"I'M NOT EATING THAT!"

6/10/01 - The Rev. Bruce Silver

SERMON

I'm Not Eating That!"
(The Great Ends of the Church - 6)

According to the Book of Order (our church constitution) the great ends of the church, are:

• the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind;
• the shelter, nurture and spiritual fellowship of the children of God;
• the maintenance of divine worship;
• the preservation of the truth;
• the promotion of social righteousness;
• and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.

Today we take a look at the last of the great ends of our church; the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. I think I have a better appreciation for those baseball players who bat last in the order. Here I am preaching on the last one of the great ends of the church. Maybe we have saved the best for last. And it seemed especially appropriate that I be preaching on this topic the week that we commission our Mexico team for our annual mission trip. We have a long standing tradition here of going to Mexico and building houses. This church has been incredibly gracious in supporting this mission. I know that some of you here this morning still wonder why we go so far away to help others when there is so much that needs to be done close to home. There are a couple of reasons. The first is that when you do a local mission you are confronted with the realities of its needs on a regular basis and most of our youth are not ready for that kind of commitment yet. Another reason we go to Mexico and build is because is gives our students a chance to, in less than a week, see the labor of their hands in a measurable and visible way. They are able to build in Mexico without having to go through the permit and inspection process they would have to endure at home. The third reason we do this trips is because, I believe that it develops a servants heart in students who thought they were getting away from their parents for a week and also getting an opportunity to buy cool stuff in Mexico. Besides all of this I feel that a trip, like our Mexico mission trips, accomplishes the sixth great ends of our church. It enables us to exhibit the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.

This process in found in today's passage from Acts and amazingly involves a threefold process. First, God creates a willingness in our hearts to exhibit the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. Second, He shows us through his scriptures the truth behind our need to exhibit the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. Third, we are filled with the Spirit and God gives us opportunities to do this in our relationships with others.

The whole process of exhibiting the Kingdom of Heaven to the world begins with God creating the willingness in us. But, how is this done? For many of us we would rather not be pushed to do this. We are quite comfortable in our surroundings with our friends, services of worship, Bible studies, and fellowship groups. We want our children to associate with the right kind of people and to do the right kinds of things. We want them to learn God's truth from God's people and we want what we have always wanted, in the ways that we have always gotten them accomplished. This is the path of least resistance and takes the least amount of work. I believe that it is in our nature as human beings to want the comfort and security of that which we know and with which we are familiar. But as sure as I am that our nature would have us follow this path; I am sure that God would have us follow another path. Take for example our passage from earlier. We have Peter, good old Peter, the disciple that more people identify with than probably any other. He has gone to stay at the house of a tanner. This fact, in and of itself, is rather surprising, since a good Jew was not to associate with those who dealt with dead animals. Tanners needed to live 50 cubits outside of the village because of this fact. But, in spite of all of this Peter ends up at a tanner's house and decides he needs some quite time of prayer and goes onto the roof for this. Aren't there times in all of our lives when we just want to escape the craziness of life and find a little peace and quiet? That's what Peter did as he climbed up on the roof to pray. So Peter has already made a concession by staying in the house of a tanner. It's on this tanner's roof that God gives Peter a vision, which will change the Christian church forever.

God created in Peter a willingness to hear his call to exhibit the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. How might you be open to this call? First, you need to remember the one fact which most of you learned in Sunday school a long time ago. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son." It's that simple, but we often forget that basic truth. It doesn't say that God so loved those in your same social group. It doesn't say that God so loved those in your ethnic group. It doesn't say that God so loved those who have their act together. It says that God so loved the world. That includes everyone. Not just those like us. When we realize that God loves the rich and the poor; the well adjusted and the mentally disturbed, the alcoholic and the drug addict, and most importantly each of us, we will begin to show our willingness to exhibit the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.

Our willingness to respond to God's love is only the starting point. If we stop at our willingness we have done nothing more than some mental gymnastics. We need to function on more than just our heartfelt need or inner willingness to show the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. We need to understand why it is that we should share this with others. The best way that I know of is through the study of God's word. It's pretty easy actually. We all have access to a Bible. As we study the ways that God has communicated with his people over the centuries, we get a better understanding of how God wants us to respond to the world today. Take for example the people that gathered around Jesus and those whom he called friends. You probably remember from your Vacation Bible School days the story of Zaccheus, not the kind of person that most people would associate with. Or how about the prostitute that anointed Jesus and rubbed his feet with her hair? Maybe you remember the woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years. She was considered unclean by society yet Jesus spent time with her, hearing her story, after she was healed. These are the people that we seen in the scripture. If we spend time reading God's word and paying attention to the way he has interacted with people throughout history His truth is going to reorient the way that we think.

In our family we have talked about the way that Jesus interacted with people. We have talked about him loving the unlovable. We have talked about him saying that if we want to be first we must become last. Those who want to become great must be a servant to all. With these commands in mind and the example of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, we have determined in our family that there are implications for us. The first is that we will sponsor a child in another country. Our $24 per month helps provide for the education and well being of a young girl in Kenya. I know that this kind of sponsorship works because I have a friend named Moses Pulei. Moses is a Masai from Kenya and was sponsored as a child by World Vision. Today he is working on his Ph. D. in systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. Another implication for our family is the fact that have committed to not sending our children directly to college after high school. I'm sure some of you might think that is crazy but let me explain. We are committed to sending our children out into the world to serve a one-year mission experience before they enter college. We believe that our children will be better able to make life and career decisions after spending a year serving others. They will be world Christians rather than just kids who go from high school to college to get a degree to get a good paying job to be able to afford more stuff, which they probably won't need. Josh is already looking forward to spending a year in Kenya with our friend Moses and his contacts back in Kenya. Rachel is still thinking about where she would like to spend a year ministering. This kind of life changing, thought reorienting truth, which is found in the scriptures, is not seen only in our family but in members of our church. As we meet here this morning Collete Sherbourne is in a refugee camp in Austria. Walley Fippes and Chris Beavers have served with Youth With a Mission, and Kristen Schmor will be serving the Presbyterian Church in Guatemala for a year beginning in August. By the way, she is currently working on raising support for the year and would love to talk to anyone who is interested in supporting her financially and in prayer. As you read God's word you will find the truth about how we are called to relate to others. When this takes place in your life, you are bound to make a personal paradigm shift.

If God's love has made its mark on your life and created a willingness to share that love with others, and you have been convinced by the scriptures about the truth of what God calls us to do, then all that is left is for the Holy Spirit to take over. In our openness to God's call we make ourselves ready for the workings of God's Spirit. But what does this look like? How will we know what to do? What might God be calling us all to do? God calls us not into a world were we must do his will on our own, but into a world filled with people and relationships. It is through these relationships that we are transformed and able to do God's will. Let me explain to you with a story from one of my own mission trips to Mexico. While working at Pasadena Presbyterian Church in seminary, one of the places we will be staying on our way to Mexico this year, I took our students into one of the colonias of Tijuana. I told my students to find an object during our time down there which would represent the trip for them. When we got back I the students would be leading worship and I wanted them to have an object to describe for their message to the people in worship. I had one student who was always trying my patience and most of the time was not a very lovable young man. He had a chip on his shoulder and loved to argue about everything. He had put up a big fight over going to Mexico so I had made him in charge of our trip. As our time drew to a close he came up to me and said, "Bruce, I'm not sharing in front of church so don't even put my name in the bulletin. In fact, I might even sleep in that morning. But, if I did come to church and share, this is what I would say: 'See this glove which I have, it's just and ordinary gardening glove which had a lot of little dots on the palm. I wasn't sure if I was going to mix cement of pull weeds. When I started working this glove was covered with the little dots, but as I worked more and more the dots fell off of the glove. That's a lot like me. When I first came down here I had a lot of prejudice about the people down here. I thought they were lazy, dirty, and didn't care about birth control. But, as I have worked along side of them, as I have gotten to know them, my prejudices have been worn away much like the dots on these gloves. Sure, there's a few more dots on the gloves and I still have a few prejudices left but, I bet if I stayed longer the dots and my prejudices would all be gone.' That's what I would say, but I'm not going to say it in church." He told me. Well it was too good not to share so I did it on that Sunday and I am doing it again today. As we come into relationship with others lives are truly changed.

God calls us to share the love he so freely shares with us. We are to look at his word and see how he has responded to others. That Word is going to transform our lives in a way that we are able to see his truth about how to interact with people. Finally, his Spirit enables us to make that next step in relationship to others.

Let me leave you today with one final story. There once was a college student who was struggling in many areas of her life. When she could stand it no longer, she went to the dim and seldom-used chapel in campus. She paced up and down the aisles, slapping the back of empty pews. She yelled, she cried, and she raged at God.

"God you created the world . . . What could you possibly have been thinking? Look at the problems people face. Look at the pain, suffering, and hunger. Look at the neglect, the waste, the abuse. Everywhere I look, I see messed-up people, hurting people, lonely people!" The young woman ranted and raved on and on.

Finally, exhausted, she sat in the front pew and looked hopelessly at the cross. Its tarnished surface reflected the dusty sunlight filtering through the stained glass windows. "It's all such a mess! This world you created is nothing but a terrible mess! Why even I could make a better one than this!"

And then the young woman heard a voice in the silence of that dusty chapel that made her eyes open wide and her jay drop.

"And that's exactly what I want you to do."

So the last of our greats ends is the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the earth. Go do it!
 

amen

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