Lost and Found

“Lost And Found”

The Rev Jen Van Zandt

January 22, 2023

Even though it is again cold and overcast and we are sorely in need of some vitamin D still this is a happy and joyous day because we will be celebrating three new members to this faith community, Bill and Jill Segulin, and Meg Meyer (who is with us via Zoom), unable to be here due to health reasons.  All three of these people come with a wide variety of gifts and abilities, in fact Meg Meyer actually offered to be our commissioner at Presbytery meetings; who does that?  And every time we meet and receive new members, I always say, “welcome”!  Now… “don't answer your phone for the next week or two!” Because you know they’re going to get phone calls because we have new members, we want to get them on committees, we want to get them in the choir, we want to get them helping at coffee hour.  There's no running and hiding! 

Everyone who joins a church or even chooses to be regularly active, even without formal membership, has a different way of getting involved.  Some like to jump in right away on a committee, some may not want to join a committee but will offer to do what I call, one-offs.  Like coffee hour, being a lay reader, or volunteering at Loaves and Fishes, or offering their musical gifts.  Some like to take their time to sort of discern where and how to join in.  Some also may not see that they even have any gifts and might need an invitation, (or 10), in order to participate in the life of the church.  But once any of us jumps into serving and it's a really good fit, it becomes part of our identity, right? People love to say “I'm a deacon”, or “I'm an usher at my church”, or “I'm a lay preacher or a Sunday school teacher”, and together we become part of the body of Christ which is what Paul speaks to in the next part of chapter 12.

So what makes offering up our skills and talents in this community any different than any other organization that we may be a part of?  We think the answer is obvious: belief in God! We understand that we are saved by grace through faith and that we are living out our baptism. All those things are true, to a lesser or a greater degree, based on your own personal beliefs and theology. But there's a reframe here in the text that I think is easy to blow right by, and I've been doing it for years.  Verses 4-10 are pretty straightforward. We have gifts for this, and we have gifts for that, and they're given by the spirit, and they're given by God, but it's verses 1-3 that are a little more cryptic.  Especially because we probably don't know too many pagans, but when pagans converted and began offering their gifts and their abilities to the community, Paul wanted to remind them that they are now changed.

But we also have a lot more in common with pagans than we might think.  In verse 2, Paul talks about being led astray by idols. Paul's definition is ‘the mark of those who worship idol are those who are deaf and dumb. They have no ears to listen to God's word. They have no ears to hear God's voice. They have no willingness to obey God's call. They also are unable to speak the truth and to give words of Hope. Why? We all know why.  Because like the pagans, sometimes we too are busy puffing ourselves up comparing and measuring ourselves against others.  We are driven by the wind of the ego, and far less led by the wind of the spirit.

Paul is drawing a line in the sand that we need reminding of, because before we determine and decide how we and others, especially new members, should offer their gifts (and we've already seen some wonderful gifts from Jill and Bill), we must first go back and confess Jesus as Lord.

As we talked about last week, we love the idea of Jesus being our friend and helping us and rescuing us but obeying? That's a little more challenging. We don't like that word. We don't like to be obedient. We don't mind taking our dogs to obedience school, but when God calls us to obedience, we really don't like to do that. So first and foremost, before we look at our gifts and others gifts, it's a call to confess and name Jesus as Lord. Again, I know I'm naming the obvious, because that's why we're all here. But do we really do that? Do we even confess to God our love of God when we're singing a Hymn? There’re four verses in a hymn. How many of us, while we're singing the hymn, think… oh did I turn off the coffee maker? What am I doing after worship today? Right? We all get so distracted so easily!

So Paul is saying don't worry about the gifts. He IS saying, go Back to Basics and start confessing Jesus as Lord first, because if we confess Jesus as Lord first, then we are right-sizing everything again, including our egos.

We were talking in a meeting this week, and somebody loved the idea of having a sign over one of the doors to the church saying, servant’s entrance. A long time ago one of our former members Sophie Freed who was full of gumption, went to a family funeral down in Baltimore. When she arrived at the church the first door she saw said “servant’s entrance”. So she went around the building to another door. And do you know what it said? “Servant's entrance”! Now here's what's really interesting. Sophie Freed grew up with servants in her home, so these signs really hit her between the eyes. We need to again remember that we are servants and Jesus is Lord not the other way around. We need to recognize we are Jesus’ servants, not only the things that we do with our hands and our feet and our voices but in our hearts and in our spirits and in our language. We need to be mindful of the ways in which we talk and treat one another, especially those closest to us, otherwise we, too, become like pagans that are worshiping and valuing ourselves, not Jesus as Lord.

Only on the basis of a regular consistent and common confession ‘Jesus as Lord’, can we truly discern God's call. We may think we have a gift to offer that's going to ‘bless’ the church, but that might be our ego talking. When the still small voice of the spirit says, “I know what you have as a gift and you're not telling anybody but I need you to still do it.”

That's The Obedience piece. It may be obvious that we're still focused on Jesus as Lord and as servants, we have to pay attention more to the movement of the spirit. Jill and Bill and Meg Meyer took their time discerning where they were being called, which community they wanted to connect with, how they wanted to serve. Jill had the courage to preach a number of times without even being a member and Bill by her side being the lay reader, because she knew that God was calling her to share a gift that she had. And again, Meg Meyer had the courage to say I'm new to your church but I don't mind going to Presbytery. That's a really big gift. So how do we get away from thinking about how to get the jobs done in the church and back to first and foremost, claiming Jesus as Lord? I have an idea. Let's go back to Psalm 34, because it's there in black and white.

Let’s read it together:

I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. 2 My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. 3 O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. 4 I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. 5 Look to him, and be radiant, so your faces shall never be ashamed. 6 This poor soul cried and was heard by the Lord and was saved from every trouble. 7 The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them. 8 O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.

We may be lost, but because of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are yet again found.  Thanks be to God! Amen.