Century Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ)

1301 Tamarack Road, Owensboro, KY 42301, (270) 684-0286, Pastor:  Rev. Jim Westmoreland

Ministry With Many Faces
Mark 6:1-13
by Jim Westmoreland

In 1890, ten-year-old Helen Keller was introduced to the story of Ragnhild Kåta, a deafblind Norwegian girl who had learned to speak. Ragnhild Kåta's success inspired Helen, and she wanted to learn to speak as well. Anne was able to teach Helen to speak using the Tadoma method (touching the lips and throat of others as they speak) combined with "fingerspelling" alphabetical characters on the palm of Helen's hand. Later, Keller would also learn to read English, French, German, Greek, and Latin in Braille.

Anne was Helen's teacher for 49 years. Success and learning did not come easy, but, many of Helen's accomplishments might be attributed to these words from Anne Sullivan, "Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose, not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember."

These words spoken to Helen Keller could have been words to us from Jesus. In today's reading, he begins his management plan for spreading the Gospel. He will not do it all Himself. He begins delegating and treating His disciples as fellow ministers of the Gospel. When we realize that we are all called to be ministers and that Jesus really means it, we can respond in several ways. A common response is to talk down our abilities. We say things like, "I don't talk to people," or "I just can't do ... (whatever the topic is)." Another response is to suggest it is someone else's fault why I don't do more. Or, we can stay safe on the periphery, at a safe distance from commitment and service.

Mark tells us that Jesus began to send them out two by two. He would no longer allow them to continually huddle around Him. If they were to hear His teaching and be His disciple, they would have to learn what it meant to trust Him and to go out and tell others what God was doing through Jesus and in people's lives. Our faith has a way of growing and becoming even more personal when we begin responding to Jesus ongoing direction to send us out in His name, sharing our faith and ministering to others. It is usually when we are outside of our comfort zone that we know we are serving in Christ's strength and not our own. God sees a bigger picture than we do, and He sees a bigger picture of us that we do, too. He believes in us more than we believe in ourselves.

It is interesting that the disciples were a not particularly impressive group. No one would have picked them to be on the Temple Outreach and Evangelism committee. They would not pass a consultant's profile for success. Yet, they were picked by Jesus Himself, and He entrusted to them the work of the Gospel. His method has not changed, and it is God's plan that ministry has many faces. And, some of those faces belong to you and me.

Mark says that Jesus began to send His disciples out. Mark didn't write this for the local newspaper the next day. No, he wrote his gospel twenty years later, after this first ministry assignment, after many other ministry assignments, after Pentecost, after the preaching and teaching of the Gospel began to travel throughout the known world. Mark tell us that Jesus not only sent the twelve out, but He tells us that the church has continued to respond to the sending of Jesus as it has reached out across neighborhoods, across cities, across regions and national boundaries.

From the diary of Anne Frank, the teenage Jewish girl who died at the hands of Nazi Germany during WWI, she writes, "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." We are all called to minister, and we are all called to the priesthood of Jesus Christ, whether we are slave or free, male or female, rich or poor. Whether it is the preaching of the word, living the word, giving communion to the sick and homebound, distributing food and clothing to the poor, we are called to serve as full ministers of Jesus Christ.

Barbara Brown Taylor, internationally known preacher who serves as an Episcopal priest, shared this story: "She sat huddled in her wheelchair as I turned the television tray between us into an altar: tiny chalice, tiny paten, and a yellow rose from the garden, all spread on an embossed white paper napkin. Because she was 97 years old and all but blind, I suggested that she not bother with a prayer book. "I'll read all the lines," I said, "yours and mine too. You just join in on the parts you know." She nodded and we began, each of us delivering our lines on cue until I came to the Great Thanksgiving. Then, when I raised my hands, she raised hers too, the sleeves of her flowered gown falling down her bony arms as she lifted her gnarled fists into the air. We faced each other across the table, mirror images of one another.

"Holy and gracious Father," I began, "in your infinite love you made us for yourself . . . "

"In your infinite love" she said slowly, tasting each word.

"And, when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death," I went on, "you, in your mercy, sent Jesus Christ ..."

"In your mercy," she said, smiling as though someone she knew had just entered the room. When I realized she meant to say the whole prayer with me, I waited for her to catch up, and we prayed it together, our voices looping through one another in an unstudied duet. I had thought they were my lines, but they turned out to be hers, as well. No one had fooled her, all those years she sat watching someone else bless the bread and the wine. She knew she was a priest.⁽¹⁾

Whether it is serving communion, visiting the sick and homebound, whether it is cooking at the Pitino shelter, serving at the Help Office, whether it is teaching a S.S. class or singing in the choir, whether it is leading a small group or challenging friends to give as much of their life as they know to as much of Jesus as they know, we are all called to ministry. For the kingdom work to be done through Century Christian Church there must be ministry with many faces.

It is not uncommon for us to resist change and to resist becoming involved. I believe that God does send us and that He does call us to serve, and it is not always in the way we would have designed. The message that the disciples were sent to proclaim was not only the Good News about Jesus, but they were to preach that all should repent. Ooh! That would be presuming quite a lot, wouldn't it? Remember that repentance is not just feeling sorry and remorseful. It is much stronger than that! It means making a change! To repent is to turn away from what we are doing and start following after what Christ would have us to do.

Erwin Soukup has compiled what he terms "The Seven Steps to Stagnation," which apply not only to individuals but to churches as well. Some are familiar to us. They are

Soukup admits that "there's probably an eighth step, but we've never looked it up before!"⁽²⁾

Ministry can be discouraging some days, but we are not serving for our own feelings, we are serving because we have been sent to serve. That's who we are and what we do. When Mark writes from his vantage point after the death and resurrection of Jesus and after the early spread of Christianity, he describes Jesus beginning to send out disciples.

What does Jesus do today? He is not physically here. The first 12 disciples are no longer here. Has Jesus stopped sending disciples? We think too much about what we want and how we happen to be feeling. Lost is the real meaning of commitment, of a lifetime of ministry. The deeper question for our day is not what we want, but what does God want? What does the Lord require? Can we even ask that question without watering it down? "Require" is not a politically correct term. It forces us deeper than superficial, casual and convenient commitments.

What we discover is that Jesus is very serious about ministry with many faces. And one of the faces that He wants to see more of is yours, and mine. Amen.

Century Christian Church, July 9, 2006 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
www.centurychristian.org

1. Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, Cowley Publications, 1993, pp. 25-34.