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It’s amazing how the little things make such a big difference. When I was in high school, I took a typing class, primarily because it was taught by the golf coach and I thought it would be an easy A. But I ended up hating it. Every day it seemed like we did the same stupid exercises over and over and over. With our left hand we would type AQ AW AE AR AT. Then it was SQ SW SE SR ST. We did this with all the fingers on the left hand, and then it was on to the right hand. Over and over and over again. This went on for weeks, even months. What did this little exercise have to do with actual typing? One day, as I was asking that question to myself in my mind, my teacher must’ve read my thoughts because he said, “Today, you are going to type sentences.” “But how?” I thought. “You haven’t taught us how to type, you’ve just taught us all of these stupid little exercises.” He handed us our assignments for typing and left the room. I didn’t understand how, but I started pecking on that keyboard and words began to form! I started typing faster and sentences began to form. Then paragraphs. I filled an entire page faster than I ever thought possible. I learned to type by learning those little exercises. They taught me discipline, and exactly where my fingers needed to go, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. Through the time spent on those exercises, my teacher had prepared me and my fingers to know exactly what to do when the time came. And so I became a pretty good typist, even though I didn’t understand the importance at first. The disciples in our gospel lesson were in a similar situation to my typing class. Jesus was trying to teach them something very important, yet they didn’t understand his point. Jesus kept telling them that the Son of Man must suffer and die, and then rise from the dead. This wasn’t the first time Jesus told them this and it wouldn’t be the last, yet the disciples just didn’t get it. They kept asking themselves, “What does this have to do with being the Messiah?” How could the Messiah suffer and die? Yet they were afraid to ask Jesus about it. They just kept listening to him go on and on. Little did they know what Jesus was doing, how he was preparing them for the most important moments of their lives. The time that Jesus spent teaching and the time that the disciples spent enduring the preparation all came together in one incredible weekend. They saw their teacher suffering, lifted up on a cross, and then taken down from the cross dead. And while they probably still didn’t understand, the words and the sentences began to flow three days later when they discovered the empty tomb. It all clicked. Jesus had prepared them for this very moment without them even realizing it. It’s those little things that can make such a big difference. Bible studies, prayer, coming to worship every week, asking questions about sermons or passages of scriptures that confuse us – it is these kinds of little things that prepare us for the big, important moments of our lives. Knowing what the Bible says about death and heaven and baptism can bring you incredible comfort when a loved one dies. Being comfortable in prayer can calm your heart in the midst of crisis. Coming to worship every week can uplift you and provide much needed good news amidst a world of bad news. It is these little things that God offers to us as a way to prepare for when we need him most. Just as I spent endless hours going through stupid typing exercises, and just Jesus spent endless hours teaching his disciples, one of the most important things we can do as a congregation and as individuals is to prepare ourselves and help prepare others for the times in life when we need to rely only on God. Pamela Jenkins tells a story about when she was growing up. They lived near a lake in Oklahoma and one of her dad’s favorite hobbies was to walk the shore of this lake looking for arrowheads. When the water level was low, every now and then new ones would either wash ashore or be revealed out of the mud. Pam never really saw the point of spending hours and hours walking the shore looking for these artifacts, but one summer, for whatever reason, she took a very strong interest in these arrowheads and asked her dad if she could go along. He said sure and so they spent many mornings and afternoons searching. Her dad could usually find one or two per week, but as the summer wore on, Pam couldn’t find any. Pam started to get discouraged and frustrated, and even threatened to stop looking. Finally, one morning, after Pam had walked up and down the same beach three times, she saw the most beautiful arrowhead that she had ever seen! She was thrilled and excited that she had finally found one! She carefully picked it up and took it to show her dad. It was indeed beautiful and made out of a rare stone, and he told her that it was far more valuable than any of the ones he had in his collection. She took it home and framed it and kept it on her wall well into adulthood. She soon stopped looking for arrowheads, and while her father persisted for many more years, he never found one that equaled her’s in value or beauty. Many years later, as the family was sharing stories from her childhood, he revealed to her that he had actually found that rare and beautiful arrowhead in Canada somewhere, not in Oklahoma, and that he had placed it on the beach that morning so that she could find it. He had watched her walk past it twice before she finally found it. While it was by far the most valuable one in his collection, he gave it up just so that he could watch the excitement on her face, and it was totally worth it. In today’s gospel lesson, as Jesus’ disciples were walking along the shore, instead of looking for arrowheads, they get into a discussion about who is the greatest. After overhearing their conversation, Jesus says to them, “Whoever wants to be first, must be last of all and servant of all.” Being a servant isn’t about being the best or having the most. Being a servant actually means sharing what you have with somebody else, recognizing that whatever you have is more valuable to the person you are giving it to. Pam’s dad was being a servant to her because he shared his most precious arrowhead with her. It was more important for her to discover it than it was for him to keep it. We all have things that are important to us, that we would struggle to go without or to give up - our food, our time, our possessions, our pride, our money, our comfort. These are all important parts of our lives, yet they are also things that might be more important to someone else than they are for us. How many of you have way too much food in your pantries and could share just a little of that food with someone who is hungry? How many of you struggle to admit when you’re wrong, yet could stand to give away some of that pride? How many of you don’t talk about your faith with others because it either makes you uncomfortable or you think that it will makes someone else uncomfortable? Giving up a little of your comfort in this regard is a way to share the gospel. Jesus calls us all to servanthood, and the path to servanthood is sharing what we have been already been given by God. For the third part of my sermon, I want to briefly focus on what Jesus says and does at the end of our gospel lesson. “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.’” Jesus opened his arms to the untouchable ones in society – the children, the ones who in that day and age were utterly insignificant. He cared for this little child so much that he wrapped his arms around it. Think for a moment about what it means to be caring, and to help you, I’d like to show a clip from the movie Braveheart. In this clip, the boy’s father and brother have just been killed in a battle. Little William is now an orphan, one of the untouchables, and this is what happens at the funeral.
Show Clip
This little girl’s simple gesture was the most caring thing she could do. She reached out to William when everyone else was leaving him. Caring means reaching out and doing whatever you can to show others that they are important. Caring means entering into other people’s pain. Caring means welcoming others who are not welcome anywhere else. Caring is something else that Jesus calls us to do today. It’s interesting - this week’s gospel lesson has Jesus doing three things – Preparing, Sharing, and Caring. Our transformation team has been hard at work trying to discover what God is calling Hope Lutheran to do and to be about. After many months of hard work, scripture study, and prayer they have crafted the rough draft of our new mission statement, which you can find in your weekly. It just so happens to contain these three words – Preparing, Sharing, and Caring. As this mission statement changes and evolves based on your feedback, it is clear from our gospel this morning that Jesus is the one who prepares us, shares with us, and cares for us. It is now for us to decide how we can do these same things for others. Amen.
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