A New Understanding of an Old Situation

Mission Sunday March 6, 2016 SERMON ILLUSTRATION Don't Recycle Old Life In the late 1920s my grandparents married and moved into Grandpa's old family home. It was a clapboard house with a hall down the middle. In the '30s they decided to tear down the old house and build another to be their home for the rest of their lives. Much to my grandmother's dismay, many of the materials of the old house were re-used in their new house. They used old facings and doors, and many other pieces of the finishing lumber. Everywhere my grandmother looked, she saw that old house—old doors that wouldn't shut properly, crown molding split and riddled with nail holes, unfinished window trimming. It was a source of grief to her. All her life she longed for a new house. When God brings us into the kingdom, the old way of living must be dismantled and discarded. Len Sullivan, Tupelo, Mississippi Even Jesus says not to put new wine into old wineskins, it just doesn’t work. If you are going to do a new thing, you have to do it all the way. As a matter of fact, did you know that you get a totally new body every seven years. The cells in your body totally die and have to regenerate themselves every 7 years. So there is not one part of your body, that is the same part as it was last year. It looks the same, and some of us may even say that we are worse off now than we were seven years ago. But that is not true, life and death occurs in our bodies somewhere every day. And as long as you have breath, the body is continually working to regenerate itself. The problem is that we may have a new body, but many times we have the same old thoughts and feelings. We don’t want to change, or to adapt to new conditions. And yet the bible says that when you are living in Christ, you are a new creation, on the inside and the out. Everything is new, your thoughts, you feelings, your way of dealing with things, even your commitment. We have been dealing with renewing ourselves through renewing our relationship with God during the time of lent. Stewardship has been about us renewing our commitment to Christ and to christ’s church. That process should continue long after today. But I wanted us to come together on this last day of the stewardship campaign in order for us to rethink who we are as a community, to rethink how we are working together as a church, and for us to recommit to doing the work of the church. This has been a tuff year for us. Have you noticed that we have had very few outside guest coming to our church this year? Paul says that our task is not complete, until we give someone else a chance to renew their mind and spirit. He tells us that we should be ambassadors for Christ, spreading the good news, that everything and everybody can be a new creature in Christ. God is trusting us to not only renew ourselves, but to pass this message on to others. It is like a fisherman who was in his boat off the coast of Alaska where the tides vary up to 25 feet. The tide was going out fast and he was too close to the shore. His boat got stuck on the rocky ocean bottom. It was rocking back and forth and would break apart shortly, destroying his whole livelihood. A fellow fisherman further out to sea saw his plight. Without hesitation, he drove his boat alongside the mired boat and threw lines to the other boat, lashing them together catamaran fashion so that both boats could ride out the low tide together without rocking back and forth. When high tide returned, they could both back off to safer, deeper water and go their way. (5) In order to pass this message on, you have to see people the way God sees them. And want for them what God wants for them. I don’t want to talk for too long because we have a lot of work that needs to be done. And I don’t want people to think that the pastor got you to church and held you hostage. But this is the culmination of our stewardship drive. So it is time for us to recommit our selves to the work of Christ. I do want to say one thing, and I could write a whole sermon on this, and just might a little later in the year. When I hear you all talk about the ministry of the church, you tend to think that your are helping the pastor out in her ministry. When something needs to be done then the pastor needs our help. Whenever there is a function, in order for it to happen, then the pastor needs to be a part of it. There is nothing further from the church. I am here to help you, you are not here to help me. As a matter of fact, all of us are here working together, to help God. Have you noticed that the scripture never says that God need to be reconciled to man. It is always man who needs to be reconciled to God. God never gives up on any of us. but we tend to give up on ourselves. And we can give up on the church. I say all that to say – that the ministry of this church is about all of us, we all have a role to play. Not the same role, but I role. Sometime we even have to learn how to switch our roles and to do something different in order for God’s kingdom to move forward. Today – we celebrate the work of the laity. This is your church, your future, and your walk with God. We have three task to perform today. So I want to allow as much time as possible to get through those task. The task are: a special building project led by the lay people, and Peggy Jackson Turner is going to talk about that, Next since it is mission Sunday – we have to fill out our pledge cards, and Rosalynn Anderson is going to lead us through that portion of giving not must our treasure, but our time and talent. And finally, we have to put that commitment into action. I am not sure that we will get everything on the calendar today, but we will do the basics and continue to work on these projects. We will have communion and then celebrate our work with a meal together.