What Not To Wear

I have a confession to make – I don’t like weddings. I know. What’s the matter with me? Weddings are beautiful. They are the occasion of a couple publicly declaring their love and commitment to each other. What could be better than that? I admit, all that’s great. What I don’t like are all the little details; details like which usher should escort which mother down the aisle, and which pictures the photographer wants to take and would you mind if he stood next to you pastor, and whether the best man is going to show up late for the rehearsal and we’re all supposed to laugh about it and think it’s cute. Do I sound bitter? But all that aside, the thing that really has soured me on weddings, that strikes fear into me, heart and soul, can be summed up in two words – wedding coordinator. Nemesis, thy name is wedding coordinator. See, I can see some of you guys, you’re wincing too. You remember.

Someone just told me this yesterday: One of the shortest sentences in the English language is “I am.” One of the longest sentences is “I do.”

I’m just kidding. I still believe in weddings because I believe in marriage. And it’s a good thing because God believes in it. In fact, he says that the Kingdom is like a wedding banquet. Let’s look at that.

The kingdom of God is like a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. The invitations go out. But nobody responds. They don’t come. The king tries again. He sends messages – “Look, I’ve prepared this sumptuous feast. The decorations are gorgeous. The entertainment is first-rate. Everything is ready. Are you coming?”

But the invited guests don’t come.

I figure I’ve officiated at close to 100 hundred weddings and one big thing I’ve learned that you should always do if you are officiating a wedding, in a wedding, getting married at a wedding, or merely invited as a guest to a wedding – SHOW UP ON TIME.

One of my best friends got married a year ago last summer and we were invited. Jim and Adriana chose to have their wedding on Sunday, July 7th, 2007 at Cape May, New Jersey, right on the beach. I doubt you will remember but I was in church that morning here for first service and then I left and the Morris’ family quickly packed the car and headed to Cape May to make the wedding at 6pm that evening. Let’s just say that I made good time on the turnpike. I got us to Cape May before six o’clock, but barely. We knew the wedding was at the Sunset pavilion on the beach but we didn’t know where that was exactly. So we drove up and down that Oceanside stretch searching frantically for the wedding. At one point I got out the car and ran wildly over to a lifeguard station. I was like Dustin Hoffman in the graduate only I was yelling, “Wedding! Wedding!” The lifeguards were doing sit-ups but they kindly pointed the way for me. “No problem, dude!” they cheerfully called after Dustin Hoffman. And the Morris family found the pavilion and calmly slid into their just ahead of the bride walking down the aisle. In fact, I think Seth looked like he was in the procession. Don’t be late to your best friend’s wedding.

Remember that Jesus is telling us this story, and if you look closely at his life described in the gospels, he never seemed to be in a hurry most of the time. In fact, at least one time he was chastised by Martha for arriving tardy when her brother was dying. Jesus was never in a hurry, but he was always on time; especially on God’s time. Their was purpose in his actions. There were not wasted conversations or wasted days. There was a sense of urgency in his living. “I’m must be about my Father’s business.”

There is a sense of urgency for all Kingdom workers.

Unfortunately, too much of time the church is content to let the wheels of action turn ever so slowly. And if we are content to take our own sweet time all the time then we ignore the fact that there are souls perishing in this world who will spend eternity apart from Christ.

The king told his servants to convey this message to the invited guests – All is ready. There is urgency in that statement. The dishes are hot! The bride and the groom are waiting. The master is waiting. So invited guests, what are you waiting for?

Jesus made it clear that he would leave this earth, but at some fixed some in history, he would definitely return. In other words there is a finite amount of time between the Ascension and the Second Coming. This in between time is Church Time. This is our time to do our part for the Kingdom. We are his ambassadors. We are the faithful steward who reigns until the King returns.

Too many church people are content with the status quo just so long as they can keep the building open and basic services going until they themselves are gone. They have no thought for future. Worse, they have no thought for the present reality of so many people separated from God in their own communities. A church that doesn’t have a sense of urgency about reaching new people for Christ is not only a dying church, but a disobedient church.

Perhaps most churches with any kind of history have periods in their history of lack of urgency and focus on mission. How do you know when these periods of disobedience have occurred? The church will have generational gaps or holes in the body. You can look around and ask yourself which generations are present here and which are missing. The missing generation is the years the church just didn’t bother too much about.

Paul Borden suggests church leaders ask themselves this question: “Do we really believe that the majority of the people in our communities are lost to God and that being lost matters deeply to God? And is the mission of our church to join Jesus’ mission, which is to make new disciples?


The dishes are hot. Are we urgently sending out invitations?

The second thing I’ve learned about weddings is DRESS APPROPRIATELY. I’ve been in weddings in big churches and small churches, in backyards, on boats, on the beach. One couple wanted to get married in a cave. You can imagine that the dress code varied a bit, from formal tuxedoes to dress jackets and jeans. But I’ve never been to a wedding where it was okay to look sloppy. I’ve never been to a wedding where the bride said, “Sorry folks. I was running late today and didn’t get a chance to put on my makeup.” I’ve never been to a wedding in which the groom said, “Wow, we partied all night, me and my buds, I’ve haven’t even showered yet. Boy, do I stink.”

Of course, they don’t say that. They look and smell terrific. The tuxedo is sharp, the dress is breathtaking. They leave their flip flops and t-shirts at home. They do their best to be their best. And as an invited guest, so should you.

“When the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without the appropriate attire? The man was speechless. So the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Wow, that’s pretty serious. You better pick out the right shirt to wear. So what is the right attire in the Kingdom of God?

Is it good behavior? Well, it depends on what you mean. In the parable it says that after the invited guests had refused the summons the king sent invitations everywhere – all kinds of people were invited, “both good and bad.” And both good and bad came.

Invitation to the Kingdom is not based on our intrinsic goodness or our moral behavior. Clearly, the whole invitation rests upon the One who is inviting. But accepting the invitation means preparing for the occasion.

Ironically, in biblical times a wedding was not primarily a religious ceremony but rather a legal one. But what did happen was preparation. So much went into dress and setting, poetry and feasting. After the wedding, in some cases a week-long feast would ensue at the groom’s house. How would you like to have your new in-laws stay with you for your first week of married life? The point is, is was planned and not rushed. Presumably they made sure there was more than easy mac in the house. Food, drink, lodging, regal dress – they were prepared.

In the Kingdom of God, the best preparation, in fact, the only recognized dress code, is the converted life. Are you converted to the Kingdom of the Son? Have you given yourself fully to Jesus and allowed him to transform your character?

Remember the wedding guests who refused to come? They disrespected the King who invited them. But it’s equally disrespectful to come ill prepared to the great feast. As we discussed last week, our character is the most important thing about us. It is who we will be going into eternity. Are you ready to enter eternity as you now are? Or are there things about you that you wish you had the time or power to change? Well good news, you have both, with God’s help.

Having a sense urgency about your character, your soul growth, means diligent and consistent preparation. How is your prayer life? How much are in the Scriptures? How faithful have you been in worship? Do you have a small group?

“Many are called, but few are chosen.”

Folks, in God’s time, it’s much later than you think. Tomorrow can come upon you so suddenly. Especially that last tomorrow.

But the good news is, in God’s time, today is the right time.

Character Over Giftedness

I am indebted to John Ortberg for much of the following:

We have been doing a series on spiritual giftedness. We began with “Invest” in which we looked at the Parable of the Talents and launched our Talent Program using our gifts and passion. We continued our series with “Not My Way Is Still a Good Way” in which we praised diversity and variety. We studied the specific gifts of serving, helping, and giving two weeks ago. And last week we studied the gifts of teaching and learning in the church. Today I want to look at the importance of character as it relates to giftedness.

As you may know, my favorite football team is the Pittsburgh Steelers. At the start of the season pundits were picking the Cleveland Browns to unseat the Steelers as division champs. The Steelers haven’t played particularly well so far this year. What’s more they have experienced a rash of injuries, losing two key players for the season and others for several games. The pundits are questioning whether the Steelers are gifted enough to last the season. And yet, after all this, the Steelers are still 3-1 and in first place in their division. Why are they in this position? Because Jesus loves them.

The Bible tells us that God is the giver of every good and perfect gift. What’s more, using your God-given gifts is essential for your spiritual growth and the growth of the church. Remember, diversity is good. Diverse gifts produce growth, which produces more diversity. As important as gifts are, your gifts are not the most important thing about you. The most important thing about you is your character.

Character is who we are at the absolute core of our person.

Character determines how we relate to God and how we relate other people. It is the habitual tendencies we display. Giftedness is good and essential but it is not the greatest good. We are called to be like Jesus, not in his giftedness, but in his character.

Our culture values giftedness more than character. Giftedness gets people ahead. It gets them on magazine covers. When we see a gifted person in action we say, “Wow.” Character seldom if ever elicits that action, and if it does, it’s usually for bad character. We envy giftedness in others. How many of you have ever envied someone else for their job, their musical ability, their house, their car, their money, their waistline, hairline or bottomline? Raise your hand.

The desire for good character never leads to envy. There’s something about Christ-like character that the desiring of it cannot harm us.

There is an incredibly gifted person in scripture who did not have the character to bear their gifts. His name was Samson. His story can be found in Judges, although it really begins in Numbers 6 where Moses talks about the way of a nazarite. Moses describes how a person could devote themselves in a special way to God for a season. This is the way of the nazarite. And it is essentially involved three basic vows of obedience.

A Nazarite will:

Touch no dead body
Drink no wine or fermented drink or anything from the grapevine.
Not cut their hair

Okay, so in Judges we find a couple whom God promises a child and tells them that their child will be a nazarite and he will be great and the Lord will use him to bless Israel and throw off the oppression of the hated Philistines. Samson arrives on the scene in his young manhood and boy, is he a man. In a culture which values physical strength, Samson is the deal. Men wanted to be like him and women wanted to be with him. He had looks, charisma, and power. He was even a judge in Israel – not like our judges in black robes in the courtroom. A judge in Israel was the supreme political and military authority. In the days before the kings, the judges were it.

Samson was it. He was the big dog. He’s a renaissance man. Guys would come up to him and say Samson you are the man! And he would say, yes, I am the man. Who could we compare him to today? Well, let’s suppose there was this former world champion body builder who became an actor and made all these action-hero movies, (show picture) then he marries into a politically powerful family and gets himself elected governor of a powerful state and enjoys a new level of influence and power. Of course this person doesn’t exist in real life. But Samson did.

God uses Samson sometimes because of what he does and sometimes in spite of what he does. Let me say it again – the Bible is full of real people. They’re not completely good and not completely bad. They’re not one dimensional cardboard cutouts. And so we can’t read their stories that way. A good question to ask as you are reading Bible stories, especially Old Testament ones, is “What is God up to in this story?”

One of things we find in Samson’s story is that lack of character can never be made up for by giftedness.

“Once Samson went down to Timnah, and at Timnah he saw a Philistine woman. Then he came and told his father and mother, “I saw a Philistine woman at Timnah. Now get her for me as my wife. But his father and mother said to him, ‘Is there not a woman among your own kin, or among all our people that you must got take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’” Judges 14.1-3

That last part is a phrase you hear more than once in the Bible – uncircumcised Philistines. The Philistines were known as the sea peoples. They were not a Semtic people. They were about as different from the Israelites as could be imagined. In their religion they worshipped a god called Baalzebul and it was an evil religion that routinely featured infant sacrifice. This so repulsed the Hebrews that they called the Philistine god, “Beelzebub.” Does that ring a bell? Beelzebub means “Lord of the Flies.” The Hebrews were calling this god, the god of the dung heap where the flies hang out.

So it’s not for nothing that Samson’s parents wandered why he could not find a wife among his own. Samson’s response was, “She’s the right one in my eyes.” Why is she right in his eyes? Are they part of a book club together and he has fallen in love with her booksmarts? No, he likes what his eyes see. “Get her for me, “ he says.

Woody Allen, some years ago, divorced his wife and married his then adopted daughter. It caused quite a stir even in New York, a city not known for its strict moral code. When asked why he did it, Woody replied, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” I saw it. I wanted it. I took it.

That’s the human condition. On our own, without Jesus, the heart we follow is a devious thing. It’s a dark heart, a divided heart. It takes what it wants.

“Then Samson went down with his father and mother to Timnah, and suddenly a young lion roared at him. The spirit of the Lord rushed on him and he tore the lion apart bare-handed as one might tear apart a kid. . .and he turned to see the carcass of the lion, and there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey. He scraped it out into his hands and ate it. When he came to his father and mother, he gave some to them and they ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the carcass.” Judges 14.5-9

Why didn’t he tell his parents this little detail about the honey? Because he had broken nazarite Vow #1. Why did he break the vow? He was hungry, so he took. On some level he knew he was doing wrong and so he hid it from his parents, maybe from himself on some level. He “forgot” it.

Always, when there is something wrong in someone’s life there will be a prolonged period of hiding and secrecy. Don’t believe the Bible? Pick up a newspaper. Read all about it, almost any week of the year.

“and Samson made a feast there (in Timnah) as the young men were accustomed to do.”
Judged 14.10

What the young men were accustomed to do was to drink to excess. Samson joins right in. Down goes Vow #2.

And then, feeling good, Samson proposes a riddle to his fellow partygoers, his buds.

Out of the eater came something to eat
Out of the strong came something sweet

I told you he was a renaissance man. He’s a poet. And he’s a jokester. There’s this duality in him that even though he knew enough to hide his broken vow from his parents, he also takes delight in the fact that he got away with it. He makes a joke of it. He has a divided heart.


The party ends badly however. Samson ends up killing the thirty groomsmen. Sort of puts a damper on the wedding plans. So his fiancé goes to be with his best man, and he goes over to Gaza and visits a prostitute. And you thought your soaps were racy.

Samson is in Gaza, a Philistine city, and the Philistines are still trying to learn the secret of Samson’s strength. Samson sees another woman there by the name of Delilah. Again, he likes what he sees. But the Philistines plot to use Delilah to their advantage.

“Delilah said to Samson, ‘How can you say you love me when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me three times now and have not told me what makes your strength so great.’ She nagged him with her words day after day and pestered him until he was tired to death. So he told her his whole secret.” Judges 16.15-17

This great gifted man is nagged into submission by a woman. Hard to believe isn’t it?

You know the rest. She cuts his hair while he is sleeping and his enemies come and take him. The Last Vow is broken. He is no longer a nazarite. He is just a has-been strongman. And then comes one of the saddest statements in Scripture:

“But Samson did not know that the Lord had left him.” Verse 20

The lesson of Samson’s life is that character is the capacity to be inhabited by God. When you are deficient of character, your giftedness can mask that, for a time. But you can only evade character for so long. Samson could not say no to his appetites. He saw, he wanted, he took. Ironically, one of the ways the Philistines tortured Samson was by gouging out his eyes. His eyes wandered, but Samson’s main problem wasn’t his eyes. It was his heart.

Many years later a man comes along people called the Nazarene. He was not fair or overly pleasing to look at. In many ways he was the anti-Samson. But he came and promised healing and rest for the weary heart. Jesus was and is still in the heart-rebuilding business.

Samson needed a new heart. He needed a friend to tell him the truth. He needed a small group. He needed time to form character and let God fully inhabit him.

What do you need?

Are you willing to take the time and expend the effort to see Christ-like character fully formed in you?

God doesn’t love us for our gifts and he doesn’t love us for our sterling character. God loves us because He’s God. It’s who he is. He can’t help himself.

Spirituals Gifts: Teaching and Learning

Recently I was invited to be a part of an interfaith panel discussion called Faith Forum. The panel meets monthly and is representative of local faith communities – Judaism, Islam, Roman Catholicism, and representing the myriad of Protestant bodies, a member of the Protestant clergy. Well, Mr. Protestant left town, so someone gave them the notion of calling me.

I told them I was interested, but the kicker? This forum discussion is strictly taped for cable TV. That made me pause. Granted this is not the Today Show, but still, I had never been on TV, at least on purpose. I’ve been told that I have a face for. . . radio. Now, I was promised to be seen by literally tens of viewers. Of course, I accepted.

We sat there in the luxurious studios of Altoona High School. We’re on the set and the cameras are pointed at us. We’re seconds from beginning, and I’ll tell you what was going through my head.

This is it. The jig is up. Everyone is going to find out that I am a fraud. I know nothing about Christianity. I can’t even talk. I am a bumbling idiot.

Questions like “Who gives you the right to speak on behalf of the Christian faith?” occurred to me. Sadly, I hadn’t stopped to ask those questions when asking might have helped.

You may have noticed that in our Gospel lesson today, people asked almost this same question of Jesus:

“Who gives you the right?”

So I am in good company.

How did Jesus answer this question? Well, we need to be mindful first, that the folks posing the question had some good reasons for asking. First of all, they were the chief priests and elders of the Jewish faith in those parts. It was their job to know who was teaching what in the name of Israel and on whose authority.

And let’s face it – the Scriptures can be pretty difficult to teach. A simple teaching like “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,” can be taught in many many ways. What is a Sabbath? What does it mean to remember it? How do you keep it holy? This potential for many interpretations and countless applications is something I have heard discussed, at least superficially, many times. I have heard this point used in objection to reading the Bible or taking the faith seriously:

“The Bible can be twisted to mean whatever you want it to mean.”

They’re right. Without reliable guides, the Scriptures can be twisted to mean just about anything. But that’s where faithful guides, teachers, come in. The Rabbis understand that the Bible is open-ended and must be interpreted. In Israel’s history, each rabbi came up with his own set of rules of application, not just what you need to know, but then how you should live it. A rabbi’s set of rules and lists, which was really his way of interpreting the Torah, was called that rabbi’s yoke. People chose to follow a certain rabbi because they believed that rabbi’s yoke was closest to what God intended in the Scriptures.


Most rabbis taught the yoke of a well-respected rabbi that had gone before them. Everyone knew then, what you were going to teach. The two main schools, or yokes, of rabbinical teaching were Shammei and Hillel. If you were a rabbi worth your salt, you basically taught the yoke of Shammei or Hillel. And so, you taught by the wisdom, learning, and experience that they had already revealed. You taught by their authority.

Once in a great while, maybe once in a lifetime, a new rabbi would come along teaching a different yoke. They would need the confirmation of other rabbis for their authority. The other rabbis would essentially be confirming that this rabbi has authority to make new interpretations.

One new rabbi even said his yoke was easy. It was this rabbi that the chief priests and Pharisees were worried about.

Secondly, many of those folks in charge had seen or heard about what this new rabbi had done just the day before – threw a fit and threw out the money changers. The Jewish leaders were concerned, and they were right to be.

But Jesus never directly answers them, although he does use the moment to teach the teachers with a parable. What does Jesus teach the teachers?

You play the part of the obedient Son, but you don’t obey. I may not look like I’m obeying God as you understand the Scriptures, but my yoke is the right one because I am the “right One.” My authority, Jesus says, is me.

So what does this have to do with me and you? Well, for most of your believing life you have been trying to avoid the pastor coming to you and saying, “We need a teacher for such and such class.” You’ve been successful all these years. Those of you who are teaching now just were not very good at avoidance. You heart must not have been in it.

But those of you who have successfully avoided the call, maybe, deep down you feel a little guilty. Maybe you honestly feel that you weren’t ready or didn’t have the gifts for it. And you may be right. But if the barrier to you teaching was, is, or ever will be the question of authority, then today the barrier is removed.

By whose authority do any of us teach the Christian faith? By Christ’s authority, by Christ’s!

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
Matthew 28.18-20


The authority of the rabbi has been given to his disciples. As Rob Bell writes, “The rabbi thinks that we can be like him.”

And he thinks we can teach others, or he wouldn’t have commanded us to do it. Duffy Robbins suggests looking for this quality in yourself that, if you’ve got it, makes you qualified to teach the faith - Are you a FAT Christian?

This has nothing to do with your weight. A F.A.T. Christian is

· Faithful
· Accountable
· Teachable.

Are you faithful? Are you growing in faithful obedience to the commands of Christ? Are you accountable, connected, ready to serve? Are you teachable, humble, always ready to learn more, be corrected, and share what you have learned with others?

A healthy church is constantly growing good teachers of the faith - because there is so much need, for Sunday School, Home Fellowships, Youth, Children, Seniors, and so on. You just cannot overstate the importance of a good teacher. Good teachers strike chords that ring for eternity in the hearts and minds of their students.

The writer and actress, Tina Fey, won an Emmy Award last week and I loved what she said in her acceptance speech. She thanked her parents, who. . .

“Gave me confidence way out of proportion to my looks and abilities. That’s what good parents do. That’s what every parent should do for their child.”

Good parents and good teachers equip us with knowledge and confidence way beyond our natural abilities. They do this because its been done for them.

“For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Philippians 2.13

Spiritual Gifts: Serving, Helping, Giving

God invites us to a new life, lived in a community of faith. He gives gifts to us to build up the community and benefit the Kingdom. Romans 12 is one of several places in the New Testament that list and describe these gifts.

“So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. . .” Romans 12.5-6

Last week we said that diversity and variety are good. This week we look at several of the gifts and how God blesses us in specific ways for the benefit of many. These gifts are called spiritual gifts because they come from the Holy Spirit. They function truly and powerfully when we are open to and obedient to the Holy Spirit’s direction. Anytime spiritual gifts are mentioned in the church there is tendency to think of certain gifts, namely what we think of as the more charismatic gifts like speaking in tongues, healing, prophecy, and the like. But what do we mean when we say charismatic? Charisma means grace. These gifts are divinely given. We don’t earn them. We don’t luck into them. They are the gift of a gracious God. And so all the gifts God gives to the church are rightly speaking, charismatic gifts.

“Prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher in teaching; the exhorter in exhortation; the giver in generosity; the leader in diligence, the compassionate, in cheerfulness.” Romans 12.6-8

This morning I want to focus on the gifts of serving, helping, giving. Though these gifts are separate and each have their own uses and meanings, they are still related. They are often “Behind-the-Scenes” Gifts. They are gifts that some people assume they get when they don’t get one of the flashy kind. But these gifts, really, are the heart of Christ-like living. I will lump these gifts under the title “servant ministries.”

The word servant dates back to the earliest of human times. In the Old Testament a servant is a slave. A servant has no rights of their own. They exist to do their master’s bidding. In the history of Israel “servant” is used as a term of humble self-designation. Soldiers are servants of the King. Against this background a religious sense of the term begins to develop. The righteous person is called the “servant of the Lord.” Men like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, and Solomon are all called servants of the Lord.

That these great leaders that stride across history even now to us called themselves “slaves” too easily rolls off of us. But consider how even in New Testament times, this view in Israel is dramatically different from the view in surrounding cultures. For the Greek the highest ideal was self-determination, independence. The opposite of this is being a servant. Who wants to be that? To the Greek the slave was an inferior person. They would never talk about themselves as servants, to each other, even to God.


This idea doesn’t go down well in our American culture either. If the choices are the humble servants of Israel or the rugged and independent Greeks, then many of us would rather have Greek salads than eat humble pie. Here’s a very scientific chart of our cultural values today and who is important:


Great in the World Example They Said

Pop Stars The Beatles “We’re bigger than Jesus.”

Government leaders Dick Cheney “Quit your whining.”

Famous for Being Famous Paris Hilton “I’m so hot.”

Professional Athletes Muhammad Ali “I am the greatest.”
Terrell Owens “I want me some me.”

Professional Sports Teams Steelers “Thank God we’re not the Dolphins.”


Why are people in these vocations so much more visible and so much better compensated than say, nurses or teachers? Because the values of our world are messed up.

But there are voices calling to us to be different.

“You know that the rulers of the Greeks lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be a servant, and whoever wishes to be first must be a slave. Even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Matthew 20.25-28


Jesus is answering the question, “Who is really great?” And He could not be more clear as to how differently he looks at human beings compared to the way of the world. This world is not just a little off in its values, it is upside down! Jesus means to turn things right side up again.

“The first shall be last and the last shall be first.”

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you may like to dance.
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world.
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Yes, indeed, serve somebody.
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
Bob Dylan

So what does a servant look like these days? Sometimes that’s hard to answer because the first thing is, a servant is not trying to be noticed doing the good they do.

Servants are behind the scenes. They quietly do the work that needs to be done. They work in secret for their Father “who sees in secret.” They are often very compassionate people. They really see the needs of others. They find meaning and purpose in doing something about it.


Someone pointed out to me just the other day that the new bridge in Minnesota is open. You remember the bridge that collapsed about two years ago now? That collapse set off a flurry of bridge inspections and bridge work around the country. We realized how important bridges are to us.

Servants are bridge-builders. They don’t need to talk a lot. Their work speaks volumes. They are the glue that holds a community together. Sometimes more vocal leaders have differences of opinions but servants are the bridges that bring them and keep them together.

Often we take these kind of folks for granted. It’s like what comedian Chris Rock says about underappreciated fathers. Mothers get all the accolades. Many songs are sung in praise of mom. Dads? We get, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.” But good fathers quietly do work that needs to be done .

Nobody says, “Thanks dad for paying the rent. Or, Dad, this hot water feels really good. Or, I can read a lot better with these lights.”

Servants don’t get thanked enough. But I want to thank some people today for the behind-the-scenes stuff they do.

Before all of you get here on Sunday morning; before I get here, one person has been here for awhile to unlock the doors, turn on the fans, open windows, get things ready for everyone else. John Frazier does it week in and week out.

When most of you are on your way home or out to eat on Sunday, you’re already talking about what a great service it was and how those two hours flew by, a couple of folks are still here shutting things down, locking things up. John Smith, Bill Neely, Jack Linderman, and the wives that have to wait upon them – we thank you.

Bob and Cathy Baird are our church custodians and they do a great job behind the scenes. Most of the work they do when we aren’t here. We don’t notice it because everything looks so good. Thank you Cathy and Bob.

I could go on to talk about Mary Jo Campolong, Heidi Fogle, and Deb Simpson, and Brian Fleck and Erica Dellinger. But I would have to just keep going on and on. Because so many of you are serving in little-noticed and underappreciated ways. We thank you!

I know you don’t do it to get paid. I know that you have other motivation. I know you have a servant’s attitude and a servant’s heart.

“So when we have done all that we were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”