Mission
From the Series: aone:eight Neighborhoods
Speaker: Heather Zempel
Date: June 21, 2009
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Transcript
Hello NCC! My name is Heather Zempel, I’m the Discipleship Pastor here at National Community Church and I’m so excited to kick off our summer series aone:eight but first, can we give it up for all the fathers at all of our locations! I am so thankful for my dad. My dad coached every team I was ever part of. Then the poor man had to endure piano recitals, dance recitals and theatrical performances. He is a good, good man. Mom, I know you are watching this via the webcast, you might want to ask Dad to come over right because he might appreciate this story, that is if you guys want to hear how my dad taught me about the grace of God. There’s a little bit of debate about how old Heather was when this happened. I’m going to say I was about 7 or 8, so we’ll pick 7-year old Heather. On this particular Sunday night, my children’s choir had been asked to sing in the service, and when children’s choir sang, we would sit in the first couple of rows and then we would get up on the platform and sing our song and then usually we were dismissed to go back and sit with our families. For whatever reason, on this particular night, they didn’t do that. They had all the children go back to the first two rows to sit. So I am sitting front row, center, next to my best friend, Janie Fisher. Janie is trouble, I would use up all of my sermon time tonight if I told you my Janie Fisher stories. Anyway, I’m sitting front row center and my parents are sitting front row center of the balcony. I have no idea what happened on this night, but for whatever it was, everything was side-splittingly funny to me. It might have begun with the prayer time when bunch of people had come up to the altar to pray and this little girl knelt over and as she did, her ruffly underwear stuck out under her dress and Janie and I just lost it, and continued to loose it for the entire sermon. And what made it really bad is that we had a guest preacher that night. Heather decided that it would be a good idea to act out the sermon and imitate the preacher at key moments with his gestures and his hand motions and at some point, in the middle of all this nonsense, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I thought that my parents were really enjoying this. So I look up to the back to see my parents because I know they’ve got to just be so pleased with their child’s imitation of this man of God, and the look on my dad’s face showed me that he just wasn’t getting it. So I turned around a little confused about what I had done incorrectly and wrong and that didn’t last very long. I figured Dad probably just couldn’t see me real well, he was all the way up there and probably couldn’t see very well, so I continue with the imitation, the acting out of the sermon and finding everything absolutely hysterical. As I am in the middle of one grand dramatic gesture, my dad has now come from the balcony to where I was looking at me like ‘I am going to walk over in front of everyone and God and take you out of this service right now.’ I remember at the end of service having a very quick conversation with my dad at the very front of the church, then I remember very vividly going home and then the next morning at the breakfast table, having a discussion with the entire family. The main question was - why? I had no answer! I just thought it was really funny! But I remember thinking that this may be the end of my life, and I would never have to sing in children’s choir again. But my dad, I don’t know what it was, but I remember being threatened and I should be punished very badly and that the right thing for me to do would be to go apologize to the pastor, but my dad said the point was for me to learn a lesson, more than being punished, more than having to go check off a box, he wanted me to learn a lesson. And in that moment, I learned something about the grace of God. My poor friend Janie, on the other hand, got the spanking of her life.
But I learned something about the heart of the Father that as we walk around in this weird, delusional world that we create wherein everything we do is ok and right and funny and wrong, God grants grace. And sometimes it is the process of having to look up and see the angry face and look over and see the angry face and be caught in the middle of everyone. Over and over, we learn these lessons that God continues to extend his grace to us. I’ve seen samples of this in Scripture and that’s what I want to do tonight. I want to look at a couple places in the book of Mark.
Turn to Mark Chapter 8. That’s where we are going to start. Mark is one of my favorite gospels. It is very quickly moving. You see words like ‘suddenly’ and ‘quickly’ and ‘immediately’ show up in it over and over again, and it is a picture of Jesus as a man on a mission. I’m going to start reading in verse 31. This is right after Jesus had fed 4,000 and he has healed a blind man and he settles a conversation with his disciples that He is indeed the Messiah. This is what we read:
Then Jesus began to tell them that He, the Son of Man, would suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the leaders, the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed and three days later, He would rise again. As He talks about this openly with his disciples, Peter took Him aside and told Him He shouldn’t say things like that. Jesus turned and looked at his disciples and then said to Peter very firmly, “Get away from Me Satan, you are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God.”
Then He called all his disciples and the crowd to come over and listen. “If any of you want to follow me, they must put aside your selfish ambitions, shoulder your cross and follow Me. If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will loose it, but if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will find true life. How do you benefit if you gain the whole world but loose your own soul in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul? If a person is ashamed of me and my message, I, the Son of Man, will be ashamed of that person when I return in the glory of my Father with the holy angels.” Jesus went on to say, “I assure you that some of you standing here right now will not die before you see the kingdom of God arrive in great power.”
Let me stop there for a minute and talk about this kingdom of God. This is what Jesus has been talking about. The kingdom is coming. They have already established that Jesus is the Messiah. This is what these 12 men have invested their lives in. This Man was going to bring the kingdom of God that they have longed for their whole lives, that for thousands of year, their people have waited for, for the kingdom of God to come. So when Jesus, their Messiah, begins talking about death and expressing vulnerability and that He is at risk, Peter wants to shut Him up very quickly. These guys are looking and waiting for a kingdom that is political and military in nature, and Jesus said that is not it, because it is about sacrifice, it is about taking up our cross, putting aside our selfish ambition and following Him. I think what’s happening here is that the disciples were settling for a man-made gospel of convenience, when what Jesus was calling them to was the gospel of the cross. I think that is where we get derailed in our own lives. We so often are looking to settle for a gospel of convenience, that when I put my faith in Christ, everything works out. We can sit back and enjoy the blessings of God coming to us. That is not the gospel! The gospel is taking up our cross and following Him. The gospel that we have embraced and that we see in Scripture is not something that is easy. We see a gospel that tests the faith of a man by asking him to hike up a mountain and sacrifice his son. We embrace a gospel that comes to a wayward and deceitful man and wrestles with him and pulls his hip out of socket and then gives him a new name so he can have a new calling and be the father of nations. We see a gospel that throws people into dens with lions and into fiery furnaces. We embrace a gospel that nails the Son of God to a cross, and I do not believe that Jesus died 2,000 years ago so we can live safe, comfortable convenient lives. He died on the cross to save us from a lifetime of hell and He has invited us to come be a part of that mission. It is the gospel of the cross, and if we want to see the kingdom of God come in our day and in our generation and in our culture, we have to abandon this false, man-made idea that the gospel somehow makes our live convenient and throw ourselves into the gospel of the cross.
Let’s keep going because the fascinating thing here is that this doesn’t happen just once. It happens again. If you turn over to Mark 9, one page over, in verse 30, the heading in my Bible says that Jesus again predicts his death:
Leaving that region, they traveled through Galilee. Jesus tried to avoid publicity in order to spend more time with his disciples and teach them. He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed, He will be killed, but three days later he will rise from the dead.”
They didn’t understand what he was saying, however, and they were afraid to ask him what he meant. After they arrived at Capernaum and settled in a house, Jesus asked his disciples, “What were you discussing out on the road?” But they didn’t answer, because they had been arguing about which of them was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve disciples over to him, and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else.”
The disciples were so focused on themselves and who they were and who God was going to make them be, that they totally forgot about their mission. They were neglecting the mission. Jesus is saying, ‘I’m going to be betrayed and killed but three days later I’m going to rise from the dead.’ They don’t understand what He is talking about so they just focus inwardly. Who’s going to be the greatest. I think some members of the church are the biggest bunch of navel gazing people in the world. We will visit churches and size them up by who is the greatest, the greatest music, the greatest preaching, the greatest people, who’s got the best stuff going on? And somehow, we’ve gotten this idea that church is about us. It is NOT about us, it is about the people who aren’t even here yet. It is about the people that are around this area, living in this neighborhood who don’t yet know Jesus. And while Jesus is saying, ‘Guys, pick up the cross and follow Me, follow in my footsteps,’ we sit around and wonder, ‘how can we do something greater? Who is greater around here?’ I think that we derail from the mission of God when we focus inwardly instead of focusing outwardly. Jesus is telling his disciples about his mission to the world but they focus inwardly and miss his mission to go outwardly. And it doesn’t stop. Turn over one more chapter, Mark 10. The heading in my Bible - Jesus again predicts his death. Verse 33:
Jesus tells them, “When we get to Jerusalem, the Son of Man will be betrayed to the leading priests and the teachers of the religious law. They will sentence Him to die and hand Him over to the Romans. They will mock Him, spit on Him, beat Him with their whips and kill him. But after three days He will rise again.”
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee came over and spoke to Him, “Teacher,” they said, “We want you to do us a favor.”
“What is it?” He asks.
“In your glorious kingdom, we want to sit in places of honor next to you, one at your right and the other at your left.”
Are you serious?! (paraphrase) ‘We are going to Jerusalem, and when we get there, oh by the way, this is the third time I’ve told you guys this, I’m going to be betrayed, I’m going to be mocked, they are going to spit on Me and kill Me but in three days, I’m going to rise again.’ And for whatever reason, James and John think this is an opportune time to ask for a promotion and a raise. John! The guy who is supposed to be this super-emotionally intelligent and compassionate guy! Here’s the gospel being predicted and he says, ‘I’m really most interested in who is going to be your right-hand man and if it is going to be my brother, I’ll settle for being your left-hand man.’ They were so focused on what was happening in the future, looking forward, hoping and waiting to see what history was going to bring to them. I think we do the same thing. Jesus is telling us, ‘this is my example, this is my way, this is what it means to live a life on a mission with Me,’ and we say thank You Jesus for doing that, and now I’m going to bide my time here on earth until we get to that heaven thing. I put my faith and trust in You and it seems to me that the next step is just to wait for the heaven thing to happen. We wait for history to happen to us instead of writing history ourselves.
Jesus is telling his disciples to follow Him, to come write history with Him, not to wait for the future to happen, make the future happen, follow Me, set aside your selfish ambitions, shoulder your cross and follow Me. This is the mission that Jesus was giving his disciples and this is the way He wanted them to live, but just like bone-headed, 7-year old Heather sitting on the front row center of the church not getting that this is the way I’m supposed to live. The disciples are missing the point. Three chapters, three conversations in a row and they miss the point. Were they not listening? It is easy for us to pick on them, yet we do the same thing today. We try so hard, we get frustrated, we try with every ounce of energy we have to embrace a gospel of convenience. We focus inwardly to the point where we wither away in our selfish and we sit back and wait for history to come to us instead of writing it. We continue to read in Mark and sure enough, all this stuff that Jesus said was going to happen happens. He was betrayed, He was whipped, He was spit upon, He was mocked, He was nailed to the cross, and just like He said He would do three times, He rose again on the third day. We keep reading, 50 days later in the book of Acts, Jesus gives his final recorded earthly words and we read them in Acts 1:8:
But when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere, in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
This seems like a ridiculous goal to me. Twelve men from the backwoods, fishing villages, synagogues and tax-collecting agencies of Galilee have been handed the keys to the kingdom of God. This kingdom that they totally misunderstood, He said, ‘here, it is yours, go do it.’ Twelve men who just months earlier, He told them three times, ‘this is what the kingdom looks like and this is how you are to live in it.’ And they said, ‘I’m just really interested in knowing who is going to be vice president.’ Twelve men who just weeks earlier had run away in fear. Jesus was saying, ‘it is your turn now, go for it, do it.’
There are a couple things I see happening in this passage. It says when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power. The disciples received power on the day of Pentecost. We can’t be a part of God’s mission until God has done something in our lives.
The second thing we see is that He says, you will tell people about me everywhere. In some translations, the word is witness. Here’s a fascinating thing, in the original Greek language, the word for witness is the Greek word martyrs, which is our word for martyr. See, a lot of times in the church, we think of a witness as someone who walks door to door with tracts or a bullhorn in an alley or a sign. The word witness in the original language of the Bible was a person who gave personal testimony and the word is the word that we use today for martyr. It is because in the first century of the church, the idea of being a Christ-follower and dying for your faith are so synonymous that they became one in the same.
So going back to this idea of kingdom and what it means to be a part of that kingdom takes on new shape. Jesus said, ‘go be a witness and tell people about Me everywhere,’ and He hands it to these 12 unlikely guys. My thought is that they wound up pulling it off. We can do the same in our generation and in our culture. We are here today because these 12 guys who didn’t get it three times in a row fulfilled their mission, they did it. They handed it off to the next generation, and it’s been handed off from generation to generation to generation. And my question is - what are we going to do today? How do we live, not in the sense of seeing the kingdom of God come in the future, but living and bringing the kingdom of God to the neighborhoods that we live in and the places we work in.
Last year, Pastor Joel came to our church with a ridiculous vision, to go from 3 mission trips per year to 10 and to send 10% of NCCers on those trips. I think everybody on staff thought he was a little bit crazy. See, it’s crazy people that write history. Pastor Joel is going to give us updates on the aone:eight initiatives, we base it around this verse in Acts 1:8 of going to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth, and he is going to give an update, but let me read you a few things that NCCers have done this year on aone:eight mission trips. Teams have been busy rescuing girls from the sex-trade industry in Thailand; they’ve been serving orphans; doing construction in the Dominican Republic; training leaders and teaching kids in northern Ireland; serving AIDS victims in Ethiopia; serving the poor in the slums of Nairobi; rebuilding hurricane-pummeled houses in New Orleans; and renovating a drug rehabilitation center in Trinidad; and we’ve got two more teams going out later this year. Going to the ends of the earth. But there is another part to that mission, and this summer we are going to bring it home.
This summer, we are going to bring it to our Jerusalem. For the disciples, Jerusalem was home. Judea was the surrounding region, Samaria were those people who lived geographically close to them but culturally were miles away, and then the ends of the earth. The very cool thing about bringing aone:eight home, about fulfilling this mission in our Jerusalem is that we see all of these people living right here in the Washington D.C. area. We see people that live miles away from us but culturally are very different from us. The end of the earth has come here. To go to the ends of the earth, all we have to do is walk outside our front door and they are on our street, they are in the cubicle next to us, they are on the treadmill in our gyms, they are in our coffeehouse. Are we living our mission? Are we taking the gospel? Are we serving our neighbors the way Jesus told his disciples to do? Here’s where we are heading over the next five weeks, we are going to talk about what it means to be on this aone:eight mission right here at home, right here in our neighborhood. We are going to talk about what it means to be salt and light. We are going to talk about what it means to pray powerful risky prayers that put us in situations that are difficult but have tremendous, life-changing results. We are going to talk about compassion. We are going to talk about how to communicate across cultures the goodness and the love of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And throughout the week, our small groups are going to be tracking with that sermon series. Every small group this summer is based on a neighborhood. It could be the geographic neighborhood where you live; it could be the marketplace neighborhood where you work; or an interspace neighborhood where you play. For six weeks, we are going to be asking the question - who is my neighbor and how do I love them? We will culminate with every group creatively and prayfully coming up with a way to share the love of Christ with our neighbors. It’s just a first step toward trying to do what Jesus is teaching his disciples to do.
What I want to do now is something very practical. When you walked in, you should have gotten one of these discipleship packets. Take it out, I want to show you some of the stuff that’s in here. This is arranged by those neighborhoods, so go to page 8, you see the start of geographic neighborhoods. We’ve got them on Capitol Hill, we’ve got them in Maryland and in northern Virginia. On page 13, you see the start of interest groups. Listen to some of the groups we have going on. Groups for artists and musicians, we have a choir that’s going to do a benefit performance, we have a band camp, how many band geeks do we have? We’ve got three groups for people who want to cook, two groups doing soccer for kids, one in Virginia and one here in D.C. We’ve got groups for tennis players and runners and readers and baseball fans and software developers, moms, dads, men, women, even women who work in agricultural policy. There is a group for you! Turn over the page 16, you see some of our marketplace groups. These are groups that are meeting around where they work. There is a group for people who are Congressional staffers, meeting in the House office building in the mornings. If you are a staffer or intern, we invite you to be part of that group. We’ve got a group for teachers; for people who work in Chinatown and in courts and in medicine. Tons of people, NCCers, who are coming together for the purpose of asking - who is my neighbor? Who is my neighbor at work, who is my neighbor at play? Who is my neighbor where I live? We’re trying to find a way as a community, as a group of people, to share the love of Christ in a very practical way.
I have never said what I’m about to say. I’ve never said that I believe every NCCer should be in a small group, but this summer, I’m saying it. I believe that every NCCer should be in a small group. There is tremendous synergy and momentum that can happen when we as a body of Christ come together and get on the same page at the same time for the purpose of following Jesus Christ.
Here’s the next thing I want you to do. In your bulletin, you should have gotten one of these cards, on the back, there is a way to sign up for these groups. I’m going to fill mine out right here and right now. I want us to do this together. Everybody, on name, write your name, even if you’re leading a group, write your name. Don’t make me do this by myself. Fill in your email. Then your group, I’m leading a group so I’m going to write 15th and D Street. I’m also interested in Pastor Joel’s Dream Center prayer group so I’m going to write that down too. You can be in more than one. If you’re not sure what group, you can write down that you’d like to join a geographic, marketplace or interest group in this area and we will get back with you and help you find a group that will be a good fit for you. Now, what I want you to do is on your way out the door, drop this in one of the buckets. Turn this in and we’ll make sure you get in a group.
We’ve got a couple choices to make today. We can continue to live as though the purpose of our life is to arrive safely in heaven. Or we can go ahead and loose our lives now so that we can live in the fullness of the life that Jesus has created us to live. We can choose to settle for a man-made, false, empty gospel convenience or we can embrace the gospel of the cross knowing that it is not going to be easy, it will be difficult. It is the way that God has called us to live. We can choose today to continue to focus inwardly or we can focus outwardly. We can choose to sit around and wait for history to happen or we can jump in and start making history and writing history right here in our neighborhoods in Washington D.C. and Maryland and Virginia. Sometimes, I’m dumb. I can sit on the front row and act like an idiot. But the life I want to live is the life that Jesus has called us to live. Sometimes I can be as thick as the disciples and not get it, but God is patient. He tells us over and over that this is the life He wants us to live and this is what can happen when you do. Just imagine a church full of people whose hearts are breaking for the things that break the heart of God. Just imagine a small group of people who are yearning to learn what it means to love their neighbor. Imagine a city full of small groups who are changing their neighborhood by practically, creatively, prayerfully sharing the love of Christ. Imagine all of us being part of us being part of something bigger than ourselves. That’s the kind of imagination that fuels the mission that Jesus gave his disciples. Go everywhere. That’s the mission I want to be on. And I’m inviting all of you to be on it as well.
In closing, I want to pray a prayer of blessing and commissioning over the people who are going to be leading groups this summer. I would like to ask, at all of our locations, if you are in service right now and leading one of these groups, please stand up. I’m going to pray a prayer of blessing and commissioning over you. If you are seated around one of these people, pray for them as well.
Father, we are so grateful to be part of your family. Thank You for all of our leaders at all of our locations who have given their summers to lead this aone:eight mission. I pray that You would fill them with knowledge and understanding. I pray that you would fill them with peace and with joy. I ask that the fruit of the spirit would be abundant in their lives and that You would stir up the spiritual gifts that You have given to each of them. I pray that You would give them vision and boldness; give them favor with their neighbors. I pray that your Holy Spirit would go with them and saturate their neighborhoods where they live and work and play. God bless them and keep them. May your face shine upon them and be gracious to them. Lift up your countenance upon them. In Jesus Name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
