Feb. 21, 2021
In the gospel of Mark, first chapter, Jesus starts his ministry, and everything is upside down. First, John the Baptist says, “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” The real spiritual powerhouse is coming. He is talking about Jesus.
Then Jesus comes. John has said Jesus is the one filled with the Holy spirit. Jesus will baptize, and it will be the real deal, with the Holy Spirit. John can’t do that. But then it turns out John is the one who baptizes Jesus. The less powerful guy, John the Baptist, baptizes the spiritual powerhouse: Jesus. It is upside down. It’s a sign that God’s way, is upside down. The student becomes the teacher.
John baptizes Jesus and verses 11 and 12 say: And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness,”
God is so pleased with Jesus, that he sends him into the desert for 40 days to be tempted by Satan! That makes no sense. A father that his please with his son, gives him a real gift, not a 40 trip to the wilderness with no food! But God’s way is upside down. You have to be willing to suffer, to follow God.
Finally verses 14 and 15 say, 14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
John is in prison, and Jesus is starting his teaching, saying the kingdom of God is very close. It’s good news!
It’s an upside-down kingdom. Where, despite prison for John, there is good news. It is a kingdom of humility and suffering, where there is bad news with the good news, but God is here!
In a world where we are tempted to do selfish things, Jesus came in an upside-down way, an unselfish way. Jesus taught in Matthew 16:24-27: 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[f] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.
If we act selfishly, we risk losing our soul. If we act selflessly, we will find true life in God, we will get a reward.
Today is our annual congregational meeting. It’s a time to think about our church, how do we do what God wants and follow the upside-down way of God’s kingdom? What does it mean for our church to take up our cross and follow Jesus?
We have a purpose statement: “Loving God, Serving Together” This fits us well. Each year, when it is our turn to serve at the Williams Valley Food Pantry, we pack the place with volunteers! The director, Donna Hunter, is so impressed by how many people we turn out! The Halloween Parade food stand is a big project. Guys come in the afternoon to put the stand together, Bonnie and Maggie and others cook and bake so there is plenty of food. Even this year we our Halloween Parade food stand happened! There are more fundraisers like pumpkin rolls and the Mother’s Day meal. We get together and we serve. We like to serve the Learning Tree preschool. We make sure the snow gets plowed and the heat works well, we serve on the board, all to make sure the preschool runs smoothly and educates kids. That’s our purpose: “Loving God, Serving Together.”
We also came up with a mission objective: “Go all out to reach children and youth and their parents and increase worship attendance by 10 and increase Sunday school and youth ministry by 10 by the end of 2021.” That’s a big mission! We can extend that to 2022, since things aren’t quite back to normal yet.
This mission objective seems to really fit Trinity. We love young people! We love our Sunday school. We love the Learning Tree. We kept the confirmation class going even during the stay-at-home time, meeting on Zoom and Go to Meeting when we couldn’t be in person. Our youth were confirmed on time. Many people from church taught the confirmation class. We served young people together.
So we plan to go all out to reach children and youth and their parents and increase worship attendance, Sunday school and youth ministry. Part of accomplishing this is to give family ministry more resources, more volunteers than other things we do. If Sunday school needs volunteers, we will sign up. Let’s say we decide to do a valentine’s dinner for learning tree parents: we would serve. If the schools have some need, we will do our best to meet it. If there is a group serving the children and youth of our community, we will go help them. We will give our best to families.
But what will we do? How will we accomplish this? We need to hear from you. You have great ideas. Let’s put our heads together and come up with something that really fits, that we are all inspired to do.
If you look at the insert, you see some examples of goals to meet the Mission:
- Pray for children, youth and parents.
- Go all out on hospitality so kids love church.
- Provide serve opportunities for families.
- Put on a few fun events for families, children or youth.
- Empower youth to lead.
- Have a summer five-day mission/service stay-at-home trip for youth to serve in our area.
- Help the school or another group that serves children.
- Once or twice a year offer coffee and donuts to Learning Tree parents/grandparents as they drop off their kids.
These are just examples. What do you think we should do? What has God put on your heart? Please write it down and let us know. Five or fewer goals is all we need. We plan to ask people who aren’t worshipping with us today their ideas as well. I believe together we will come up with a Holy Spirit-inspired set of goals.
Then, how are you willing to serve? It will take the whole church, everybody doing something, as we seek to fulfill our mission. Please put it in the offering place as you leave, or you can take it with you if you need more time to think. Just be sure to give us your ideas.
Jesus started his ministry in an upside-down way. The lesser man baptized the Spirit-filled Jesus. God loved Jesus so much he sent him out with no food to be tempted! Jesus taught us to lose our lives for him in order to find them. Together as a church, let us serve the world and help build God’s wonderful, upside-down kingdom! Amen.
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