Sermon: "Eye to Eye"

2nd in the "Visioneering" series.
Delivered November 15, 2009 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Sermon Text: John 5:16-23;20:21

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Well it has been an exciting few weeks here at Central Presbyterian Church. We've had over five missionaries visit us in just the last two weeks or so. If you go back into our Mission and Outreach office, on the back wall you can see photos of all the people that we support in regional and international missions. About 70 different units, but there are hundreds of faces there. You know all the family members and things like that. It's really something to see that whole wall of people we've sent out, people we support in mission all around the world.

And when these people come to visit us it's always a great time of interaction, a time of getting to know them better. They come and speak at our different meetings and things like that. And when you get into conversations we often are really interested in the way we're different than them. And I know this from having been a missionary for 10 years and going to a lot of churches and having a lot of conversations. You know, we always end up focusing a lot on the differences. We notice that they drive hours and hours across mud roads, hundreds of miles, to go to villages. And that's really interesting to us. And we think about the fact that they speak unusual languages. Wow! You know, we explore that a little while as we talk to them.

They eat different foods. And that was always my favorite moment, when we'd get to that. If you wanted to talk about different things and you thought you had a little bit of boldness in your palate, I'd always get to the point where I would share, "Yeah, okay, how about raw whale blubber?" Okay? When I got there I knew I usually had won the eating contest there. We like those differences and it's sort of the fun of getting to know them. But it's not the only thing that's going on. Maybe it's not even the most important thing in our relationships with them.

D. and M. (names removed) were among those missionaries who visited us recently. And D. and M. are working with HIV Aids affected people in China. And they shared about that at our worship and they shared about that at extra meetings. But on Wednesday M. went and spoke to the women of our church at Women on Wednesday. And she talked about her home life, but she didn't focus on the differences. Instead, she started to reveal things about their lives that we noticed were just like us. She talked about her insecurities, the feeling that they don't really measure up to the standard of the other missionaries. And is she a good mother, the frustrations she has with her two-year-old. "What do people think of us when they see our two-year-old's behavior?" It was an eye-opener for some of the people there. M. struggles with the same issues we do.

Now that shouldn't be a big surprise because missionaries are just people. They've taken a step of faith to uproot and move to another culture, and that is huge. And it requires special courage and trust, but underneath it all they're just people, people who deal with the same kind of things we do: loneliness, discouragement, budget worries, tension with co-workers, all the details of work, all the worries you have raising kids, issues about meeting your neighbors, learning how to love and serve the people that God puts into your life. And when they get to wherever they're going to serve God, they have to figure out what it means to be faithful to God there. It's not like you get off the plane and all of a sudden it's written in the sky, "This is how you're going to live."

It's just like here. You get over there, you look in the sky, nothing written there. You have to ask that question every day. You have to kind of discover what does it mean to be faithful in walking with Christ in your new situation? And it's not just the big projects that you have to be concerned about. It's not just the things you take pictures of and send it back to your supporters. These questions are pressing; this issue of faithfulness to God, of living the way he wants us to live is the question you have to ask about your day-to-day life on the mission field as well.

In other words, they have to ask God, "What does it mean for me to be faithful where I live, where I work, and where I play?" I hope that sounds familiar to some of you, because those are the same issues that we have to deal with here. That's our challenge. What does it mean to be like Jesus? You know, people talk about, "What would Jesus do?" Well that's our question. What would Jesus do in life? What does it mean to be like Jesus? Not just in the obvious religious stuff, but at home and at work.

So we're going to take a look at Jesus' approach to life, what he's described about the way he lives. And we're going to find that in the book of John. We're going to look in the Gospel of John, chapter 5, verses 16-23. You find that on page 972 of the Bible that you'll find in front of you, the pew Bible. We'll use the Bible so that if you, you know have other questions you can kind of look into the text before and all of that.

John, chapter 5, beginning verse 16.

"So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, 'My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.' For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Jesus gave them this answer: 'Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.'"

And then I just want to read a single verse out of John 20. You don't have to turn to that, but it's verse 21, John chapter 20.

"Again Jesus said, 'Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.'"

Let's pray: Lord, as we look into your Word, help us to understand. Help us to believe. Help us to obey. For we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.

The words Jesus says here have come right after he has healed a man who has been an invalid for 38 years, 38 years of brokenness. Jesus just speaks a word to him, a command, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." And that man's life is totally transformed. He's healed. And so this should be a reason for everybody to party, but some people who are there get really upset because Jesus does this on the Sabbath. People weren't supposed to work on the Sabbath. Jesus should have waited.

When Jesus answers their objections he does so by appealing to a well-known rabbinic teaching, a rabbinic teaching that was probably circulating at his time. And we know it circulated at other times in Judaism. And that teaching said that even though God rested from creation on the seventh day, what we read about in the book of Genesis, and even though he commanded us to keep the Sabbath, the fact is (the rabbis taught) God still works on the Sabbath.

And they based this on a graphic reality. On the Sabbath babies are born. On the Sabbath people die. And since God is the giver of life and God is the one who takes life away and brings judgment, it was obvious that God was still active, still engaged in life even on the Sabbath. In issues of life and health on one hand, and issues of death and judgment on the other, God is always at work; the day doesn't matter. So, Jesus says this in verse 17, "In his defense Jesus said to them, 'My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.'" "God is at work and so the reason I'm at work is because God's at work."

He goes into this even deeper in verse 19 and 20. In 19 and 20 he uses it, he explains it using an image that they would all be familiar with, the image of an apprentice, of a son learning his father's business. The words here Jesus is using are specifically talking about his relationship with God, but if you look at those words, those words could be used to describe the relationship of a child to their parent who's learning the business. He might have even been using a proverb. Some of those words might have come from another proverb that they were already saying about some other kind of lesson. And so Jesus says this, verses 19 and 20, "Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does."

Naturally, the child would learn the family business. He does nothing of himself but would watch and see what his father does. And the father would naturally love him and show him, show his son, his trade. This is the way Jesus learned carpentry from Joseph, and this is the way Jesus does ministry. Jesus is simply doing the Father's business and since his Father deals with life and health even on the Sabbath, so does he.

And Jesus points out that this is not just a pattern in his ministry now; this is his role, his pattern even into the future, even into judgment. In verses 21 to 23 he says this, "Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him."

Life and judgment is the Father's work and Jesus says, "I join God in doing that and not only that, God has entrusted the giving of life and even judgment to me." The people who hear him are angry, not because his logic is wrong, but because by saying this, he's saying he's the Son of God. But as the Son of God, God in the flesh, it explains to them perfectly why he is healing on the Sabbath. Jesus, Son of the Father, not doing anything on his own, but looking to God to see what God is doing and then joining him in doing it, joining the Father in his work.

This is the explanation of how Jesus lived as the Son of God on Earth, God in flesh. This is how we live, by looking at the Father, seeing what the father is doing, and joining him, submitting to that. It shows us what it means for God to be in flesh, but it's also a model of how Jesus lived as the perfect human. This is what we were created to be like. This is what human life is all about. It's to see God, and see what he's doing and to join him. This is what humanity was originally created to be and this is what we're supposed to look like when the Holy Spirit transforms our lives into Jesus' likeness.

So, what would Jesus do? Jesus says it in verse 19, "The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." That's how he lived and we are to be living every day, in everyday life the same way. And so that brings up certain questions that are supposed to be on our heart. If we're going to live into this model of the way Jesus lived, there are certain questions that are part of our discipleship, that need to be running through our minds frequently.

The first one...God, what's on your heart? God, what is on your heart? And then related to that is... what are you doing in the world, in the lives of the people around me? In other words, where are you already at work? And then the third question is... how can I join you? These are fundamental questions about what it means to submit to the lordship of Christ, to submit to the leading of God in life. Not to run ahead, not to plan for God, not to hold back, but to say, "God, what is on your heart? What are you already doing around me? And how can I join you?"

And these questions are no different for the missionary overseas than for us. We're all called to ask that question. But sometimes when we get a chance to live overseas, we learn something more about what it means to serve God even here. Let's watch the screen.

Video: "My name is Renee and I live here in Baltimore County. I grew up moving quite a bit. My husband, Matt, however, is a born-and-bred Baltimore County native. We came across an opportunity to go overseas because his company was looking for people who wanted to help build up the office in Asia. And so we talked about it and we prayed about it and we talked about it some more and decided that we would go ahead to China.

When we arrived in Shanghai I was about seven months pregnant with my son and life was a little chaotic. We were trying to figure out what to do, how to get places. We spoke no Chinese. I had to begin wondering why God had brought us to China, because it wasn't becoming very clear to me, and it was pretty frustrating. And I felt like, "We've come to China, we should be able to do great fantastic things."

And so it was that Christmas that I, it was cold outside, Shanghai, really windy, cold weather, and I was craving American food, which happened a lot. I was sifting through a bunch of different recipes and found a cinnamon roll recipe from scratch, because they don't sell those cute Pillsbury rolls. So I sat there and I decided that I was going to make lots of cinnamon rolls.

And so I made lots and lots of cinnamon rolls, enough to take out to the staff people that were in our complex... the security guards that worked there, the cleaning people that worked there, the lady who drove the golf cart from one end of our complex to the other end of the complex. You know, what if I reached out to the people that nobody else really cared about. And on Christmas Eve we took several dozen cinnamon rolls out in the evening to all of these people. And when they asked us why, the only thing that we could respond with was, "我愛耶穌 (Wo ay ye su)," which is, "I love Jesus. This is why."

So after Christmas and the cinnamon rolls, all of a sudden I realized, like, I didn't have to change the Chinese government. I didn't have to do these huge things, that I could begin to impact my own community and that that impact could be huge. And so we started to do things a little bit more intentionally.

One of the best things that we did was Thanksgiving of '07. Turkeys are outrageously expensive in China because they ship them from the United States. So, we had decided we would not do a $200 turkey, but we would have a bring-whatever-your-favorite-food-is-from-your-home-country, and we had 40 people in our apartment. And people loved it and they still talk about it to this day, you know. And our apartment really shouldn't have fit 40 people, but it did and we had a blast and relationships were built. It was fantastic.

So, a friend of mine in China came to me and said that she had a five-month-old baby who had Spina Bifida surgery and needed a home for the whole summer. And she was small. She was, at five months old, about eight pounds, and she had to go to the hospital every day to have her wounds cleaned and have injections. And so we talked about it and we prayed about it. And what kept popping into my mind was, "If I call myself a follower of Christ, if I say that I believe him and trust him, then will I not follow him here if this is where he wants me to be, to be a foster mom?"

And so we took, we called her (name removed) which means, "little sister" in Chinese. We took her in and it was crazy. She would sleep for 30 minutes, and then she would wake up, and it was insane, but it was fantastic. And we loved her and we fattened her up because that's what we do well.

This summer with us opened her to a lot of different people and one of those people was one of my best friends, Karen, and her husband Chris, who had already adopted from China and fell in love with her. And so when she left our house, she went to live with them and now they're finishing the process of adopting her. I had no idea what God was going to do in that, and it was pretty amazing to be a part of it.

What I realized was that God was already at work in China, and all I had to do was be a part of it, to join in, and to be a part of what he was already doing. I mean if you look at our life in China there were very few things that we did there that we couldn't have done here, right here, in Baltimore, right here. My calling as a believer is to be faithful to what God has called me to do, to be a part of his everyday work, wherever I am, whomever I am in contact with."

[end of video]

John Schmidt: Renee is one of our own. When she was in China she recognized that God was already at work in China, and her responsibility as a believer, as a follower of Jesus, was to notice what he was doing and to join him, make herself available. And that the things that God was calling her to do and the kind of person God was calling her to be is just like her calling here. That's the reality. Even here, we're supposed to be asking those same questions. "God, what's on your heart? What are you doing in the world around me? What are you doing in the lives of people around me? Where are you already at work? And how can I join you? God, what is on your heart?"

That's the kind of question that was on the heart of people when we started collecting food for ACTC and started Operation Christmas Child here at church, starting Love & Fishes, that's coming next week. What's on the heart of the people who got that started was, "God, what's on your heart? How can I join you?" That's what was on the heart of Kevin Good when he started Acts4Youth, something we celebrated last night here.

But asking that, asking that question doesn't mean that we end up having a booth that shows up in the concourse or ends up on the church program, because God is inviting us to join him in the little things, in the things that aren't very noticeable, even though they have great impact. Everyday things become special if God has sent us to do it. It might be something in the life of a neighbor. It might be something going on in your children's school or it might be something you can do. It might be something you notice in a co-worker's family.

Asking those questions, being ready to respond to God is learning the family business. That's what we're supposed to be doing. That is what our Father is doing. That is what our Lord did. That is what we are called to do. Learning the family business isn't an act of spiritual heroism for certain missionary types. It's not something you magically learn on a plane as you fly to another country. It's a matter of being like Jesus right now, where we are, where we live, work, and play.

Jesus was constantly watching the Father and when he sought the Father to see what the Father was doing, and when he joined the Father in doing it, Jesus was showing us how to live. He was showing us what it means to be human. Our highest calling, our deepest joy, is being like that. The place we get closest to being what we originally were created to be is when we watch and ask and join God in what he's doing, learning the family business. Nothing less will ultimately satisfy what's in your heart.

All kinds of other things are going to vie for your attention. All kinds of other things are going to pull your loyalty away, but what you were created for, what will make you all you were created to be, what will give you the thrill of being inside of the fullness of what it means to be you is when you watch and you ask and you join. It's what we were created for, so why would we settle for anything less?

Let's pray: God, we thank you for Jesus, who died for us and allows us to join your family and then as our Savior who modeled for us what it means to join you in what you're doing in the world. So, help us to learn, help us to look carefully at Jesus, and then from him, to learn how to look carefully at you and make our lives available to you. For we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.

© 2009, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org