Devoted to Efficiency

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Moms are the epitome of efficiency. Think about all that a mom can do. Talk about multitasking. They were multitasking before multitasking was cool. A mom can get up in the morning and she can know the entire schedule of her family two weeks out. She can be making lunches for the kids, pulling out something for dinner, texting her husband asking what they’re going to do that night, talking to the neighbor, folding laundry, putting the kids in the car and never even break out in a sweat. They’re incredible! They are the epitome of efficiency.

In fact, I ran across a mom on YouTube that managed to condense everything that she would say in 24 hours in less than 3 minutes. Check this out. “What I’ve done is I have figured out what a mom would say in a 24‑hour period and I have condensed it to 2 minutes and 55 seconds, so strap on your seatbelt. Here we go: Get up now. Get up now. Get up out of bed. Wash your face. Brush your teeth. Comb your sleepy head. Here’s your clothes and your shoes. Hear the words I said. Get up now! Get up and make your bed. Are you hot? Are you cold? Are you wearing that? Where’s your books and your lunch and your homework at? Grab your coat and your gloves and your scarf and hat. Don’t forget, you got to feed the cat. Eat your breakfast. The experts tell us it’s the most important meal of all. Take your vitamins so you will grow up one day to be big and tall. Remember the orthodontist will be seeing you at 3:00 today. Don’t forget your piano lesson. It’s this afternoon so you must play. Don’t shovel. Chew slowly but hurry. The bus is here. Be careful. Come back here. Did you wash behind your ears? Play outside. Don’t be rough but just play fair. Be polite. Make a friend. Don’t forget to share. Work it out. Wait your turn. Never take a dare. Get along. Don’t make me come down there. Clean your room. Fold your clothes. Put your stuff away. Make your bed. Do it now. Do we have all day? Were you born in a barn? Would you like some hay? Can you even hear a word I say? Answer the phone. Get off the phone. Don’t sit so close. Turn it down. No texting at the table. No more computer time tonight. Your I-pod is my I-pod if you don’t listen up. Where you going and with whom and what time do you think you’re coming home? Saying thank you, please, excuse me makes you welcome everywhere you roam. You’ll appreciate my wisdom someday when you’re older and you’re grown. Can’t wait ‘til you have a couple little children of your own. You’ll thank me for the counsel I gave you so willingly but right now, I thank you not to roll your eyes at me. Close your mouth when you chew, we’d appreciate. Take a bite, maybe two of the stuff you hate. Use a fork. Do not burp or I’ll set you straight. Eat the food I put upon your plate. Get an A. Get the door. Don’t be smart with me. Get a grip. Give it here. I’ll count to three. Get a job. Get a life. Get a Ph.D. Get a dose of . . . I don’t care who started it. You’re grounded until your 36. Get your story straight and tell the truth for once, for heaven’s sake. And if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump too? If I’ve said it once, I’ve said at least a thousand times before that you’re too old to act this way. It must be your father’s DNA. Look at me when I am talking. Stand up straighter when you walk. A place for everything and everything must be in place. Stop crying or I’ll give you something real to cry about. Oh! Brush your teeth. Wash your face. Put your PJ’s on. Get to bed. Give a hug. Say a prayer with Mom. Don’t forget, I love you. And tomorrow we will do this all again because a mom’s work never ends. You don’t need the reason why. Because, because, because, because I said so. I said so. I said so. I said so. I’m the mom, the mom, the mom, the mom. The mom. Ta-da!”

So after 2 minutes and 55 seconds, she’s done for the day. I tell you, moms are incredible. As far as I’m concerned, moms have like super human power. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this or not, dads, but whenever a child gets hurt, I have never once heard them call for dad. It’s always Mom. Dad could be a brain surgeon who works part-time in the Emergency Room, have them fall off their bicycle, they will run past Dad calling for Mom. Never mind that Dad could stitch them up and give them some antibiotics. Mom, she can kiss it and make it better.

I do not begrudge moms any of this. In fact, I celebrate that. God has made us different. Male and female. Mothers and fathers. And we each have a role to play in the family and God has gifted just instinctively a difference between mothers and fathers. And when moms and dads understand their roles and the gifts that God has given to them, the family is a wonderful place. It’s a happy and healthy place.

And the same is true with the family of believers. The family of believers that we call the church, if we can understand and recognize that God has made each one of us unique and different and that God has gifted each one of us uniquely and differently and if we can work in conjunction with one another and if we can recognize the different roles we have, the church is a wonderful place. It’s a powerful place.

We’ve been looking at how to be devoted followers of Jesus. The devoted followers of Jesus are also devoted to being efficient because the work that God has given to us, the work that God has given to the church is too important to just do it by the seat of our pants. We should do it very effectively and efficiently because it’s that important.

We see it in the early band of believers as they got together and even in those early days, an issue came up for them and it was a critical moment, were they going to be efficient, effective or were they going to go down another path? First of all, they had to identify that there was a need and there was a problem. So listen again, Acts 6, “In those days, when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained about the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.”

Uh-oh, we have problems in paradise. Everything was great. They were meeting in the temple courts. They were praying together. Everything is going well. But now the church is increasing and here is the first big issue with them. We have two different groups of people. We have the Grecian Jews or the Hellenistic Jews, so these have Jewish descent but they were not born in Palestine and their native tongue would have been Greek and so they sort of had the culture, the Greek culture in them. On the other side, you had the Hebraic Jews. They were raised in Palestine. Their native tongue would have been Aramaic and they have sort of had that culture around them.

Now both have come together because God has called both groups to faith in Jesus Christ, but there is a bit of a tension between the two because we have two different cultures, two different backgrounds coming together and there seems to be just a smidgen of jealousy here, that maybe someone is showing favoritism to one group over the other group. So they identify the problem and the problem is huge. I don’t want you to overlook that or dismiss that when it talks about the distribution of the food to the widows. This is a big deal. In the culture of that day, women had no rights and they had no means of making a living for themselves. So if they were left widowed, they were out of luck. They were dependent upon other people’s generosity, of other people taking care of them.

Case in point: Jesus, when He’s hanging on the cross, what’s one of the critical things that He did for His mom? Do you remember? He looked at John and said, “John, this is now your mom. Mom, this is now your son.” Why? She was a widow. Jesus had to look after her. Otherwise, she would have been lost. So this is a huge deal for the early church about the distribution of the food to the widows. And it’s a critical moment where there could be a huge potential problem.

The potential problem is that we have the Hellenistic Jews thinking they’re being neglected. So were the apostles doing that on purpose? Did they not like them because they weren’t of the Hebrew descent? They didn’t speak Aramaic? They weren’t from Palestine? Or maybe the Hebraic Jews somehow wanting to distance themselves? I mean, all kinds of things could have happened here.

They could have gone down one of two roads. The one road would be detrimental. And that road is the road of entitlement. If they go down the road of entitlement, then the Hellenistic Jews would have asked this question: “So what is the church going to do for me?” Or the Hebraic Jews could have said, “So what is the church going to do about that situation over there?” See, that’s the entitlement road, that you’re part of the church and, therefore, you’re entitled to something. What’s the church going to do for me?

Or they could ask the right question, which is what they did and that is, “What are we, as the church, going to do?” Big difference between those two questions. “What is the church going to do for me?” Or “What are we, as the church, going to do?”

Not really much has changed in almost 2,000 years. We have all kinds of situations surrounding us, all kinds of needs and problems that are around us. We have the poor. We have the homeless. We have people going through financial difficulty. We have divorces happening. We have people in relationships that are failing. We have folks struggling with their kids. I mean, you name it, everything is happening today and maybe even magnified from what it was back then. And it’s just as serious as the issue that they were dealing with. But the question is how are we going to address it? What’s the question we’re going to ask? Are we going to say, “So what is the church going to do for me?” Or do we point out and say, “So what is the church going to do about that over there?” Are we going to go down the entitlement road? See, as if the church is just a club or it’s an organization we belong to. We toss in our dues and we should get something in return for that or we can make demands upon it to take care of things. Are we going to ask, “What’s the church going to do for me?” Or are we going to say, “What are we, as a church, going to do?”

When we ask the right question, then we understand what the church is all about. The church is not some club or organization. This is the family of believers who comes together, who God has assembled and, in this family of believers, I guarantee you that God has given us all the gifts and all the talents that we need to meet all the challenges and all of the issues, the needs that are surrounding us. But it begins when we ask the right question. “What are we, as a church, going to do?”

It’s what the early church asked. “What are we, as a church, going to do?” So we’re going to address this situation. Look at the early church. They’re going to address the situation but they’re going to address it by saying, “Let’s identify the right people. Who are the right people to take care of the need that has been presented before us?” We see an incredible amount of wisdom by the apostles. So the twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry or the word but, brothers, choose seven from among you who are known to be full of the spirit and wisdom and we will turn this responsibility over to them and we will give our attention to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

So the apostles said, “Look, we have been gifted differently and each of us have a different skill set. Each of us are qualified for different roles in the church that God has assembled here.” And so they first point to themselves and they say, “We have to dedicate ourselves to the preaching of the word.” They are uniquely qualified to do this, are they not? They spent three years with Jesus, sitting at His feet learning plus Jesus appointed them as His apostles. Apostles means His messengers. So for the disciples, for the apostles, their role is to be that of a spokesman for God, of preaching God’s word and reaching out to the people with that.

“On the other hand, let’s identify among us seven who are full of the spirit and also,” what? Wisdom. Who’s qualified to take care of the distribution of the food to the widows? “We need somebody who has some organizational skills. We need somebody who has some administrative skills to oversee this huge operation, not just for the Hebraic Jews and not just for the Hellenistic Jews but for all people, for all of the widows who fall under our care. So we need seven guys who really kind of have organizational, administrative gifts and we’re going to take advantage of those gifts that God has given to the church so we can address the issue.”

So the first step that the church did is look for those who had the right qualifications or the right skill set, the gifts from God. But it’s not just the gifts. It’s not just the skills. But it’s linked with passion. What is it that they were passionate about that was driving them? For the apostles, that’s easy. They had the passion. They not only had the skills to preach God’s word but they also had a passion to preach about Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

If we flip back to Chapter 4 in Acts, we have Peter and John and they’re before the Sanhedrin. That’s sort of the Jewish ruling council at the time and they have them arrested. They pull them in and bring them into court and they look at them and they say, “Now listen, guys, you are not to preach in Jesus’ name again. We don’t want to hear that you’re stirring up all kinds of trouble. We’re going to let you go because we can’t put you in prison but do not speak that guy’s name again.” Listen to how they react to that. “But Peter and John replied, ‘Judge for yourselves whether it’s right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God,’” and here’s the key verse, “‘for we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.’”

They can’t help themselves. They have a passion that is burning inside of them. There is no stopping these men from talking about Jesus. They lived with Him for three years. They sat at His feet. They watched the miracles. They witnessed Him die. They put Him in a tomb. They went through the grief and the sadness for three days and then they saw Him alive. And then they sat at His feet again and listened to Him before He ascended up into heaven. There’s no stopping them.

Not only do they have the skills and the gifts to preach in Jesus’ name, but they have a burning passion in their heart to preach the message. I have no doubt that the seven guys they chose had a passion to take care of the widows, that there was some connection there, that they saw that of just supreme importance to take care of the widows who were surrounding them. You see, it’s a matching up between the skills and the gifts God has given and the passion in your heart. And when those two align, that is powerful. That is God’s church at its best.

And nothing has changed today. I guarantee you that God has given us this family of believers at Gloria Dei all of the gifts and all of the skills that we need to meet any challenge, any need, any problem that we can see. But we’re going to meet it as we each understand and start to comprehend our gifts and our skills.

The first thing we need to do is to say, “So where is it that God has gifted me? What skill set has God bestowed upon me?” Now some of you right now are going one of two ways. The one way is saying, “I didn’t know I had to be qualified to be in the church.” You know I’m not saying that. Most of you, however, are going the other direction. You’re breathing a sigh of relief. “Wow, I thought this guy was going to ask me to do something. I don’t have any skills. I don’t have any gifts.” I hear it all the time. Whenever I talk about this, somebody inevitably comes up to me and says, “Ah, but Pastor, there’s nothing special about me. I don’t have any gifts. I don’t have any special skills.” And unfortunately, I always answer the same way, dripping with sarcasm, and I say, “That’s amazing. That means you’re the only human being in all of creation that God forgot.”

Because scripture is clear. You’re going up against God’s word here. God says that every one of us has been gifted. Just a sprinkling, 1 Corinthians 12, “There are different kinds of gifts but the same spirit. There are different kinds of service but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working but the same God works all of them in some of the people.” No, misread that. “In all the people.” Or skip over to Verse 11, “All of these worked for the one in the same spirit and He gives them to each one just as He has determined.” To each one. If that’s not enough, let’s go over to the book of Romans. Romans 12 says, “We have different gifts according to the spirit.” Not some of us have different gifts but we, all of us, have different gifts according to the spirit. I guarantee you that God has made you the unique person you are. He formed and shaped you in the womb and He gave to you a unique set of gifts, skills and talents.

It’s our job to discover what are they? Sometimes, that’s by trial and error. But more likely than not, what is it that comes naturally to you? See, the reason why people come up to me and say, “I don’t have any special gift or talent,” is because it comes so naturally to you, because it comes so easily to you. So you don’t think there’s anything special about that. No, that’s how God made you. That’s how He created you. That’s the gift, that’s the skill, the talent.

So what is it that comes naturally to you? When you see a person who is hurting, do you immediately become empathetic? And are you that listening ear? When you see a situation that’s in chaos, do you jump in and organize it? Are you, by nature, a strategic thinker, always kind of future focused? What is it that comes naturally to you, easily to you? And then what is it that other people see in you as a confirmation of that? What is it that others say, “You know, you are so talented in that. You’re so good at that.” Don’t dismiss that. They’re recognizing the gifts that God has given to you.

And the second part of that is equally important. Where’s your passion? What is it that will really get you riled up? What is it that you will make sacrifices for, that you will squeeze it into your schedule? You’ll make time to make sure it happens. And where these two intersect, your passion and your skills and gifts given from God, it’s powerful. That’s God’s church at it’s best, doing incredible things.

The result for the early church, when these two aligned, the passions and the skills, and they were working in conjunction with one another, the apostles were preaching the word and reaching out to people, you have these seven taking care of the widows and certainly there were others, each one recognizing their gifts and talents working together, well, this is what happened. If we go back to the book of Acts, “After everything is said and done, it says, ‘So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.’” That’s kind of like the explanation point at the end. Could you imagine the local Jewish Rabbi, all of a sudden, coming in and confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? That’s what was happening. The word of God spread and the number of people coming to faith increased as the church at Jerusalem grew, as more people were snatched out of hell and put into heaven. I mean, that’s what we’re talking about here. People rescued from hell because of the gospel of Jesus and now are enjoying heaven. Why? Because the church was at its best, an intersection between their passions and the skills and gifts that God had given to them.

The church is the same today. God hasn’t stopped doling out His gifts. God hasn’t stopped infusing passion in your hearts. We have it all here, right now. And when you see someone who is working in the zone and they have a passion, look at the incredible things that happen. You want to witness that? Wander down to H3 at 9:00 and see the people who are involved in that service, as they’re reaching out to families with small children, as you see those who are doing the puppets, those who are leading the music, those who are at the stations as they reach out to those families and minister them.

You want to see it in action? Open up your Weekly Word right in the middle. You’re going to see a whole new slew of Stephen Ministers, people who recognize a skill and a gift that God had given to them and a passion they had for walking alongside someone else and helping them through a difficult situation. Just read some of their testimonials in there of why they’re doing that. That’s an intersection between the skills and the gifts and the passion.

I can go on from there. Look at the some of the works that’s happening in the youth. Look at some of the works that’s happening in children’s ministry or those things that are happening at the Food Pantry and around in our community. When God’s church comes together and we ask the right question, “What are we, the church, going to do?” And we recognize our skills and our gifts and it lines up with our passion, powerful things happen. And I guarantee you, if we can have that happen more often, these walls will not hold the people because the word of God will spread. And more people will be snatched out of hell and put into heaven because God will capture their hearts working through you. That’s God’s church being efficient and being effective. Because the work that we have to do is too important. It’s too important to just let it happen. We want to use the gifts that God has given to His church and infuse that with our passion and watch God work.

Maybe the best way that you can picture it is take the efficiency of Mom and interject that into the church. Amen.

Copyright 2010 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church