Once You’re Touched By Jesus, You Begin Serving
This week, we continue our five-week series with an invitation to “Be Engaged: Share Your Heart, Do Your Part” with Pastor Doug sharing that “Once You’re Touched By Jesus, You Begin Serving.”
God has equipped all His people to serve uniquely, and that service leads to changed hearts and dynamically changed lives, both for the one who serves, and the ones served. At BBC, we seek to engage our people by equipping everyone to understand their God-given calling and purpose and unleashing them to live their passion. Whatever you do, whatever gifts or skills you possess, they can be used for God.
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Once You’re Touched By Jesus, You Begin Serving
Action movies are a popular genre of films. Some of us enjoy stories with lots of action, activity, and suspense. Often an action film will begin with a chase or something dramatic that pulls you into the story and introduces the main character.
If you like action movies, then you may enjoy Mark’s Gospel. Mark is the first account we have of the life and ministry of Jesus, and it starts with lots of action. Jesus encounters all kinds of people and situations, and things happen “immediately” one after the other.
The setting for today’s action is the village of Capernaum on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. We visited this site on our trip to Israel in 2011.
In Mark 1 we hear about the first of what will be several dramatic healings of women in Mark’s Gospel. It follows another healing story. The first takes place in the synagogue, the other in the nearby home of Simon and Andrew. One involves a man, the other a woman. The first case is one of demon possession; the second is an ordinary fever.
In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus heals all sorts of problems in all sorts of people in all kinds of settings and then we see how the individuals respond.
“As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. 31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”
When I read this passage it makes me smile thinking of my Roman Catholic friends. Roman Catholics look to Simon, later given the name Peter, as the Rock on whom Jesus builds his church, yet Simon was married, and priests can’t be. I’ve never understood that.
Another reason this story makes me smile is that a group of at least five men enter a house and learn of one older woman, Simon’s mother-in-law, who was sick in bed with a fever. So naturally Jesus takes her hand, lifts her up, the fever leaves, and she begins to serve them. This is one of the most practical of Jesus’ healing stories. He heals Simon’s mother-in-law, and she immediately begins to “wait on them” and serve them food like a good middle eastern mother would. We never learn Simon’s mother-in-law’s name; she’s an ordinary woman whose faith is not even mentioned in regard to her healing. Yet, this will be the first of many passages in Mark that makes a woman a model of discipleship. Her response is the one Jesus is looking for in all of us; her response once touched by Christ, is to serve others.
Mothers in all cultures and times understand about serving.
Many moms embody the words of 1 Peter 4:8-11a that we heard earlier in the service. Listen to them again this time thinking about the possibility that Peter remembered his mother-in-law and what she did when Jesus healed her at the beginning of his ministry.
I wonder if perhaps he had her in mind, when he wrote,
“Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received…whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ.”
Like Simon’s mother-in-law, you were made to serve God.
Whatever you’re good at, you can be doing for God, for the church, and for our communities. At BBC there’s an extensive list of the ways all of you are serving. There are probably over 50 different ministries, groups, and events in which to serve God and our neighbors. Yesterday our Trunk or Treat event was a great example.
We were put on earth to contribute to the common good and there are lots of ways for everyone to contribute at BBC.
Sunday School teachers give of their time, and embody the love of Jesus for our children, students, and adults.
Caring Nurses, Cooks Who Care, Community Life and Fellowship and all those who serve by making sure there are refreshments after worship to encourage people to linger and visit with one another.
People serve stocking the Caring Cupboard and meeting our neighbors and sharing food and a caring smile.
The Caring Heart to Heart Team does an excellent job in hosting receptions when a loved one has died like they did on Friday after the service we had for Marie Knight and there were Deacons here to welcome people and serve and support the family.
We could talk about those who serve by visiting members and friends of the church, sharing a caring presence, reading to people, bringing an encouraging word.
The members of the Worship Team serve through music to bless the Lord and all of us when we gather in God’s name.
The Worship Welcomers, Media Team, various ministries that serve women and men, office volunteers, the list goes on.
An old hymn seeking to describe the awesome greatness of God says, “Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.” A lot of folks can fit under God’s canopy and there is room for all of us to find our place of service and belonging.
We all have a part to play. Each of the ministries and the people who make them happen are like the spines of the umbrella that hold up the canvas. When even one or two are broken or not functioning the way they should, the whole umbrella loses its shape and becomes less effective.
Even as we get older and we don’t have the physical capacity we once had, we can always pray for other people, for the church, our volunteers, and staff. You can text or email people an inspirational message or send cards to people as our Deacons and others do or call a person or two each day to connect.
As Mark’s Gospel stresses repeatedly, Jesus came to serve and give and serving and giving are part of our life as well. Jesus says we’re to be servants of God by serving other people. Jesus makes it clear serving others helps to train us away from selfishness, arrogance, envy, and resentment.
Rick Warren wrote in The Purpose Driven Life,
“If I have no love for others, no desire to serve others, and I’m only concerned about my needs, I should question whether Christ is really in my life. A saved heart is one that wants to serve.”
Like Simon’s mother-in-law, you’re called to serve Jesus and others.
Henri Nouwen wrote, “No Christian is a Christian without being a minister. Whatever form the Christian ministry takes, the basis is always the same: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
We know we’ve reached a level of spiritual maturity when we stop asking, “Who’s going to meet my needs? Who’s going to serve me? What’s in it for me?” and start asking, “Whose needs can I meet? Who can I serve? What can I do to help?”
Mature believers are more concerned about serving and reaching out than about our own convenience and comfort.
As we grow as disciples our attitude starts to shift from, “I’m looking for a church that meets my needs and blesses me,” to “I’m looking for a place to serve and be a blessing.”
My thesis for my Doctor of Ministry program was titled “Every Member a Minister.” I’d like to have 100% of our people serving others for Christ because simple acts of service—the genuine practice of loving your neighbor as yourself—leads to transformation in Christ.
We pursue loving and serving people in need because Christ loved and served first.
God has equipped all of us to serve uniquely, and that service leads to changed hearts and dynamically changed lives, both for the one who serves, and the ones served.
The eternal value of transformed lives for Christ is found in significant relationships built through avenues of service.
At BBC, we seek to engage 100 percent of our people by equipping everyone to understand their God-given spiritual gifts, calling and purpose and unleashing them to live their passion. Whatever you do, whatever gifts or skills you possess, they can be used for God.
The well-known prayer of Saint Francis expresses this other focused, ministry oriented spiritual maturity. “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace!
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury pardon; where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and
It is in dying that we are born to Eternal life.”
As St. Francis’ prayer expresses so well, servants give their all and take responsibility to serve their master, rather than sitting back and complaining because no one is doing anything for them.
One person contributing or failing to contribute can make a significant difference.
A priest received a letter marked, “Please give to Harry the Usher.” It was handed over to Harry, and this is what it said. “Dear Harry. I’m sorry I don’t know your last name, but then, you don’t know mine. I’m Gert, Gert at the ten o’clock Mass every Sunday. I’m writing to ask you a favor. I don’t know the priests too well, but somehow I feel close to you. I don’t know how you got to know my first name, but every Sunday morning you smile and greet me by name, and we exchange a few words: how bad the weather is, how much you like my hat, and how I am late on a particular Sunday. I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to remember an old woman, for the smiles, for your consideration, for your thoughtfulness.
“Now for the favor: I’m dying, Harry. My husband has been dead for sixteen years, and the kids are scattered. It’s very important to me that when they bring me to church for the last time, you will be there to say, ‘Hello, Gert. Good to see you.’ If you’re there, Harry, I’ll feel assured that your warm hospitality will be duplicated in my new home in heaven. With love and gratitude, Gert.”
When we use our gifts as servants of the Lord and servants of each other, whether gifts of hospitality like our Worship Welcomers, or mercy or teaching or anything else we’re touching lives in ways greater than we know.
Giacomo Puccini wrote a number of great operas including La Boheme. When he was in his sixties, he got cancer, and he decided to spend his last days writing his final opera, Turandot, which is one of his most polished pieces. When his friends and disciples would say to him, “You are ailing; take it easy and rest,” he would always respond, “I am going to do as much as I can on my great masterwork and it’s up to you my friends, to finish it if I don’t.” Puccini died before he could complete the opera.
Now his friends had a choice. They could mourn their friend and return to life as usual – or they could build on his melody and finish what he started. They choose the latter. And so, in 1926 at the famous La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Puccini’s opera was played for the first time, conducted by the famed conductor Arturo Toscanini.
When it came to the part in the opera where the master had stopped writing because he died, Toscanini stopped everything, turned around with tears welling up in his eyes, said to the large audience, “This is where the master ends.” And he wept. But then, after a few moments, he lifted up his head, smiled broadly and said, “And this is where his friends began.” Then he finished conducting the opera.
Where our master Jesus ends, as far as his death and resurrection, is where his friends and disciples build on the melody he began, using our spiritual gifts, our passion, our abilities, our personality, and our experiences as a community of servants in his power and in his name to help others along their journeys. Whatever we’re good at, we can be doing for God. No matter who we are or where we are, we can be an instrument of God’s grace and peace.
I would greatly appreciate you completing the insert that’s in the bulletin, it’s also available in the Buzz and on our website brewsterbaptistchurch.org for those watching at home. It asks for your contact info (which we’ll never sell) and then for you to tell us either where you’re already serving, or if you’re not, to consider where you can share your heart and do your part at BBC. I encourage you to take a look at some of the options we have listed and either to check one today or commit to pray about it and then to speak to a pastor about it this week, before next Sunday. Each of us has a part to play that will bless the Lord and others and ourselves as well.
And remember, “Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received… Serve with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Prayer: Jesus, we pray that you would come to our house and enter and heal the fever of our sins, whatever they may be. Each of us is afflicted by one “fever” or another. We invite you to come into our home, take our hand, lift us up and heal us so we may serve you and others.
Blessing: Mark 9:35, And Jesus said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” So, “Do all the good that you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” John Wesley
Questions for Discussion or Reflection
- What is one of your favorite action movies or stories? What do you like about it?
- Recall a time when someone blessed you by serving or assisting you in some way? Who was it and what did she or he do?
- Discuss or reflect on this quote by Rick Warren, “If I have no love for others, no desire to serve others, and I’m only concerned about my needs, I should question whether Christ is really in my life. A saved heart is one that wants to serve.”
- How are you seeking to serve God in your life? What roles, tasks, or responsibilities do you do to serve God and other people?
- 1 Peter 4:7-11 says we’re to serve God with whatever gift we have received and with the strength God supplies. Have you identified your primary spiritual gift(s)? If so, in what way are you using your gift(s)? If you haven’t, consider taking the next spiritual gift class when it’s offered at BBC.
- Given your gifts, strengths, availability, and passion, what is an area where you might contribute at BBC to glorify God and build up and bless other people as Simon’s mother-in-law did?