Are You A Spiritual Risk-Taker?

This is my sermon for tomorrow. It is Week 7 of our 50 Day Spiritual Adventure "Daring to Dream Again: Overcoming Barriers That Hold You Back." The scriptures for this sermon is: Luke 1:26-38; 2:33-35; John 19:25-27. I hope it blesses you.


Greenfield Presbyterian 4-1-12

It’s Palm Sunday, and may seem a bit odd that we have read scripture of Jesus’ birth being foretold and as a youngster! I agree! But by the time we make it around to the end of the sermon hopefully it should all make sense!

Today begins Week 7, the last week of our 50 Day Spiritual Adventure, Daring to Dream Again: Overcoming Barriers That Hold You Back...and today we’re going to talk about being risk-takers, going outside of our comfort zones for God.

Hopefully going outside of your comfort zone isn’t a totally foreign idea to you! But for some of us, I know, we can avoid discomfort like the plague.

The Bible is full of faithful people who stepped out of their comfort zones for God...
Abraham as he took his son Isaac up on the mountain to make a sacrifice to God (of his son!),
Moses, confronting Pharoah and leading the Israelites out of Egypt and to the Promised Land,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ruth...the list goes on and on.

Today we’re looking at Mary, Jesus’ mother, as someone who is a good model for us of someone who was a spiritual risk-taker. God asked Mary to be a part of His dreams, and it changed the course of her life and the course of history forever!

When we think about who Mary was and what her situation was, we need to step back a little bit....step back to before God appeared to her through the angel Gabriel.

Mary was betrothed, engaged to be married to Joseph - a just and good man, a descendant of the great King David. Things were looking really good for Mary.

No doubt, Mary saw this relationship and upcoming marriage to Joseph as a gift from God. And there is also no doubt, that as a young women in that time and that place, her betrothal to Joseph was probably her greatest security.

Certainly Mary had her family, like her cousin Elizabeth who she went and visited after Gabriel confronted her, and friends in the village. Those were also some of Mary’s securities.

What are some of your greatest securities?

Your income?
For Mary, I’m sure that her marriage to Joseph represented financial security for her as well.
Your position?
For some this is tied heavily to income, for others it may mean status, or happiness because they love it or feel they’re making a difference, or something else.
Your house?
When you have a home to go to you can feel much more secure!
Your emotional comfort?
I know I don’t like conflict and tend to avoid it. Is it my security?
Your family?
You know that if nothing else, your family is always there for you.
Your friends?
How many do you have on FB?
Your parents’ approval?
You’ll never lose it, right?
Your appearance?
How about your retirement package?
Because that’s what security is all about right? Planning for the future, being prepared. Taking care of yourself. Right?

What in your life represents security for you like Mary’s engagement represented to her? (pause)

These are all wonderful things that God blesses many of us with. But He also asks us to hold on loosely to them... Hold them with an open palm.

With an open palm because if or when He comes to you with a dream He’d like you to share in, He doesn’t want you clinging to them as if they were your biggest security.

He may ask you to put all of those things which make you feel secure into His hands and ask you to totally trust Him. Will you be able to leave that comfort zone?

The angel Gabriel came to Mary and told her that she was a favored one of God, and that God was with her. And then notice the next words...

It says, “Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.” Um, yeah.

Mary finds that God is going to make her the mother of the son of God, despite the fact that she’s a virgin...for nothing is impossible with God.

Now, I’m not really sure what you say to that...

But Mary’s response was, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” (1:38)

She could’ve pulled a Jonah and taken off somewhere.

She could’ve done like Moses and argued with God about how there must be someone more well-suited for the job.

Or she could’ve done like Samuel’s sons did - and do whatever she darn well pleased...but she didn’t.

Mary stepped right out of that future of security into a future that was unknown and totally in God’s hands. Easy to talk about...difficult to do.

And as life goes on things get more and more interesting for Mary. She goes off to visit her cousin and finds that Elizabeth indeed is pregnant, just as the angel told her.

Mary becomes pregnant, has her son and names him Jesus, has visits from all sorts of people affirming the uniqueness of this child...and then they take him to the temple to circumcise him and present him to the Lord.

While there the prophet Simeon, besides foretelling the things Jesus will bring about, says that, “a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (2:35).

We see numerous things throughout Jesus’ life that must’ve pierced Mary’s heart...

All of the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and younger who were killed because of Jesus’ birth;
The flight to Egypt which took them far away from any family or friends;
Knowing that Jesus was who he was, and then not being able to find him for three days at the temple;
Hearing or seeing the treatment that some gave Jesus; and finally,
Seeing her son beaten, crucified, and finally dying on the cross.

Yeah, quite an example of stepping out of comfort and heeding God’s call. Makes you want to jump right in, doesn’t it?

Do you think after all that Mary would still say, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.”?

Let’s face it. Mary had a rough life, and hardly comfortable.

But comfortable isn’t one of the things that God promises us, is it!

My guess, is that if we could ask Mary if she again would say, “I am the Lord’s servant,” she’d say, “in a heartbeat!”

Because once we get over being uncomfortable when we follow God, we see and experience wonderful things that we never would have seen or experienced if we had held on tight to our comfort.

As your life with the Lord unfolds have you ever found yourself telling God, “Hold up! Stop! That’s too much...too far....too uncomfortable for me!”

(Maybe some of these challenges we’ve been given in this Adventure?)

If so, I want to challenge you to go back and figure out, exactly, where your security lays. What represents your comfort zone? Get an actual picture of it and put it in your Bible.

Is it your job? Take a picture of your desk and stick it in your Bible.

Is it money? Take a picture of some cash or your paycheck and stick it in your Bible.

Figure out what it is, take a picture, and keep it in God’s Word as a reminder of what your struggle is, that you need to hand it to God, and where your real security is.

Today is Palm Sunday. Jesus has been telling his disciples that time is coming near and he will be leaving them. Actually, he was even very specific and told them that he would be killed...but they didn’t want to believe it.

That’s pretty uncomfortable to think about.

As Jesus came into Jerusalem on the back of a colt the crowd of disciples began praising God “in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:”

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

And interestingly enough, some of the Pharisees told Jesus to rebuke his disciples. Apparently they were uncomfortable with their outbursts.

And Jesus told them that if his disciples weren’t able to yell praises that the rocks themselves would cry out in praise. (Luke 19:39-40)

Hanging out with Jesus can be really uncomfortable.

He has this habit of showing us where our loyalties are misplaced.

He has this habit of constantly giving praise to God, which sometimes makes us uncomfortable... because we like to praise ourselves.

He has this way about Him that always points us back to the One in whom we can always find our total security.

Last weekend was the World Mission Initiative Mission Conference at the seminary and Kim and I went to one of the plenary sessions to hear one of the speakers, Chris Haw.

Chris is a young guy, probably in his late twenties, who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. He was a Catholic as a youngster, but as an adolescent he attended Willow Creek Community Church, a huge mega-church known for their dynamic worship and discipleship, and ministry to church leaders.

So Chris had a strong faith as he went off to college at Eastern College in PA. He had heard Tony Campolo, a writer, speaker and professor at Eastern - and he was so impressed with him he chose Eastern to attend.

While in his last year at there, Chris knew of a Catholic priest who was coming to talk about mission and evangelism. The professor hosting the priest was one who not many students liked, and so out of pity, he decided to attend the talk.

The priest started telling the few students who were there about where he lives in Camden, NJ. Camden, in it’s heyday had been a city with lots of manufacturing and industry, but over time the plants shut down and people moved away.

What’s been left are mostly poor, minority, and crime-ridden neighborhoods. The city government has been corrupt, the school system and police department have been taken over by the state, and in 2008 Camden had the highest crime rate in the country with 2,333 violent crimes per 100,000 people (compared to the national average of 455 per 100,000).

The priest told about how the area has two superfund clean-up sites, and numerous sites where the soil was so contaminated that nothing can be built on it until it is cleaned out.
As the priest went on Chris thought to himself, wow, this place sounds like hell! I think I want to move there! And move there he did.

He asked the priest if he could move into one of the abandoned houses, and the priest directed him to one where he actually had a key to the door!

Since he and his wife moved to Camden, Chris has learned more about the area and its people and tried to reach out in real ways...

He and his wife and young daughter share their house in community with some other people from the area, one person who used to be homeless.

He tries to make friends with the neighborhood kids, and helps out at the Catholic Church where he became a member.

It’s a rough, sometimes difficult, and stretching existence...but stretching in ways that we can’t even imagine.

Chris shared about an 11-year-old boy who had been out in the street when guns came out and as he turned his head to look, the bullet shot right through the boy’s eyes and part of his nose.

Chris asked the audience with tears in his eyes, “What do you do with that?” He says the boy is now blind and the priest has asked if Chris will help catechize the boy, help teach him his catechism... Chris’ heart was so crushed he could hardly talk to the group.

Chris is another extreme example, I think, of moving out of your comfort zone to follow the dream God has for you.

There is so much more to his story that encompasses ecology, and the economy and economic justice and social justice and so many more things...but the point is that Chris and his wife made the big decision and decided that they could let go of their securities, and trust God for everything.

Where do you find your security?
In what do you find your security?

We can lose it all in a moment. Nothing is certain...nothing, except the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Can you put your total trust in Him? Will you?

God has dreams for you, and He wants you to trust Him.

Be a spiritual risk-taker and trust God as you step out, maybe into a little bit of discomfort, but also into a new adventure of seeing how God will use you to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world.

If you keep your eyes on Him, and not on whatever comfort you had to let go of, He will lead you and grow you and hold you close as you live into His dream for you.

May you be blessed to do so. Amen.