Seeking to Serve

This week's text and sermon I preached... (audio)

Romans 12:9-21

English Standard Version (ESV)

Marks of the True Christian
9(A) Let love be genuine.(B) Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10(C) Love one another with brotherly affection.(D) Outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not be slothful in zeal,(E) be fervent in spirit,[a](F) serve the Lord. 12(G) Rejoice in hope,(H) be patient in tribulation,(I) be constant in prayer. 13(J) Contribute to the needs of the saints and(K) seek to show hospitality.

14(L) Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15(M) Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16(N) Live in harmony with one another.(O) Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.[b](P) Never be wise in your own sight. 17(Q) Repay no one evil for evil, but(R) give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18If possible, so far as it depends on you,(S) live peaceably with all. 19Beloved,(T) never avenge yourselves, but leave it[c] to the wrath of God, for it is written,(U) "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." 20To the contrary,(V) "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.



In 1824, a small group of young women in Paris felt a strong call to ministry and service amongst those in need of medical care. These 12 young Catholic women wished to serve those in greatest need, starting their own new and very unique order of nuns. They lived at a time of great conflict and distrust of the Church, especially the Catholic Church in France and a time of rampant illness, disease and poor sanitation. Most of the poor could not afford to go to the hospital and many saw hospitals as death traps. The poor often resorted to relatives for home healthcare, most of whom had no experience in tending the sick.

It is into this world, these brave young women sojourned. Popular belief at the time was that, if nuns left the safety and security of a convent, they were to return by nightfall. However, the needs of the sick could not be scheduled solely in daylight hours. The young sisters would stay on floor mats and tend to the sick all night, if need be. These sisters would tend not only to the patient, but to the patient’s whole family. If the mother was sick, they would care for the children and cook the meals and tend to any housework. If it were the father, they would work the land or his shop. They practiced a tireless, faithful hospitality… not in a church or a convent or a hospital, but they sought out those in need and when they found them, they did all that was needed and more.

The sisters broke the tradition too of going only to those within their faith tradition and they refused to offer their help upon contingency of belief or repentance of sins. Their radical love acted out in their “sisterly affection” was unmatched. And while the Catholic church was skeptical about granting them their own order, by the end of their first year, they had more than doubled in size and continued to grow. More sisters flocked to “associate with the lowly.”

These young women, who became known as the Sisters of Bon Secours, the sisters of good help, would go on to become a large order that established hospitals internationally, including throughout the United States. I worked at a Bon Secours hospital as a chaplain in seminary, and they continue their holistic ministry of seeking to show hospitality even today. They do not merely extend medical care to all those in need, regardless of ability to pay, but they will do all they can to serve the entire family of the patient in whatever way may be needed.

In this way, the Sisters continue to serve in a way that reflects Christ’s ministry in a way that so many hospitals, hotels… and churches… do not. They do not merely provide the highest level of hospitality to those who pass through their doors, but they seek out those in need. It is that seeking that is unique in Christ’s ministry and teaching. Try to imagine a gospel devoid of seeking. Jesus opens up a back room in his father’s carpentry shop and takes applications for 12 spots in his disciple visioning team. He tells these disciples that the son of man has come to save the lost who stop by his shop. He tells them stories. Once there was a shepherd who lost one of his sheep. He sat around all day and when the sheep never came back, he was very upset. A young man takes his inheritance early, squanders all his money in a foreign country and when he heads home, his father sees him coming and sits at the kitchen table till his son peeks his head in the door and gives him a disapproving look before hugging him.

What kind of Gospel is that? Where is the Jesus who seeks to save the lost? Where is the good shepherd who goes looking for his lost sheep? Where is the prodigal son’s father who goes running out to his lost son? Where is the seeking? Where is the associating with the lowly? Without leaving the house, without getting out in the world, without turning over stones, without seeking, hospitality is just good customer service. It’s not “brotherly affection.” It’s not “associating with the lowly.” It’s letting the lowly associate with us. And it’s certainly not “overcoming evil with good.”

We worship a God who seeks us. It is the example he sets from the beginning of creation. Adam and Eve, for all their stupidity, know that their God is a seeking God. They go and hide. And sure enough, God comes looking for his children. The Bible is a history book… in that it is a history of the times God has gone looking for his people. As Presbyterians, we often baptize infants and small children. We do this as a symbolic act that before we ever profess faith or go seeking God… he is seeking us. It is one of the most deeply important reminders for us as Christians… that we worship a God who seeks us. And he sent his son to find us and to show us that same example, to seek out the lost, to seek to show hospitality.

As a freshman in college, I can only remember one or two care packages I received. One of them was a complete surprise. I received an air mail package from my home town. I couldn’t imagine who would send me an air mail package or why they would do it from only 2 hours away. I opened the box and found 2 dozen fresh chocolate chip cookies, made with love by my best friend’s mom. She had shipped them air mail so they’d still be fresh when I got them. More than cared for, I felt sought out. I felt found. I felt loved. That is seeking to show hospitality.

Many of us know that kind of love. Many of us have experienced the feeling of being sought after. This is a feeling, a knowledge and a hope that we cannot deprive another from feeling, from knowing, from sharing. In seeking to show hospitality, we show others the radical love of Christ in a way that we cannot do passively. We can be good people by being kind to those who walk through our door. But we cannot be good Christians, good disciples if we do not run out our own doors and go look for those who are lost or in need. We are to be a church on the move. And what is it we must do when we get our own doors? We must seek out those in need and seek to do everything we can for them. And there are even deeper needs than those of a lonely, hungry college student.

Emperor Julian of Rome once remarked of the early Christians that “the godless Galileans feed our poor in addition to their own.” In order to feed people who didn’t come to their churches and homes, the Christians had to leave their homes and go find these hungry people. And it was so common a practice and so radical a notion that even the emperor knew what this fledgling group was up to. It’s the Gospel manifest in the faith of a people who are convicted.

What is the Gospel if not a collection of the hope we are promised and the expectations we are given by a God who loves us? If the Gospel you profess is full of love, so too should be your life and faith. If the Gospel in which you believe is full of forgiveness, so too should your life be. If your Gospel is full of stories of seeking and saving the lost and seeking to show hospitality, shouldn’t your life be a story of the same?

The prophet Isaiah was big on hospitality. And his brand of it was not an easy one. If you don’t like being challenged in your lifestyle, stay out of Isaiah. It’s one of the bad neighborhoods of the Bible. If you decide you’re gonna read Isaiah, don’t go in there unprepared. Have your excuses ready. Be ready to defend your lifestyle choices with arguments about how much you need your creature comforts and expensive possessions to be happy, or how you need an expensive car because it’s reliable. And if you get backed into a corner, do what I so often do and pull out the big guns and be ready to say your biggest concern is the safety and security of your family. Because Isaiah is tough. Isaiah isn’t interested in excuses and good intentions.

Isaiah says we must not only make up a nice room for relatives and even the in-laws. Isaiah says we must not only give money to the homeless and provide them places to stay, low income housing and shelters. Isaiah says we have to invite the homeless into our own homes! Most of us get around that by living in nice neighborhoods and high rises where the poor dare not venture. We seek safety and refuge far more often than we seek to show hospitality to those in need.

The people with whom I worked in inner city Richmond moved into the worst area of town for just that reason. Richmond, like many cities, Denver included, is designed to minimize the interaction those in different socio-economic groups must have with one another. There are skywalks that connect office buildings so you don’t ever have to risk running into a homeless person. Not only are the bad neighborhoods separated from the good ones by geography, but even the highways that pass through have strategically placed trees, planted by the city, that hide the lower income neighborhoods from view.

This had to be pointed out to me by my mentor there. As I drove from my safe home in a neighborhood that had one car break in over the course of a year to this neighborhood where homicide was a daily reality, I had never noticed all the carefully constructed barriers that kept me not just safe from crime, but safe from ever seeing the need. The people who moved into this neighborhood found the need because they were seeking. I hadn’t even thought to look.

We have had 9 baptisms this year at Wellshire. Each is a reminder that God seeks us. Each is a reminder that we are called to seek. My prayer for each of you as you leave today, a church on the move, that your eyes be wide open to need, always seeking those in need. I pray that when you look, you find everything but the excuses that will keep you from showing hospitality to all. Seek to serve. Amen.

The Gates of Hell

Matthew 16: 13-20
English Standard Version (ESV)

Peter Confesses Jesus as the Christ
13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" 14And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." 15He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" 16Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." 17And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed[c] in heaven." 20 Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Hear It Here

It’s a dangerous business, going out your front door. So starts the Children’s book, The Hobbit. I’ve been rereading a lot of those recently, in anticipation of the arrival of our little one... It’s well documented that stepping out your front door is dangerous business. A lot can happen out there. In many ways, it’s the hardest part. It’s how Jesus begins his ministry, calling the disciples out of their homes, out of their lives, out of the boat. It’s no accident that Jesus does this. Once he’s got them out the door, they can do almost anything.

I was among the group from Wellshire this summer that visited the Holy Land. We had the privilege of visiting the house of Peter where Jesus very likely said these words. Beside the house is a little beach on the Sea of Galilee, a beach covered in small pebbles. A reminder of the words he spoke. “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” Does this choice seem odd to any of you? At first glance, it should. This is the guy who couldn’t sit still. We don’t have one instance of Peter in scripture twiddling his thumbs or sitting on his hands, meditating or reading the paper. Peter would not have made a good Presbyterian. Peter is the hyperactive disciple of the twelve. Jesus is transfigured… Peter has a hammer and nails out, ready to build mountain cabins for the group. Jesus is taking a stroll on the water… Peter is jumping out of the boat to go skipping across the waves. Jesus is being arrested… Peter has a sword out, ready to defend his Lord and teacher.

So why on EARTH, does Jesus turn to this wiggle worm, busy body, robe-full-of-springs bouncy fidgeter and say, “you’re a rock and I’m gonna build my church on you?” Could it be that Jesus is building a church that will never sit still?

What the heck kind of rock is that? If Peter, whose name is Greek for ROCK, was an ordinary rock, he wouldn’t have made it two steps out of the boat when Jesus called him. He would’ve sunken immediately. In fact, the moment we begin looking at rocks in scripture, we start seeing that they don’t sit still much longer than Peter does. A very small rock takes down the Philistine giant in the hands of a young shepherd boy who would become king. Rocks are the backup singers that are ready to shout if the people who welcome Jesus fall silent. And a rock rolls away as our savior rises from the dead.

All three of the verses from Psalms this morning speak about rocks on the move, rocks that save and protect…

The LORD lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be the God of my salvation!

To you, O LORD, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit.

Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily! Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me!

Our Lord is a rock that lives. Our Lord is a rock that can hear our cries for help. Our Lord is a rock that goes out to save. This is the kind of Rock that God sets his church upon. Jesus doesn’t say Peter is his immovable steady rock upon which the church will stay, unmoving, still, motionless, invulnerable to and unconcerned with the outside world. This rock is not a sinking stone, but a Holy Rolling Stone!

A favorite classic movie of mine is Sister Act. Whoopi Goldberg’s Reno lounge singer character witnesses a violent murder and is hidden in a convent till she can testify. As you can imagine, she turns the place upside down, and the convent has an effect on her as well. She becomes Sister Mary Clarence and tries to fit in… in her own way. Everything about the convent is designed to protect the sisters from the outside world, and so is a perfect place to hide Sister Mary Clarence. However, she cannot abandon the outside world so quickly, and finds that many of the sisters share that passion, desiring to help those outside the walls.

When Sister Mary Clarence succeeds in bringing people in off the streets with her music, the Monseigneur is delighted. Mary Clarence takes the opportunity to speak for the mother superior, the very protective head of the convent, purposely undermining her, and says, “She wants us to go out into the neighborhood and meet the people.” As the mother superior begins to protest adamantly out of fear for herself and her nuns, the other nuns plead with her… “Oh, sister, that’s why many of us became nuns.” And an older nun says, “There’s a lot more that we could for these people than pray for ‘em.”

And so they go out to meet the people and their church gets moving. It gets outside itself, outside the walls, outside its own gates. “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” So Jesus is not building a Church that is heavily fortified with gates that can withstand the attacks of hell and evil… he’s building a church that will attack the gates of hell! The Church can certainly be a sanctuary for those in need. The church in Sister Act began by extending hospitality to those who came in off the streets. But if that’s all they had done, they would have missed the whole point. Only the people within hearing range of the church came in for the music. There were many more people dwelling in poverty, in hunger and oppression and sickness and hopelessness than who lived within a block of the church building. How sad it would be… if the Church became confined to the buildings in which it resides and worships.

As the church in Sister Act begins to turn the tide in the neighborhood… feeding people, loving people and bringing music, joy, hope… the aging mother superior becomes incredibly nervous about their new direction, terrified of the real-life danger it invites into the lives of her nuns. Discouraged, she tells Mary Clarence, “Could I keep this going, even if I wanted to? No. I am a relic… and I have misplaced my tambourine.”

When a Sister Mary Clarence inspires us, we all desire to rise to the occasion, to help Hunger Task Force pack boxes, to travel to Haiti, to head to Galveston or Joplin or the local Denver schools and shelters. But how often do we misplace our tambourines? How often do we see the Church as our refuge, the safe base of operations from where we conduct our saintly chores? How often do we associate our church attendance, Sunday school, worship, Bible studies, youth groups, fellowship groups, circles, committees and sessions on tap… with actively storming the gates?

I don’t mean to say that any of those is bad. Holly would have my head. Those are recon, strategy sessions and battle plans. But imagine science teachers who could never hope for a student that would go on to cure cancer or invent a new sustainable energy source. The last thing any Sunday school teacher hopes for is to inspire their students merely to a life of good Sunday school attendance.

Jesus does not say, “Peter, you are the immovable object on which I will build my church and the gates of it will never be penetrated, scaled or obliterated by hell and evil.” The Church of Jesus has no gates. What then, are the gates of hell? What in this world is evil? What is so deeply entrenched that it cannot easily be removed? At one time, the gates of hell in America looked like the institution of slavery… and then Jim Crow laws. And not one of us should pretend that racism, bigotry of all kinds or indifference is not a part of daily life in this country and all over the globe. We cannot pretend that children all over the world, even in Denver, don’t go to bed hungry each night or that our economy isn’t contributing more and more intensely to our homeless population and putting a greater and greater strain on our food banks. Those are the gates of hell… the seemingly-impenetrable barrier that separates us from one another. And the Church is called to assail, to attack, to bring down those gates.

It would be foolish to believe we could put a real dent in any of these gates from within the walls of this building. A church full of people who are so well-educated, so aware and so passionate cannot be content to try. We cannot be stones on which holy moss grows. We must be a rock like Peter, fidgety and discontented. We have to get out there. For some of you, this will look like family vacations that look more like mission trips or field trips, so your children will learn your passion for God’s children everywhere. For some of you, this will look like volunteer hours at MetroCareRing or Denver Inner City Parish. For some of you, it will be going somewhere here in Denver or to Joplin or Haiti in October during our week of Work-ship. We cannot be content to see ourselves as relics who have lost our tambourines.

Mark Yaconelli, author and profound story teller, meets with small groups of adults and will ask them, “at what time in your life did you stop dancing?” The question gets at the heart of our transition from childlikeness to adultness… as opposed to our transition from childhood to adulthood. When in our lives does joy stop being a reason in and of itself to dance? When do we stop moving? When do we become settled? When does our church stop moving?

This morning, we celebrate in joy with many among us who have gotten out of bed and walked or run for a purpose, for a cure. They walk and they run and they stand with others to attack the gates, to fight for a cure. This is a church on the move, God’s people storming the gates, a rock that will not stay put. God built his Church on a moving rock, and upon that Rock, the Church should always be moving toward the gates of all that hurts and oppresses and stands against the good news of life and love. It was no accident that God built his church, our church on a rock that would never sit still. God never wants us to sit still.

In this passage, Jesus not only establishes his Church, but he makes a promise… that building this church on the rock he has chosen… the gates of Hell shall not prevail. We are a part of a church built on the rock God chose, the rock that God set in motion. When I was in Galveston, I saw a motivational poster in the hallway of the small church in which we stayed. It portrayed a beautiful beach sunset and in lovely script, it shared the wisdom of a wiser generation and the enthusiasm of a younger one… “May the Lord bless you and keep you… and rock your face off.” Go, be not the church that fortifies gates against the storm. Be the church that storms the gates. All glory be to God. Amen.

Green Day

Fly Me to the Moon... A recent post on Lonely Planet is about some of the least Eart-like looking places on Earth. These pictures are of places here that look just out of this world. Please check them out.

Also, if you have a picture of somewhere that looks just out of this world, send me the picture or a link and I'll enter you to win this month's little prize: pick the topic of Brian's next blog. This can be anything related to culture, the Church or religion that you think needs to be discussed.

Green Day

"We are the only species that celebrates Shark Week. Sharks don't even celebrate Shark Week." -Jeff Winger, Community

It's True. We do celebrate Shark Week. Discovery Channel has been hosting it for 24 years now. It's gotten so popular, pop icon Lady Gaga does their promo song. If you've never experinced Shark Week, you don't know what you're missing. It's phenomenal... for more than a few reasons. First of all, it's a whole week dedicated to one kind of animal... every year... for a quarter of a century! Perhaps even more interesting is that it's sort of the "bad guy" of the animal kingdom. Despite the very few shark-related fatalities in the history of the world (compared to car crashes and lightning strikes), sharks get an awful rap.

So for one week each year, the media redeems itself by bringing us a realistic look at one of God's most spectacularly fascinating and awe-inspiring creatures, one of the oldest species alive. They've outlived the dinosaurs and some experts believe they may even outlast Survivor. So, if you have cable (we don't), tune in and get hooked. Or just watch Jaws on Netflix.