Jesus: King of kings and Lord of lords
“What Stones, as a Congregation, do We Need to Roll Out?”
Matthew 25:14-29
I would like for you to take a moment and pick a number. Just pick any number. You don't need to write it down or anything like that but, just so you're not cheating, go ahead and whisper it to the person next to you. Everyone have a number? Okay. Did anyone pick a number over a million? I wonder why not? Hold that thought for just one moment.
In 1998, two graduate students from Stanford University named Larry Page and Sergey Brin incorporated the Google search engine. In 2002, Fortune magazine's small business edition reported that on an average day there were 150 million searches on Google. Google is able to access over 2 billion pages of information in 74 different languages. I don't know about you but when I type in something and Google it, bang, it's there. It has searched all 2 billion pages and it's instantaneously there. Now can you explain to me how two graduate students at Stanford could come together in 1998 and come up with a search engine for the Internet that would become so dominant, so huge that really any other search engine on the Internet doesn't even compare to it?
Well, see, I don't have the technical savvy to explain to you how the search engine works nor do I have the business knowledge to know how they positioned themselves so they could be so successful, but I do know this. It all started with their vision. If you would ask these two gentleman to pick a number, any number, they wouldn't pick a number like 14, 99, or 200, or 500. When they decided to name their company, they decided to call it a mathematical term, Google. Google stands for a 1 with 100 zero's behind it. You see, it all started with a vision of what their company could be.
Now there's no way these two guys, Larry and Sergey, could have ever imagined what Google would turn into. In their wildest imagination, they couldn't come up with what would happen to their search engine. But they had the vision, and they fearlessly pursued that vision.
Back in the early 1950s, there was a group of people who got together on the west side of Des Moines and they had a vision. They had a vision for a congregation on the west side of the city of Des Moines. At that time there was no Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod church in the western part of Des Moines. A site was found; land was purchased, and in 1952 construction began. On November 11, 1953…with 47 communicant members and 38 children… a congregation was formed called Mt. Olive Lutheran Church. They didn't know what was going to happen to that congregation, certainly didn't know what God was going to do with that congregation, but they had a vision that there should be a congregation but the vision didn’t stop there.
In 1959, Mt. Olive Lutheran Church became known as Mt. Olive Lutheran Church and School with the start of a kindergarten class. The following year 1960, construction began on the school and in 1961 K-4 opened with 61 students enrolled. 1965 brought 5-6 grade. 1968 brought Little Lambs pre-school and in 1976 grades 7-8 were added to the education program. All of this branched from the vision that the gospel message of Jesus Christ needed to get out to the community, whether it was in the setting of a worship service or the setting of a child sitting at a desk, the gospel message needed to be proclaimed.
If you talk to some of the founding members, I am willing to say that they had no idea back then what Mt. Olive would come to be today. They had no idea about the size, no idea of the breadth of the ministry our congregation and school, no idea of how much of an impact we would have on the community and an impact we would have on people's lives. But it began with a vision, a vision of what God was calling them to do.
For the past few weeks, we have been focusing in on how to roll the stones out of our lives. Just as the women as they were walking to the tomb that first Easter morning were asking, “Who will roll the stone away?” We too have been asking ourselves, what stone needs to be rolled out of our lives. You see, just as the stones in front of the grave were blocking the women from believing in who Jesus is and following the vision he had for them, we too deal with stones, whether from our present or those from our painful past, that block us from having a deep, personal relationship with Jesus. For that is the vision God the Father has for each and every one of us from John 6…”The will of the Father is this…that everyone will look to the Son…” So personal does Jesus want this relationship to be that he states in John 14, “We, the Father and I, will make our home in your heart.”
And so, as we have asked what stones, we individually, need to roll out of our live, we also need to ask as a congregation, what stones do we need to roll out of our lives? Because if we don’t ask that question, if we don’t begin to work on identifying and rolling those stones out…it will become harder and harder for us to do God’s vision for this congregation. Our vision statement is built upon the acronym ACTION.
When we as a congregation came together two years ago to try to discern the vision God had for us, we came up with ACTION. Adore – worship; Contribute – Stewards; Teach – Educate; Interact – Work together; Outreach – proclaim the message; Nurture – provide a place to grow. But, if we don’t first work on rolling the stones out of our congregational life…there will be no ACTION.
But this much I know, as I’ve been here these last couple of months, asking questions, learning about what we do and why we don them, this much I can see: God has given us everything we need to roll away the stones that we may be dealing with as a congregation that may prevent the vision from becoming a reality. In fact, I guarantee you God has given us everything we need, because God doesn't call us to something unless He equips us to accomplish it. God doesn't ask anyone to do something, unless He enables that person to be able to do it. And that's just what God has done. God has given us more than what we need to roll away our stones and accomplish his vision.
Jesus Himself teaches us this important concept in the parable of the landowner.
• A landowner comes to his servants because he's going to go on a trip.
• Now this is a parable, so it's a story Jesus tells for a meaning. That means it represents something.
• The landowner is God Himself. And He entrusts His property, He entrusts what He values, what He owns to His servants.
• The servants bring nothing into this relationship. There is nothing the servant can contribute in this transaction. They simply work for the master. The master has all the supplies. The master has all of the blessings, all of the property, and He entrusts it to them.
• In other words, He trusts they're going to do what is right with what belongs to Him, that they're going to manage it well.
He gives five talents, then two talents, then one talent. You may be asking, “What's a talent? What's He really talking about here?”
• Jesus is trying to show what God gives us is of incredible value.
• A talent equals 6,000 denarii. An average person working an average day's work would earn 1 denarius. So 1 denarius is one day's worth of work. 6,000 denarii equals 1 talent.
• Convert that over into our economy, our dollars and cents, roughly, to the first man he gave a little over $2 million. To the second man, he gave a little over $3/4 of a million and, to the third man, a little less than $1/2 million.
• Jesus is saying here is that the landowner, God, has entrusted something of incredible value to his servants. He gave them all they needed and more to work with. He wanted them to use His property and to invest His property and to continue to earn from His property, to have a return from that, He gave them what they needed.
• He gave them, even the third servant, everything they needed and more to accomplish what He was asking them to do. And that's the point of the parable. The point of the parable is not the money. The point of the parable is He entrusts to them something of great value, and He gives them more than what they need to accomplish their mission. God has given us everything we need, more than we need to accomplish our vision of ACTION.
First and foremost, the greatest gift God has given us, the greatest resource He's bestowed upon us, the thing that is almost incomprehensible in value that He's entrusted to us is His forgiveness and grace. And frankly, we'd be lost without it.
• Grace by definition is God's love for us, but it's a love that's undeserved.
• It's not a love that somehow you can work your way up to and make yourself good enough so God loves you.
• It's not a love that somehow, once God loves you, well, you can kind of repay God back and, all of a sudden, become worthy in His sight. That's not it at all. Grace is a one-sided kind of love. It's not earned. It's not deserved.
We don’t deserve this love because we are not perfect. In fact, if we look down deep inside of ourselves, we know to the core of our being, we have fallen far short of what God expects of us. We lie, we cheat, we steal, we gossip. The list goes on and on of the things we have done. We fall far short of what God expects of us.
We as a congregation also have had our challenges. There have been things said to or about each other over the years that have not been helpful. There may be people that don’t even speak to each other because of it. There have been mistakes made, fears created, fingers pointed and when we look deep down through it all we realize that we as a congregation also have fallen short of what God expects of us. And these are very real stones that we as a congregation are dealing with and could prevent use from carrying out God’s vision for us.
But that’s not the end. Even though we don't live the way God wants us to live, even though as a congregation we fall short in how we handle each other and deal with each other, and, even though we know what God wants us to do but we do the opposite anyway, God still loves us.
In fact, He loves us to such a degree that God sent His Son to live among us. So Jesus came and, although He was God, He became a complete and full human being, just like us, with one exception. He's the perfect human being. Jesus was sinless. He followed the Father's will, the vision for his life completely, totally.
All so that God can do something that just blows your mind. He substitutes Jesus for us. He watches as His Son is nailed to a cross and He takes all of our sin and all we deserve from that sin and He lays it on Jesus. And He takes Jesus' righteousness and perfection and He lays it on us. So as Jesus hangs between heaven and hell, all of the sins of the world are put upon Him. The death you deserved and I deserved, He died. The hell you deserve and I deserve, He goes through. And the heaven, which is rightfully His, is waiting for us. That's grace. You can't put a price tag on that. You can't assign a value to that. We're lost without it. But that's what God's love is. Who’s the one that would roll the stone away on that first Easter morning? Jesus himself! He takes what was blocking us from having a relationship with God and rolls it right out of our lives. God has given us that great resource so we can roll those stones and accomplish the vision of grace.
Another resource God gives is each other. Would you think for a moment of the resources God has given us of the people of this congregation? Just for a moment, contemplate the people you know in this congregation. What skills, gifts, and talents do they bring to the table? I'm amazed at the wide array of skills and gifts and talents God has brought together in this place we call Mt. Olive Lutheran Church and School. We have everything here. We have lawyers, nurses, accountants, and teachers. We have construction workers and landscape artists. We have waiters and waitresses. We have everything. All the skills, all the gifts, all the talents that are necessary for us to fulfill that vision of grace, God has assembled in the people of this congregation.
And not only that but think about the spiritual gifts, the spiritual gifts God has laid upon each one of us. Some of us have the gift of leadership. Others have the gift of compassion. Some of us have the gift of empathy. Some of us have the gift of hospitality. The list goes on and on of all the spiritual gifts, and they're all here. They're all assembled in this congregation. God has given us all of the people resources we would ever need to move forward with his vision.
And if God indeed has given us the resources we need to removed those stones out of our lives and is calling us to work together toward his vision, there's one more thing he gives.
God also gives us the responsibility. God gives us the responsibility to use what He has given us to work in His kingdom. What happens when the landowner comes back? He calls for an accounting of His servants, does He not?
• The servants come in one by one and they are to give an accounting, “What have you done with the blessings I entrusted to you?” He expects they've used them and He expects a return for the work they've done.
• So the first servant comes in. He says, “Well, you gave me $2 million. Here, $4 million.”
• The other one comes in and says, “You gave me $3/4 million. Here we go, we have $1½ million your money has earned.” Now notice there's no distinction between those two servants. This is important. He doesn't say to the second servant, “Well, you know, the first guy came in with $4 mil. How come you didn't do the same?”
• That's not the point. The point is what we do with what we’ve been given.
But what about the third servant? The third servant comes in and He says, “I was fearful of who you are and so here you go. Exactly what you gave me, I'm giving it right back to you.” Can you imagine what this man did? He took $1/2 million, put it in a box, dug a hole in his back yard and buried it and he waited.
As a congregation, it’s easy for us to fall into that same trap to think that, “Well, we don’t have the money like Lutheran Church of Hope, we don’t have the man-power like Shepherd of the Valley, First Federated, or we are not in a position like Gloria Dei to grow.” It’s easy for us to just bury our resources and not use them because of the fear that we are not like others.
My friends, we cannot be the third servant. We cannot allow our ministry, our congregation to be the third servant. In other words, we can't just kick back and say, “You know we just don’t have things like those other churches”
We cannot say that “we’ve never done that before” or “Why move forward, we have a beautiful sanctuary. We have good facilities. We have a pretty good preacher.” Alright, well, maybe not. “We have a new principle coming and we have a wonderful devoted group of members. We are paying off our debt. Let's kick back and let's just see what happens.”
That's like taking $1/2 million and burying it in the back yard. That’s like allowing the stones of fear from mistakes from the past or the challenges of the present keep us from using God’s resources to the best of our ability. That would simply be irresponsible. We cannot be the third servant.
Did you notice what happened to the two servants? His master replied to them after they came back with their return. He says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful with a few things. I'll put you in charge of many things.” You've been faithful with a few things so even more blessings are going to be showered upon you.
Look at the history of Mt. Olive Lutheran Church and School. As Mt. Olive has been faithful with God's blessings, as Mt. Olive has stepped out in faith and advanced the ministry, God just pours down more blessings. And God just opens up more doors. And He just keeps pouring them down. And I believe in the future, as we allow God to roll our stones away and as we go towards that vision of ACTION using all the things God has made available to us, God is going to bless us even more. God is going to give us even more responsibility so we can use and manage all of His gifts to the advancement of His kingdom.
It's God’s vision for us. You see, God doesn't think in numbers of 14 or 98 or 200.
. God thinks in terms of Google. He thinks in terms of 1 with 100 zeros behind it. And if God is calling us to the vision of ACTION, and I believe He is, then let us roll the stones out our life as a congregation and move forward together with that vision. And to do so, I encourage all of you to take a stone, whether it’s the one you brought or one out of the basket in the gathering area and as you walk out the front door of the church place it to the left in the corner of the flower bed. Those stones will be used in the new prayer garden and will serve as a motivation for us, an inspiration for us. And by God's grace, we will accomplish God’s vision in ACTION.
Amen.
A sermon by Rev. Kendall L. Meyer
Senior Pastor
Mt. Olive Lutheran Church and School
5625 Franklin Ave.
Des Moines, IA 50310-1031
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May 24, 2009
