Community
Church Sermons
Fourth
Sunday of Easter – April 17, 2005
This afternoon at 4 PM, we will celebrate the ordination to Christian ministry of our Associate Pastor, Margaret Manning. I hope you will be with us for the experience!
The place will be teeming with ministers, you know. So watch out! It will be a clergy-rich environment. And that’s not necessarily a good thing! There will be our local crew, of course – Carl Burke and Sarah Hallstrand and Larry Hornbaker and Bob Puckett and Marty Singley. Michael Broyles regrets not being able to be with us today. You know, we almost have more ministers in this church than members! Other clergy will come from around the area, and some from as far away as New England. Among the distinguished members of the cloth will be Michael Livingston, the Executive Director of our Council of Community Churches. What you may not know is that Michael is also the President-elect of the National Council of Churches in the USA. What an honor, Margaret! Michael is our American Protestant version of the Pope. And he will be here for you!
And it will be a rich time today as Margaret takes her place among those ordained to Christian Ministry. She will treasure this moment for the rest of her life, just like I treasure my ordination day thirty years ago, and just like our Founding Pastor Carl Burke cherishes his day way back in 1949. I would have liked to attend Carl’s ordination back then, but in 1949 I was too busy being born!
So the past, present and future all come together today in a most extraordinary way. But I would be remiss if I did not tell you that what we celebrate today is really about much more than those who have been ordained in the past, and even more than about Margaret who will be ordained in the present. Today we gather to worship not the ones called, but the One who does the calling. Today we celebrate the glory of God who redeems all our lives, and calls us into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ.
What do you suppose it means to be called into fellowship with Jesus?
Our text from 1st Corinthians gives us a hint. It begins with the rather forceful declaration about who it is that’s writing to the people of the church in Corinth.
Now it was customary in the world of the first century to
begin writing a letter backwards – at least, backwards in terms of how we do it
today. We sign our letters at the end of the letter. They
signed their letters at the very beginning. So the letter to the Corinthians
begins with a signature…”Paul…”.
In all but four of the New Testament letters attributed to Paul, the recipients are loudly reminded that this is not just any Paul. This is Paul the APOSTLE.
And that was important because, in some cases, people had forgotten their relationship with Paul. Paul had preached the Gospel that gave birth to their faith. Paul had started their churches. Paul had sacrificed and suffered greatly for them to become who they were. Paul was their father in the Christian journey! But years later, as often happens, some had forgotten their roots.
One of my colleagues, a Community Church pastor up north, tells of a meeting one day with the chairman of his church Board. Now Tom (not his real name) has been minister of this church almost forever, and the man who was Board chairman had grown up in the church. Tom had baptized him as a baby, confirmed him as a teenager, nurtured him in the youth group, performed his wedding, baptized his children, shaped him for leadership in the church, and nominated him for election to the Board. They were like father and son.
They met in Tom’s office. The church boy-now-become-Board-chair had a serious look about him. Then he opened the discussion by bluntly saying, “Tom, I’ve come to tell you you’ve lost your edge. Your leadership is weak. Your administration is poor. Your sermons are dull. You’ve lost it.” He went on to tell old Tom that Tom needed to take some time off to read and get some new material. He needed to take some courses on leadership and administration. Maybe he could even go back to seminary and learn how to preach, the boy-turned-Board chairman said!
Well, old Tom didn’t take too
kindly to all this. When he told me about it, he said, “Who in the world did
he think he was? I remember him when he was a snotty little adolescent who
couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time!” And then Tom hit the nail on
the head. “How soon they forget how they got to where they are, and who
brought them there!”
“PAUL, CALLED TO BE AN APOSTLE OF CHRIST JESUS BY THE WILL OF GOD…”
This seems like a not-so-subtle reminder to the Corinthians – who, like the boy-turned-Board chairman, thought they were pretty hot stuff, too – that the person writing had the standing of being their founder. It seems like someone tooting his own horn!
But I don’t think it is. Paul is simply reminding the Corinthians about how they got to where they were, and who had brought them there
And though at first glance it might seem as if Paul is taking the credit for himself, nothing could be further from the truth. Did you hear what he wrote?
“PAUL, CALLED TO BE
AN APOSTLE OF CHRIST JESUS BY THE WILL OF GOD…”
This is not about Paul. It is about the One who called Paul. And today is not about Carl or Mike or Sarah or Larry or Bob or Marty…or even Margaret. Today is about the One who has called us to ministry.
But wait! There’s more!
Paul reminds these Corinthians that God is the one who called him to be an Apostle of Christ Jesus. And then Paul uses that point to remind the Corinthian people that God has called THEM, TOO!
“To the church of God in Corinth,” he writes, “to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and CALLED TO BE HOLY…”
Paul had been called. And so have they!
In the same way, Margaret has been called. And so have you!
Do you know what it means to be “called to be holy”? Many people think that being “holy” means being really, really, really good. Being perfect! Like your wife’s first husband, or your husband’s first girlfriend, or your mother!
But to be holy is not to be perfect, nor is it even to be good. The word “holy” simply means “to be set apart for service to God.”
The people of Corinth were set apart for service to God. We the people of Tellico have likewise been called. Not only Paul in his day, and Margaret in ours, but ALL of us are called out into the service of God.
And until you find your particular calling – the service God has ordained for you – you cannot experience the fullness of what God intends for our lives.
Bob Buford has a neat little book called “Halftime.” It’s an easy read, and I commend it to you. Comparing life to a sporting event with two halves, Buford says that most of us spend the first half of our lives chasing after success. Now success can come in many forms – great careers, material possessions, personal happiness, comfortable retirement. But at some point in our lives, all that becomes not enough. There is an emptiness within that cannot be filled up with all the things we once thought would make us whole. There is an inner aching for something more.
And that something more is significance.
You may be feeling that ache in your heart right now, and I want you to know something about it. That ache is there because God has put it there. God has wired you that way. God has placed in your heart a need for something of spiritual significance. You and I have been created with a need for divine purpose – a need to be joined to God and the redemptive work God is doing in the world!
In other words, God has planted in each of our lives a sacred calling! And until we hear it and receive it, and live it, we cannot be whole. So Paul, in verse 9, tells us where and how to find our calling. He tells us to look to “…God who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ…”
Where do you find your call? In Jesus. In relationship with the most loving, life-giving, salvation-bringing person who has ever lived – the One who gave his life for the world, and who rose on the third day. When you hang around with Jesus, you feel a tugging on your heart to give yourself away to others. When you are joined into the fellowship of people who follow Jesus, you hear the call!
Roger and Sandy Vervelde, and Marlie Ridley, and Bill Morgan heard the call and went in February to minister to some deaf and speechless children at a Christian mission in Jamaica. Those who heard their testimony when they returned know how they glowed with joy and with deepened faith, and how they felt more alive than ever before! They were called to be something for God!
Gloria Hunt and her wonderful band of prayer partners heard the call. Sometimes in the middle of the night when the rest of us are asleep, this human chain comes alive with people who pray for you and me and others. They have been called to be something for God, and their own lives have been deepened in the process!
Stephen Ministers, called into the lives of others to be Christian friends; Sunday School teachers, called to nurture faith in the lives of children; musicians called to help us in our worship; the Holy Roller bus people who make it possible for some to come to worship or even go to places outside the Village where they find fellowship and refreshment.
They’ve all heard the call to be!
Last Thursday night, Sandy and I attended a big fundraising dinner to benefit the Child Advocacy Center. Many of you know that the CAC was brought into being to care for children wounded by the sin of abuse. The Center become a reality through the efforts of ordinary people – just like you. In fact, many of the people who founded the CAC are members of this fellowship of Jesus. The other night, how blessed I was to see how many more Tellico Village Community Church people have heard the call and joined that cause.
But what struck me most about the other night was not your numbers, but your faces. I saw you weep as stories of abuse were told. I saw you smile over the stories of help and healing. I saw your joy giving your money away to help expand the work. I saw your determination to do whatever is needed to help bring healing to children who suffer from abuse.
There was a look of significance about you. You looked to me like people CALLED – called to something so important that it has filled your lives with life itself! In the first half of your life, did you ever imagine that one day you would called to be healers of broken children?
You see, its not just Paul who is called. And its not just Margaret who is called.
It’s ALL of us!
We are ALL called into the fellowship of Jesus where God places a hand on our shoulders and says, “I’m calling you to be…”!
So today we worship this God who calls people – ordinary, every day, very human people – people just like you and me – to be God’s partners in building a new and beautiful world – the kingdom of God!
I’m glad that God has called Margaret to pastoral ministry. She will accomplish great things for God! And what a celebration we will have at her ordination this afternoon! But even as we gather to worship the God who has called Margaret, my prayer is that you will hear God calling you!