Sermon of May 3, 2009 Dr. Jim Standiford Cultivating ...

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Sermon of May 3, 2009
Dr. Jim Standiford

Cultivating Fruitfulness:
Risk Taking Mission and Service —“Bold Adventures”

Micah 6:6-8
Matthew 25:31-40

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed! Thanks
be to you, O God, for the new life that we have
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Today we continue our series of sermons on Cultivating Fruitfulness. Two 1/4
weeks ago we talked about Radical Hospitality. Last week the focus was on
Passionate Worship. Today’s topic is Risk-taking Mission and Service.

Did you hear about the man who gave his testimony of how years earlier when
he was young and just starting out in business he heard a missionary. He made
a big deal of saying the missionary was so very effective that though he only
had a dollar to his name, he gave that whole dollar to missions. Then he
allowed as how God must have blessed him because now he was worth more
than a million dollars. When he sat down, a little old lady seated in the pew
behind him leaned forward and said, “I dare you to do it again.” Now that is
risk-taking mission and service. Did you hear about the missionary who gave
some cannibals their first taste of religion? That is risk-taking mission and
service. Or why the missionaries wouldn’t allow gambling in Africa? It was
because of all the cheetahs. That’s just a bad joke!

When I was in high school David Persons, who is one of our covenant
missionaries now, attended our MYF group when his missionary parents were
home on furlough from Africa. He and I were playing golf one day in Phoenix
in the middle of summer, and I said I didn’t know why anyone would want to
go live in Africa. Dripping with perspiration and looking quite wilted he looked
at me and said, “I don’t know why anyone would want to live here!”

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The earliest written scriptures record a consistent emphasis upon service,

justice, compassion, respect, and love for the neighbor. The books of law, the

Torah, not only restrain violence, fraud, theft, and harm, but also call us to

love our neighbor. (Leviticus 19:18)

The prophets pick up this beat, and in the case of our first reading today, we
hear Micah: “God has told you O mortal, what is good; and what does
the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your God?” Micah has promised the people in exile that God
will act and provide them a great leader to bring them out of bondage. In our
passage today, he then tells them the appropriate response to God’s grace is
to live justly with all, to reach beyond themselves to help others, and to have
humility in their relationship with God. The truth of their humility will be seen in
the way they serve those around them. They show their true appreciation for
God’s grace in risk-taking mission and service.

Jesus echoes the prophets in our second passage today. Matthew has
organized his gospel around five teachings, or sermons by Jesus. In today’s
passage are the last words of Jesus’ last teaching, a climactic point to which
Matthew has carefully built. This is the scene of the last judgment. The
criterion of judgment is not confession of faith in Christ. Neither is anything
said of grace, justification, or the forgiveness of sins. What counts here is
whether one has acted with loving care for those in need. Jesus says these
loving acts to the least are in fact a response to him. These acts of service and
care are not done to win God’s favor. We already have that. These are done
in response to God’s favor and demonstrate that God’s love has taken root in
us. If we aren’t loving and caring, we demonstrate we do not really know
God’s love.

As followers of Jesus today we proclaim our faith with our words, but also
with our deeds. We say Jesus is our Lord and Savior. We worship him, we
teach about him, and we live his ethic of self-giving service to others.
However, for many, many people outside the church the loudest and most
convincing proclamation is not with our mouth, but with our hands and feet,
our actions. This is especially true when we truly take risk, when we move
beyond the easy, automatic, or common response.

Risk-taking mission and service changes the lives of those who receive the
help we offer. Risk-taking mission and service changes our lives when we
serve those in need. Risk-taking mission and service changes churches who
make it a priority.

Let me tell you of several of our members who have given themselves in risk-
taking mission and service and what they have learned from the experience.

David McMaster helped his parents rebuild after the 2003 wild fires. After
that experience he volunteered in April of 2006 to go with the International
Relief Teams to repair homes in the Mississippi Gulf Coast area. He spent a
week with 11 other volunteers from our area, re-roofing three houses. Theirs
and other teams were housed in a temporary dormitory arrangement in the
fellowship hall of the Caswell Springs United Methodist Church in Wade,
Mississippi. The church had just constructed this hall for expanding their youth
programs and basketball league, but instead were using the hall to house 50
people a week, every week, for several years to assist with the relief efforts.
The three families Dave helped were physically and financially unable to repair
their own homes. The work was funded, and the volunteers coordinated by

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UMCOR. UMCOR bought the materials and assigned the volunteer groups

to projects. One of the things he heard the locals say over and over was, “the

Methodists were here first.” And they are still there repairing homes. Our

district just sent another team this spring.

David’s move from helping family here, to taking a week of vacation time,
away from family, to travel to the gulf to help, was a venture in risk-taking
mission. He said it was hard on him and his family, but the rewards were very
great. Also, the Caswell church continues to demonstrate risk-taking mission
and service as they offer their new facilities for others to use.

John Imel was a Peace Corp volunteer for two years, 1968 to 1970, in
Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. He said this was before the ensuing forty years of
civil war, foreign invasion by the Russians, subsequent chaos, and the
infiltration of foreign-influenced radical religious ideologies. He wrote, “After
three months of orientation and language training we were dropped into what
seemed like a different world: different language, different customs, different
culture—in a seemingly different era of history.” His was a risk-taking mission
but he is also very aware, “When I read the tragic headlines and heartbreaking
stories of the seemingly endless suffering of nameless men, women, and
children in Afghanistan today, I see behind them the faces of people who once
showed risk-taking, radical, hospitality to some young volunteers from a far-
away country with its own strange and very different language, customs, and
culture.”

Several years before he retired, John Stevenson, drawn by the ethic of Jesus’
moral teaching, came to our church because he wanted a church which
focused on service and wanted to be with people who served. He started out
working in our mentoring program, and then became involved in our tutoring
work with SPIN. He said, for a math teacher of fourteen years, it was no big
deal to engage in tutoring. He is now the designated host of the group that
helps youth who do not have the advantages of other youth; helping them to
negotiate systemic and personal limitations, providing them transportation, a
good breakfast while they are here, learning, socialization, and self-esteem
resources. Now, in addition to the tutoring, he is also involved in the
“Alternatives to Violence” program. This is risk-taking, offering prisoners
workshops on communication skills, community building, and socialization
skills. He said, “I would never have thought of going into prison voluntarily.”

Emily Sernaker is graduating from the University of Redlands this year and will
be the commencement speaker. Her serving heart was nurtured here as she
worked on Sierra Service Project and our food ministry. While still in high
school she became familiar with the film Invisible Children, about the plight
of children in Uganda. During her senior year she organized a showing of the
film here in Linder Hall. It was the first night of Winter Break 2004. Through
persistent and creative contact over 400 students showed up and Emily raised
over $4,000 for direct aid to Uganda. She has since traveled to Uganda twice
and hopes to go again this year. She remembers being in a stadium in Uganda
surrounded by 300 cheering children who had been affected by the fundraising
work she had done here in the U.S. This little girl looked her up and down,
saying, “When I heard this money came from the U.S., I thought it was
coming from someone big. But you’re so small…” Emily is small of stature,
but she has a really big risk-taking mission and service heart.

So, what can you do to be involved in risk-taking mission and service? The 3/4
needs are great, varied, and plentiful:

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You can join in our “Everyone a Reader” program in the elementary
schools.
You can be a tutor.
You can be a mentor to a family in need.
You can be a part of one or more of the many phases of our food
ministry.
You can help with the community meals at the Normal Heights church;
the next one is tomorrow night.
You can be a visitor with our homebound members. Rev. Mowry is
putting together a training program very soon.
You can be a part of our joint commission ministry with the Methodist
churches in Tijuana.
You can join the next Katrina Relief team.
You can sign up to work at the New Roots Community Farm in mid-
city, an urban garden plot for immigrant families.

As followers of Christ, we cannot live as if the needs around us, have nothing
to do with us. Christ moves us closer to suffering, not farther away. We
cannot walk around obvious suffering, ignoring it and denying it like those who
preceded the Samaritan down the road to Jericho. We can’t moan about how
somebody ought to do something. We need to pray but we cannot merely lift
those who suffer in prayer, asking God to do for us what God created us to
do for God.

Let us give ourselves to risk-taking mission and service. Amen

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