Luke 10:25-37
Today is the fourth and final week of
our annual stewardship emphasis. Next week is Commitment Sunday. If
you haven’t already, you will soon be receiving a pledge card by mail
that you are asked to fill out and bring back next Sunday. There will
be a time during our worship service where you will be asked to
respond to God’s gifts and give a portion of those gifts back to the
Lord. Hopefully, through the past several weeks, you’ve been thinking
about those many and valuable gifts that God has already given to
you. Next week you will have the opportunity to thank God for these
gifts by committing some of your financial resources to further God’s
kingdom. But as I hope you have already realized, there is so much
more to stewardship than just money. Three weeks ago, we talked about
God’s gift of relationships and how we can be stewards of those
relationships by committing our lives to Jesus. Two weeks ago, we
talked about God’s gift of the Bible and how we can be stewards of
this gift by reading it and exploring its vast riches. Last week, we
talked about God’s gift of Holy Communion, about how Jesus is our
giving tree, and how we can be stewards of this gift by becoming
giving trees to the rest of the world. This week, our emphasis is on
the final part of our worship service – the sending – and the great
gift that God gives us as we are sent out into the world. The great
gift that we are talking about today is the gift of God’s power. And
I think it is fitting that we are emphasizing the stewardship of God’s
power as we participate in a prayer & healing service this morning.
My favorite comic book character is
Superman. I think he’s great because he has all of these cool powers
– x-ray vision and heats rays with his eyes, he could fly, and of
course he was incredibly fast and strong – nothing but kryptonite
could harm him. Yet, he usually disguised his power and hid it from
the world, parading around as the clumsy Clark Kent. No one knew who
he really was and what great power he had inside of him. I think that
a lot of times, we Christians go into Clark Kent mode. We try to hide
the power of God inside of us and try to disguise the fact that we are
Christians. People that we come across would never recognize us as
someone who has been changed by Jesus Christ. Even more likely
perhaps, we ourselves are unaware and don’t recognize the power that
we possess as Christians.
As we look at some of
the great “sending” passages in the Bible, we start to see a common
theme. Luke 9 tells about Jesus sending out the twelve and how Jesus
gives them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases.
Luke 10 tells about Jesus sending out the seventy. When they returned
they were amazed at their deeds. Jesus reminds them that they did
those things only because he was the one who gave them his power over
the enemy. And in Acts 1, just before Jesus ascends into heaven, he
promises the disciples the power of the Holy Spirit. Any time that
Jesus sends people out, he always sends them with his power and the
world is changed wherever they go.
But like I said, we as
Christians don’t always realize that we have this power within us. We
come to church, we enjoy the presence of God and of fellow believers,
we hear the scriptures being read, we receive the forgiveness of our
sins, we partake in Holy Communion and then as soon as we walk out
those doors, we forget that we now have the power of the God within
us. We act like we always have and we act like we are powerless to
change the world, our circumstances, our problems, or the people
around us. In short, we act just like those first disciples did at
the ascension. Jesus has just promised them great power and what do
they do? They watch Jesus ascend into heaven and then they just kind
of stand there and stare, like “Whoa!” It takes a couple of angels to
tap them on the shoulder and say, “Why are you just standing there?
Let’s go! There’s a job to do.”
My friends, don’t let that be you.
You have been given the power of the Holy Spirit. You have been
baptized, washed clean of your sins, made into a new person and
anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit. You now have the power to
change the world. Just like Superman, right? Not exactly. Superman
often changed the world in spectacular ways – fixing earthquakes,
keeping buildings from falling down, flying people out of danger. We
don’t have those kinds of powers, but each of you does have the power
to change the lives of the people around you. You have been given a
gift of power and you can either marvel at this gift or you can
actually put it to good use. It doesn’t have to be anything
spectacular – the power of God less about fireworks and big miracles
like Superman than it is about changing the world - one person, one
moment at a time.
The story of the Good
Samaritan is an excellent example of someone recognizing and using the
power of God within them. The priest and the Levite both knew about
the power of God, they likely both worked at the temple or the
synagogue and they certainly had the ability to help the man who was
struck by robbers. Yet, the one who actually used the power of God
and was a good steward of that power was the Samaritan, for he used
the power of God to help the man, to care for the man, to provide him
with clothing and safety. He used the power of God to change the
world for the one person that he could. He saw a person in need and
said, “Yeah, I can help that guy.” And that is how we are asked to
use the power of God.
Our healing professionals who we will
be recognizing in a few moments are modern day examples of people who
use the power of God in their daily lives. God’s power and healing
often go hand in hand and they use the gift of God’s power to heal the
world, one person at a time. Our stewardship challenge this morning
as God sends us out into the world is to use God’s power to change the
world.
It sounds like an incredible task and
it is daunting to think that God could use me and you to change the
world. Yet that is our responsibility as Christians. Our task is to
bring light into the darkness, bring Jesus into our workplaces, our
schools, our relationships. Our responsibility is to bring forth the
kingdom of God. And we can do that by sharing Jesus with those we
know, by serving those who are less fortunate, by helping those in
need, by healing those who are hurting, by forgiving those who wrong
us, and by following Paul’s lengthy instructions that we read from in
Romans 12. Pretty big task and we certainly couldn’t do it on our
own. Our God sends us out to do these things, but as always, he
doesn’t send us out unequipped.
I’d like to close with a clip from
Superman the movie. This is towards the beginning of the movie and
the planet Krypton is about to blow up and Superman’s parents are
sending him out to the earth to save his life. They both know he will
have incredible powers on earth, just as we Christians have incredible
powers. And Jor-el wants to comfort his son, Cal-el, soon to become
Superman, because he knows that his child’s life will not be easy,
even though he does have these powers. As you watch this, imagine
that this is God speaking to you as you are sent out into the world.
Clip from Superman (17:13 – 19:00)
You are God’s holy and precious child sent out
into the world. Yet, you are not alone, you are given the very gift
of God himself. You have the richness of God’s power inside of you.
Because of God’s power, we have the power to change the world, to
heal, to serve, and to love. Amen.
