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The Message for July 7, 2019Selfless Service (Serving)Luke 10:1-11, 16-20Rob Miller, PastorThis is week 5 of our 7-week series on Rooted: To grow up - grow deep. This series is based on Colossians 2:6-7 which reads... 6?So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord,?continue to live your lives in him,?7?rooted?and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught,?and overflowing with thankfulness. (Colossians 2:6-7) This week our topic is Serving. Of all the things we are called to do as disciples of Jesus in and through the church – serving isn’t just one of things we are to do… Serving is THE thing we are to do. Serving is the basis for everything we do as disciples of Jesus in and through his church. Jesus said - he came not to be served but to serve. We are called to do the same thing because of our baptism. Serving help us grow up and grow deep in the faith.I enjoy checking out other church websites. A website can tell you a lot about a church. A churches website is the road sign on the spiritual journey of life. A lot of people find our church because of our website. That’s why we try our best here at FLC to keep our website up to date. Many churches do not. They do not keep their websites up to date. It’s July and some churches are still promoting their Easter worship times. It drives me crazy… Nevertheless -- I love to see what other churches are doing and steal from them - I mean learn new ideas from them. I was looking over a church website recently that posted a humorous article about a church searching for a new lead pastor. The pastoral search committee offered this report. It read.“We have been unable to find a suitable pastoral candidate for the congregation, although we do have one promising prospect. We have followed up the recommendations from various church members with interviews or calling at least three references. This is a confidential report on the prospective candidates we talked with:ADAM: Good man but has had problems with his wife and children. He and his wife have been known to walk around outside without wearing clothes.NOAH: Former pastorate of 120 years with no converts. Prone to unrealistic building projects.ABRAHAM: References reported that on two occasions he offered to share his wife with another man.JOSEPH: Big thinker, but brags, believes in dream interpretations and has a prison record.MOSES: Modest and meek – but a poor communicator. He stutters. Known to blow his stack and fly off the handle at times too. Left an earlier position under a murder charge.DAVID: The most promising leader of all. Very musical. We discovered he had an affair with his neighbor’s wife then had her husband killed.SOLOMON: Great preacher but our parsonage wouldn’t hold all his wives and children. He has grandiose tastes.ELIJAH: Prone to depression; gives up under pressure.HOSEA: A tender, loving pastor type but his wife is a prostitute.DEBORAH: Pushy and controlling. Insists on doing things her way.JEREMIAH: Emotionally unstable, an alarmist, often negative, always lamenting things.ISAIAH: Claims to have seen angels. He has trouble with his language too.JONAH: Refused God’s call until he was forced to obey. Claims he was swallowed by a fish. Then he said that fish spit him out on the shores of Nineveh. We hung up.AMOS: Backward and unpolished. Not much of a people person.JOHN: Says he is a Baptist but doesn’t dress like one. He slept outdoors for months on end, eats a weird diet. Doesn’t work well with others – we suggest he become a camp director instead of a pastor.PAUL: Powerful CEO type and a fascinating preacher. Questionable past. Short on tact. So long-winded he has been known to preach all night.JESUS: Popular at times, but once his church grew to 5000 he managed to offend everyone and his church dwindled down to 12 people. Seldom stays in one place very long. And of course, he is single.This last candidate has solid references. Strategic planner and good money manager. Conservative and well-connected with the community and religious leaders. This is the candidate we recommend to the congregation. His name is JUDAS.”I hope you got a little chuckle out of that list as I did. I share that with you because any casual reading of the Bible and we can see the kind of people that God calls to be ministers. God can use anyone and often does. This saying is so true… God doesn’t call the qualified - God qualifies the called. That has certainly been my experience. And it’s clear from the Bible that God does not expect us to be super heroes. God simply expects us to be ordinary, fragile, human beings – with all our flaws and failings. According to the Bible all of us are called to be ministers in one way or another. Think about that for a minute. There isn’t just one minster in our congregation. In God’s eyes we are all ministers. I like the phrase - Every member is a minister in the making. It’s true. You are a minister in the making. You may not feel like it. You may not feel like you are qualified to do ministry and that’s okay. It seems that God prefers the unqualified. That way God gets the glory and the thanks and the praise. We are not called to be successful - thank God for that. We are called to be faithful -- faithful servants of the Lord. Dr. Samuel Johnson an English writer from the 1700’s wrote these words,“The three qualifications for the ministry arethe grace of God,knowledge of the sacred Scripturesand gumption.”I would say the most important thing on that list is gumption. Do you have it? I know you have the grace of God. I know you have a pretty good sense of the Bible. Do you have the gumption? I believe you do. There is a place for you to serve in and through the congregation called First Lutheran Church. If you haven’t found a place to serve here at FLC and you would like to – then write these five words on your connect card – I would like to serve. And place it in the offering plate. And either I will contact you or I will have someone contact you. Let’s talk about faithful servants…Faithful servants strive to let their words and deeds reflect God’s will no matter what the situation. We try not to point to ourselves either but instead we are to point to Jesus. We are all ministers in the making. The word minister means servant. We are all servants of Christ in the making. We all make mistakes… but a mistake is not a mistake if we learn from it. It’s okay to make mistakes here at FLC. We forgive each other as we have been forgiven.As servants then we are called and empowered to share a special message. I like how the old spiritual song puts it -- “If you can’t preach like Peter, if you can’t pray like Paul, just tell the love of Jesus, and say he died for all.”The world needs to hear a message like that. The world needed to hear a message like that when Jesus walked this earth. So he sent out his disciples two by two to share his message of love. Luke 10:1-11, 16-20We are told that Jesus gave instructions to the seventy and sent them out to every town and every place where he intended to go. The number 70 is important… It was the number of nations the people in those days believed existed on earth at that time. Seventy people sent out to do ministry meant that no tribe or nation on earth would be excluded from the Kingdom of God. If everyone falls short of God’s intention as the Bible tells us, then it stands to reason that everyone is welcome to receive God’s forgiveness made available through Christ Jesus and his cross. That’s what the disciples were went to share God’s love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness.Jesus tells the seventy to go out like lambs in the midst of wolves, to not expect too much but not cheapen the Gospel either. If the Good News is welcomed, the disciples were to do ministry there with the people - to love on the people as we say around here. If the Good News was rejected the disciples were to move on and go elsewhere. Love on people elsewhere. As Jesus says, “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you, rejects me and whoever rejects me, rejects the One who sent me.”Point of clarification -- Jesus did not expect his disciples to be successful everywhere they went. He expected them to be faithful everywhere they went. Not everyone will respond positively to Good News about Jesus. Not everyone will accept the Gospel. Not everyone wants to be loved. Our reading for today redefines what success means to us as disciples. When the seventy returned they rejoiced at what they were able to do – “Even the demons submit to us!” They announced. But Jesus doesn’t go there. Instead he says something like this – “That’s all well and good – I saw Satan?fall like lightning from heaven. Now nothing will harm you. But do not rejoice because of those things – rejoice because there is a place for you in heaven. This world is not our home heaven is…”Until we go there -- we have work to do… The harvest is plentiful and the workers are few. Jesus reminds us. I pray that you will have the gumption not to be successful this week but to be faithful. Remember -- you are a minister in the making. So go and be a faithful servant of the Lord - wherever your faith journey takes you this week. Amen. ................
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