Luke 4:14-21
January 24, 2010
"The Call Too"
Now I want you to say it again with me and claim it in your heart, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me!”
All baptized Christians can claim the same statement as their calling for with our water baptism comes the gift and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
God has anointed you with the Holy Spirit to do certain thing for Him. The Holy Spirit has empowered you to do courageous and great things for God in small acts of love.
God has empowered you to do things you can only dream about and they seem so large and hard to do that again and again you’ve backed off from pursuing them. So I say to you the words of Isaiah that were claimed by Jesus and are yours because you are Christ’s body today, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon you!!!”
And God has anointed you and empowered you to do certain things. Hear your calling, listen for it and claim it…..
God has anointed you to preach good news to the poor;
To bind up the broken hearted,
To preach release to the captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind
To let the oppressed go free
And proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
This is your calling. You can claim it. You are empowered to claim it. You are anointed by the Holy Spirit to claim it and live it.
But you and I we often hesitate for we say, “who am I to speak and act for God?” For we forget our calling, we forget our anointing and we forget our baptism and empowerment by the very Spirit of God.
I say to you and to myself its time to act with boldness and not with fear. It’s time to act with faith and not doubt.
For do you want to know the truth? You as you participate in the Church and give to its ministries you are already doing many of these things for we as a Body with many parts are answering our calling here and around the world.
The first part of our calling is “to preach good news to the poor.” Have you giving to any disaster relief efforts now or over the last several years? If so say with me
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”
If you work or have worked in the Food Bank, with Primavera, Project Hospitality, Helping Hands and of course the UMW say with me,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”
If you have sung with or helped with the choir, or the praise band, or the music program or fine arts say with me,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”
If you have prayed for the church and its leaders, participated in the prayer wheel, the knee mail say with me,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”
If you have worshiped God here and strived to love his people say with me,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”
If you teach or have taught Sunday School, been on an Education Committee or been a participant in a Sunday School class or Bible study say with me,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”
What a Holy Spirit filled people and church we have!!! Amen!!
Now where do I see the Spirit of the Lord upon us leading us into the future? I see it in us jumping in whole hog into our Church Project “to become the church for families with children living at home.”
In our scripture today there is one little phrase that can often be overlooked in verse16 it says, “When Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom.”
That one little phrase “as was his custom” speaks volumes to us today. Jesus was brought up “going to synagogue”, or as we would say, “going to church.” Jesus came from a religious family and as was his custom, he attended to the religious demands of his faith. I can imagine he had a lot of disagreements with what went on in the Synagogue but he went faithfully.
Now I imagine that Jesus went to worship a little more willing than some of our children have gone to worship over the years. Some of us would describe our experience with the church in our earlier years as that of having a “drug” problem. Our parents “drug” us to Sunday School, “drug” us to worship, “drug” us to youth group until we had and “addiction problem”.
We were addicted to Christ, wholly taken over by the Holy Spirit, wholly given to God. In fact we couldn’t shake that call for the Spirit of the Lord was upon us.
In working with some of the children here I have discovered that they don’t have a “drug” problem. Their parents do. These children dragged their parents here. In fact a couple of families joined this church this past year because their children enjoyed our Sunday School program so much.
For most children, though, it is their parents that are the most important religious influence in their lives.
One time I was called into the SPRC to give an accounting for why the numbers of youth involved in the youth program wasn’t higher. Some of the members of the committee had certain youth in mind who weren’t attending. I pointed out to them that many of the kids they had in mind even their parents were on the rolls, the parents did not attend. It was an almost one to one relationship. If the parents were involved in the life of the church the youth were. If the parents were not the youth were not.
I had one women call me one day to lament that her 20 year old daughter had joined a religious group that she considered to be a cult. In our conversation I asked her if she attended worship anywhere. She said, “No, not for the last 20 years, and then added, I guess if I had given a better example my daughter wouldn’t be where she is at.” I didn’t have to say anything but encouraged her to begin again practicing her faith.
Now it seems obvious that children will follow in their parents footsteps at least it did for me, but the Lilly Foundation recently paid for a huge study on the religious faith of American Teenagers. It was a huge study and the results will be published in a book this summer, but I got a preview by the author at the “Congress On Evangelism” that I just attended.
Now after years of study of thousands of teenagers from many denominations what was the number one finding? Well, that teenagers and young adults generally hold the same beliefs as their parents. If the parents are involved in the life of the church the children are. If the parents are not involved then the children won’t be.
Now just about the second most important indicator that faith was being passed on to youth was “significant other adults within the congregation investing their lives in the children and youth”. Basically, churches that invested resources in terms of adults, time and money and staff in children and youth and their families had those children grow up and claim the faith.
As Darrell Obert has pointed out, “Our children are not the future of the church; we are our children’s future.”
Now where I see us going with this, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is upon us” and leading us. Is that we are now interviewing candidates for a Director of Children’s Ministries here at Christ Church. This person, whom we hope to have in place by March 1st, is being hired to help us do our ministry with children and their parents, not do our ministry for us.
Since parents are so important to the development of children’s faith we are starting a parent’s fellowship and we are working to strengthen our educational opportunities for parents. The better we train parents to pass on the Christian faith the more likely it is to occur.
I am also moving towards starting up the “Sidewalk Sunday School Program” right here at Christ Church. Our primary outreach will be to Duffy School. Through this program we will minister to the children and through the children get to know the parents and discover how we can better reach and minister to our community. We believe a little child will lead us.
God works in mysterious ways and speaks to us through people, the Scriptures and the circumstances of life. Here are some reasons why I feel God is calling us to reach out through the Sidewalk Sunday School program in our community. I have heard about the program for years. I spent the week at the “Congress on Evangelism” with a pastor who runs the program at his current and a previous church. And at the Congress one of the preachers made this observation.
He said the Methodist movement did not start the day John Wesley had his heart warming experience. It started the day he wrote in his journal words to this effect, “Today I descended to do such a vile thing and that is to preach the gospel out of doors on the street.” I looked up that entry. John Wesley preached to 3000 people that day and the Methodist movement never looked back.
The scripture he chose to preach on is one you might recognize. It begins, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me….” I have taken these as a sign that this is where God wants us to go.
Methodism at is best has always been a lay movement. Today here in this place it continues on and will deepen as members step forward to mentor and teach our children, youth and parents, and reach out to our community through Sidewalk Sunday School, which is a form of street preaching.
So repeat after me and claim these words in the deepest recesses of your heart, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” X2
Now repeat after me and proclaim this to each other and the world, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon us!” X2
In Jesus’ name amen!!!!
