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Fill us with your love, show us how to serve the neighbors we have from you.
Kneel at the feet of his friends, silently watch as they meet, master whose access has slain to them.
Jesus, Jesus, fill us with your love, show us how to serve the neighbors we have from you.
Neighbors are rich and poor, buried in color and grace. Neighbors are near and far away.
Jesus, Jesus, fill us with your love, show us how to serve the neighbors we have from you.
These are the ones we should serve, these are the ones we should love, all these are neighbors to us and you.
Jesus, Jesus, fill us with your love, show us how to serve the neighbors we have from you.
All it puts us on our knees, serving as though we are slaves. This is the way we should live with you.
Jesus, Jesus, fill us with your love, show us how to serve the neighbors we have from you.
Kneel at the feet of our friends, silently washing their feet. This is the way we should live with you.
Jesus, Jesus, fill us with your love, show us how to serve the neighbors we have from you.
They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them,
The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.
But they did not understand what he was saying, and were afraid to ask him. Then they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them,
What were you arguing about on the way? But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.
He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, Whoever wants to be first must be last of all, and servant of all.
Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them, Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me,
And whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.
By God add blessings to the reading of this holy word. Amen.
Let us pray.
Father, we come before you, O God, with humble hearts, Lord.
Asking you, O Lord, to forgive us of all our sins, that you may hear our prayer, O Lord.
Father, we ask that you go by the highways, and meet everyone's need, O God.
Father, there are people that are home bound, Lord. We ask that you go by their houses, by their homes, by their apartments,
wherever they may be, Lord. We ask that you heal their bodies, O God. We ask that you feed them, Lord.
We ask that you encourage their hearts, Lord. We ask that you meet every need there is around this world.
We thank you for your healing power. We thank you for your shelter.
We thank you for you protecting all of us. We thank you, O God.
We understand that you are our I AM. I AM who gives us everything we need.
So God, in the name of Jesus, we pray this prayer.
Our Father, Lord our God, all the way be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is now.
Give us this day for our daily bread, and ever give this to our deaths, as we forgive our deaths,
and that it is not intimidation, but deliver us from evil, for our lives is kingdom, and power, and glory forever. Amen.
Amen.
Jesus, hear the call, where is our precious shelter, reach to your heart and hear the scream, don't sound the bell, resound the bell.
Hear the calls, hear the calls, hear our glory ever.
Feel the fire as the souls combine, and let us feel our glory ever.
Feel the fire as the souls combine, and let us feel our glory ever.
Feel the fire as the souls combine, and let us feel our glory ever.
Feel the fire as the souls combine, and let us feel our glory ever.
Hear the calls, hear the calls, hear our glory ever.
Hear the calls, hear the calls, hear our glory ever.
Feel the fire as the souls combine, and let us feel our glory ever.
Amen.
When historians talk about our great leaders of our past, you never hear them say he was destined from the start to be totally invisible,
or her greatest achievement was the way that she blended into the background.
It sounds silly to talk about leaders that way, but the disciples in our passage are wrestling with a leadership that looks a lot like that.
The disciples were used to seeing their so-called leaders trumpeted about, followed by vast entourages, lording it over all others.
The leaders of their time rode into town on white stallions with a Roman legion behind them.
The leaders of their time had feasts thrown in their honor, with people bowing obsequiously in their presence.
The disciples looked at all that and said, soon it will be our turn.
What Jesus said turned the whole idea of leadership on its head, as he did with so many of our cherished concepts.
He stated clearly that we are looking at what it means to lead in completely the wrong way.
Leading in God's eyes looks exactly the opposite of what we are programmed to do and what we are to expect.
I first ran into the concept of servant leaders before I could even read those words.
My parents were my first, and I still think probably one of the best examples of true servants.
I grew up in the church, but I confess I remembered little of the early worship services.
What I did remember, what I do remember, is that my parents were among the first to arrive, and among the last to leave.
You had to look to find them, though.
A casual observer of our church would probably not have noticed them.
One of the pastors once remarked that they were almost invisible, but absolutely necessary.
They were the ones who made sure that there were fresh pots of coffee brewing in the kitchen before everybody else arrived.
My parents were the ones that were sitting in the nursery with the children, while their parents debated the work of the church.
They were the ones who were part of every cleanup day.
They scrubbed floors, they cleaned out refrigerators, they changed diapers, and they ran errands.
And if you needed something, they knew right where it was, and they'd get it for you.
As the pastor said, they were almost invisible, but they were absolutely necessary.
And when I think about what Jesus said about being a servant of all, it's their faces that I put on an image.
As Rich Mullins once said, they sought to give faith feet and hands, and somehow gave it wings.
I'm grateful that my parents are still runners, still teaching me what it means to be living a life of service in a way that may seem small to the world's eyes,
but in a way that I call significant insignificance.
Compare that to our society.
Our society, like that of the disciples, suffers from a debilitating, backwards understanding of leadership.
We learn this upside down way as we watch our leaders strut and posture.
Early on, we learn to desire to be recognized as the best, or the greatest, and even within the church, you see people vying for the noticeable positions.
Fortunately, Jesus has a response.
He says, the way to turn our understanding right side up, to completely rethink what it means to be a leader,
is to look at what it means to be last.
While the words of Jesus' lesson on leadership take up three short verses in Scripture, they also encompass his entire life.
He modeled this kind of leadership through his entire ministry.
If we want to know what a servant leader looks like, we need to look no further than the life of Jesus.
It's no accident that this lesson on leadership follows Jesus telling the disciples about his coming, suffering, and death.
Jesus' servant leadership culminates in him taking that cup for us, a cup we could not take for ourselves.
As Paul put it in Philippians 2, Jesus emptied himself, took on the form of a servant, and was obedient to God, even when that led to his death.
And it is for that reason that God has lifted him up.
It is for that reason that every knee shall bow.
That lesson will come to the disciples in time.
For now, Jesus says, whoever wants to be first must be last, and must be the servant of all.
Notice, he is not talking so much about what we must do, but about what we must be.
To be a leader means to be last, to be a servant, to be like Jesus.
To lead in the way of Jesus means throwing off the backwards leadership of the world and taking up the yoke of a servant.
Did you know that the stoles that we ministers wear represent a yoke like the oxen wear when they pull the plow?
It's true, the stole is symbolic of our taking up a servant leadership.
Jesus says in Matthew 11-29, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
I must say that's been true of my experience. There have been times when I've struggled with ministry, but those times when I've struggled the most are the ones where I'm saying,
look at me, hear what I have to say, do what I do.
And when I finally put that yoke back on, the struggle doesn't go away, but God guides God's servant leader through the struggle.
Well, that's all fine and good, but what is so good about being last?
Perhaps it has less to do with one's position or station in life and more with what one can see.
When you're out in front, you can see the terrain, but when you're behind, you can see all the people in front.
We see all the other folks that God has put in our lives, and we have an opportunity to learn from them and to build on their efforts.
In Jesus' ministry, the community of disciples practices greatness by being observant learners of all the rest.
Now, Jesus shows his disciples exactly what that means. He calls a young child over.
A child was then, as they are now, small, weak, apparently powerless, and completely dependent on others to learn what they need to know,
very much on the margins of society. And Jesus brings that child to the center of the community and wraps his arm around her,
and he says, if we want to lead, then we must welcome all the ones like her.
If we want to lead, we must see the worth in welcoming the other weak ones to the very center of our community.
We will expand the community center to include those people on the margins.
In fact, we will make the margins the new center, because that's where God is, welcoming the fringes in with us.
That's what a leader looks like in Jesus' ministry. It is significant in significance.
Now, it's not going to be easy to overturn years of learning and practicing false significance.
It's not only a return to the church as Jesus wanted it to be. It's a move forward to what the church must absolutely be in our world now.
In a world of multiple billions of people, people are crying out for lives that matter, lives that are significant.
And the world beckons them with false significance.
The only way to lead them into lives that truly matter, to model significant and insignificance,
is to do so in a way that they can see it in everything we do and in everything we are.
If the church fails to be a welcoming presence of God, it loses its witness and its relevance to the world.
It ceases to be the church.
Now, one last thing. I've used the term leader to describe a person who lives out significant in significance.
But I don't want you to think that I'm only talking about those people who are in obvious roles of leadership.
Insignificant significance means that even the most seemingly insignificant people who are exercising their gifts and talents
in the work of the church are leading all in their own way.
They are truly significant and they are truly indispensable.
The world's false significance underutilizes their gifts, it underappreciates their value, it underappreciates their contributions
and it absolutely fails to see the grand vision of all of our lives woven together in a great tapestry of service to God, to others, and to our world.
So open your hearts. Open them all the way to the margins and embrace your brothers and your sisters who wake there.
In this significant insignificance, you will find true greatness at the center of God's presence.
All who dwell in deepest sin, my hand will save. I who make the stars of night, I will make their darkness bright.
Who will bear my light to them? Whom shall I stand? Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night. I will go home. If you leave me, I will hold your people in my heart.
By the Lord I smell and reign. I have roared my people's fame. I have wept for love of them. They turn away.
I will break their hearts of stone. Give them hearts full of all hope. I will speak my word to them. Whom shall I stand?
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go home. If you leave me, I will hold your people in my heart.
I the Lord of wind and flame. I will tend the poor and lame. I will settle fees for them. My hand will save.
Find a spread I will provide. Till their hearts be satisfied, I will give my life to them. Whom shall I stand?
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go home.
If you leave me, I will hold your people in my heart.
A couple of things in Pastor Russ' sermon today reminded me of a church meeting many years ago.
I was serving a medium-sized church in a small town. It was a college town, and this was a meeting of the Evangelism Committee.
It seems that the Sunday before, and that was early in the summer, we had had visitors.
And the first visitor was a single woman in her middle to late 40s, I guess. She was a mentally challenged person.
She lived by herself. She had some state assistance. She was not articulate at all. She came barefoot to church.
No one in our congregation had seen her before. No one knew her.
The local college in that small town had hired a new president for the new school year.
That college president and his wife visited our congregation that same Sunday morning in Washington.
We had some conversation at our Evangelism Committee meeting, and we were talking about following up on first-time visitors
because we want people to come back, and we hope people will decide that they want to join our church.
And we talked about following up with the visit of the college president and his wife, and following up on the visit of the other lady.
And I think to everyone's credit, we saw the immense irony of this contrast. It was just so blatant that we could not ignore it,
and it gave us a marvelous opportunity to think through what our philosophy is and what we believe Christ really wants for his church.
And, of course, we said that we should treat them the same. We should follow up with them the same.
We should be just as anxious to have each of them come and be part of the life of our church.
Now, how well we did that in practice, I do not know, but both that professor and his wife and the other lady
were regular participants in the life of that congregation for as long as I was still pastor there.
It reminded me that at this table, we think, of course, of what it means for Jesus Christ to be the servant and the servant leader
and the servant king, and we think about his sacrifice.
We also think about what it means for each and every one of us no matter who we are, no matter what our social status,
no matter what our level of education, no matter what each of us comes to this table as Christ's brothers and sisters,
as God's own children, and none of us are any better than anyone else today.
I invite us all to come and participate as true brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us together.
Closing in gracious God, hear us as we come before you in these special moments, hear us as we come to this table,
as we receive this bread representing the body of Christ, as we receive this cup representing his blood,
as we take them eating and drinking, as we literally make them part of our own bodies,
may we truly feel your Holy Spirit joining us and filling us in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Hear the words of the Apostle Paul,
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus Christ on the night he was betrayed took bread,
when he had given thanks he broke it, saying this is my body which is broken for you, take and eat.
And in the same manner also he took the cup after supper, saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
All is in readiness. Come to the feast.
Go into the world, to the utmost margins of our society, find the sisters and brothers of Christ waiting for you there.
Welcome the man.
And the loving God will bless you with their presence and their gifts,
as the realm of God grows to astounding proportions.
Pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen.
