Called2Serve

This is the keynote address delivered at "Called2Serve," the national youth gathering for Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ on the Grand View University campus on July 21, 2016.

Welcome back from your service projects on this hot and humid day. I hope you all had on Duluth Trading Company moisture-wicking underwear today like I did. I want to start with a couple things tonight. First, a big shout-out to Culynn and Alex for how great their Bible studies have been this week. Let’s give ‘em a hand.

Second, I want to tell you about something we’re incredibly excited about here at Grand View. We’ve received a $600, 000 grant to serve the church and young people like you. On your way out tonight you’ll get a flyer about the Nexus event on our campus next summer. We’ll be hosting 150 young people who’ve said “Maybe me” when folks have asked who our future pastors are going to be. We’re looking for 50 kids for each of three weeks who have the gifts, the resilience, the faith, and the guts to think about what being a pastor might be like. Here’s a video from our campus pastor Russ Lackey and others. [They played a promotional video.]

We’ll give you a week of fun and learning, sweat and service. And then we’ll send you back to be a servant in your home congregation, equipped to ask more questions, and connected to other kids from Nexus who’ve become some of your best friends. And you know what? It’ll be absolutely free. And all you pastors and youth ministers and parents out there, keep an eye out for more info, because we’re counting on you to nominate kids. You know who has potential. The next generation of pastors needs you to pull ‘em out of the crowd.

Now let’s talk about other stuff. I want to tell you about our wrestling coach Nick Mitchell. For five years running now, Grand View’s wrestling team has been national champion. That’s an amazing feat for a little college in Iowa. It would be pretty easy for our wrestlers to have egos as big as their guns. But Coach Mitchell won’t let it happen. Before they ever set foot on our campus, Coach Mitchell tells the wrestlers that they’ll have to commit themselves to live the championship lifestyle. 

He says it’s not enough to want to be champions on the wrestling mat. Our wrestlers have drilled into them that they need to be champions in the classroom, in their dorms, in their relationships. What’s happened as a result is that our wrestlers wind up being academic all-Americans. They’re known in the college wrestling world not just for how quickly they can achieve a take-down or pin an opponent, but also for the quality of their character. Coach Mitchell has something to teach us about service. But this profile isn’t about winning or about championships. It’s about how important it is for the rest of your life to reflect your faith. In other words, what we’re up to tonight is to think about what it means for you to be a Christian.

I grew up in Sturgis, South Dakota. You may have heard of it. That’s the place with all the motorcycles. I couldn’t show you any picture beyond these wheels. It wouldn’t have been appropriate. But when I was a kid, Sturgis was a lovely place. We lived on the outskirts of town in a little eight-wide trailer house not much different from this one.  We were part of the tiny-house movement before anyone knew there was such a thing.

One summer morning when I was six or seven, my older sister and I were running through the sprinkler to stay cool. We were kids who were always singing. So it was sprinkler spritzing and singing songs. But we didn’t sing your normal kids’ diddies like “London Bridge” or “This Old Man” or “Wrecking Ball.” My sister had gone to church kindergarten where they taught the kids church hymns. Things like “My Faith Looks Up to Thee” and “Beauteeful Savior.” At some point during the singing and splashing, my sister decided it was time to go over to the corner of the yard and play school at the picnic table we had in the shade. I wanted none of that, because I knew who always got to play teacher, so I headed inside for a big glass of Kool-Aid in a 1960’s aluminum glass.

As I came around the front of the trailer, I grabbed hold of the hitch to swing around it like any active kid would. And it was like the trailer house was sucking me into itself. You know what it’s like when you get a shock from a bad outlet? That’s what it was like. But the buzzing didn’t stop. If I used all my strength I could pull one hand away, but the other would come loose. I yelled to my sister for help as loud as I could, but she couldn’t hear me. I was being electrocuted and the electricity was zapping the strength from my voice. At all seemed like it was happening in slow motion. But it ended as quickly as it began. My sister, who was safe because she was wearing leather-soled sandals, grabbed my arm to make me stop what she thought was my messing around. And she pulled me away from being as good as dead. As she dragged me away from the killing electrical field, my beloved sister was still singing. And you know what the words were that came off her lips? “I know that my Redeemer lives: What joy that blest assurance gives! He lives, he lives, who once was dead; He lives, my everlasting head!”

Somehow in that moment something significant happened. A kid’s electrocution became a sermon on his baptism. As good as dead, I had been handed back my life. And it became linked with the fact that Jesus himself lay dead and now lives. My life was no longer my own. Every minute I’ve lived since 1966, every breath I’ve drawn into my lungs, has come on account of someone else’s actions. I couldn’t breathe or pull my other hand away from that hitch to save my life. But death had no power over my sister that day. I was literally grounded in death and given new life. That’s where we always have to begin when we’re talking about our lives as Christian: with the realization and confession that none of this – none of this – happened because of something I did or even had the possibility of doing. It all happened because of Christ.

Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther (from whom we get our name as Lutherans) wrote something called the “Heidelberg Disputation.” In it he was dragging on people who said we could use our free will to choose to be saved. But Luther pushed back. If you could bend your will to decide to be the person God wanted you to be, then we wouldn’t have needed what Christ did on the cross. And saying that was true meant you were dissing Jesus. Then Luther went to say a curious thing. He said “It is certain that we must completely despair of ourselves in order to become fit to obtain the grace of Christ.” Another way of saying that is “As long as you think you have something to contribute to your salvation or bring to God, you don’t get it yet.”

Thirty-five years ago I worked as a camp counselor at a Bible camp in South Dakota called NeSoDak Bible Camp.Some of you here tonight might even have gone there as campers. In those days developmentally disabled adults who were residents of the State Hospital and School in Redfield would join the fifth and sixth graders for a week of camp. Each cabin of kids would have one Redfield resident staying with them all week. I had the privilege of having Robert Schieffelbein in our cabin. The first night of camp I told my campers about the Robert’s arrival the next day. I told them their job was to be inviters. Whatever our cabin did, they would invite Robert.

Those boys were incredible hosts. They’d invite Robert to the canoe beach, to the crafts hut, to softball field, to breakfast, to campfire. But every time they invited Robert, they always got the same response.

“Robert, let’s go swimming.”“I can’t do it. I can’t do it, buddy.”“Robert, let’s go canoeing.”“I can’t do it. I can’t do it, buddy.”“Robert, let’s go to morning worship.”“I can’t do it. I can’t do it, buddy.”

Dear Robert Schieffelbein, who’s probably long dead all these years later, gives us language to talk about ourselves when we come before God: “I can’t do it. I can’t do it, buddy.” All of Christian life begins with our confessing honestly that we come to God with nothing in our hands.

As someone who’s been given his life on a silver platter (well, some days it’s a paper plate), but you get the point. I had nothing to contribute. There’s a divide in my history. And in our Christian lives there’s also a divide – between before Christ and after. We Christians begin to see our lives according to two categories.

There’s Christ. He’s the one who saves. He’s the one who gives you life. He’s the one with so much mercy that your cup overflows. And then there’s everything else. That’s all the bad stuff, of course. But it’s all the good stuff in life, too. Your going to worship. Your digging into God’s Word. Your serving your neighbor. Your sitting in a school bus without air conditioning to go do a service project in hundred-degree heat. There’s Christ. And there’s everything else. None of which can save you. Despairing of yourself means understanding what belongs on each side of the divide.

But if nothing except Christ counts for your salvation, then why bother doing anything good? But you ask, surely there’s something that needs doing! Ah, lemme give you a Q-tip. Nothing. Got it? But if it’s nothing for me and everything for Christ, good works still have a place for us.

In a little book called “Freedom of a Christian,” Luther said that, since you don’t have to give God a whole passel of good works to prove your worthiness for heaven, now you have lots of good works to spare. And there are two reasons to do good works.

The first reason to do good works is that your neighbor needs ‘em. You don’t even have to go out of your way to find neighbors to serve. You’ve got ‘em all around you.When I tool down the road on I-235, I’m surrounded by neighbors in other cars. They depend on my driving safely and courteously.

When Oliver was a new-born, Culynn and Meg Curtis didn’t need to go looking for a neighbor to serve. They had one in the baby crying in the middle of the night.When you walk down the hallway during passing time, it’s crowded with neighbors.

I came across a Luther quote a couple weeks ago that I’d never read before. Listen to what he said in this sermon: “How is it possible that you are not called? You are always in some sort of position. You have always been a husband or a wife or a son or a daughter or a servant. Imagine the lowest position…[E]ven if you had four heads and ten hands you would scarcely have the energy for such a task. And I guarantee you would not be thinking about making a pilgrimage or doing some so-called ‘saintly’ work.” [Martin Luther, “Sermon on John 21:19-24” (1522), quoted in Mark D. Tranvik, Martin Luther and the Called Life (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 33.]

And when we talk about people needing your good works, I’m not talking about pretend needing. I’m a member of Luther Memorial Church – the big steeple up the plaza from us – and I see it happening there all the time. When my former student Katie lost her parental rights to two little boys and wound up in prison for several months, she was desperate for company, and members of the church visited her every dang Saturday. And they paid off here jail debt when she was released, so she could get a driver’s license. And during the peace, when I lean in to tell Betty I’m praying for her and let her know I’m aware of her grief two years now after her 50-year-old son was hit on his motorcycle by a drunk driver and died, she weeps right there in the middle aisle of our sanctuary. My first year-and-a-half as a newly-minted pastor I had to deal with seven baby deaths. Seven. Those grieving families couldn’t tell you who brought what hot dish to the house, but it kept ‘em moving.

Eleven years ago we bought our very first house. On our move-in morning, my 8th-grade son and I were at our lousy apartment with the movers to get the big furniture loaded up. My phone rang, and it was my nephew Nick who had graduated from high school two months before. He said, “Uncle Kenny, I just found my mom dead in her bed. I don’t know what to do.” That started the most awful day. How could I call my wife and tell her that her sister died? How could I tell her parents? How were we going to move into our house and then be able to drive four hours to a funeral for my wife’s sister?

I called our church secretary, and before I could drive over to the new place she had a group of church folks ready to serve. Our campus pastors and Grand View’s Academic Dean also showed up. By the end of the afternoon, our beds were put together with sheets and pillow cases on them. Our entire kitchen had been unpacked. And my Dean hung my tie-rack in the bedroom closet and carefully hung all my ties, so I could choose some appropriate funeral garb. Do you see what they did? In the face of death, they gave us life. Their eyes could see a neighbor’s need, and they acted. When they were all gone and we were left standing weeping in sorrow and amazement in our living room, they had given us space and life so my kid could say, “Mom and Dad, we need to pray. I’ll do it.”

You can think of all kinds of places you have neighbors, because God has placed you in a web of relationships. Your callings from God happen within that web. They’re as common as being a sister or a brother, or as vital as being a voter marking a ballot, or as far into the future as leaving a healthy planet to your great-great-great grandchildren. If you wonder about what you’re going to do with your life, like I did when I was in high school, you don’t have to wonder. Sure, you’ll have to figure out a job. But that’s secondary. This stuff is what truly matters. And the word we Lutherans use to describe it is “vocation.” It’s giving our life to others on account of Christ.

But what about that whole business of why we do good works? I told you there two reasons. I think we’re pretty clear on our neighbors needing us. But there’s that other reason. Luther said we do good works…because it sucks doing ‘em. Well, that’s not exactly what he said, but that’s the gist of it. We do good works because God is making us into new creatures every day of our lives, and the old sinner in us can’t stand it. The sinner in me wants it all to be about me. I want it my way or the highway. I don’t want to be put out in any way. I don’t want to give something to someone who doesn’t deserve it or appreciate it. But the new person of faith God is creating with this good news about Jesus recognizes how the Old Sinner in me clings to its ugly, selfish life. So if there’s nothing you can do to earn your salvation, there is something God lets you have a hand in. Whenever you do good works, it blocks the path of sin we so love to saunter down. Good works are one way the Holy Spirit uses to kill off the old sinner in you, so you won’t be hounded by what Luther called its evil deeds and desires. Doing good works, just like reading scripture, engaging in prayer, and worshiping God, work on you. They not only stymie the old you, they’re also ways God forms the new you. The word we use for that is discipleship. It’s what happened to those Jesus called to follow him.

Most people you might ask about what it means to be a Christian will tell you that it’s all about becoming a better person and being a moral example for lesser beings. But that really doesn’t fit with what we know about God in the person of Jesus Christ. Luther said it best when he said the Christian life is about two contradictory things that you have to hold together: A Christian is perfectly free. A Christian is perfectly dutiful.

Okay, I know. You still wonder if there’s something you need to do. After all, isn’t the theme this week “Called2Serve." You’ve had some good preaching and teaching these days. The mutual conversation and consolation of believers has happened on my campus (yay!). And I know the Spirit is working to create faith in you. So my response has to be: You’re free. What do you want to do? You’ve prayed “Thy will be done” in the Lord’s Prayer hundreds of times. God is answering your prayer by molding your will to match his own. That way, when I ask what you want to do, the Holy Spirit is going to shape your answer and grow fruit in you: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You can count on that happening. That’s the kind of God you have. You have a God who loves your neighbors enough to limit your sin and then give you to them in service. You have a God who loves you enough to die for you and give you life. There’s lots to get busy with. Go to it! Amen.