Monday, August 27, 2012

Sermon from 8/26/2012


Scripture Psalm 84 and Mark 14:3-9

Laura, Alex, and I had the privilege of spending the week with forty Young Adult Volunteers.  These people are between the ages of nineteen and thirty-one, they have agreed to serve in mission for a year, and are traveling tomorrow to their new city or village.

They are headed to far away places like Kenya, Guatemala, Northern Ireland and closer to home places like Tucson, Hollywood, San Antonio, Atlanta, and Denver.  Some are heading across the world while others are moving to another part of the same city. 

They will work with food banks, the homeless, afterschool programs, orphanages, and refugees. 

In some people’s eyes these young people are foolish for doing something like this with student loans to pay and car payments that are due.  It does not seem as useful as getting a job to start paying for expenses.  Yet serving God in this way is important enough to them that they are willing to commit a year of their lives to do this – to put their own plans on hold to see and serve the larger world. 

Others criticize their length of service by asking, “What can possibly be accomplished in a year?” 

To these people it seems like it is a waste of time, a waste of a year of work, and perhaps thinking that their first job out of school is so important that spending a year in service will leave them at a disadvantage when they do enter the job market that they will never catch up with their peers. 

Isn’t it striking that this woman’s gift anointing Jesus was worth about a year’s worth of work.  And those who saw this lavish gift criticized her for the way she spent or wasted her money – the way that she decided to honor Jesus her king, by offering him a essentially a year of her life, a year’s worth of work. 

Indeed it is a costly gift, given that the average household income in the United States is $40,000, this is an extravagant act of generosity. 

Whether they realize it or not these young people are offering a costly gift to honor Jesus with a year of service. 

The ministry they are engaging in is relational rather than task oriented, while they will have jobs and volunteer work to do, much of what they do is not easily measured.  For they will be building relationships with people they are working with and serving. 

Where they are headed, Relationships are going to be their only currency.  It is the relationships they build that may help protect them from the rough neighborhoods and placements they find themselves in. 

As an example, one former volunteer shared that a nun he worked with was in the process of being mugged and the perpetrator was stopped not by the police but by the nun’s neighbor who happened to be a drug dealer. 

From my experience as a volunteer I discovered the importance of learning the stories of where I was and sharing them with other people to raise awareness. 

In Miami I learned how halfway houses worked.  How they provided both structure and freedom to enable a person to overcome addiction by providing a safe environment and stability needed to work and save money for a deposit for an apartment and make a new start. 

I learned how similar I was to the guests of the program I was serving – I learned that we all have addictive tendencies.   But that some addictions are more socially acceptable than others – addictions like consuming information, TV, video games, or shopping are often times less destructive than alcohol and drugs. 

In my time there I realized that I was only a few decisions or circumstances away from their place in life.   I was only making $200 a month yet I had a social safety net in place to support me while most of their relationships and social support had been destroyed because of their addiction. 

Some of us are only one car accident, one fire, job termination or few bad decisions or events away from being homeless.  And this is scary.  Money is helpful and even necessary but it is the relationships we build that sustain us. 

This is because we are relational people, Descartes was wrong when he said, “I think therefore I Am.”  When he came up with his famous revelation he was snowbound in a cabin by himself, trying to figure out how he could know that he actually existed. 

If we accept his words as truth we set ourselves apart isolating ourselves from one another.  We should correct Descartes by saying, “I relate therefore I am.” 

God created us to be in relationship. 

First, we are created to be in relationship with God.  Our primary purpose in life is to serve and give praise to GOD our creator through our thoughts, words, and actions.  

Second, we are in relationship with our SELF.  We all have inherent worth and dignity because we are created in the image of God and being made in God’s image, we are called to reflect God’s being. 

Third, OTHERS.  We are created to live in loving relationships; we are to know, love, and encourage one another, to use our gifts from God to fulfill our calling.

Fourth, we were created to live in relation to God’s CREATION.  We are called to be Stewards of the earth, to protect, understand, and manage the world.[1] 

BUT because of SIN all of these relationships are broken causing discord and injustice.  The reason that the poor will always be among us is because of sin – not necessarily their sin but the sin of our world. 

Despite our sin we are still called to live following the example of Jesus Christ. 

As Presbyterians we are part of a relational church, because the Presbyterian Church(USA) is a connectional denomination.  And because of this we are connected to those leaving tomorrow for their year of service. 

Our mission giving to the presbytery and larger church goes to support programs like this.  So by contributing to our weekly offering you all are participating in this ministry in this mission work.  As your pastor I spent the week supporting them and helping them prepare for service: this creates a direct link between our church and mission taking place across the world and right here in the United States. 

In other words our church has a relationship with mission going on out in the world. 

The slogan of the Young Adult Volunteer Program is, “A year of service, for a lifetime of change.” 

This program changes lives.  People are exposed to different worlds, neighborhoods that you don’t see on vacations to foreign countries or even in a bigger city like Nashville or Denver – they are faced with victims of poverty and violence who suffer as the result of the systemic sin of our world.  It is truly an eye opening experience. 

Ten years ago I began my journey as one of these volunteers.  At the end of August I loaded up my white Geo Metro with everything I thought I would need for the year and headed to Tucson.  This led me to a year in Miami, then a year in Louisville helping lead the program, which took me to seminary in Chicago, and ultimately here to East Bethany. 

Ten years ago I could not have imagined that I would be living in Western New York, married to a woman I met as a young adult volunteer, but here we are with Alex and a dog.

Here I am.  Here we are in relationship with one another, in ministry together. 

Praise God that we have been brought together in this time and in this place! 

Rev. Michael Fry preaching
at East Bethany PC
August 26, 2012




[1] This list of relationships is taken from the book When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, Moody Publishers 2012.  Page 55.  This is an excellent book on doing and being mission in ways that empower the community and people we engage in mission work instead of fostering dependency and curbing paternalistic tendencies.  

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