Healed to Serve: Living a Life of Service

One Sunday, a pastor preached a really long, really boring sermon. During the announcements at the end of the service the pastor said that he wanted to meet with the church board after the service. After the regular greeting, the first man to show up was a complete stranger. The pastor kindly informed him, “I think you misunderstood my announcement. This is a meeting for the board members.” The man replied, “I know. But if there is anyone more bored than I am, I would sure love to meet them.”

If there is one thing that we can say about the Christian life, or living the Christian life, it is that it is most certainly not boring. Although, I imagine that sometimes it can probably seem that way. I pray that as we are making our way through this series you will find a renewed excitement for living a life that shows Jesus, that you will find great joy in living your life in accordance with your place in God’s kingdom and mission. Because that is what stewardship is all about.

Today our series, Christ in us: living a life that shows Jesus, continues with a look at living a life of service: being healed to serve. What we are talking about here; what we are getting at is our response to what God does in our lives.

When we are talking about this kind of a thing it is important to remember that we keep both things in view together. It is important that we keep God’s action in our lives in mind with our response. If we try to separate them, then we run the risk of thinking that God’s action in our lives has no impact on our lives, or that we have what we have from God because of the response the works that we do. Neither of those options are good or helpful. So we keep them both in mind together.

Keeping them both in mind, we find a simple equation of sorts. God comes to us and works in our lives, and we respond with our lives, with our service. We see this in the Gospel text. Here is Jesus. Many people are being brought to him. They are suffering. They are sick. They are oppressed by demons. Mark tells us that the whole city was gathered together at the door of the house of Simon. It must have been quite crowded.

There Jesus heals the people who are brought to him. Their suffering is gone. Their sickness is no more. Their demons are cast out. And the people are healed. They are made whole. They are restored. This is not too surprising for us, and not just because we have already heard this before. We understand that in Jesus, God’s kingdom has come into our world, and that where ever Jesus goes the effects of that brokenness is undone.

This is amazing. This is awesome. This is how much God loves his creation, and how important it is to him. He doesn’t just give up on a creation that is corrupted by sin, and start over. But instead he comes into his creation; he becomes a part of it. He does this so that he might fix it, restore it, renew it, and bring back into a right relationship with himself. This is God’s mission and work in the world. This is what happens when God’s kingdom comes into the creation.

This is what we celebrate and remember when we celebrate the season of Epiphany. We are celebrating the work that God does in our world. We are celebrating the glory of God as it is revealed in Jesus. We are celebrating the glory of God as it is revealed in the one who came in order that we might live in relationship with him and have forgiveness life and salvation. And so this is why we have taken time during the season of Epiphany to talk about stewardship; where we live our lives in accordance with our place in God’s kingdom and mission.

We do not earn our place in God’s kingdom and mission. This is something that we have, simply because God loves us so very much, he comes to us and does for us what we are unable to do for ourselves. Jesus became a human being in order to fulfill all the requirements of God’s law. And certainly he has done this. He has done this on our behalf. He also paid the price for our sins on the cross. They have been paid in full. They are no longer held against us, or counted against us. We are forgiven because of and for the sake of Jesus.

That he rose again means that we have the assurance, the promise, the certain hope, of life everlasting and victory over the grave, over evil, and over our own sinful nature. This God comes to us, in order to give us these gifts, so that we would not be separated from him by our sin, but so that we could know and live life with him. It’s enough to make us want to get up and shout for joy, or for us, the Lutheran equivalent of getting up and shouting for joy is to smile. It’s enough to make us want to smile.

God’s coming to us and working in our lives is powerful. It is something that has an impact in our lives. He comes to us and does not leave us the way he found us. Look at Peter’s mother-in-law in our text. We are not given a whole lot of information here. We don’t know her name. We are not given her age or her specific ailment. All we know is that she was sick with a fever.

Jesus comes to her and takes her by the hand. He lifts her up and the fever leaves her. And what is her response to this? She serves them. And so in this we see both parts. God comes to her and works in her life, and she responds with service. It’s not that Jesus and the boys wanted her to serve them and so that is why he healed her. Instead, her service is a natural response to the work that God has done in her life.

Now, it is important to clarify that this is not a text that is telling us that when Jesus comes to us and works in our lives, that all of our physical ailments go away. Sickness in our lives, or in the lives of someone we love should not be seen as an indication that God is upset with them , or that somehow their relationship with God is in danger. That is not what is being show to us here.

Instead this text helps us to understand the source of our service. The source of our life of service is the work that God has done in our lives. We serve because God has first served us. He has served us by giving to us forgiveness, life, and salvation in Jesus. The source of our life of service can never be guilt, fear, or manipulation. Because those things will turn the service into an obligation and that is never a good thing.

But if we, instead, understand that service comes out of what God has done for us in Jesus, if we keep both aspects together in mind, then what we will discover is that a life lived in service is a wonderful and exciting adventure. It is something that is better than anything we could imagine. It is something that has eternal effects and implications. It is being a part of something that is bigger than just us.

This does not mean that living a life of service will always be easy. This does not mean that it will always be glorious. The temptation is to always be the one who is served, as opposed to being the one who does the serving. The temptation is to gather as much as we can for ourselves.

The life of service, though is one that will sometimes require us to make sacrifices. It will require us to put others, and their needs and wants ahead of our own. It will require us to give up our time, our money, our resources, and maybe even our plans. The prospects of that can be really scary for an individual, but downright terrifying for a community.

And yet, we believe that a life lived in service, a life that is lived the way that Jesus calls us to live, is better than anything that we could ever ask for and imagine. It may be hard sometimes, but the things in life that are most important, or have the most value are sometimes the things that we have to work for the hardest. In other words, it is well worth it.

This is most certainly true as we think about living our lives in accordance with our place in God’s kingdom and mission. We have a place in these things, we live our lives in accordance with these things, because our God has first come to us, and worked wonderfully and mightily in our lives. He continues to live with us, and to live in relationship with us. He continues to work in wonderful and mighty ways in our lives.

In fact, the worship services here are sometimes called divine services because that is exactly what is taking place. The divine, that is God, is serving us. He is coming to us to forgiven, renew, and restore us. He does this through word and sacrament. Having been forgiven, renewed and restored, having taken our hand, he lifts us up and leads us out into the world to live lives of service. He leads us out to join him in the work that he is doing in our world. This is what we are doing, when we come together, and join together and do ministry together. It is powerful. It is awesome. It is a great gift that our God gives to us.

May we find God’s great working in our lives to be the source of our lives of service. And may living those lives of service be a great joy and blessing to us we live our lives in accordance with our place I God’s kingdom and mission. Now and always. Amen.