We have focused most of our teaching on the three actions that sit at the center of our renewed vision statement. Two week ago we talked about what it means to authentically welcome all people. Last week we talked about authentically loving all people. This week, using Luke 22:24-27, we look at authentically serving all people as we also release our full vision statement.
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One of my favorite movies is Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. For those that may not be familiar, Bill Murray plays a weatherman who is sent to Punxsutawney, PA, to cover the emergence of the groundhog. He is arrogant and narcissistic and makes no attempt to hide his disdain for a task he sees as beneath him and a waste of his talents.
Somehow, while he is there, he begins living the same day, Groundhog Day, over and over again. Every morning when he wakes up, it is Groundhog Day again. It is as if the day has been reset and he gets to try it again.
At first, he is obviously confused. Who wouldn’t be? Am I hallucinating? Am I dreaming? Is this some sort of weird elaborate hoax? Am I having a mental breakdown of some kind?
But pretty soon he decides to take advantage of the situation. He robs an armored car, spends the money on expensive things, takes advantage of the people he meets around town and at the celebration -- basically he lives a wholly self-centered existence.
Now we might also recognize that this is more or less the very life that our culture suggests we are supposed to want. Our culture tends to idolize those that have all they could possibly want and who live unapologetically selfish lives.
However, as this pattern continues, Bill Murray’s character finds that the whole thing leaves him feeling empty and alone. Sure he has the ability to get whatever his heart desires without any consequences. But then the next day he wakes up and nothing has really changed.
After going through a low period where he tries to end his own life several times, his attitude starts to change. He begins doing little things to help others. He sits down to share a meal with a homeless man and tries to get him help at the local hospital. He catches a kid falling from a tree. He helps out someone with a flat tire. He embraces the community he had shown so much disdain for, encouraging others, offering support, being kind and generous. Once he succeeds in living completely selflessly, serving everyone he meets along the way, his life starts back up. He is in effect born again, no longer trapped in the monotonous pursuit of selfish gain that had been his existence prior, as he finally wakes up to February 3.
I hope you can recognize some of the parallels between this movie and our gospel text this week. In the gospel story we find the disciples arguing about who is to be the greatest among them. This is not necessarily a new thing; you may recognize this theme from the parallels in Matthew and Mark where the sons of Zebedee, James and John, are specifically singled out as attempting to be at the right and left hand of Jesus in the coming kingdom. It is not clear if Luke is rewriting this same story in a different setting or perhaps that this argument about who is the greatest disciple occurred so frequently that this is in fact a different occasion. Either way Jesus makes the same point in all three versions of the story: I am not here as a leader in the sense you are expecting; greatness in the kingdom to come is not measured in the same way as you measure it in this world.
Matthew and Mark do this much more explicitly. The stories there conclude with "I came not to be served, but to serve." Or as the motto of my alma mater, Berry College, states it using the King James language: “Not to be ministered unto, but to minister.”
Luke makes this same point in a much more subtle way. Sitting at the table for the Last Supper, Jesus hears them arguing about greatness. So he asks them what constitutes greatness. He makes a point of identifying greatness as the world does - kings and rulers; master of the house; the ones sitting at the table, not the ones serving the table. And then Jesus simply says, “But I am among you as one who serves.”
There is a challenge to them in this statement. You know who I am. You know how great I am? And yet you have also seen how I serve others.
If we see this conversation at the Last Supper as Luke has written it, there is even more power to Jesus’ words. The gospel of John tells us that as they gathered for the meal, Jesus proceeded to wash their feet. Can you imagine after he has served them in that way that they got into this argument? Can you imagine how they would have felt after he subtly pointed this out to them? Perhaps they finally started to get the point.
Jesus is showing a different model of leadership, a way of leading that they are still having trouble understanding, even or perhaps especially here during their last meal together before his death and Resurrection.
It reminds me of a Lenten song called “We Sang Our Glad Hosannas.” This song is written from the point of view of Jesus’ followers in the days leading to the cross. It ends with the disciples not knowing what is coming, but one line in particular stands out for me in relation to our conversation today. The first stanza ends with the line, “We sought a royal savior, but did not understand a king could rule by loving instead of by command.”
Jesus has been showing them a different model of leadership than the one they are expecting. He is calling them to be leaders in a different way than they are expecting.
“You know how the Gentiles do it, how their rulers demand respect.”
“You know that the lord of the table is greater than the servant.”
“You know that I am the Lord of the Table, and yet I am here as a servant.”
He is not only among us as one who leads by serving. He called on the disciples to do the same. He still today calls on us to do the same. And this is not something new. It has been a part of Christian teaching from the earliest days. So it is fitting that we make this an explicit part of our vision for what it means to be church.
If you look to the full vision statement (see below), you will see that our vision is rooted in the leading of the Holy Spirit and grounded in the Great Commandment. When he was pressed to state which of the laws is the most important, Jesus responds that the greatest is to love God with all that we are. He then tells us that the second is like it: to love our neighbors as ourselves.
When it comes to those of us that follow Jesus, then, this is where our commitment starts: loving God and loving our neighbors.
As you can see this vision statement is our reminder to do exactly what it is that Jesus taught us -- to welcome, love, and serve all people.
“We desire to be a church united and empowered by the Holy Spirit…”
All that we do as church should be firmly rooted in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. When we look to the stories about the disciples, we see two general phases in their ministry. When they were traveling with and listening to Jesus, they often misunderstood. They would get excited by the simplest displays of power. They would feel boastful about their own place and critical of anyone not in their group.
And yet after the Resurrection and the granting of the Holy Spirit, their power grew. They were able to take those same teachings, the ones they had frequently misunderstood, and spread them to the ends of the known world. They traveled throughout the Empire and beyond teaching others about God and healing the sick. They helped communities form and guided them through the difficulties of forming relationships with people from different backgrounds.
This is not a coincidence. They understood that this was not through any strength of their own. This was only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit. This same Spirit united them in mission, in the call to spread all that Jesus had taught them, to heal the sick, and feed the hungry, to call people into relationship with God and each other.
So united and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we seek to “authentically welcome, love, and serve.” These are not simply statements of belief or feelings. These are actions. Our faith is an active faith. It is not simply about putting a statement on paper or posters on walls. While those can be good reminders, our vision, our calling, is to do those things.
We welcome our community in many ways. Sometimes they come here, and sometimes we go to where they are.
We love our community in many ways. We care for those around us, we perform acts of service and kindness, we acknowledge and support their right to exist. We treat them as we would hope to be treated.
And we serve our community in many ways. We provide for their needs and support other groups both here and abroad that provide for those in need. We provide much needed money, supplies, and other resources. But we also speak out in the face of injustice. We seek to stop the patterns of harm and violence that put people in those situations to begin with.
It is rather fitting that we celebrated a baptism today. When we look to our baptismal covenant, we find that this vision, while it may feel new to us today, is really nothing new. When we are baptized, we make a commitment to welcome, love, and serve others. Through our baptism, each of us individually promises to “renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of [our] sin.”¹ We “accept the freedom and power God gives [us] to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.”¹ We accept the call to “serve as Christ’s representatives in the world.”¹
And as a congregation, we reaffirm these vows and promise to support those being baptized as they grow in their faith. We make a commitment to welcome, love, and serve those being baptized and recommit ourselves to welcome, love, and serve others.
Our vision statement serves as an ongoing reminder of the commitments made when we were baptized. It is a reminder of the grounding of our faith, our unity in the Holy Spirit through our baptism, and the ongoing strength and guidance provided by our baptism to live out our faith. This is an active faith, not a passive one, that calls us to action on behalf of Jesus in the world. It is a faith that calls on us to welcome, love, and serve all of those in our community and world.
Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, who found new life in serving others, may we be empowered to live life anew as we boldly live this calling to welcome, love, and serve all the people in our community and world.
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¹ From "Baptismal Covenant I" in The United Methodist Book of Worship (or online here: https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/book-of-worship/the-baptismal-covenant-i)