Core Values: In Service and Mission

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was 1 John 3:11-24 and Mark 10:35-45:

Shortly after I was appointed to my last church in Albuquerque, a member of the congregation came to me with a service project that he wanted to do, which is the best place for service to begin. Albuquerque did not have a food pantry anywhere west of the river and north of the interstate, which is a pretty large section of town. There was one way up in Rio Rancho, and one in the south, but none close to us, and so he wanted to start one. I was totally supportive of that effort, and having some experience with food banks, I told him that it would be great to have some other churches involved because I didn’t think we would be able to support the pantry by ourselves, especially to do what he was hoping it would do. So he went off and met with the 3 churches that were within a ½ mile of us, two of whom were immediately on board and another said they would think about it, so we were off to a great start. He then went to meet with another church that was close by which happened to be one of the largest in the city, and also the 10th largest in their denomination in the country, which I am not going to name in order to protect the guilty.

But, he sat down with them and explained what we were doing and asked if they would be willing to be a partner. The pastor he met with then asked how they could get new members of the church from the pantry? He wasn’t sure what they were asking, and so asked for clarification, and was told that unless they could be guaranteed that new people would start attending their church because of the pantry then they weren’t interested in participating. That is, the only reason to be of service to the world, the only reason to help others in need, the only reason to offer Christ’s love was if, to be a little blunt, it would put more butts in the seats.

Now there is definitely a place for evangelism, of for mission, as a part of service, (our logo on bagels we gave out to hospital workers) but, in my opinion, that’s a byproduct or a natural outcome of offering people the love of God, it’s not the reason for doing it. Jesus didn’t go to those who needed to be healed and ask them if they would follow him if they got healed, and refuse to heal those who said no. Instead he healed them and then we saw the results. And in the gospel of Mark especially it is the healing, of being of service to others that generates the response of seeing Jesus for whom he is and then proclaiming Christ to the world and becoming a follower. Or as we heard in last week’s passage when Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, she gets out of bed and begins serving. Her servanthood is a result of her healing, and idea we will come back to shortly. And so today we complete our series on our core values looking at the final value of that of being in service and witness. And so for the final time for the moment, let’s say our core values together. We are Christ-centered, prayerful, inclusive, growing spiritually, compassionate and caring and in service and mission.

As we’ve talked about, what the core values do is to ground us and center us as a church. These are the things that serve as our foundation that we say we are going to hold onto. That when the going gets tough, these are the things that keep us together the things that we will not let go of, the things that we will use to judge what we are doing and why we are doing it. These will be our non-negotiables for who we are as a congregation. And as I said in my letter in the mid-week news this past week, I believe these values are both authentic, that is that we are already doing them and living in them, and they are also aspirational, that we have room to grow in all of these areas, to get better and stronger and to do more. And in that, these not only focus us as a congregation, but they also help communicate who we are to the community. 

When the One Board, which is our leadership team were discussing these ideas and working on naming them and then narrowing all the ideas down to what we have, I told them that one of the ways I will use them is that when I am talking with first time guests or others who want to know more about the church is to say that this is who we are. This is what we value and this is who we are, and so this banner will go into the entry way to help with that. Because the truth is not every church is right for every person. For some these values may align perfectly for what they are looking for or needing in a church, and for others they won’t, and that’s okay. But being able to name them right up front is helpful for everyone to know our values and that our values lead to action and expectation. And so part of who we are is to be in service and mission to the world, and we do that, as we started, by being Christ-centered, that this is a specific form of service and mission.

And so in saying that, it’s important to say that these are different things. Just as being compassionate and caring are different things, although there are overlapping similarities, service and mission are different, even if there are some similarities, or ways that they go together. Now I do have to admit that of all of the values, the One Board didn’t articulate what they meant by mission, or at least I don’t remember them doing so, and so on this one, this is totally my interpretation, and I am open to correction or addition as that might be necessary. But one of the best definitions I found came from the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible that says “Mission is best understood as the activity of a community of faith that distinguishes itself from its environment both in terms of religious beliefs and in terms of social behavior and actively works to win other people for the convictions and way of life of whose truth the members of the community are convinced.” 

There are many reasons I like that definition. One is that it recognizes that the church has to be different from the environment which surrounds it, because one of the problems the church has had is that it’s not always all that different from society in general, or its members are not. And so if we are just like everyone else, why would people who are unchurched be interested. And when the church is perceived to be different it’s in negative ways were many of much more concerned with saying what they are against, rather than what they are for, and the hate that comes from some who claim to be Christians, of which the 1st letter of John has something to say.

Second, it’s not just about beliefs, but it’s also about behavior, which says more much about who we are then anything else we do, which again is part of what we have in today’s passages. In the letter of John, we are told “let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Today on Valentine’s Day when we celebrate love, it’s more of the Greek word Eros, or love of the passionate sort for another, when we have to remember that more often in scripture, especially in the New Testament, the love we are talking about is agape love, which is a self-giving love, or, again, as Thomas Aquinas said this love is "to will the good of another.” And so it’s not about how we feel about another person, but what we are doing for other people, which gets into that idea of serving. The final reason I like this idea of mission is that we are actively working to win others to the truth of what we believe. But it’s not just what we believe, but about how we live. It’s belief and action, and the action comes from the belief, or a better way to see it is that we serve the world and we are in mission to the world because of what God has already done for us. We love and serve as a response to God’s grace. Let me say that again, because it’s crucial, we love and serve the world as a response to God’s grace.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, said, and this is a paraphrase, that the only appropriate response to accepting God’s saving grace is to act on that grace in the world. And so that means that mission is not about us it’s about Christ. I know an evangelist who travels around as a guest preacher to churches and revivals, and he metaphorically puts a mark in his belt for the conversions he does, and will brag about how many people he has brought to Christ. And my response is what about all the people who came before him that witnessed to these people? And more importantly, what about the role of the Holy Spirit in the whole process? I can tell you the people that I have baptized and welcomed into the faith, but I don’t take credit for their conversion because I was just the last person in line, who happened to be in the right place at the right time, but I was supported by everyone else before me, and by the Spirit, and so when we think about mission, about going forth to make new disciples, and realize that not only is it not about us, but it’s not even entirely up to us, because it’s about Christ and it involves the work of the Spirit, then it should remove most of the pressure that we have or the reasons we don’t want to share our faith, because we don’t want to be one of “those people” or we’re not sure what to say. We have to learn to trust in the Spirit and to put Christ first, and more importantly we have to know that mission is not really about the words we say.

There is a quote commonly attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, although there is no record of him ever saying it, that says, “Preach the gospel at all times and use words when necessary.” Whether St. Francis said it or not, there is much truth to it, and it doesn’t dismiss all words, but says, like 1 John does that what proves us as disciples, what is truly showing love is not the words we use, but the actions that prove the words or support the words or lead to the words. Because if we are acting in love to the world, if we are serving the world, then it will often lead to follow-up conversations with people about why we are doing what we are doing. And it can also just be a way that we are in the world. So for example, the families that received the water tanks that we purchased for the Navajo reservation will never know who we are, but we have made a difference in their lives, without any expectation from them or of them. Simply us responding to a need to help address a concern that we can help remedy. And that’s important, but in some ways that’s us being in service to people rather than being in service with people, about relationship.

And again, that work is important, but it shouldn’t be our primary form or way that we are in service to people or to the world. We also need to be in service with people so that we are building up relationships over time, not for the ulterior motive of trying to convert people, but so that we are truly learning to love our neighbor, by being in relationship with our neighbor. And invariably that will lead to conversations about faith and God because not being self-centered, of truly caring about others and giving of ourselves to help them is counter-cultural, and we do it because of our faith. We do it not just because Jesus tells us that if we want to become great in the Kingdom, we must be a servant and a slave. And the greatness there is not about accolades, because then it becomes work righteousness, something we can brag about, but about the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew chapter 25, that whatever we do to the least of these we do to Christ himself. And so we respond to the world with grace because of what Christ has already done for us. So again thinking of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, she responds to her healing by serving, and the Greek word used there is diakanos, from which we get the word deacon, which is a servant ministry. And so that service, like mission, is about Christ and comes from Christ.

That’s what the disciples are being taught in the passage from Mark today. James and John are two of the first disciples called by Jesus, and yet in everything they have seen of Jesus’ ministry, they still don’t get it. They want glory and power, after all they have given up a lot to follow Jesus, and so expect something or return, or demand something in return. And to show us how uneasy this story made people, in Matthew he changes it so that it is there mother who makes the request, rather than them, which sort of takes away some of the judgment on them, and Luke simply reports that there was a dispute about it. But then Jesus talks about baptism and the cup, and while we are not going into the details of what that entails here in this passage, it is a reminder to us, just as we started of what baptism means for us. That it is not just a personal thing, but it’s a corporate activity and has lasting change for us in how we live. And the cup is a reminder of the sacrifice that Jesus made. And so when we take part in communion it is a reminder of our call to go and serve the world, to be a servant, for if Christ didn’t come to be served but to serve, then how much more is that call for us. So, once more, service is not about us, but about Christ. And self-sacrifice is about being in service to something higher than ourselves, and that is to be God’s love in action.

John Wesley called for us to participate in the grace of God. And he said that out of that came works of piety, things like daily prayer and scripture reading and fasting, some of which we will talk about in Lent as ways we deepen our personal relationship with God, which is sometimes also called personal holiness. But then Wesley talked about works of mercy, which included feeding the hungry, giving to those in need, doing good works, and it also included “seeking justice, ending oppression and discrimination.” Living our faith out in the world, being of service, which were also called social holiness. These were all parts of responding to God’s grace in our lives, all part of being Christ-centered. 

And so if we look at our values, I hope that we will notice that both parts of our faith are involved. There is personal holiness and works of piety. And there is social holiness and works of mercy. As Christians, as Christ-centered people, we do not have faith for ourselves, we do not live for ourselves, but we have faith in community and we live and serve in community, and so we should, as 1 John tells us, follow the command that we have had from the beginning that we should “believe in the name of Jesus Christ and love one another.” And when we do as Jesus commands then we abide in him and he abides in us through the power of the Holy Spirit which has been given to us, which then empowers us to be known as his disciples because of that love, not in word or in speech, but in truth and in action, and so I pray that we will be known by our service and our mission. Amen.