Sermon Cloud

Today I want to do two things.  First I want to talk about a vision for serving our God.  I want to talk about appropriate and inappropriate ways to serve God.  I want to talk about how the Gospel speaks to the way we serve God and each other.  I also want to talk about the different service opportunities that we have and what the vision of these ministries will be so that you can consider whether or not you would like to serve in these areas.

I want to begin by telling you a story.  You see I grew up watching one of the greatest servants I have ever seen.  I got to watch him every single day.  He would get up at 6 in the morning, drive an hour and a half to work, work a full day in a highly stressful job at a Christian college, and then drive another hour and a half home.  He got home around 5:30.  Dinner would be ready, we would eat and then he would go outside and work on people’s cars until between 9 and 10 at night almost every night.  Looking back on my childhood, although I am sure there were some, I don’t remember any nights spent in our house.  We were always outside working on something.  Now these cars were not usually our cars.  They were usually cars of single moms in our church.  I remember putting roofs on a widow’s home, spending days with a snake doing plumbing for her; you name it my dad did it, every night and all weekend long except on Sunday.  He was a hero to me.  As I grew older I didn’t really like working all the time and I got into sports so I wasn’t around to help as much, but he kept working.  Years later when I was a youth pastor I could see how much of that had rubbed off on me.  Every time I would come home or talk to them on the phone all I would try and tell them about was how busy I was.  Somehow I felt that if I was busy enough, doing enough work then my dad would be proud of me.  And then one trip home my dad took my brother and me into another room and sat us down to talk to us.  And he began to talk about his life and if he could change things there would be one thing that he would change.  He said, “If I could do it all over again I think I would have served God less, and sought to know him more.  I would have spent more time and energy knowing my God and less time busily trying to serve him.” 

That line rocked my world and sent me searching for what it means to serve God.  What does it look like?  You see I have begun to realize what a deceptive idol serving our God can be.  It is so crazy and so messed up, but Satan loves to come and turn good, virtuous things into idols.  You see, in our minds there is little that we could ever consider more virtuous than serving God.  It seems to be selfless, it seems to be right, it seems to be called for in Scripture, and so we fall into the lie that in serving God we have one of those acts that is always right no matter how you do it.  But there are no such acts.  The story of Mary and Martha is an excellent example of how something that seemed to be so virtuous can actually be harmful to our relationship with God. 

Do you remember that story in Luke 10:38?  Mary and Martha have Jesus over to their home and he is no doubt hungry.  And Luke tells us that Martha invited him over.  Now you can only imagine that in Martha’s mind the best thing that she can do for Jesus to show him how much she loves him is to give him the best meal and the most enjoyable relaxing experience that she can.  So she is working really hard.  She is trying to make everything perfect.  She is trying to make Jesus happy.  To show him how much she respects and appreciates him by giving him from her time and talents.  Certainly this is how we often view service isn’t it?  When I serve God I try and show God how much I appreciate him by working really hard to give him my very best.  The problem is that this story comes and rocks our view of service. 

You see the fact is Martha had it all wrong.  Martha was looking at Jesus as if he needed something from her.  Martha was looking at Jesus as if his happiness and his wellbeing were dependent upon her service.  She saw him as hungry and tired and needing a good meal.  And she saw herself as having a home and a place to cook and being able to provide for him what he needed.  And she believed that the way Jesus looked at her was dependent upon how well she did.  That is why she is so anxious to do it right.  That is why she is so concerned that her sister is not helping her.  You see Mary had a different perspective.  Yes, Jesus might be hungry.  Yes, he might want some rest.  But she understood that she was utterly empty and needy and dependent and she new the best way to show Jesus how amazing he was and how much she respected him was to acknowledge how much she needed him and to sit at his feet.  She did not see Jesus as the one in need of her help, but she saw herself as desperately in need of him.  And so Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and her whole focus is on him.  She needs him, she loves him, he is beautiful, his words to her are life, and so she sits there and soaks them up.  And because she understands just how much she needs from Jesus and how amazing he is, her focus is on him.  She doesn’t notice her sister working in the kitchen, she only notices her savior. 

Martha on the other hand notices Mary, doesn’t she?  She goes to Jesus and asks him to tell her sister to help her.  And listen to what Jesus says, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” 

Do you hear what Jesus is saying?  He is saying Martha you are distracted by things:  by stuff, and how you can serve me by putting all these things together, but Mary has realized the one necessary thing.  The one necessary thing is not feeding me, it’s not being hospitable to me, it’s not meeting my needs, the one necessary thing is me and you are the one in need.  Do you remember how Jesus does the same thing to the woman at the well?  She thinks that Jesus must be really thirsty and in desperate need of her in order to break all the cultural norms of the day and actually ask her, a Samaritan woman for a drink.  But how does Jesus respond to her thoughts.  Jesus responds to her thinking that he needed her by saying, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you ‘give me a drink’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 

You see when Jesus asks this woman for a drink she thinks that he needs her.  And that is often how we feel deep down inside when we serve God.  We feel like somehow he needs our help.  We feel like we are some indispensible part in the story of God’s plan and it would fall apart if we didn’t help out.  We feel sometimes like God is lucky to have chosen us since we are so generous with our service toward him.  You see, because God calls us to serve him we take his call for service to insinuate that he needs help.  Just like this woman took Jesus’ asking her for a drink to mean that he needed her.  But here is God’s response to all servants who think that we can do anything to benefit God.  He says, “If you knew who was asking you to serve him, if you could even but catch a glimpse of my majesty and power you would stop dead in your tracks and instead of arrogantly thinking you could serve me you would beg me to come and serve you.  That’s what separates Mary and Martha.  Martha foolishly thinks that Jesus needs her to make him food while Mary realizes the gift of God that is in her home and just how magnificent he is and so she sits at his feet and lets him serve her.  Mary understood what Paul said in Acts 17:25, “God is not served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”

You see when we think that God needs us our service becomes the center of attention and not God.  That is why Jesus says that Martha is distracted.  You see, for her it is her service that must be worthy if Jesus is to be satisfied, whereas for Mary all she can do is sit and depend upon God.  Like we talked about last week, just as we worship through dependence so we serve God through dependence.  We serve God by recognizing our desperate need of him.  We serve him when we remember that he gives us the very breath that we are using to serve him and so in all things God is the benefactor and we are the beneficiaries.  That is the key to understanding the right way to serve God.  In all things we are the ones who are needy and in all things we are the ones who are benefiting from our service.  I want to make sure that you let that sink in.  You are the one who benefits from your service.  Your service is for your joy.  When we call you to serve we are not calling you to serve simply because we need your help or because God cannot build his church without you.  No, when we call you to serve it is for your joy.  It is so that you might know and experience more of your God as you draw near to him through service.  You see in all things God is the giver, and we are the receivers and of course it is the giver who receives all the glory.

Romans 4:4-5 reminds us of this when it says “To the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.  And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted righteousness.”  Do you see that?  Let that free you.  For those of you who feel empty if you are not serving God, listen to that verse.  For those of you who find your identity in always being busy doing things for God, listen to that verse.  Stop working!!!  Stop it.  Sit down at his feet.  Come to him and let him serve you.  Jesus did not come to be served but to serve.  Let him serve you.  Sit down and let him serve you by dying on the cross so that you can be saved.  Realize that at the cross your righteousness was earned.  You get no points for service because your service isn’t and never will be good enough.  Jesus’ service was good enough and he offers it to you if you will come to him and ask for it.  I Corinthians 1:30 reminds us that Christ is “our righteousness and our sanctification.”  So, let his service be your righteousness, let his service be your sanctification.  You don’t have to earn favor with God, your savior has done that for you.  So, look to him, rest in him, serve from his power and for his glory and not from your own strength and for his approval.   

You see until we can rest in his service for us we will never be able to truly serve him.  All of our service will be a lie because it will be about trying to earn God’s favor by helping him.  When we do this all our service becomes a burden because we are constantly wondering if it’s enough, if God is pleased with us or if we should do more.  We will never be able to say no to any request.  If we get sick and can’t do something that we committed to we will feel empty and like a failure.  If we mess up and don’t do a good job we will despair.  If we really want to serve in someway, but are asked to serve in a different place we will struggle because we will feel like we are not being allowed to serve God in the way that we need to in order to please him.  You see when we believe God’s approval is based on our service we become slaves to service and it is a cruel master that will never be satisfied.  When our approval is based on our service we also notice that we are constantly looking at others just like Martha did.  We are constantly comparing our service to theirs, we resent those who don’t work as hard and we find ourselves weary and tired.  We grow tired because we are serving in our own strength and we are week people who in our own strength have nothing to offer our God.

However, if we will let our savior serve us, if we will come to him as needy and beg him to fill us, to give us strength, to take our sin and give us his righteousness, if we will be crucified with our savior, we will find that we no longer live, but Christ lives in us.  The life and the service that we now give, we give by faith in our savior.  Coming to Jesus empty we will find that he fills us so that we can go out and allow the fullness of the grace which he poured out on us to spill out in service to others.  You see serving God is good.  We are called to serve him, but we are to serve him in the strength that he provides.  I Peter 4:9-11 calls us to serve our God with the strength that he supplies so that in all things he might receive the glory.  You see at the end of the day it is all about God’s glory.  When we serve him in our own strength we try and steal the glory that is rightfully his.  When we serve him in the strength that he provides we find that in all things he receives the glory.  John 3:21 reminds us that when we come to the light we find that everything good we ever do has been done through God.

So, what does this undistracted service look like? 

1. It begins with our need.  It flows from hearts that understand how much we need God.  It comes from hearts that cling to God as our only hope. 
2. While it flows from a needy heart it also flows from a satisfied heart that has found its God to be more than enough to provide for them.  It comes from a heart that has been overwhelmed by the grace of God and how Jesus came to serve them by dying for them on the cross.  It flows from a heart that is resting on the finished work of Jesus. 
3. Because it flows from a needy heart that has found Christ and Christ alone to satisfy, its service points all those who see it back to the source.  Like John the Baptist, we take no credit for our service, but constantly point others away from ourselves to our savior.  This can only be genuinely done when we truly understand and believe that we are needy and that he alone can and has satisfied us.

The Bible gives us a glimpse of what this service looks like in John 12.  In John 12 the same Mary from Luke took a very expensive jar of perfume and anointed Jesus’ feet with it and wiped them with her hair.  Notice the difference between her service and Martha’s.  Martha’s service distracted her from Jesus, while Mary’s is focused solely on Him.  Mary doesn’t see anyone else, she doesn’t care about how humiliating what she is doing is and that she is doing it in front of others.  She doesn’t hear Judas complaining.  She has understood her great need for Jesus.  She has sat at his feet and been filled with his words.  She knows that all she has is his, all her strength, all her gifts, all her money, and so she pours it all out at his feet. 

True service is done before an audience of one.  When we serve it must be before our savior and Him alone that we serve.   We serve from hearts overwhelmed with his grace, and hearts resting in his righteousness.  We serve in the strength that he provides.

And so our call to service is really a call for you to let your savior serve you.   Please, let your savior serve you.  Humble yourself.  Accept his bloody sacrifice for you.  Stop working and look at him.  Let his righteousness fill you.  And then and only then, come and let the grace that he has lavished upon you overflow onto others in sacrificial service for them.  But until then my friends, as crazy as it sounds, please don’t serve.  And if you find yourself burning out, if you find yourself growing weary, if you find resentment or bitterness growing up in your heart please, talk to someone about it.  Ask them to remind you about Jesus and his service for you.  Ask them to point you to the cross where you can sit and be served and find the grace you need to go on. 

So, the point of everything that we have just said is that all of our service would be motivated by the Gospel.  We serve as those who have first been served, we love as those who have first been loved, we give as those who have been richly blessed.  So, today I want to talk about just a few of the opportunities that we have for you to serve the body specifically on Saturday nights.  What I would like to do is to look at each one for a moment and talk about the vision behind each ministry and then we will try and see how the Gospel might specifically motivate us in these particular areas of service.

Prayer:

One of the greatest ways to ensure that we remember that our service is not done in our own strength but rather through the strength that God supplies is to be a people committed to prayer.  Each Saturday night from 4:45-5:15 we will gather together to pray before the service. 

You see the Gospel makes us a people of prayer.  The whole first half of this sermon was meant to show us that at the cross we see both our desperate need and God’s amazing provision.  And prayer is one of the primary ways that we acknowledge both these truths before God.  In prayer we come to God needy.  We don’t give God anything in prayer we come to acknowledge how much he has given us in the past and how much we are depending upon him for help in the future.  Remember what Jesus said to the woman at the well?  In prayer we acknowledge that we have caught a glimpse of the majesty of our God and so we ask him that he would give us living water so that we might never thirst again.  You see as we look at the cross we are moved to gratitude to our savior who has washed away our sin and given us his righteousness.  So, we come to God a grateful people to praise him for how amazing he is.  And yet even as we proclaim his greatness and mercy to us in the past we become painfully aware of our desperate need for his future grace.  And so we come to him in prayer grateful for who he is and all that he has done for us in the past and desperate for him to continue to pour out his grace on us in the future.   

Children’s Ministry

Right now the children’s ministry on Saturday nights is going to be very small.  We have a nursery for babies and we have another room for toddlers up through 5 or 6 years old.  We want loving care and prayer to characterize the infants’ room.  Infants will be cuddled, played with and rocked.  Caregivers will be asked to pray individually over each child for a time during the service.  We will put together ideas for prayer as well as a spread sheet to mark off to ensure that each child is being prayed for. 

With the toddlers through 5 or 6 years old there will be times of supervised play, a small snack, a Bible lesson, and a time of prayer with the children.  For now we will be using the same curriculum as Linda Vista which walks through the whole story of God from Genesis to Revelation, relating every story of the Bible to the great, unstoppable story of God’s redemptive plan.

Our vision for childcare is that from the beginning we would see the children in our church as disciples.  They are God’s gift to us as a body and we are called to use every opportunity we have with them to set for them a godly example and to point them to our precious savior.  Deut. 6:7 speaks of God’s word saying, “You shall teach [Gods Word] diligently to your children, and shall talk of it when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise…”  It is God’s grace that children are often so easily influenced and we desperately need to take advantage of this time in their life to set them upon the foundations of the beauty of their precious savior. 

In our MC on Tuesday, Stephen was talking to us about how his three-year-old keeps saying these amazing things about Jesus that he is hearing from somewhere.  He is talking about how in the hospital when he was sick Jesus did a miracle and healed him.  This child is three years old.  I have been thinking about it as I have been hanging out with the children and I am amazed at how many true things our children can say about batman and spiderman and how well they might know their favorite superheroes and their stories.  As I thought about this I began to contemplate how no superhero can truly compare to our Savior and the crazy thing is our savior is real and the superheroes are only imaginary.  What an opportunity to teach our children how our savior is better than all their superheroes.  What if we took what is good and what our children loved about a superhero and explained to our children how Jesus is actually better.  He is a better savior, a better friend, he is stronger, more powerful, has conquered a greater enemy, at greater personal cost.  And not only is he all these things in general but he offers to be all these things for them.  Personally, individually, he loves them.  He knows how many hairs they have, he sees them all the time.  They don’t just have to watch the most amazing story in the universe unfold in some movie they have been given a part in it. 

We long for those who work in the nursery to see this as an amazing opportunity to influence the children and to talk to them about Jesus.  We talk a lot about learning how to speak about ordinary things with Gospel intentionality. What better place to practice this than with our children.  So, we don’t want this to be seen as merely babysitting the kids and we don’t even want it to be seen as babysitting the kids with a Bible lesson stuck in the middle.  This is discipling our children.  Whether we talk about Jesus or not, we are discipling our children.  Either discipling them to know that there is a savior who is amazing and worthy to be spoken about and talked to and loved with all our hearts, or discipling them to know that their entertainment is the most important thing in the world.

Lastly, we want to pray for our children, and to teach them to pray.  At the end of the day it is God and God alone who can save our children.  He is in control and so we must beg him to have mercy on our children.  To protect them from sin, from being overwhelmed with the pleasures of this world, and to guide them to himself.  We don’t want to wait until they are on the brink of trouble to start praying for them, but we want to pray for them now, when they are young, that God would raise them up to love him and use them powerfully for his kingdom to make his name famous. 

I have been thinking about the Gospel motivation for children’s ministry and I believe that there are so many ways that we can see the Gospel and be moved by the Gospel in children’s ministry.  Specifically, I want to talk about doing children’s ministry when it is hard.  Doing it when you would rather be in the service.  As I was thinking about doing children’s ministry when you would rather be in the service I was thinking about our savior and I was thinking about where he would have rather been.  I was thinking about how he left heaven and came to earth.  How he left the comforts, the relationships, the joys, and the ease of heaven to come and to serve us here on earth.  I was also thinking about how he dignified children by becoming a child.  Our savior was an infant.  There is not a certain age where working with children becomes dignified work because our savior became an infant.  Think of the humility of our savior.  Think about it.  The God of the universe became an infant.  As you hold the baby remember your God became one of these for you.  The creator of the galaxies became a child.  Oh, how great was his love that he left heaven to become an infant.  Think of the irony in this; the self-sufficient one, the one who has no need of anything became a child who needed to be carried, held, fed, changed.  You see Jesus had no need, but willingly humbled himself and the irony is that when he calls us to become like a little child we refuse because we feel like we are above it.  You see, the reality is that when you look at a little infant and see how desperate and how needy they are, you are looking at a picture of yourself for all of us are completely and utterly dependent upon God for everything, even our next breath.  And Jesus reminds us that the only way we can ever come to God is as a child.  As one who understands how much we need him.  And so the Gospel motivates us to do childcare.  It reminds us that just as our savior left heaven so we can leave the joy of the service and instead go and serve.  And as we serve the children we are experientially reminded of just what an amazing savior we have and just how desperately we need him. 

And lastly, in the same verses that Jesus speaks about our need to become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven, he tells us just how much he loves children and all those who help them.  For all of you who feel called to do childcare this verse is for you.  In Matthew 18:5 Jesus says, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.”

Greeters/welcomers.

In Romans 15:7 Paul says, “Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”  I love this verse.  Welcome one another.  I love the idea of welcome.  Welcome means you are wanted.  Whenever we go somewhere new, we always go wondering if we will be welcome.  Will we be accepted?  Do they want us there?  We all know how awkward it is to feel unwelcome.  To go to a gathering or to be around people who don’t want you.  I am 31 years old, and I still remember in 7^th grade when my entire class decided they were going to give me the silent treatment the whole day.  I remember how devastated I was and how lonely it felt to be unwelcome.  Some of you may feel unwelcome at work and you know how that feels.  Some of you may feel unwelcome with your spouse’s family, or even with members of your own family.  To be unwelcome is a terrible feeling.  As I have been thinking about being unwelcome I have been thinking about heaven and about how the Bible says that there was a time when we were doomed to be unwelcome there.  There was a time when we were far off, when we were not a people, when we were separated from God, dead in our sins and our trespasses.  And the Bible is the story of God’s grand work of restoring us so that he can welcome us once again.  The Bible tells us that he has made us alive, he has brought us near, he has wiped away our sins and made us who we are, once not a people to be a people for his own possession.  We have been welcomed.  And the cost of our welcome was the precious blood of our savior.  He welcomed us while we were yet sinners by giving his life for us on the cross.  He died our death so that we might live, he was forsaken that we might be welcome.  Our savior was forsaken by God so that he could welcome us.  And even today our savior is at work so that one day he can welcome us.  Listen to John 14:2-3 where Jesus says, “In my Father’s house are many rooms.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”  Do you hear what this verse is saying?  Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us.  He has gone to prepare a place so that one day he might welcome us into his presence so that forevermore where he is we might be as well.    

So, now we too are called to welcome others just as our savior welcomed us.  And what made it so hard for our savior to welcome us was how different from him we were.  You see it was our sin that made it so hard for him to welcome us.  Nevertheless, our savior gave his life to do it.  So at times there will be people who are vastly different from us.  People who we might not naturally enjoy being around.  People who we really see no benefit at all for having a relationship with, these people we are called to welcome.  In fact the more difficult a person is to welcome the more closely we can relate to how our savior welcomed us.

So, what is our vision for welcoming people? 

1. We want everyone to be involved in this ministry.  All of us are called to be welcomers.  We are all called to make people feel welcome just as Jesus has welcomed us.  We are called to sacrifice our own convenience, our own conversations with our friends, our own agendas in order to welcome others just as Christ sacrificed all these things for us.  However, it is a joy for us to do this.  It is a joy for us to make sacrifices in order to welcome others because in doing so we are reminded of how amazing our savior is and how awesome it feels to be welcome by him.
2. We also want specific people who will stand at the door and greet everyone as they come in.  We want at least two people doing this.  That way one of you can feel free to offer assistance to anyone who might need help or to get into longer conversations with people.  If someone is new ask them where they are from, see if they know anyone, and get their name.
3. Either before or after the service we would ask that the greeters find anyone that they think might be new and try and get their email and phone number.
4. We then ask that you call or email them the next day and just see how they are doing and if there is any way that we can be praying for them or serving them. 
5. We will then get that number to me and to the MC leader who is nearest them and one or both of us will give them a call or email that week.
6. Now it is vital that all of us understand that the best way that we can truly welcome people is by getting them into community.  You see the goal is not only that people feel welcome to our service but that people feel welcome into our church which means that they would feel welcome into the lives of God’s people.  In other words, our goal is that we would all be involved in welcoming people into our lives.  So, what this means is that we want to try and encourage everyone we meet to come and be a part of one of the communities.  Now, we realize that they might not immediately feel comfortable just coming to someone’s home for a Missional Community so as MC’s we will work to create opportunities for new people to come to something social and get to know us better.  In other words, let’s be planning things where we can invite new people we meet to join us in during the week.  Maybe it will be dinner that night if they want to go out or come to your home.  Maybe it will be watching the football game on Sunday.  Maybe it will be a grill out on Sunday.  Because we have Saturday night services lets look at Sunday as a sweet day to do things together as a community and to be able to invite guests to come and join us. 

So, ultimately our goal is not merely to welcome people to our service on Saturday night or even our MC during the week but our goal is to welcome people into our lives.  And that is why if we truly do this we will find that there are times when this takes radical sacrifice.  Its easy to smile and shake someone’s hand and get their name and email; its pretty tough to welcome certain people into your lives.  But aren’t we glad that our Savior didn’t just invite us to some service in heaven, but he has invited us into his life and he is coming again so that where he is we might be also.  What a savior!  Let’s learn to welcome others as he has welcomed us.

Set up, sound, take down, and clean up. 

I have grouped all of these ministries together because they are the behind-the-scenes stuff.  We need people to come early and set up chairs and help with the sound and then we need people who will hang out after the service both to pick up all the chairs and carry the speakers up the stairs to the storage place but also to help clean everything up.  We have to clean the bathrooms each week and make sure to vacuum wherever it is needed and on the weeks that we eat we will need to clean off all the tables and clean the kitchen as well.  We don’t want these ministries to be a burden on just a few people, so we are hoping to get a number of people so that the work goes quickly.  The set up people get here around 3:30-3:45 so that we can be done in time to pray at 4:45.  Our goal is to be able to relax and do everything without feeling rushed and anxious.  We want it to be a sweet time of community where we work together and enjoy each other’s company and feel free to be preparing ourselves to worship or thinking about the things we have just heard. 

Now, because this is such a thankless task that often goes unnoticed, it will be a task that may cause some people to feel burned out.  It is easy to get tired when you are moving tables, picking up chairs, or washing down toilets.  It is a humbling work.  Now we pray that we will have enough people helping that it won’t seem like too much work for any one person, however, I want to speak about what the Gospel says to those whose tasks of service often seem to go unnoticed. 

Recently I have been thinking of the dirtiest and most menial and difficult task of service that was ever done.  This task was so menial that Jesus chose to give the disciples a foretaste of it by washing their feet.  Jesus took off his outer garment, wrapped himself in a towel and did something that in all of ancient literature we have no other example of.  He the superior, washed the dirty, manure-covered feet of his disciples.  And he did this as a foretaste of his ultimate act of service.  He chose this incredible act of self-humiliation in order that disciples might catch a glimpse of just how massive an act of selfless service he was about to perform for them.  You see after washing their feet, Jesus humbled himself and allowed people he created to bind him and nail him to a cross.  He gave the breath to the people that he allowed to suffocate him.  And on the cross there were no thank yous.  There was no acclaim.  There were no congratulations, no fanfare.  The cross was a thankless place.  As Jesus hung on the cross to pay for the sins of all his people there was no one pouring out thanks to him.  No one there thought he was amazing and powerful and unstoppable.  Even his own Father whom he had spent all eternity beside chose to forsake him on the cross.  If you ever feel like your task of cleaning or setting up or taking down is menial, if you ever feel like there is no one there to thank you, if you ever feel alone as you do it, look to the cross and see what your savior did for you.  See him hanging alone, abandoned by everyone so that he could watch you as you serve.  He is watching, and he is providing you the strength that you need, and if you are tired, tell him, for he has more strength to give you, don’t try and do it on your own, instead look to your savior and find strength and joy in his finished work for you.

Now you might say, I get how the cross was thankless and menial when Jesus hung on it but it’s not anymore.  Today look at the cross!  Today it hangs around necks, it is sung about in songs everywhere, today the cross is given its rightful place.  Well, you are right to some extent.  You are right that today the work that Christ did on the cross is being noticed and he is being praised for it.  And I would tell you that the same thing will one day be true of all that you ever sacrificed for your savior.  Jesus reminds his disciples, “When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.  For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.  Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.  But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.  And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”  Jesus calls us to serve our Father and not to look for the accolades of people.  Even if no one else sees, your Father sees.  Don’t ever forget that as you clean the toilets, as you pick up the chairs, as you carry the speakers up the stairs, your Father sees, and the one who gave his only Son to forgive your sins will take care of you.