Essential Personnel

Opening Prayer

Let’s open with prayer. If you have a prayer concern, just offer it up out loud in this space. It can be a situation, a need, a family member or friend. When I sense we are finished I will close out our prayer.

Those battling COVID

Cissy

Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Introduction

We are in the season of the church year called Epiphany, meaning “to appear”. This season celebrates the revelation of Jesus as the Savior of the world. During Epiphany we’re doing a series called The Hope of Glory, and we continue to look at how Jesus revealed his glory, and what this epiphany means for us.

You may remember when the pandemic first hit a phrase that was being used - "essential personnel". While most of us were asked to quarantine at home, these people were seen as necessary to the public good - people such as nurses, police, and fire protection. They were essential, and the rest of us were not! Unfortunately, how “essential” was determined wasn’t necessarily consistent, so churches weren’t essential but liquor stores were! The good news we will look at this week is that there is no such thing as non-essential personnel in the kingdom of God! All of us who have been baptized into Christ's body are now an essential part of his ongoing work to bring his rule and reign to the whole world. The anointing that rested on Jesus now rests on each of us, and here is where our joy is found as we enter into our calling as members of the body of Christ!

Jesus’ anointing and mission

I first want to look at our gospel passage. To give some context, Jesus had been baptized and the Spirit came upon him. This was his initiation into his ministry. The gospel writers all make the point that Jesus performed no miracles until this baptism of the Spirit. Then the Spirit sent Jesus out into the wilderness to face a time of trial and testing to strengthen him. And now, Jesus returns in this strength and power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ baptism wasn’t just an initiation into ministry, but was also his anointing for mission.

What was this mission? Jesus summarized it when he reads from Isaiah 61:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

In his anointed power, Jesus will now begin to push back darkness and undo the anti-creation, anti-life work of the devil. The rest of Luke’s gospel will describe this activity. But as we read we must also recognize that this is only a beginning of the mission. He launches this mission of seeing God’s kingdom come to restore what is lost and broken, but it is only a start. For not all the poor have yet had the good news preached to them, not all captives have been released, not all the blind have had their sight recovered, not all the oppressed have gone free, and not everyone has heard the news that God’s favor is present to them.

This mission of the restoration of the kingdom of God on earth is now inaugurated, but there is still much to do.

Baptized and anointed

Here is where we come in, and this is where I’ll start looking at our 1 Corinthians reading. As we remember our own baptism, one thing we should understand is that our baptism was an initiation into the body of Christ. This is Paul’s point:

1 Corinthians 12:12–13 (NRSV)

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Is Paul talking about water baptism here or Spirit baptism? Yes! There is a lot we could say about this, but the thrust is that our physical baptism in water pictures a spiritual baptism of the Spirit where we are joined into the universal body of Christ. Baptism initiates us into the body of Christ.

But baptism is more than an initiation; in baptism we understand that we are also anointed for Christ’s mission. Jesus’ anointed at his baptism becomes your anointing as well. Jesus calling to mission becomes your calling. Jesus joy becomes your joy.

One of the blessings of 1 Corinthians is that it’s pretty clear throughout the letter the issues that Paul is trying to straighten out in this dysfunctional church. BTW - there’s never been a perfect church, so stop looking for it! It seems that one of the issues was a division happening over the rating of various spiritual gifts.

Certain gifts - especially tongues - was being elevated as the superior gift, and some were being made to feel like second-class believers because they didn’t exercise the more prominent power-gifts. Others because conceited because they had the power-gifts and felt like they could operate independently of the rest of the church. To say it another way, people were being classified as essential and non-essential personnel.

We need to be wise in our understanding of how the Spirit moves on the church. The important thing is not “who” a prophetic word comes through or “who” ministers a miraculous healing, but “that” the body has received the love and care of the Spirit. Lynette and Cissy sometimes have prophetic words for the church of me. The rest of us shouldn’t feel inferior because we didn’t have the prophetic word; rather we should give thanks that God has placed people in our midst who can hear him well. Some of you as you grow in praying for the sick will experience a particular grace in seeing people healed. The rest of us shouldn’t feel slighted that we didn’t get to have that gifting, but rather that praise God that people are being made well. The gifts of the Spirit are not given to individuals so much as they are given to the body so that the entire body can be built up.

Let me give a real-life example: every Tuesday Susie Bergstrom and Holly Skelton - I think that’s all - come to the church after they get off work and spend an hour or two pre-filling the bags with shelf-stable essentials that will then be passed out Thursday at the food pantry. They might feel like what they are doing is not a big deal, that they are just an elbow in the body of Christ. But what they do is essential to those who come in Thursday to have enough time to do what they need to do without having to also fill that bags with essentials. And while it might be tempting for them to feel like that what they do isn’t a big deal, the truth is that they are an essential cog in this machine that feeds families in our parish.

What Paul is emphatically saying is that in the church there is no such thing as non-essential personnel. All are needed. All have worth. You have been anointed through your baptism, and your anointing - whatever it is - is essential to the well-being of the entire body.

Finding your calling

There are no non-essential personnel. Practically, this means that you have a calling to the mission of Jesus. It takes a whole body to do this mission, and every part of the body is needed. A body that is missing parts is handicapped, and too often churches are handicapped because members they that what they have to offer is inconsequential or unnecessary. But the body of Christ does not have an appendix, and so whatever God has made you for, it is essential to the body.

The mission of Jesus is such that we all must do our bit. And the bit that is assigned to us is just as important and needed in the overall mission as any other bit. Jesus’ anointing for mission now rests on you by way of your baptism. You are the continuation of his bodily ministry. And this means that:

You have a calling. You have a purpose and reason for existence. God planned you.

You need to discover your calling. This takes prayer and trial and error and counsel.

You will be held accountable for your calling. We will all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. This isn’t to face condemnation, but to receive reward. Jesus will ask you what you did with the calling he gave you.

You must be equipped for your calling. Here is a shameless plug to take part in our upcoming SOM.

You will find joy in your calling.

As God anoints you, he also fills you with an unspeakable joy as you walk out your calling in partnership with him.

At Christmas, we bought for ourselves and our grand kids these things called toddler towers. They are these stools that allow toddles to safety stand at the bar to help cook or whatever. A few weeks ago we celebrated our third granddaughters birthday. I made a chocolate cake, but I left it unfinished until she came. I let her help finish the icing, put sprinkles all over it, put the candles in. And the joy on her face was radiant as she got to help.

God, in his perfect love and wisdom, has wired you this way. He’s empowered you for mission, and he’s wired you to find your deepest joy in mission. If you’ve been struggling to find your joy lately, maybe this is God’s invitation to discover your calling and joy him in the mission. You are essential personnel. Amen.

Ministry time...

Communion

Nehemiah 8:10 says “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” God’s people had returned from exile and they had gathered to hear God’s word read. As they listened, they were weeping that they had failed to live up to it. But Nehemiah told them that this was not a day of weeping but a day for joy. We come to the table each week where, regardless of the message we hear, regardless of any conviction we might feel over it, God’s word to us is a source of joy and strength. And here we “eat the fat and drink sweet wine”, and we remember what the true Word of God, Jesus, has done for us. For the joy of the Lord is your strength.

Words of Institution

The Lord’s Prayer