mean to reach the city for the gospel, in light of the needs of the poor?
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Urban areas often carry an unbalanced share of the local infrastructure. As businesses and families moved to the suburbs, a vacuum was created in the cities that make it challenging to meet the very real needs of the city. Consider the Roanoke City Public Schools budget challenge, that really cannot be solved without higher taxes. In our culture, education is the most significant way out of some of the challenges facing us, we cannot abandon our children without making significant efforts in education. What does it mean to reach the city for the gospel, in light of the needs of education?
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The amount of fear and pain that exists in the world, and in the churches. 10 years of ministry have taught me that a lot of us are carrying around a lot of pain, deep concerns, and fear.  Gordon Cosby tells the following story: I was sitting with four women that I thought I knew fairly well. Something happened to change the feeling and people began to share deeply. I found that three of these four women had been sexually abused when they were children. But now they were talking about it.
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Often we feel that our own personal pain is unique. We feel cut off. But when at last we can share it, when we can tell our stories to those who themselves are in pain and who really want to hear them, healing begins.

The strange thing is that the church, which is by definition a place of healing, is often the place where it is most difficult to share our pain.  What does it mean to reach the city for the gospel, in light of people’s pain?

In many ways, each of these three areas are storms. The question is, what do these storms expose in us?
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If we are taking seriously the work of spiritual formation, if our worship attendance and Bible reading and praying and loving one another are doing the work in us that they can, then somewhere along the way—maybe without our even realizing it—we ought to set aside reciprocal relationships for servant relationships.

People can say what they want about the Bible being old and irrelevant all they want, but don’t believe a word of it. Jesus may have spoken these words 2,000 years ago, but he has pegged our society hasn’t he? It is easy to allow what we will put into a relationship to be defined by what the other person gives to us.

Think about your relationships for a moment. How many significant relationships do you have with persons who aren’t doing all that much for you?
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This seems so obvious that I’d be surprised if some of you weren’t ready to object. "Of course this is how relationships work!" But isn’t Jesus telling us something of the upside-down nature of the Kingdom of God in these texts?
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Luke 6:32-34 "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ lend to ‘sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full."
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If reciprocal relationships are the only kind of relationship we can imagine, we’re not there yet. The Holy Spirit hasn’t yet marinated down very deeply in our souls, tenderizing and flavoring our character to where we begin to see the nature of servant relationships. Listen again to the text...
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Luke 6:35 "But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked."
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What do servant relationships look like? Those are the ones where we invest in the other person, without regard to what we might get back. If you want to consider what a servant relationship looks like...

Consider Ruth Corekin.

Four years ago, she made a choice to enter a nursing home, rather than insisting on staying at home and having Bob care for her. Why did she make this choice? Because she knew how difficult her care was going to be, and she didn’t want to put a burden on Bob that might have ended his life prematurely.

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Servant relationships are a measure of our faith! We cannot measure our faith by our reciprocal relationships because everyone has those. You do not have to be in Christ to understand effective and meaningful reciprocal relationships. We all have them, and we should have them.

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In relation to reaching the City of Roanoke for the sake of the gospel, servant relationships are how we are invested in storm clean up in the name of Jesus. They are our attitude to the storms of poverty, under-funded education, the large amounts of personal pain being carried around by many persons. What is your attitude to the storms around us?

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How can Central continue to emphasize servant relationships along side of reciprocal relationships? Consider Congregations in Action. One of the ways I’ve learned that CIA is an effective ministry is by the number of other groups that have "come out of the woodwork" wanting to learn more about us. It should come as no surprise that there are a lot of Christians in Roanoke who get this, that one way to reach the city for the sake of the gospel is to provide all of our children with a good education.

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There are many components to that, issues of poverty and personal pain factor in, to be sure. But when we allow this inner compulsion of the Spirit to overcome our fears, our busy-ness, our uncertainties and venture into Highland Park school we find something interesting. We find out that even in servant relationships, we learn something! Our eyes are opened to our own ignorance, our own prejudices, our own fears. Hopefully, prayerfully, we are bringing what we learn back to the church and sharing it with others, learning how the gospel applies to our front-line experiences, and then going back and reinvesting in those servant relationships with more wisdom and power.

And the body of Christ is built up, and we see the power in servant relationships for reaching the city for the Gospel.

"Our future is urban. For the first time in history more people live in cities than in rural areas. The future of the church will be shaped significantly by the answer to the question ‘Will the Church reach the world’s cities for the sake of the gospel or not?’"

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It is an important question to be answered. It is Central’s question to be answered.