April 7, 2024, What Mission Statement?, Matthew 11:28-30 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ April 7, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

The second Sunday after Easter is traditionally Thomas Sunday; we read the story of Doubting Thomas, who wouldn’t believe that Jesus had risen until he experienced it for himself, until he saw and touched the physical body of Christ. And it wasn’t just that he believed that Jesus was alive again – remember, Thomas had been with Jesus when Lazarus came out of his grave; Thomas had seen people brought back from the dead, and that was wonderful enough – but when he saw Jesus, Thomas knew that this was something more. He cried out, “My Lord and my God!” Thomas was the first person in the Gospel of John to come right out and call Jesus “God”. Peter had called him “Messiah”, the one sent by God, and many people had called him “Master” and “Lord”, but Thomas suddenly knew that he was standing in the presence of God himself.

And John says that the reason he wrote Thomas’s story down was for us, so that we also can believe, and believing, we can have life. And actually, That’s all I’m going to say about Thomas this morning. But I do want to talk about life, about the life we share as a community of people who, like Thomas, believe that Jesus is God.

If you look on the back of your bulletin any week, you’ll see that we have what organizationally-minded people like to call a “mission statement.” It’s an attempt at a brief description of the life of St. Philip’s Church. But it didn’t just appear out of nowhere. So this morning I wanted to talk a little bit about where that came from, and how that happens to be our mission statement.

Eleven years ago, in early March of 2013, I was praying about the future of our church, and a Scripture came into my mind as I prayed. And at first I didn’t think of it as a message from God for the church, because it is a passage that I think of often. It’s always been one of my go-to Scriptures, one that has brought me comfort for many years. It’s from Matthew chapter 11, where Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

I’d always thought of those verses as a personal promise of comfort and hope. It brought me comfort that God understood my weariness and offered me rest. And it gave me hope because it reminded me to take on the “one thing needful,” the one yoke, that God was calling me to, and to take off the heavy burden of the thousand and one things I so often put on myself – as we all do.

But as I listened to God on that day, I believed that he was giving me this passage, not just for myself, but for us as a whole community. I believe that he was calling us as a church, to go deeper into that promise, to receive his words of invitation and comfort, and to offer them to one another, and to the people around us. As a Vision for St. Philip’s, this verse calls us not just to believe in Christ, but to put on Christ. I love that expression, “to put on Christ”, because it reminds me of little children when they put on on their Papa’s shoes and try to walk in them because they want with all their heart to grow up to be like their father. Putting on Christ’s yoke is our way of learning to walk like Jesus.

And so that day, March 7, I wrote those verses in the front of my prayer book, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” It calls us, as St. Philip’s Church, to two things: “Welcoming the weary, and dedication to discipleship.” The first is to offer comfort and rest and support to one another and to others, what we can broadly call hospitality. And the second thing is what makes it possible for us to do the first; we have to learn from him. And the word for that is discipleship; it means walking in Jesus’ shoes day by day, and it means sitting at his feet, just like the disciples we read about in the gospels. We are his apprentices, learning with Jesus as we work by his side.

Hospitality is a much broader thing than merely welcoming visitors and having good coffee hours, though that is also part of it. At the very heart of hospitality is knowing that as we show love and comfort and grace to any person, and especially to the poor and the helpless and the ignored, we are showing love and grace to God. Because God identifies so closely with the poor and the downtrodden that he takes it as a personal affront when his people do not care for them.

The sin for which Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, for instance, was not violence or homosexuality as people often think; it was indifference toward the poor. Ezekiel said, “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”

But even more important, God takes it as a personal kindness to himself when we offer kindness to the “least of these, my brothers and sisters.” In the parable of the sheep and goats, the King says to the sheep, “Welcome into the kingdom, for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ And the sheep are as confused as sheep generally are, and they say, ‘Lord, whenever did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King answers them, ‘Truly, I say to you, anytime you were kind to one of the least of these my brothers, you were kind to me.’

So we, God’s people here at St. Philip’s, are called to be hospitable: to be a place of welcome and rest, a community people can come into and feel safe, and a community that feeds and clothes and visits people in their need. I have always found St. Philip’s to be very much that kind of community; so our call is to keep on growing in the same way. And as we grow in giving and loving and showing kindness, to remember always that we are giving and loving and showing kindness to God himself.

But without the second part of the vision, without discipleship, we won’t ever get very far in our hospitality.  If we give generously of ourselves and open our church and welcome in more people, but we are not growing as disciples, learning to be like Christ by spending time with him in prayer and in his Word, we will burn ourselves out and we will not really be of help to anyone. If we spend hours and hours at the Thrift Shop and cook up a storm for our Community Lunches and polish all the brass, but don’t take the time we need to be his disciples we might succeed in doing good to others, but we will find other areas of our life unraveling around the edges until we have to pull back, and we will find in the end that we have not really brought glory to God, or grace to those around us. As disciples of Jesus, sometimes serving better will mean doing less.

What I have always loved about this passage is who Jesus tells us he is. Learn from me, he tells us, not because I know every thing and I can show you how to do it right – though that is certainly true – and not because I am wise and all-powerful – though he is – Jesus says come and learn from me because I am gentle and humble of heart. He offers us rest, not a program. So the wonderful good news is that our Mission Statement for St. Philip’s doesn’t invite into a life of busy-ness and frantic activity, but one of peace and devotion to God. It’s what Jesus means when he calls us to abide in him. like branches are firmly rooted in the vine – because it is only out of our abiding that we bear fruit that is worth bearing.

Our communal worship, and our daily life of prayer, silence and stillness before God: these need to be at the beginning and at the center of everything we choose to do, because it is always out of our rest in God, it is only out of our nearness to God that real ministry flows – the ministry of every one of us, not just a gifted few, and certainly not just me. There is not one person here who is not absolutely essential to the life of the church – and as we grow closer to Jesus together, we all make the church more and more like Christ, as each one of us has space to exercise the gifts which the Spirit has given us. And that’s when powerful things happen; that’s when God’s grace and glory really shine out in this community.

We had a very special opportunity this week of welcoming members of our community in to celebrate with us as we re-dedicated our beautiful Good Shepherd window. It was truly a joy to share the good gift that God has given us with our neighbors and some new friends as well. MaryEllen especially did a wonderful job of telling our story. But the real treasure of this church will always be the love and kindness, the faith and generosity, that God gives to us so abundantly in our need, so that we can offer comfort and strength to one another, and welcome and grace to all who are in need of our hospitality. Because God has called us to be a place where we can all find rest for our souls.