The Single Greatest Gift
The Single Greatest Gift
Matthew 5:13-16 / Romans 5:6-8 / John 4:1-26
Introduction:
Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” Salt and light have become some of the greatest symbols of the Christian life. But they imply a certain amount risk…of stepping out of the boat and into the water…of being willing to connect with the world around us…of being willing to share the very passion of God. It has been said that of all the good and godly things that we do, there is one…just one…that someday we won’t get to do. Someday day when we are with God in heaven in glory all around us, there is one thing that we won’t be able to do. And that is to share the good news of Jesus Christ. It is something that we won’t be able to do because everyone will all ready know. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!
Before that day comes, however, we have an opportunity to share the good news to the world around us. And they need to know. They need to know that there is hope, that there is life, that this is purpose and a plan for everything that we do. In the next four weeks, were going to begin to looking at this great opportunity. It’s called Just Walk Across the Room, because sometimes that’s all it takes. It takes initiative, a little compassion, and a willingness to follow the Holy Spirit into the hearts and minds of people around. This mission of sharing the good news is different than it used to be in our North American culture. People are more skeptical now. They have less knowledge of the Bible and of what it means to be a Christian. And what they see in the media isn’t positive. In a sense, there’s more work to be done. It takes lots of conversations showing them this is not a just one more empty institution, that the Bible is a book with credentials and that it works in our lives. When it comes to God, most people don't know who He is…and if they were to believe in the possibility of a revelation from God, they wouldn't know whether it's the book of Mormon, the Koran, some New Age writing at Starbucks, or the Bible. There's a lot more confusion out there and a lot less urgency about needing to know. A generation ago, people knew what they could cling to if they were willing; now even if they're willing, they don't know which way to turn.
It’s no surprise that Jesus uses two symbolic metaphors to describe sharing the good news: salt and light. Salt is a powerful image, because it is all about proximity and time. In the Roman world it was extremely valuable. Roman soldiers were often paid in salt and it is where we get the basis for the word “salary.” But it was more than just a currency. It was used to purify and in preservation. Throughout the Bible there are odd little phrases about salt, and it suggests that the disciples were to purify, preserve and actually change the flavor of the world. We need to be careful to understand the subtlety and not to misunderstand the metaphor. For salt to cure something, it needs to be right up against the surface, and it takes time for salt to do what salt is supposed to do. Jesus isn’t talking about flinging a handful of salt into a pot of beef stew. Saltiness is something to be preserved and cherished, not something to be dissolved. The message here is not dissolve ourselves into society to give it taste and flavor, but to continue to be salty. Jesus says, “if salt loses its taste, what can make it salty again?” It means that by our constant contribution…our consistent witness…our careful connections, we are able to draw others to the presence of God. In that sense, it’s not that different from what salt does for us today. Do you know why they sell peanuts and popcorn at the movies? So you'll want to buy more soda pop. You've heard the old saying, “You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.” That’s true, but you can feed him some salt and help the process along a bit. By being salty Christians we actually help people become thirsty for that living water…which is Jesus Christ.
Jesus also says, “You are the light of the world.” Light reveals the good and the bad. It brings everything out into the open. This is where, perhaps for the first time, you can see things the way they really are. The way Jesus says this…it kind of gives you the feeling that this really isn’t an option in the Christian faith. He doesn’t say, “Read your Bible and your illumination will increase.” He doesn’t say, “Pray at breakfast, lunch, and dinner and you will have enough shine to share with your neighbor.” He doesn’t even say, “Listen to Pastor Jon and your day will be a little brighter.” But what he does say is that “you are the light of the world” simply because God is at work in your life. We are the light of the world because God has given us the single greatest gift. Paul says in the book of Romans, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This passage says that God is passionate about reaching the world. He is so passionate about this that he was willing to die for us. We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to die for someone else. The Bible says that it doesn’t happen very often and it doesn’t. But occasionally it does. Author Anne Gordon tells the story of Father Kolbe, who was a prisoner at Auschwitz in August 1941. A prisoner escaped from the camp and for punishment, the Nazis ordered that ten prisoners had to die by starvation. Father Kolbe offered to take the place of one of the prisoners sentenced to die. The Nazis kept Kolbe in the starvation bunker for two weeks and then put him to death by a lethal injection. Thirty years later a survivor of the prison camp described what had happened when they learned what this Christian had done. They became aware that someone among them in that spiritual dark night of the soul was willing to bring a light. Someone unknown, like everyone else who was tortured and imprisoned went to a horrible death for the sake of someone not even related to him. The survivor said, “To say that Father Kolbe died for us or for that person's family is too great a simplification. His death was the hope of thousands. We were stunned by his act, which became for us a mighty explosion of light in the dark camp.”
Paul says, “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The truth is that Jesus has done far more for us than anyone could ever do. Jesus he stood up and took our place of death. He walked across the room. He walked all the way across the cosmos and reached out his redemptive hand to people like you and me. And because of that one walk, humankind was able to be saved and secured in the family of God forever. Think for a moment about the implications of that walk. Jesus Christ left His own comfort zone he took the longest walk a person could ever take, so that He could reach people. But there’s more. In addition to taking a walk across the cosmos so that you and I could be redeemed, he also took a walk across the cosmos so that you and I could see how it’s done. And these days—right here in our everyday lives—what he tries to do with us between now and heaven is to say, “What I did, leaving that circle, making that trip and reaching out to you, what I did … is precisely what I want you to do. I want this to be characteristic of my followers, that they would be walk-across-the-room kinds of people.
Don’t get yourself tied up in knots trying to make sure all of the mechanics and logistics are just right. Don’t give even a hint of mental energy to motivations of guilt or obligation. You can cast all that stuff aside and just take the hand of the Holy Spirit and walk. If you will stay open, with an eye focused on people and an ear tuned to his still, small whisper, you will be amazed by what unfolds! God says to us all today, “I am going to ask you to walk across the street; I am going to ask you to walk across a restaurant. I am going to ask you to take that walk, leave whatever Circle of Comfort you are in and take the walk, enter the unknown—and something really exciting is going to happen. That is what I want you to do.” As you’ve probably figured out by now, this is why we’re devoting an entire month of our ministry calendar to these ideas. So that we can all get better about hearing the Spirit’s promptings, yes. But also so that we will start taking action with immediacy and a sense of confidence … and in the process, that we will become more like Jesus! This is what our four-week experience is about.
One of the most dramatic occurrences of Christ taking action in this way is found in John chapter 4. Jesus and his disciples had been traveling all day and had come to a well. It’s the middle of the day, and these thirteen men are hot, hungry, and unbelievably thirsty. They see a woman standing by the nearby well—we learn later that she had been through five marriages and divorces and that she was now living with someone who was not her spouse. In highly-spiritual terms, that’s what you call having a lot of tread worn off your tires. Make a note to take a closer look at this story during some devotional time this week—again, it’s found in John chapter 4. When you review it, you’ll notice that all thirteen—Jesus plus his twelve disciples—come up to the well known as “Jacob’s well.” The disciples probably size up this woman and say, “Hey, we’re going to hang together and go into town … maybe grab some lunch or something.” I’m sure they would have invited Jesus to go with them. But instead of heading off with the guys, he says, “You all go ahead … I’m going to pull out of this circle for a minute, but you go on to lunch.”
After the disciples head into town, he turns around and sees the woman again. Without giving it much thought, he simply walks from one side of the well area all the way over to the other—a move which catches the woman off guard, to say the least. Because of the customs in that region, she’s not expecting him to have anything to do with her. In their society, Jesus wasn’t just walking across a typical “room”—he was walking across gender, racial, cultural, and even religious restrictions. Because of her lifestyle, this woman would’ve been labeled a “sinner” by the religious establishment. That would have been too great of a complement. But if you’ve read the story, then you know that despite all of the protocol violations, Jesus took the walk anyway. Then he lets the conversation evolve from the seemingly safe topic of drawing a cup of water from the well to something much deeper in nature … like “living water,” as he calls it—a term that catalyzes this woman eventually coming to faith. Right there in a dusty well area in first-century Samaria. The text says that she leaves her basin, runs into town, and drags half of her friends and neighbors out, telling them that they just have to come meet this guy who knew all about her sordid past but who accepted her and showed her something called … grace. And for the next two days all of these wide-eyed folks hang around, just listening to Jesus teach. It says in the text that many people from the town crossed the line of faith and joined God’s family during that timeframe. All because one man took a walk across a room to reach out to someone living far from God.
Jesus says, “You are the light of the world.” It is no good having a light and keeping it in a bowl. Yet if we are honest, we will admit that this is what our tendency is. We are good at letting the light shine but mainly to each other in things like prayer groups, Bible study groups and worship. Don’t get me wrong, these things are important and even essential toward growing in our relationship with God. But they don’t usually provide us with opportunities to be salt and light to a world that doesn’t know Jesus. As Bill Hybels describes it, too many Christians spend the majority of their lives clinging to safe “Circles of Comfort” instead of looking outside the circle to see the people they are called to impact. We are all tempted into stay in our safe little circles. It’s warm and it’s cozy in the circle of comfort. And we all like to be there. But hopefully, the longer we hang around the person of Christ, the more our eyes will be open to seeing the things that He sees…to being lead in the way that He was lead.
The walk across the room can at anytime and in anyway. You may know that once a week a group of guys from our church gather at the Buggy Restaurant. It’s great fellowship. We laugh, we pray…at least the first guy who gets served does… and share the joys of Christian fellowship. I would like to think that we impact the restaurant…in a good way. I hope that the joy of Christ is evident in our patience, our conversation, and even the way we tip the waitress. I hope that this is true because I know that we all try. But something happened this week that revealed to me that perhaps I wasn’t doing enough. Occasionally, I will take one of my daughters to the men’s lunch. Please don’t tell anybody, but we do sometimes make exceptions to the men only policy. My oldest daughter Rachel was with us and she noticed a family with kids sitting across the restaurant. She says, “Dad can I go over and say hi?” I gave her permission and off she went. It was several minutes that she spent talking to this family before I began to realize what was happening. I’m not talking about the possibility of her disclosing all our family secrets to people that we didn’t even know. I’m not even talking about the possibility of this other family thinking that I’m a bad parent for letting my child run all over the restaurant. What I’m talking about is the distinct voice of the Holy Spirit that was saying, “Get up and walk. Get out of your chair and just walk across the room. You don’t need a formula. You don’t need a strategy. You just need to respond to prompting of my Spirit.” And so I did. I walked across the room, thanks to the Holy Spirit and my daughter Rachel, and had a conversation. It wasn’t a conversion, but it was a conversation that pointed to the love of Christ.
It a small walk in comparison to Jesus who left his own Circle of Comfort — the warm, perfect fellowship of the Trinity — in order to come to planet earth. He entered the uncertain and unfamiliar “Zone of the Unknown” for the explicit purpose of enfolding wobbly and sin scarred people— just like you and me — with grace and love. And when his earthly ministry came to a close, Christ in essence said, “this walk-across-the room behavior is exactly what I want all of my followers to do in my place! Listen for the Spirit’s guidance. Leave your Circles of Comfort. Start walking toward the Zone of the Unknown. Reach out your hand, open your mouth, take the risk. And just see what my Father might do!” It’s true: the single greatest gift Christ-followers can give to the people in their lives is an introduction to the God who created them, who loves them, and who has a purpose for their days. The single greatest gift Christ-followers can give to the people in their lives is an introduction to the God who created them, who loves them, and who has a purpose for their days.
