Your Platform

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” Matthew 22:36 ESV

 

As we wade deep into election season 2012, we are bombarded with the platforms of the various candidates, and how their platform is different than the other person’s platform.  In this verse the person essentially is asking Jesus, what is your platform as a rabbi? Jesus what is the most important thing for you as a rabbi?  Where is your passion at, what issue or law are you most concerned with?  Jesus’ reply was this:

 

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 22:37-40

 

Jesus’ platform is simple.  Love God, love others.  Sounds a bit simpler than what many are taught throughout religious institutions.  We are taught about laws, rules, and regulations.  We are told about special clothes to wear (or not to wear), things to say, and styles of music that are good and bad just to name a few.  When Jesus is put on the spot and asked to identify what is most central to His work and ministry, He keeps it simple, love God, and love others.  Let your life be guided less by rules and patterns, but instead by Jesus calling, love God and love others.  As simple as it may sound, these two things transform everything you do, if we really take them to heart.  It asks the question does everything I do or say reflect my love of God or love of others?  This election season, you know well what Jesus stands for, what he considers most important: love God and loving others.

 

Pastor Bill

 

Discussion Questions

1. What is your platform in life?  What is most important to you?
2. How do your priorities guide your life?
3. How do you believe your priorities compare to God’s for your life?

Showing Up

You arrive at work; stop to get coffee, two creams, and one sugar just like you do each day. You walk past the same cubicles, turn on your computer, wave hi to the same four people, and start your normal day at work. Nine hours later, you head home, and drive the same route you do each normal day. You wake up at 5am, start the coffee, wake up the kids, let out the dog, feed the cat, and make lunches. Kids are off to school around 7:30am, now onto errands. Most of us would qualify our lives as normal or ordinary. Nothing crazy goes on; we have a rhyme and rhythm to each day, which is pretty regular. Today is not an ordinary day though, today you may be the answer to someone’s prayer, and you may not even know it.

We know Scripture tells us that “your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:8 ESV) God hears our prayers and answers them but often in ways and places that we did not plan on. Did you ever think that the woman you held the door open for was praying for a break after a tough meeting at work? You “happened” on the way home from work to call your sibling, who felt lonely and was praying for company, for someone to listen to them, someone to be with them. Each day we are presented with is a chance to be an answer to someone’s prayers. Sometimes we can be an answer to that prayer just by our presence, just by simple basic things. Jesus tells a parable in Matthew 25 of people who took this seriously, and gave clothes away, visited prisoners, shared food, and more. They asked, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” 40 ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. They did not see themselves serving God, they were trying to make an impact in their own lives. They had no idea the power of their simple acts of service.

It has been said 90% of care is showing up. Where are you going today? What door might you hold, or conversation might you have, that changes someone’s day, that answers a prayer that you never even knew about?

Pastor Bill

 

Discussion Questions

1. What are some people and places you regularly interact with that might be opportunities for you to be God’s ambassador?
2. Do you have a story of how someone else has been an answer to your prayer unknowingly?

 

First Love

Do you remember your first crush, starting dating or newly married?  You may have shared a booth or dinners when out for dinner, you made homemade cards for one another, you sent candy AND flowers.  But then for most couples that time slowly comes to an end.  The home-made cards became store-bought; sharing food was not that appealing, candy and flowers are two separate gifts, if they are given at all.  Something changed once the relationship moved from new, to something normal, common, and expected.  Some of the early passion in the relationship may have gone away, or just transformed into something different.  As the passion fades, we tend to take the relationship for granted, we stop doing things to remind those we love how special they are, and sometimes forget all together the importance of that relationship is to us.  Our relationships become another task or job on our list of things to do.  We don’t do it intentionally.  Life is busy; there are bills to pay, appointments, jobs, kids, pets, other family, and all sorts of other things that pull at our time.

If we are not careful our faith and relationship with God can easily get caught up in the everyday routine.   Think about when we first become a believer and how excited we were about our faith or came home from a retreat or mission trip on a “God high”.  I know of some, who read the Bible cover to cover in days, spent hours in prayer, began to volunteer at a food pantry, only for it to continue a little while.  Then the normalcy sets in.  Their bibles start to collect dust on the shelf, our prayer time becomes three minutes before we fall asleep, and we get a little too busy to volunteer.  We find ourselves at church, but not engaged.  We pray but we don’t believe it does anything, and quickly we have forgotten our love of God, the reason we began any of this.

We are not the first people to experience this, in Revelation there is a letter to a church in Ephesus that says this from God, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” (Revelation 2:4-5, TNIV)  For the church in Ephesus, they had become so focused on “doing church” (meetings, by-laws, administration, the color of the walls) that they had forgotten that all of it should find its source and focus in our love and relationship with God.  So what is the instruction to the church?  Do what you did at first.  At first you did not have committees that fought about the budget, you simply used all that you had to care for the community.  At first you did not fight about styles and formats of worship or bulletins, you simply rejoiced at the opportunity to come together and worship God in one voice.  At first, church was a place that we came to worship God, encourage one another in our faith, and share the Good News with other.

In the midst of meetings, committees, programs, budgets, paperwork, styles, and preferences have we lost our focus?  Is our first love of God still the drive and source of all our life together as Christians?  Or is our faith becoming just one more job, one more distraction, and one more thing to do in an already busy schedule.  Let us remember our first love – God.

“Who is My Neighbor?”

Play nice with others.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Treat others as you want to be treated.  I am sure each of us have heard or been told these as a reminder of how we are to act.  We were taught them from a young age, and may teach them now as adults to other kids.  But what does it look like, how do we do it?

A young man who thought he was really smart asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” hoping that Jesus would affirm his idea of serving his neighbor.  The young man felt that his “neighbor” was his friends, those that he is comfortable with, those that he thought and looked like.  He felt that this meant to love those who loved him, and who treated him well.  Jesus responds to the young man by telling the story of the Good Samaritan.  In this story Jesus shows that to care for our neighbors is to care for those in need, but also to show love and mercy to all kinds of people, even our enemies (Luke 10:36-37).  When the young man hears this he is shocked, and leaves Jesus speechless.

Jesus tells another story later about caring for our neighbors.  In the story (Matthew 25:31-46) there is a group of people who meet God in heaven, and God says to them, “Thank you for feeding me when I was hungry, and visiting me in prison.”  To which the flustered people say, I don’t remember ever doing that.  God simply responds to them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40)

So what does loving our neighbor look like?  What does it mean to serve the least of these?  It means that our chances to share Christ’s love with others begin the moment that our alarm clock goes off each morning.  Patrick wakes up each morning at 5:30am to get showered and ready for his day.  Patrick’s morning are pretty full though, he drops off his daughter at school, then off to a morning work meeting, then back home to pick up his son to drop at another school, then back to work for the rest of the day.  But Patrick wouldn’t trade that time with his kids for anything, even if it makes for busy morning of driving. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”

Corrie works with cognitively impaired teens and adults to teach them life and job skills.  Each day is an adventure, you never know if a client will have a bad morning, have their medication adjusted, or what.  But she loves the adventure and the ministry of her work, and loves her clients deeply.  “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”

Jesus call for us to serve the least of these is broad.  In this Holiday season, take a moment to think about who the least of these is in your life.  Perhaps it means that you send a note of encouragement to a fellow church member, invite a co-worker to lunch, or make some extra special time for a family member.  So tomorrow when you climb out of bed, hit the snooze button, or drink your morning coffee, love your neighbors, all of them.

Time to Start

I want to thank each of you for a wonderful Easter breakfast and service last week.  My first Easter at Trinity was truly a wonderful day of worship, fellowship, and celebrating the resurrection with each of you.  It was thrilling to pack out the fellowship hall for our Easter breakfast and the sanctuary for our Easter worship service.

How do you follow that?  For many of us Easter is a day of joy and celebration, it is hard not to feel energized as you leave church following the Hallelujah chorus.  Yet why is it that for so many it will be the last time they return to a church until Christmas or the next Easter?  I believe that for many it is because on Easter something special happens.  Churches sing special songs, have special breakfasts, and do other activities to celebrate the resurrection.  Yet visitors can feel or see that those same churches seem to return to normalcy after Easter.  It can appear that even those who are mature Christians seem no different or changed by Easter the following Sunday. So how do we live lives in response to the empty tomb?  What would that look like?  How will Trinity feel different because of Easter?

We are called to live differently because Jesus reminds us that his resurrection is not just one day that we celebrate each year, but instead is a sending point for his disciples and us into ministry.  The New Testament did not end after the resurrection, it had just begun, before he left them Jesus called for his disciples to, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20, ESV) Christ’s resurrection was just the beginning of their ministry.

This week we are beginning a four week sermon series called, “Time to Start.”  Jesus tells us that his death and resurrection are not an end but a reminder to us that it is time to start.  We will be looking to scripture to guide us about where and how to start living this new life in Christ.  The bible tells us that it is time to start reaching out, time to start growing, time to start serving, and time to start caring.

April 11^th- Time to Start Reaching: Isaiah 61:1-4 and Luke 4:16-21

April 18^th Time to Start Growing: Ephesians 4:1-6

April 25^th Time to Start: YOUTH SUNDAY

May 2^nd Time to Start Serving: Hospitality- Luke 14:7-14

Pastor Bill