Are You Called?

Rev. William “Buck” Day

HEB is a grocery store, in fact, it is the 16^th largest grocery store chain in the U.S., and it generates two times the average sales of other grocery stores.  HEB stands for “Here Everything is Better.”  It started in the hill country of Texas around 1905.  A man by the names of Charles Butt and his wife started with an initial investment of $60, and their approach to business could be encapsulated through the simple motto, “He profits most who serves best.”  His youngest son has continued to grow the business to this day, and he not only understood the importance of servanthood in his business, but he realized there is also no greater example than what is found in his Savior, Jesus Christ.

Today is Deacon Sunday and, as you heard from Susan, it is a chance for us to affirm the Deacon ministry in our midst and to see how that ministry is designed to help us in hard times.  I thought we would do that by looking through the eyes of Dr. Luke and the story of how the first deacons started, and my prayer is that, as a result of that, we will see with new eyes what God has for each of us. 

I want to read from Acts 6:1-7.

Hear the Word of God.

¹ “Now during those days when the disciples were increasing number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food.  ² And the Twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should neglect the Word of God in order to wait on tables.  ³ Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task.  ⁴ While we for our part will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the Word.”

⁵ What they said pleased the whole community, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch.  ⁶ They had these men stand before the apostles who prayed for them and laid hands on them.

⁷ And the Word of God continued to spread and the number of disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

This is the Word of God.

Thanks be to God.

Well, here we have the story of the church in Jerusalem and it is growing so fast that some of the things are beginning to slip through the cracks.  We see that many times in organizations that are fast-growing.  They are growing so fast and they are working so hard just to keep up with the growth that some of those other details kind of fall through the cracks – they don’t get dealt with.  And when they don’t get dealt with, they eventually blow up in their face and they will then have to be addressed.  Well, that’s what is happening here in the church.  They are adding new disciples so fast that they were not able to do anything that the twelve apostles were supposed to do, and it blew up in their face. 

The widows of the Greek Christians were not getting the food they were supposed to get – that the apostles were supposed to serve them.  It was a detail that slipped through the cracks and, now, it was causing friction and distrust between these ethnic – between those Greek and Jewish Christians. 

Have you ever noticed as you read through the Book of Acts that every time that something happens to the apostles in the church in the Book of Acts, they run into a problem and all of a sudden they come up smelling like roses?  You go, how does that happen?  Well, I think that it always turns out better than it could have or better than maybe perhaps it should have – that it happens not by accident.  These men who were leading the church were under the influence of the Holy Spirit and we see that throughout the Book of Acts.  But, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that the decisions they made were made in the power or under the power of the Holy Spirit, even when it’s not testified to in the Scripture itself, and I think this story is one of those places, and we will talk some more about that in a few minutes as well. 

I want to start today with the decisions the apostles made.  They told the community to call out some people to serve along side of them.  And so, as you think about this new group of people being called out which became known as “Deacons,” what we can say about these new deacons is that they were called out into ministry.  And, in the apostles looking to others to begin to take part in the ministry that they were doing all of, they are taking a very important first step – a first step for that community, and a step that continues for all of those churches including ours today; and, that is, they are calling others into ministry. 

And what were the requirements for those people being called out into ministry?  They were to be people of good standing in the community.  In other words, they were to have a good reputation.  They were to be full of the Holy Spirit, and we will talk about what that includes.  And then it says they were to be full of wisdom as well, and we typically think they’re automatically kind of going to this kind of Godly wisdom, you know, where it says in Proverbs that “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  While that is Godly wisdom, the kind of wisdom they are talking about here are really kind of those gifts, almost administrative skills, to be able to bring order to the situation.  That’s what they were looking for, some skills.  So these deacons needed these gifts to fulfill their duties of serving other people. 

And, as we read in our responsive reading and as Paul continues to flush out in his text, he reinforces this idea by saying that all people are called into ministry, not just deacons, but all of us are called into ministry of some type.  Not just some people, but everyone has gifts to be used for the good of the community.  These new deacons set the stage for all of us -- for all of us are, indeed, called to ministry.  Everyone has a ministry. 

When you become a follower of Jesus Christ, you are given a gift, not only eternal life, but you are given the gift of the Spirit of the risen Christ living inside of each one of us.  That’s what you get when you make a commitment to Jesus Christ.  And the goal is that as the Spirit of Christ living inside of you begins to kind of take root in your life, he will begin to mold you from the inside out so that you begin to reflect more of Christ’s character in your life.  That is an important distinction.  I think sometimes when we think of this idea of being like Christ, we think, “Wait a sec, I need to kind of go and become an itinerant preacher, I need to go and heal people, I need to be like Christ and eventually die on a cross.”  That’s not what we mean by that.  To become like Christ means for you in your situation in life, what would it be if Jesus were in your shoes?  So what would it be like if Jesus were in your shoes in the marketplace in your job?  In your school?  With your friends?  With your family?  What would that be like?  That’s what we’re talking about when Christ begins to mold us from the inside out to reflect his image.  And, so being full of the Holy Spirit is not only acknowledging that Christ is inside of us, but also yielding ourselves over to him. 

You have heard that idea of dying to yourself, that’s what it means, we need to die to our self to let the Holy Spirit have more influence, more control over our lives.  The Holy Spirit will not force himself on us.  He asks for us to yield ourselves to him and that’s why you see such a difference, I think, between many followers of Christ.  Some are yielding themselves more to the Spirit and others are not.  And, so, how full of the Holy Spirit are we?  How much are we yielding the Spirit – yielding to the Spirit to allow the Spirit to transform us, to mold us, to refine us, to prune us (to use a little different metaphor)?  How much are we letting the Spirit direct our lives?  The deacons were called to ministry just as we are called to ministry to live under the power of the Holy Spirit, to be full of the Spirit.  When we are full of the Spirit, we will hear that calling more clearly, and so it is a call for each of us to continue to humble ourselves before our mighty God to allow the Spirit to have full reign.

As we go back to our story, notice the different roles that were unfolding in the community.  The twelve who had walked with Jesus, who were so much a part of Jesus’ life when he was on earth, they said that their job was to pray and to teach and that the deacons were to serve food to the community.  The apostles are making the point of saying that what we are doing is not more important than those who are serving food, it is just different.  You don’t see in the text any kind of hierarchical kind of arrangement of the gifts.  Some are serving the Word, some are serving the food.  There isn’t a difference there.  They are different gifts, but they all have the same importance before Christ.  And the ministries that come out of those will look differently as well, but that doesn’t mean the ministries are less important or one more important than the other.  All gifts are equal before God.  Everyone has a gift.  Everyone has a role that they are called to fulfill.  And I think the natural tendency for all of us is to think that some gifts are better than others. 

That was the problem of the church in Corinth, but that’s not the case.  There are different gifts, for sure, but they are not better than others.  Some are more visible like standing up, like having the privilege of baptizing Annabelle, but there are also other gifts like someone in the nursery changing a diaper of a child, someone washing dishes in the back.  What Christ is saying in Scripture is that there are no differences.  What happens out there is just as important as what happens here in God’s economy.  We are called to all work together.  In fact, those that are maybe less visible Paul even raises the bar and says they are indispensable, saying to the point of saying without those, guess what, the community doesn’t happen.  God’s work is hampered as a result of it and so when some gifts are missing in a community or when gifts are devalued within a community, it is a detriment to the whole community as well.

I think about something that has become very much I think a part of our culture to the heaviness of my heart is that we have begun to use the word “just” as an adjective for our service and sometimes for our prayers, and whenever I hear that, it breaks my heart a little bit because I don’t think there is any such thing as just a Sunday school teacher, or just a choir member, or just a sound tech, or just someone who prays.  There are no “justs” in Christ’s world.  And not only do we discredit our service when we use the word “just,” and maybe sometimes we kind of try to justify it by saying, “Well, this is how I am showing you humility,” but I think it also devalues Christ’s sacrifice as well.  When we use the word “just,” we are saying, “You know what, what I do is really just a small thing, it’s just a little thing in a big picture.  You know, it really doesn’t have that big a deal.  It doesn’t make that much of an impact.  It is minor in that big picture.”  And do you see how that just kind of deflates the whole balloon?  There is no minor service for the Lord.  We need to embrace that and celebrate that.  There is no minor service for Christ, and when we continue by saying, “Well, I’m just an usher.”  We are also underlying that with saying, “You know what, I’m really not that important in the big picture.  I’m a pretty small fish in this big pond called ‘God’s kingdom’.  I’m really unimportant and Christ doesn’t really notice my service.”  My service and my life we are saying then is not worth what it cost Christ.  Christ’s death was not enough to make me important before him is what we are saying, and we are not a vital part of what God wants us to do in the world.  We end up devaluing all that Christ did to make you and me and Annabelle a child of God.  I think at times perhaps inadvertently it comes off as being piously arrogant as well.  There is no such thing as “just an usher,” “just someone who washes dishes,” or “just someone who washes the windows or plants flowers out in front,” or “gives blood for the cause of Christ,” so don’t use the word “just.”  Don’t use the word “just” and fulfill your role.  Use your gifts, knowing that as you use your gifts and fulfill your role, you are making an impact in Christ’s community.

And, finally, what happened in our community in the story?  What happened as a result of the people fulfilling their roles?  They grew even more, didn’t they?  That’s what happens when people yield themselves to the Spirit and use their gifts in the community.  The community grows.  Fruit is produced.  It is external fruit.  It is the number of disciples increased.  More and more they were growing even faster as a result of being faithful to what the Spirit was leading the apostles to do.  So there was external fruit, but there is also internal fruit, isn’t there?  Internal fruit when you allow the Holy Spirit to control you and transform you and you saw that this morning in Molly’s testimony.  The fruit of the Spirit is being born when we serve.  We are being transformed because in the act of service, we have to humble ourselves and that allows the Spirit to mold us more into his image.  That fruit, it’s the fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5.  And so the question is are you displaying more fruit today than you did yesterday? Than you did last week?  Last month?  Last year?

Our deacons are being faithful to their calling and the gifts that they have and they fulfill a role in God’s economy.  And our deacons have been called out by you.  You called them out.  You voted them in.  You approved them.  We’ve ordained them as a community to do exactly what those first century deacons did to care for those people in need within the community.  And they provide lots of leadership, and I hope that as you meet with your deacon today, you will have an opportunity to ask them what else they are involved in.  You will hear things like the ICA Food Shelf, Families Moving Forward, and the Paint-A-Thon are all just some of the things that happen, but they are also here for you as well.  I want to reiterate what Susan hit on this morning that they each have a responsibility for a group of people within the community here at Faith.  It’s called a friendship group, and I invite you to go and find out who your deacon is for your friendship group based on your last name.  If you are part of the full fellowship here at Faith then you are in a friendship group, and they desire to reach out to you when and if trouble comes into your life.  They are there to provide assistance, and if they can’t help, they’ll work whatever needs to happen to get you the assistance you need.  And, that’s really  what  we wanted to do today is to give you a chance to meet your deacon, and so after the service, head out to the atrium and introduce yourself, find out who your deacon is, and maybe it is someone that is a friend, a buddy, and it will be good.  But if it’s not, just come up and introduce yourself.  It will be a very good thing.  The deacons are just one way in which we can be faithful to God’s call in our lives.  God calls us and gifts us to ministry.  In ministry we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we are gifted to fulfill that role.  Our job is to find out where God is calling us.  And when you have found the right place, guess what, you will know – you will know by the fruit in your life. 

Praise be to God that he has given us this high calling.