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January 22, 2006
Witnessing in our Jerusalem
(First given as a children's sermon)
Genesis 15: 1-6 / Acts 1: 8
January 22nd, 2006
Jesus told his disciples as He was about to depart this earth to resume life with the Father in heaven, "You will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come on you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth." He told them this in Jerusalem. He wanted them to understand, "Begin right where you are."
Christians who read these words are hearing Jesus say to them too, "Begin right where you are to be my witnesses." Jesus says to you and me, "Begin where you are." We are in West Lafayette, Indiana. What does Jesus mean His followers to do? This was a question His disciples asked too.
His disciples remembered a story Jesus told them that made sense enough to them at the time, but carried no big meaning when they first heard it. This story is recorded in Luke 19, starting at verse eleven. Jesus was about to leave them to return to the Father. He spoke of Himself as a nobleman who was going away to receive a kingdom and would come back again. He summoned ten servants and gave them ten minas. One Mina was quite a lot of money, about three month's wages. When this word is used in the Old Testament it sometimes means "portion." I wonder if this nobleman divided up his possessions into ten portions. I wonder if he gave one-tenth to each servant. In other words, his entire present domain he invested in his servants.
In the old King James Version we read that Jesus told them, "Occupy till I come." Today we would say, "Use what I've given you profitably." But the word "occupy" is very suggestive.
When you and I are occupied with something that's what we're completely busy doing. I'm occupied playing tennis, or studying, or working in the yard. You might say, "I'm already occupied," which means don't disturb me.
This is very much what Jesus wanted His disciples of all time to remember. Be occupied with what I've given you until I return.
The nobleman returned after receiving the Kingdom. He called to him his servants. We read about only three servants that came to report on how they'd been occupied with their responsibility.
The first servant came back having turned his one portion into ten portions. Maybe this means he used his one-tenth so well that it multiplied as much as the whole possession that the nobleman had divided before he left. The nobleman was very pleased. "Well done, good servant. Because you have been trustworthy in a very small thing, take charge of ten cities."
The second servant came and reported. "The one mina you gave me I have made into five minas." Again the nobleman was pleased. "You will rule over five cities."
The third servant came hesitantly. "Lord, here is your mina. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth—look how shiny it still is--, for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow." The nobleman was angry. "Why didn't you at least put it in the bank and get interest on it?" So he took the one mina this man had not used at all, but kept safe, and gave it to the first servant who had multiplied his portion ten times.
Jesus then said something that seems unfair to us. "To all those who have more will be given, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." If we did not know that each of the servants was given the same amount to begin with this would seem very harsh, even unfair. But when we know that Jesus was putting the cap on a parable about ten servants who had all been given the same to start with, it seems very fair.
"Occupy till I return," he had told them all.
There is an untold part of this parable that begs to be told. Three servants came back to report, but there were seven others to whom the nobleman had given the same amount. What about them? If the third servant incurred his master's displeasure for simply hanging on to his one mina, what about the other seven who didn't even come back with their shiny, unused mina?
I wonder if Jesus' disciples wondered the same thing after a while. They noticed as any pastor notices that when people are invested with the Gospel, the Good News that God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, some take this investment and multiply it ten fold, others five fold, and some merely keep it wrapped in a napkin, hidden under a pillow somewhere.
Those who multiply God's investment in them ten fold are those who have given their lives to obedience to Jesus so thoroughly that it is evident to any who look at them that they have been transformed. And then they speak of Jesus to others in a way that is believable. People hear them after seeing them, and put their trust in Jesus. So they multiply over and over again the Gospel that was entrusted to them.
Some have greater gifts of communication than others, so that some increase their entrustment ten times, while others only multiply their investment five times. But both are well occupied. The Lord is pleased with them, and they no doubt enjoy the sense of the Lord's pleasure.
Then there are those who have taken the Lord's investment, the Gospel, and they put it under a pillow. They have not lost it. Maybe they talk about it, read about it, sing about it, think about it—but it doesn't affect them personally. All their contact with the Gospel has not affected their lives. Their natural dispositions, warts and all, are as it was when they first heard the Gospel. They are interested in the same things everyone else is interested in, essentially having to do with being secure economically and as safe and healthy as possible. Since the Gospel has been bracketed in some "religious" closet of their lives, they've not spoken of it to anyone else. They've kept the Gospel in a napkin, safely tucked under their pillow. How many, I wonder, are like this third servant. Fruitless lives, but still saying, "I believe the Gospel." Indeed, it's not clear to them what "I believe" means. It's a bit of religious jargon. The Lord has nothing but harsh words for such servants as these.
But what are we to say of the ten servants not mentioned in the story? I wonder if these are the servants who, to use Bishop Westcott's words, have succumbed to "the slow [spiritual] suicide of idleness." While possibly even going to church with some regularity they hardly remember the Gospel and have made no attempt at all to live in obedience to anything other than the ordinary quest for prosperity and good health.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to fellow German Christians back in 1937, as the church was having its heart slowly eaten away by Nazi-ism,
"The price we are having to pay to-day in the shape of the collapse of the organized Church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a while nation unasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving."
Christians now look with near disbelief at the German Christians who were taken in by Hitler's holocaust of the Jews and others he wanted to eliminate from the earth. "How could they when they had the Gospel?" we ask. Well, they did with the Gospel what the seven servants in the story did with their minas. They remained servants, but they were no longer even identifiable as servants who had been entrusted by their Lord with anything.
Well, when Jesus said to His disciples at the end, "You will be my witnesses," they remembered what He had told them in this story. And you and I have been given a mina, an investment of the Lord's property to use.
We will maximize the Lord's investment not when we hold on to our investment, but when we give it away. Because what the Lord has given us in the Gospel is like the flask of oil God provided for the widow in the Old Testament story. Elijah told this widow who had cared for him, who had only a little oil and wheat that she shared with him, "the jar of wheat will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth."
We will never run out of this Gospel. The more we live by it and witness to it believably, the more of it there is. It finds a place in everyone who receives it. Indeed, it multiplies still more as these who receive it duplicate this process into which they were introduced.
In this new initiative that we have heard today at Faith Church, our success will come not just if we get more children into this place. It will really come when in each one who comes to us the Gospel is rooted deeply because they have been persuaded by our witness. And our witness will be demonstrated not as we hold on tenaciously to what we have, protecting it in some napkin under a pillow lest it get lost. But when we hold it in our hearts, let it challenge our way of life so that we follow Jesus, and when we speak of it credibly to others.
Jesus said, "You will be my witnesses. Where? How so? Start in Jerusalem. Start in your Jerusalem, which is West Lafayette, Indiana. Hold in your hearts what is true. Let it govern how you live. Speak of it to those who express to you their need."
May God so direct us to receive Jesus' words and give them flesh.
Grant, O heavenly Father, that we may so believe our Lord Jesus that we may be faithful servants, using well His investment in us that we multiply what we have been given, and so please Him that His Kingdom is being extended where we are. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at January 22, 2006 09:30 AM