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"Completion" January
27, 2002 Rev. Gary LeTourneau I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among
you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6 I
continue to receive inspiration and challenge when I read about some of the
people and events of September 11th. I
had my attention drawn to the story of Brian Birdwell, serving at the U.S. Army
headquarters at the Pentagon. On
September 11th he had just stepped out of his office into a Pentagon hallway
when the fireball from the hijacked plane hit him full-force.
After recovering from the initial shock, Birdwell realized that he was on
fire. He's a believer.
He prayed at that moment, he says, "Jesus, I'm coming to see
you." When doctors finally
attended to him at the Washington Burn Center, they found second- and
third-degree burns over 40% of Birdwell's body, requiring several skin graft
operations. On
September 14th (two and a half days later) President Bush and Laura Bush visited
the Washington Burn Center. Among
those they visited was Colonel Birdwell. Laura
Bush went into Brian's room and spoke to him for about a minute, all the time as
if they were life-long acquaintances. She then turned to Colonel Brian Birdwell's wife Mel.
She had been at the hospital for about two and a half days, since her
husband was brought there. She was dirty and grimy.
Her shirt was blood-stained from changing her husband's wound dressings.
Despite this, Laura Bush hugged her for what Mel said seemed like an
eternity, as if Mel was one of her closest family members.
Laura
Bush then told Brian and Mel that there was someone there to see them, and the
President of the United States walked in. Standing
by Brian's bedside, the President told Colonel Birdwell he was very proud of
them both and regarded them as heroes. The President then saluted Brian. Brian slowly began to return the salute, taking about 15 to
20 seconds to get his hand up to his head, because of his bandaged arms.
During all of this President Bush never moved.
He dropped his salute only when Brian was finished with his.
Reflecting on that experience and his salvation from death, Birdwell
lives now with a renewed purpose. He
says about himself, "I'm a walking miracle.
Christ got me out of the fire, and by His not taking me, that means I
have a mission to complete. He'll
tell me what it is in due time." I
like the thought of Colonel Birdwell, who is used to receiving
"missions" in the military, realizing in his service to God and
country and in his gratitude for his life, that he now has a mission to be
completed. All of us who have been
rescued by the love and grace of Jesus Christ
have a mission. And the
apostle Paul says that he is confident in this:
that God who began a good work in us will bring it to completion.
I'd
like to talk a little bit about that word "completion."
It's a rich Greek word. It
means a lot more than we think of. In
philosophical Greek, they like to think of the major turning events in life, and
history, and nations. Those turning
events move a person or a nation from living on one plane and they begin to live
on another plane. And that turning
point was the "teleos" in Greek.
It was even used of a hinge of a door because, you see, a hinge of a door
is a turning point at which you move from one plane to another plane.
And they realized that the hinge-point was the goal, the destiny, the
completion, of this plane and then you move on to a new plane of existence.
The apostle Paul says God will bring us to completion through the
hinge-point of history. We
don't really know completion in that sense here on earth.
That's a completion which implies fullness, and wholeness, and there's
nothing left to be done, and nothing that needs to be done.
And we're just not ever going to see that this side of eternity.
Think about remodeling your home when you moved into it.
You realize, "Here are the six rooms that need our attention."
(Perhaps every single room needs our attention!)
And you make the list, and you do one whenever you can, and five years
later you finally finish the last one--the basement--and you take a deep breath
. . . and realize the kitchen needs fixing again, and you've got to start all
over! When
is the house competed? It never is.
The second law of thermodynamics from physics applies to every area of
life: Things tend towards a state
of lowest energy, and of disorder. If
you take a building and it's finished and you walk away from it and give it no
attention, what happens to it? Over
the years it begins to decay and fall apart, and it finally has to be condemned.
An organization, or an institution, is never finished.
Unless it receives constant inputs of energy and effort, things' tendency
is to decline to disorder. Even
lives on earth are not really completed. They're
simply stopped. "I'm
confident of this," says the apostle Paul, "God, who began a good work
in you (and he means 'in you, the Church') will bring it to completion--the
state in which it's finished, and full, and needs no more energy and
direction." When will that be?
"On the day of Jesus Christ."
What the New Testament says is the hinge-point of history, is the day
that Jesus returns to earth and history on earth as we know it will be no more,
and the Kingdom of God is ushered in. Jesus
will be the focus of that event. The
Day of Jesus Christ is the hinge-point of history, and on that day we, the
Church, will know completion. In
the meantime, we do have a mission to try to accomplish.
But that will always be somewhat frustrated in the sense that today (in
another hour) we'll finish our work on 2001, we'll receive a new budget and be
ready to move towards all of 2002, but guess what--as soon as we've done that we
have to begin work on 2003, and 2004, and 2005.
We're very much a work in progress. I'd
like to reflect on just two aspects of what it means for you and me to be works
in progress, moving toward final completion with the energy and power of God
through Jesus Christ being poured into us.
Our model should be that of Colonel Birdwell. We know who we are. On
our own we wouldn't even be moving in the right direction, but Jesus Christ
reached down and saved us, not because of who we are or what we've done, but
because of who He is and how much He loves us.
He saves us by grace, and now he has made us stewards together of the
Church of Jesus Christ and given us the mission to: "Go,
make disciples." "Love
one another as I have loved you." "What
you've done to the least of these my brothers, you've done to me."
"Well
done, thou good and faithful servant."
All
those verses suggest to us our mission that together we try to complete in the
name of Jesus Christ, knowing the promise that God Himself will bring us to
completion. Did
you notice the word "good"? "The
one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion."
Remember what God said as He created the heavens and the earth in Genesis
1? At the end of each day, "It
was good." At the end of
creation, God surveyed it and said, "It is very good." And God has created the Church, and constituted it, and given
us each other to be Jesus Christ's body in the world, and God says, "It is
good. It is good because I've
created it, because I'm directing it, and I'm bringing it to completion." The
second application is that you and I--I am convinced, just as the apostle Paul
was convinced--I'm convinced that God has given to Faith Presbyterian Church
everything we need to be faithful in completing the mission that He has given to
us. That's a rather startling
statement on a day when we're about to go into an annual meeting and we're short
on the budget, and we had to make some cutbacks on our future budget.
But let me share with you exactly what I mean, that I am convinced that
God has given us everything we need to be His servants here at Faith
Presbyterian Church. We
prayed for Pat Mahin, who's going to Honduras.
(He's there, I think.) Pat
is there to explore what are called "micro-economic loans." It's a new
mission endeavor in some of the poorest places on earth, with the poorest of the
poor, discovering how people make their living. Perhaps they buy a few oranges in the morning and sell them
in the marketplace, and that profit is all they have to live on.
Micro-economic loans are literally loans, on the order of fifty dollars
or one hundred dollars, which allow that person to, instead of buying a few
oranges, to buy a crate of oranges. And
it has been demonstrated that for people who live in poverty, who are scratching
out a living, that just a small, tiny amount of money to you and me--fifty
dollars--can move them out of poverty and into stability.
The repayment rate is incredible because they're so grateful for what has
been loaned to them. In the name of
Jesus Christ, lives are being changed micro-economically, fifty dollars at a
time. Now,
if we were a church of disciples of Jesus Christ in Honduras, and our per capita
income was $200, or $300, or $400 a year, then I might be nervous about our
budget and resources. I'd still
believe that God had given us all we needed, but I might wonder where it would
come from still. Well, at Faith
Presbyterian Church of Minnetonka, I don't have to worry where it's going to
come from. God has provided us with
everything we need as a church: financial
resources, people resources, vision, direction, leadership. He's given it to the church, and now it's up to the church,
as stewards, to contribute it to the church's coffers and make it happen. Let
me share with you, just very simply and fundamentally, the smallness of our
budget problem. If we had $100,000
today we didn't know about before, we'd have made last year's budget and we'd
have enough to do pretty much all we wanted in this next year's budget.
It's my belief--and I think I'm right about this--that for just about
everybody seated here in our congregation, every family, most of us today--you
can test me on this, but most of us today probably have $20.
And if we don't have $20, we'd have it sometime this month.
And most of us today--(not all of us.
I know there are exceptions)--but most of us could contribute that $20 in
addition to everything else we're going to give this month, and we would have a
hard time figuring out how it's going to change our lifestyle, affect our
entertainment. It would just be
gone, because that's what happens with those $20 bills! If our members once a month found $20 a family in addition to
what they already give, there's our $100,000.
You see, I'm convinced God has given us what we need.
We don't need to pray for God to provide.
We need to pray for God's people to be faithful stewards of what God has
provided them with. If
you're visiting this morning, please excuse me as we have a little family talk
here. I'm not beating you up.
And I'm not really beating us up our congregation.
I'm simply stating what I believe to be theologically true:
God has provided us everything we need.
The question is, what are we going to do with it?
Colonel
Birdwell's model: "I realize
God saved me for a purpose. Now I
have to discover it." God has
saved His Church for a purpose. Let's join together as God's work in progress,
on our way to completion. We
have the opportunity now to join together at the Lord's table. You know, I'm convinced that it really is true in our
Presbyterian theology that when we pray and break the bread and pour out the
cup, that Jesus Christ Himself is spiritually present.
And you and I have an opportunity to have a taste of what life will be
like living at the hinge-point of history, when we know Jesus fully and we're
fully with Him forever. We're on our way there now, and we have an opportunity here
to experience Christ's presence in the Kingdom.
It's an opportunity, as individuals, to look inward, to reflect on our
own lives and our discipleship, the grace of God extended to us in Jesus Christ,
an opportunity to say, "Thank you." And then it's an opportunity to look forward to the
completion that's promised in Jesus Christ. Let's
pray together. Heavenly Father,
thank you for your promise that life on this earth as we know it is not all
there is, that there is a culmination and an endpoint--a completion.
And that completion is in the work of your Son, Jesus Christ.
We thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, that you came to earth expressly for the
purpose of saving us, and that you invite us into a relationship with you in
which we experience eternal life beginning now, because we know something of
your presence, and your power, and your glory.
And, Holy Spirit, we thank you for your promise to be especially present
in this sign and seal of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We pray now that as we break the bread and pour out the wine,
that you yourself will fill this place and these elements with your presence
that we may truly receive you, that we may be the Church, that we may look
forward to our destiny in the Kingdom of God.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Rev. Gary LeTourneau Senior Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota [Transcribed from an audiotape of the 9:30 a.m. worship
service on January 27, 2002] |
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