Strange Service

Imagine you are walking through the streets of Santiago, Chile, in the mid-20th century. The city is full of stark contrasts—beautiful, bustling areas next to the stark poverty of the slums. In this setting, a man walks through the streets every day, not seeking comfort or recognition, but seeking to serve the poorest and most marginalized people. His name is Alberto Hurtado, and he is the founder of Hogar de Cristo, a refuge for the homeless and destitute.

One day, as he walks through the streets, he passes a group of homeless men sitting on the cold pavement. Their faces are gaunt, their clothes ragged, and their eyes filled with the sorrow of lives abandoned by society. Alberto could easily have walked by, as most would do, turning a blind eye to the suffering. But Alberto's heart is different. His faith compels him to act.

He stops. He kneels down beside them. He looks them in the eye. And he gives them his last coins, the money he had planned to use for his own meal that day. But this act of generosity is not just a one-time gesture. It becomes a lifestyle of sacrificial love. Alberto dedicates his life to serving those in need, especially the poor and the homeless.

In the Hogar de Cristo, he not only provides shelter and food, but also hope and dignity to those who have been cast aside by society. He believes that every person, no matter how destitute, is a child of God, worthy of love and respect. His work becomes a model of strange service—a service that goes beyond what is comfortable or convenient. It is service that requires sacrifice, both of his time and his resources. And, most of all, it is service that challenges the status quo, making those who follow Christ ask the question: Am I willing to serve the least of these?

We are now in the 3rd week of our sermon series “Strangely Warmed” where we are looking at the idea of stewardship as an outpouring of love from hearts that have been touched by the radical grace of God. The founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, had a formative experience with God in 1738 that left his heart changed. He said that it was “strangely warmed” and what resulted from that moment in his life was a way of living that exemplified the character of Christ and the call to live a life of love to God’s world.

So what we are looking at here is how we, as 21st century followers of Jesus in the city of Fort Pierce and beyond are called to dedicate our lives to loving God and loving our neighbors through our own personal stewardship. And we are seeing how all of our efforts to bring change to our lives and to our world must spring from a heart that is strangely warmed — or hearts that are filled with compassion.

So we’ve talked about the importance of praying boldly for God’s will to be done and for the people of this world that God has called us to care for. And we’ve talked about the ways that we are called to witness to our world — mainly by putting away all of the things that distract us from God and doing what God has called us to do. And today, we move into talking about getting our hands dirty and doing the work of service.

Now here’s an important thing to keep in mind. Our Christian witness — the things that we say and the intentions of our hearts directly impact and dictate our ability to be of service. If our service comes from a place of anything less that absolute compassion for people and dedication to God, then it will not be the kind of strange service that God calls us to. It won’t be the kind of service that John Wesley was able to do in England, or Alberto was able to do in Chile, or you know, Jesus was able to do in Galilee. Our service will always be bent toward whatever our hearts are most inclined to loving.

If it’s notoriety — that’s why we’ll serve. If it’s recognition — that’s why we’ll serve. If it’s to be the pastor’s favorite — that’s why we’ll serve. And that’s a losing game because you’re all my favorite.

So if you’re sitting there like “dangit” right now. Take heart. You’ve got friends all over your Bible. And so let’s go hang out with them for a little bit.

We’ve been talking about a guy named Samuel, who was a priest, prophet, and the final judge of Ancient Israel. And Samuel was like the best there ever was. You might remember that this is a time in Israel’s history where things are tough. The people are not good at following God and they are under constant threat from outside armies. And so God raises up Samuel to lead the people, both spiritually and militarily. This was the role of the Judge — to essentially be the hands and feet of God on earth for a period of time.

You see Israel was different than any other people group in the area. While everyone else had kings to look to for political strength and moral leadership, Israel had only the priesthood and the occasional judge. And that was supposed to be good enough. They had the covenant and law that was given directly by God to Moses and they had a religious structure that was meant to keep things going in the right direction. God was King.

But guess who didn’t like that arrangement: Israel. They wanted a king. They wanted a king so badly that they went out and found the tallest guy they could find — a man named Saul — and they brought him to Samuel and said “Sam, thanks for your service, but we need a king. Anoint Saul as the king of Israel please.”

And Samuel said, “thats a terrible idea, but I’ll ask God.” And then he asked God, and God says “these little brats. That’s a terrible idea. But if that’s what they want, that’s what they’ll get.” And so Saul became the first king of Israel and he wasn’t very good, which is simply a story for another day.

After Saul was made King, Samuel gave a farewell speech, in which he laid out his hopes for Israel’s future under the new power structure of a King.

1 Samuel 12:20–25 NRSV

And Samuel said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil, yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart; and do not turn aside after useless things that cannot profit or save, for they are useless. For the Lord will not cast away his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself. Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you; and I will instruct you in the good and the right way. Only fear the Lord, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you. But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king.”

Samuel’s point here, other than being a nice model for transfer of political power, is that in order for the people to thrive they need to place their focus on one thing: Serving the Lord with all of their heart. If you serve God then things will go well, if you don’t, well they won’t.

Now, of course, if you know the rest of the story then you understand that it gets rough for a while. But the calling of Samuel remains the resounding anchor for Israel for the rest of their history. Every time they wander, God sends someone to remind them of this call: serve the Lord with all of your heart.

In fact this trend continued all the way into a place called Galilee, when a strange new teacher named Jesus of Nazareth came to town and called on the people to refocus and reorient their lives around a way of life that served the forgotten and broken people of the world.

Jesus modeled a way of life that went beyond what was ordinarily expected, breaking through social and economic stigmas and strongholds to reach and serve the world with love. He met people where they were rather than where the rest of the world expected them to be.

And then he taught his disciples things like this:

John 15:12–14 NRSV

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

Now listen this is all so much easier said than done. Living a life of service, especially a life where sacrifice is involved, means that we are going to struggle with a lot of things. Mostly we are going to struggle with our own inner desire to put our wants ahead of the needs of our neighbors. Trust me, I know. But just because it’s easier said than done, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t get done. In fact, strangely enough, the more it gets done the easier it gets.

Our friend John Wesley called this phenomena the work of sanctifying grace. This is the means by which the grace of God moves in our lives to make us more and more like Jesus. The closer we get to being like Jesus, the easier it is to do as Jesus did or do as Jesus would do given the particular set of circumstances and people that we encounter in our daily lives.

You see it’s hard to say yes to serving the first time… and the second time… and maybe the hundredth time. But when we get comfortable showing up for people, it becomes easier for us to say yes. And the more time that we spend serving people with compassion and with love the more we begin to understand the heart of God. The more we are able to have compassion for and love God’s people, the more we can truly understand how the God of the universe could love people like us.

God looked down on us at whatever age we were at our worst — and said “that’s a heart of stone that I’m going to strangely warm.” And it has happened to you or is going to happen to you soon — if you’re here and hearing this then there is a purpose for this moment. There are no coincidences.

And every person who is brought into existence here on this Earth is born with a purpose, and every heart that is strangely warmed is done so in order that such a purpose might be fulfilled.

Recognizing this fact, orienting our lives around it, and then living it out is the way that we express stewardship of the great love and mercy that God has shown to us in our lives. When we say yes and show up in the lives of people who are in need — spiritual or physical — we are giving away a gift that was freely given to us.

There are so many stories in this room of people who have grasped this reality. People who show up on saturday morning with smiles on their face — even knowing that they might have to deal with some unpleasantries. Sometimes serving means that we see the full scale reality of human suffering.

There are people here who showed up the day after the hurricane — even though their own yard was a mess and their own house didn’t have electricity — to go and serve those who had lost so much.

But service doesn’t only exist outside of the church. There are those of you who visit the sick and the homebound with fierce regularity. There are those of you who teach Bible study and sunday school. There’s a bunch of you who put on robes and sing or pick up instruments and play or have found yourself somehow running technology you never dreamed of running.

There are those of you who clean and build and maintain this behemoth of a building. There are those of you who fold bulletins and pack bags of food and cook and smile and babysit my kids and the list goes on and on and on.

The reality is that this is a church where we work. So if you are checking us out, kinda new, whatever, just know that this is not a church that practices an easy form of Christianity. This is a church where we follow Jesus — and it shows.

And the beautiful thing that happens when we serve in this way — the way that we serve right now — is that God builds things that we can only begin to imagine. God will use our work in ways we’ll never see the end of.

Today in Chile, Hogar de Cristo serves over 33,000 people a year. What began as an overnight place for the poor to stay has become an organization that serves people across the spectrum of human suffering. Is this the scope of work that Alberto Hurtado set out to accomplish in the early 1900s? Likely not. But God had a purpose for his work.

God has a purpose for ours as well. We may not be able to see it in this moment. It might seem reckless from time to time. We will absolutely fail at it — individually and as a community. But when we do, we remember the call that we have been given: to serve the Lord with all of our hearts. If our hearts are right, God will do the rest.