The Gamble of a Lifetime
Well, our scripture this morning comes from the book of Mark. We are going to read two verses, verses 34 and 35, from the 8th chapter. So I invite you to follow along as we gather around God’s words.
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”
God’s word for us this morning!
Would you join me in prayer?
Holy God thank you for this word and Lord we do ask that you would use it, you would enliven it in our hearts this day. Lord we ask that your Spirit would lead us as we gather. It is in your name we ask that. Amen.
Well recently the Discovery Channel finished one of the highlights of its programming year. Do we know what it is? Shark Week. Shark Week. It is a week of T.V. devoted to all things shark. There are shows about swimming with sharks. There are shows learning about shark behavior, about how they eat and what they feed on; and, of course, the thing that makes shark week so special, maybe, shark bites. Who survived? How they did it? What to do to not be eaten by a shark. It seems everyone loves anything that has to do with sharks. Maybe it is because we know so little about them, maybe because they enlist so much fear in us. For many of us, all we need to do is hear the music from Jaws, right? ..and we know.
But one of the things I think that we know about sharks is that everybody wants to get up close and personal, it seems like, with sharks. You see shark tourism is on the rise around the world. It is becoming big business. They tell us that people want to swim with sharks, even if it is in a cage like this picture was taken. And if you know some of those cages are not always as safe as they are purported to be, yet people still come, people come in droves. One estimate said that 35,000 people, mainly Americans and Europeans, go to the tip of South Africa to be able to swim with the sharks. They go out on day trips that cost $150 a day and up all to be able to get up close. So it is a booming trait that the say employs 1.23 million people around the world in shark tourism. Who would have thunk it, huh? The funny thing is I was reading about this and when someone gets attacked, the demand for tours goes up.
You wonder why people would put themselves in harm’s way, wouldn’t you? I mean they are a magnificent sight, there’s no doubt about it and there is something mysterious about these creatures; but others I think just come for the rush, the rush of being up close — how close can I get without being eaten, with surviving? I think that need for that rush, whether it is seeing a great white shark swimming at you or whether it is some of the other things we do to kind of get that rush, speaks to a deeper need inside all of us. For I think the vast majority of us when we think about our lives, we think about our jobs, we go to our jobs, we try to be faithful and we try to do a good job, don’t we? If you are a bank teller, you want be faithful and make sure your drawer balances every night. If you are a sales person, you want to be faithful making those phone calls every day knowing that sometimes you will land a few sales and sometimes you will end up with nothing. I know that some of you who are here are important people in your company and what you do is an important part of continuing to make that company function effectively. Some of you are homemakers or stay at home dads. I know we have some of those. You’re thinking about that as terms as giving yourself to your kids, completely. So as we look at our job, we look at it and say, “I really want to honor God with my job. I want to please God with what I do. I even want to love those, you know, those hard to love people we all have in our jobs.” We want to do that; but, in the midst of all that, I think we would all say, the vast majority of us, “Is this all that life is about? Is this what it is all about?” And I think there is a reason for that. I think that reason is because God has planted within each one of us this desire, this sole desire if you will, to be about something bigger than just ourselves. We know the nagging feeling that many of us feel. We know it is there. It may come and go but we feel it more intensely at times and we may not know how to satisfy it; but we know it is there, kind of lingering in the background, kind of nagging us. So what we do is look for things that bring that rush, like swimming with sharks, or whatever it might be, to try to fill that unfulfilled desire that is residing within.
I think our scripture begins to kind of underscore that point. It speaks to that, that longing that we are all feeling. I think that we all long to be used by God, we all long to be used by God for something beyond ourselves. As we grow and develop in our faith, I think that desire becomes more palpable, it becomes more identifiable. It is something going: I need to do this. I need to do something beyond who I am and what I am about. It is in that that I think God places that desire for the Kingdom work God is doing, he desires for us to join him in doing. When we come alongside God and say “Yes I want to be about your business, God,” that is the door then that opens to be able to satisfy that longing that so many of us struggle with.
I think God desires for us to pick up our cross and join him on that mission. When we pray, we didn’t pray it today, but when we pray the Lord’s Prayer and we say “your will be done on earth,” that is what we are saying. We are saying “God I want to join you in accomplishing your will on earth, your mission on earth.” Think about that for a minute. We get to join God on a mission of a lifetime. Not only do we get to, God wants us to. It is a mission that God begins to work in us as Christ takes a hold of our life and we become the followers that we sang about. We become those followers and we begin to understand what God has given us and it drives us to want to give ourselves away. As we give ourselves away, it enables us to begin to reclaim and redeem our broken world. That is what God wants us to join with him in being about. He wants you to join in the redemption of the world that he is doing. He wants you. You get to join him. The God of the Universe wants you to join him so that we can truly be as the Blues Brothers say, “on a mission from God,” because we are. We are on a mission from God; and when we join in that work with God, that brings that rush like nothing else in your life. And that is the rush that will satisfy the desire of your soul.
That turns the idea of serving from I have to, or I ought to, to I get to, I get to serve. I get to join God in what he is doing. I get to join God in the redemption of this world.
I want to give you an example of a couple ladies who understand that, who, if you will, they get it, that “I get to serve God.” I want to invite Cindy Meyer and Julie Simondet to come up – aka, the Super Sale Sisters – to come up because I want you to hear their attitude— not so much about the sale –they do a fantastic job of that – but there is something underneath that that I want you to hear about.
Cindy Meyer:
Julie and I have made it our focus every year to view this as a God sale not a Garage sale. We never know each year what God has in mind and who he might send to our doors. With the economy the way it was this year and donations seeming to be down, we had no idea what he had in mind; but, as always, he is faithful and knows exactly what he wants to teach us. We have so many great God-stories to tell from this year and each one has changed both of us personally but we have chosen just two to share with you.
For the first time this year, we agreed to have the Heritage Girls sell food and drinks outside our front door as a fund-raiser for them. You might remember that the days of the sale were in the 90’s, high humidity, and the little girls were up against the brick wall in the heat for hours at a time – a lot of little rosy cheeks that we saw those few days. We learned that the organization, Heritage Girls, is the Christian version of Girl Scouts or Brownies. Quite honestly we were not exactly sure how this was going to work. But, what an amazing experience it turned out for both of us. The girls and parents not only sold food during the sale, they also came during the week prior to help us set up. Keep in mind we are talking about little girls, first and second graders. I’m sure that you would ask the same questions that I did, being so young, what could they possible do? I think you might be as surprised as I was, for they sorted and folded clothes, hung them up, put away toys, sorted bags, sorted books and shoes, hauled up boxes and straightened tables. The only thing they weren’t really able to do was to price or handle any large items. Throughout the entire sale I had a little girl at my side, holding my hand, asking me, What can I do know Mrs. Meyer? Their sweet smiles and amazing willingness to help me made it very touching. They were little angels sent to me from God.
Julie Simondet:
Of course there were many signs of God’s presence at the sale again this year, but the one that stands out the most and touched my heart was a deaf woman who came with her baby on a motorized wheel chair. It was Friday morning, half price day, and we were busy. A woman was clearly indigent, poorly dressed, missing her front teeth and completely deaf approached me in her motorized wheel chair, with her baby in her lap, unable to communicate. She motioned that she needed something to write with. She explained on paper that she had been up Thursday night at about 6:30 and realized that we were closed and wondered if I would give her a really good deal since she came all the way back. I wrote back that everything was half-price and was rather annoyed by her request. She was interested in a corner computer desk and didn’t even want to pay the half price. We went back and forth negotiating on paper and I thought that the deal was sealed when she wrote: I need someone to deliver. I quickly wrote back: we don’t deliver. It was then that I felt God tugging at my own heart. This was not about me and the garage sale. This was about serving others in the name of Jesus. My thoughts quickly changed to help find someone to help deliver her purchase. The next chain of events was definitely God in action. One of our own wonderful young adults and her friend offered to deliver and haul it up to her apartment. The only request that the woman had was if we could wait 25 minutes while she rode home in her motorized wheel chair.
The things that we take for granted! Feeling ashamed of my earlier impatience with this woman, I gave her a hug and my husband, Jim, gave her little girl a couple of small stuffed animals for free. The woman started whaling and crying, saying thank you, thank you and God bless, and made the sign of the cross over her heart. She was difficult to understand but we had definitely connected. And I had been blessed by God. I was quickly reminded why Cindy and I do the sale each year – to serve others in the name of Jesus Christ. Matthew 25:40, “whatever you do to the least you do unto me.” We as a society tend to treat people better if they are richer and have more material things than those who do not. Jesus is telling us the way we treat people who have the least, the poor, that is how we are treating him. If you ignore or overlook a homeless person because of the way they look then we might as well overlook Jesus. It is easy to love and admire those who have much but not so easy to love those who don’t have anything. Only when we can love the poor as much as the rich will the Lord use us to further his Kingdom. I try to remember that in my daily walk. We are nothing more than sinners saved by grace.
Cindy Meyer:
As always, this is a sale that just keeps on giving because we gave away vouchers for low income families this year so that they could shop free at our sale. We also gave vouchers to ICA and I think we had about thirty people come through able to buy from our sale for free. All the remaining books went to Jamaica; coats went to Under the Bridge for the homeless in Minneapolis; the men and women’s clothing went to Chaplains’ Closet, a mission for Hennepin jail; bikes went to kids in the community, several Somalian families; and our neighbor church next door took remainders for their sale. God really is working in our community.
Julie and I do want to say thank you to all of you who helped us this year. We could not do this without you. We totaled over 1000 volunteer hours and I am sure all of our volunteers have their own stories to tell and they are probably as touching and life changing as ours. I have already had several people ask me what the total was and right now it stands at $11,363.34.
Pastor Buck:
Thank you, ladies.
Faithful servants, making a difference in our world, but in the midst of that, do you think their hearts have changed at all? Yeah, that is what happens when we serve. All too often when we talk about serving or volunteering, it is always talked in terms of what other people will get as we serve them; and that is true, we do not want to diminish that in any way, shape or form. But I want to take that and I want to turn that upside down a little bit today. I want us to think about this idea of serving and volunteering, not from the idea of what will we give, but what do we get as a result of that. I want to do that by issuing you a gamble. I want to invite you to take a gamble. This is a gamble which started with a professor in a college classroom but it is a gamble that I think will speak to us, as well.
The gamble is simply this. Put to test the words of our scripture. Put to test the words of our scripture. For the next six months follow Jesus’ example. He said, “lay down your cross and follow me.” Follow Jesus’ example with reckless abandon. Go crazy in your serving. Serve at every opportunity no matter what it is. Do little things like holding the door open for somebody; do the insignificant things, the things that no one else will see. Maybe it is stacking of chairs after a meeting. Maybe it is doing the dishes even it is not your job or your turn. Keep your eyes open for every way to serve; then serve. As you take this challenge, as you embrace it, as you get a couple weeks down the road, what I want you to do is to just stop for a moment and monitor the condition of your heart. How is your heart doing? How is your heart doing? Ask yourself, am I gaining, or am I losing?
Another way to maybe think about the gamble if that is not your cup of tea, then let’s take that gamble and turn it the other way, and say, instead of trying to serve, put yourself at the center of everything in your world and have everyone serve you. Ask everyone to serve you. So that means, push your way to the front of the line. It means drive like you are the most important person in the world. Have others wait on you. Do whatever you can to have people serve you. Then, as you get down the road ask yourself, is my life fuller because of that?…or is it more empty?
I invite you to consider this gamble. Take this gamble. Make it a gamble of a lifetime. As you think about this gamble, as you are processing that in your own mind and what that will mean for you, a couple things I want to just help us understand. First you may be saying, Wait a minute Buck you are putting God to the test here and scripture says don’t test God. I don’t think we are testing God here. What we are doing rather, we are testing the trustworthiness, the truthfulness of scripture. If we are willing to serve, will it change our hearts? That is what we are really testing. I think you will see from Cindy and Julie and from many of you, the answer to that is, yes. As we act that out we are really living out the words of James: “faith that is demonstrated by works.” When you claim faith, or when you claim belief in something but it is just stated with words and you never act on it, it is not faith; it is simply words. So act on what you believe. Carry it out. Do something with it. God has called us to a life of abundance, that is what scripture tells us, and that comes when we move beyond ourselves, move beyond our desires, move beyond our wants and serve others. And yes, have you made that connection there? There is a connection between the discipleship rock from our vision and the service rock. They fit together. They go hand in hand. They are tied at the hip. One of the classes that I will be teaching this fall will be exploring that some more. So yes, if you serve, you are going to grow.
So if you take this gamble, if you are going to embrace it, it also means you have to try it. You have to do something with it. You have to act on it. You have to serve somewhere. Because we live a life in God’s abundance, one of the things that God gives us is spiritual gifts. Every one of you as a follower of Christ has at least one spiritual gift; that spiritual gift is to be used not for yourself but it is to be used for the good of the community, “for the building up of the body” scripture says. So find out what your gift is. Find out what your gift is and then find the best fit to express that gift. There are lots of areas that I don’t think we always think about in terms of ways to express our gift, some very broad areas.
-How about the arts? We have a lot of people here who are very artistic, not only in the traditional artistic way but also in the technical artistic way. What you see up here, that is artwork, as well; do you have gifts there that can be used?
-How about guest services and hospitality, the idea of helping people when they come feel welcome and feel connected and find a home here; do you have gifts in that area?
-Or how about hope and support both within our own congregation here coming alongside those who are hurting, but also in a larger scale, a community, national, world, how do we help those who are less fortunate? How do we care for them? How do we support them? Those are gifts that can be expressed.
-How about our next generation, our children, our youth, the ones that were just up here, even our young adults? Do you have gifts in those areas?
-Or how about outreach, this idea of trying to build relationships with people so that they can rub shoulders with people of faith so they can see what faith looks like up close and personal rather than just being preached at from the corner. Or people resources, this idea of making connections within our church, small group connections, discipleship, getting connected into life here at faith. If you have gifts in those areas, God wants you to use those.
-And even in the technical or skills area. What I mean about that is that some of you are very good at things around finances. We can use you. Some of you have skills for taking care of this physical plan. We can use you.
Those are all ways that we can express the gifts that God has given each one of us.
On September 20th we are going to have a Ministry Fair as part of that Sunday and we are going to have lots of opportunities for us to begin to explore what might be some new areas for us to serve in, some different ways maybe that you haven’t thought about how to express your giftedness. And that is going to be a part of our life going forward here at Faith. We are all going to have to step into a place and serve. That is what God desires for us.
I want to give you one area by way of illustration for you to consider, and that is our children in our students areas that we are going to soon be calling our family ministries. The list that I just gave you applies to that area as well. If you have areas of service around arts and a passion for children, we can use you. It is more than just teaching Sunday school or being a small group leader. Grant it, we need those folks too, but it is more than that. Do you have a gift of helping children feel welcome when they arrive? Then we have something for you to do.
Let me also be clear about something too that I think we need to begin to embrace even more, and that is that I believe God is calling some of you adults to be role models for our students beyond just their parents. The value of an adult life in the life of a student beyond their parents, I believe, is immeasurable. It is critical for their development. I have had twenty years in student ministry and I know that from experience and I know it personally in my own family. My son is a product of that. And to that end I will be eternally grateful to a man by the name of Jim Rock. Jim Rock was a guy who was my son’s discipleship leader, his small group leader, for middle school and high school. Was Jim cool? Not all the time. He didn’t need to be. But what he did is that he poured himself into those guys and all of those guys would look back on that time with Jim and say, we grew and we have a good solid foundation for our faith because of the time that Jim spent with us. He showed those guys what Christ looks like. He showed them and he was able to speak to them in ways that they would never receive from their parents. Right, parents of adolescents? They were able to say the same things that we were saying as parents, but they were able to hear them and embrace them. So to that end I say thanks to Jim. I say thanks to him publicly. I say that because Jim found his fit. Jim found his fit and you can find your fit too. You need to find your fit. That is part of what it means to walk with Christ.
So as we think about this gamble and serving in some way, let me just wrap it up by saying this. There are times and seasons of service. Just because you have been a deacon before doesn’t mean you need to be a deacon forever. There are times where you can move into new areas, new seasons of serving, and in doing that it helps us grow and mature. But yet, I know there are some of you who are thinking: I have been serving in whatever area it is forever, I am locked in and I can’t get out. What do I do? If that is the case what I want to say to you is simply, communicate. Communicate. Volunteers talk to your leader whether they be a volunteer or staff person and tell them what you are thinking about. Leaders, talk to your volunteers. Tell them it is O.K. to try something new. What we want to do is to invite people to explore new areas. No one should have to serve in one area their whole life. Some people get called to that, but they don’t have to be. And September 20th is going to be an opportunity to maybe begin to explore some new venues. So I want to encourage you to do that.
What we want to do is we want to live out our vision that we rolled out a few months ago. Do you remember our vision statement that we rolled out a year ago June? Say it with me if you can:
To Follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,
Be Filled with His Love, and
Share His Abundant Grace with our Communities.
That is our vision statement. That is what we want to be about as a community. That is what we want to do. So let’s say it again and I invite you to take this to heart. Let’s say it now:
To Follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,
Be Filled with His Love, and
Share His Abundant Grace with our Communities.
Sharing that abundant grace is all about living out our scripture today. So I invite you to take the challenge of a lifetime. Pick up your cross and serve our great God. He desires for you to serve alongside of him.
Would you pray with me, please?
Lord God, thank you, that you do not leave us alone, that you do not leave us to our own devices but you provide everything we need, not only do you gift us, but you also say we will not be alone in it. So Lord we ask that you would help us to find that place where we need to serve. Lord thank you for this great gift, the ability to come alongside of you to serve in new ways. Lord that is what we ask that you would empower us to do and courageously step into. Thank you Lord. Amen.