How do people know we are followers of Jesus? Is there some sort of secret mark we carry? Is there some sort of painful tattoo or embarrassing initiation ritual we must endure before we’re allowed in the club? We’re going to close our service today with a baptismal celebration. Is that our secret sign? Is a baptismal ceremony any guarantee of anything?Or is there some other sort of spiritual decoder ring we have to figure out how to use? Anybody remember the old Ovaltine Decoder Ring? Does our status as followers of Jesus depend on what we know or what deep secrets of the faith we’re able to figure out for ourselves? On using the correct theological, spiritual, perhaps even political decoder rings? Following all the right teachers or reading all the right books? Is God only interested in smart followers?
With all the differing definitions of Christian faith floating around these days, sometimes it isn’t immediately obvious who the real followers of Jesus are. But sometimes I wonder if that isn’t exactly the way God wants it to be…God is always looking for secret saints.
Last April, we did a thirty day experiment here at Elim Church called “Surprise Me God.” Inspired by Terry Esau’s book of the same name, for thirty days many of us began each day with a simple, three word prayer: “Surprise Me God.” And then we recorded in journals and on my internet blog how we saw God answering those prayers. It was a great exercise in simply noticing God’s hand in our lives. Experiencing the big and little surprises of God reminded us of the living relationship with Almighty God always available to us. We know we are genuine followers of Jesus by the depth, power and vitality of the faith relationship we have with Him.
But our faith relationship with Jesus is not only proven genuine by what we notice God doing for us. Our relationship with God is also proven genuine by the quality of our service to God. And so for the next thirty days, we’re going to reverse our surprising prayers. For the next thirty days, we’re going to ask God to help us “Be The Surprise.” Instead of asking God to surprise us, we’re going to ask God use us to be a blessed surprise in the life of someone else.
But there is something we need to clearly understand before we begin this thing.
Our service is supposed to be a secret. Our surprises are to be seen by God alone. Open your Bibles to Matthew 6:1-4. Jesus is in the middle of his great Sermon on the Mount teaching when he says something that sounds a little strange on the surface of things…
Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Why? What’s the big deal with secrecy? What’s wrong with getting a little good public relations value out of our good deeds? As long as we’re genuinely doing good deeds for God and others, what is the harm in letting people know about it? Jesus, isn’t it only common sense that we would use our good deeds to publically advertise our faith, beliefs, church and our God? Isn’t it a good thing to give ourselves and others a little credit for the genuinely good things we do? I mean, LORD, how many cancer centers would get built if we couldn’t put somebody’s name on them? How many church buildings or other worthy projects would get finished if we can’t put a brass plaque on the wall? These people have done a genuinely good thing. We want to honor our donors, we want to honor missionaries, pastors and others who have served so sacrificially. What’s wrong with that? What’s the big deal with all this secret service?
There are lots of answers to those questions, but let me suggest three I believe Jesus was hinting at in this passage. As we pray this “Be the Surprise” prayer, as we faithfully immerse ourselves into this Christian life, as we are buried into his death and raised together into new lives of selfless service and sacrifice, there are three things we must remember.
Service Is Sacred
First of all, we must understand our service to God and others is sacred. Our service and sacrifice is an act of worship. As Jesus will say very plainly toward the end of Matthew’s Gospel, we must understand that “as you’ve done it to the least of these, you’ve done it unto me.” Ultimately, we aren’t serving others when we serve others. When God uses us to “be the surprise” in someone else’s life, we are serving as the hands and feet of God. It is worship. It is purity. It is sacred. We serve others, we surprise others, we are fully baptized into this downwardly mobile Christian life because we have finally come to see the innate, image of God value in others. When I give a cup of cold water to a thirsty friend, I am giving it to Jesus. And who among us would give a cup of water to Jesus and expect a pat on the back for doing so?
The people around us are innately worthy of our service. We worship our LORD as we serve others. We rejoice in the opportunity to surprise others with the grace of Jesus. The last thing we want in the world is to blur someone’s pure experience of God’s surprising love by cluttering it up with a bunch of obligatory thank-you notes and gratitude. My favorite thank you note is supposed to be the sheer pleasure of being found useful to God and the kids he loves…
Last week at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, Bill Hybels interviewed the rock star Bono as a follow up to their controversial conversation three years ago. At one point in the conversation, Bono told the story of one very discouraged day a few years ago in New York City when he was seriously considering giving up his world poverty efforts. He has taken withering criticism over the years for his efforts on behalf of the poor. On this particularly down day, he was walking sadly through Central Park mulling things over, when he came across a man selling off his collection of famous, old editions of the New York Times. Bono stopped just to talk to the man and asked to see one of the newspapers the man had for sale. The very first paper the man drew out of his stack was the one with the headline, “Men Walk On Moon.” Ironically, the totally impossible story of man walking on the moon was the very metaphor that had driven Bono to get involved in his efforts against worldwide poverty and disease in the first place! Bono thought if it was possible to put on the man on the moon, then it simply must be possible to eliminate much of the stupid poverty and disease plaguing much of this world. And thus the man on the moon metaphor became the image God used to drive Bono to keep going; to get governments around the world to erase over 40 BILLION dollars of Third World debt. And so a strangely gracious, simple moment with an old man and his newspapers in Central Park felt like God stepping back into his tired life and reminding him of the importance of his calling. God restored his vision and passion through some anonymous guy and a stack of old newspapers.
But Bono never told us the newspaper guy’s name because that sacred, surprising moment wasn’t about the guy selling newspapers. It wasn’t about the newspapers being sold. It was about God using that guy. It was the God orchestrated sacred moment that mattered.
Do you see? Our service is sacred. We don’t want our name getting mentioned. Our name isn’t ever what this thing is about. In the overall scheme of things, there is nothing very surprising or special about us anyway. But in the hands of Almighty God, oh my goodness, we are powerfully sacred vessels. We can change the world! There is literally nothing my sacred service cannot accomplish in this world, but only if I understand the sacredness of my service.
Service Is Silent
And that leads right into the second truth I think Jesus is teaching here. Our service is not only sacred, it must be silent and humble. It must be as anonymous as we can make it because we aren’t interested in drawing attention to ourselves. Yuck! We don’t want all the trumpets blowing in the synagogues and all over the streets. We don’t want plaques, posters and praises! We don’t want people looking at us at all. We want people looking to Jesus.
Think about it logically for a moment. What is more fun? Being in need and receiving what you need from friends after being forced to shamelessly beg them for it or being in need and anonymously receiving exactly what you need without even telling anyone about your need? Some old Ft. Bragg friends of mine got a brand new washer and dryer given to them out of the blue by a Christian friend about an hour after their old one died! Who gets the thank you note when the sacred gift is obviously a God thing? Do you see? When was the last time somebody excitedly walked into a church service and said, “Hey pastor, you won’t believe it! I finally managed to badger all my friends and family into giving me a big loan! Oh praise the Lord!” That isn’t the kind of news typically reported in church newsletters, is it? That’s mostly just a boring business deal, isn’t it? But how many times have you heard someone tearfully stand in front of a church congregation and say, “I don’t know how or where this money, this gift, this surprising act of kindness came from, I don’t understand how people who don’t even know me could do something like this…frankly, I don’t even know how people found out about my situation, but look what Almighty God has miraculously done for me! How cool is this?”
And so what sort of service and surprise do we want to be involved in around here? Do we want to be a part of something obviously sacred, secret and powerfully miraculous, or will we continue to settle for all the silly trumpets and synagogue stuff just like the world does? Are you looking for more name recognition for yourself or do you humbly and silently long to serve the Name Himself? Trust me when I tell you that silent and humble service is way more fun!
Service Is Rewarded
The third and final truth Jesus shares in this passage is stunningly ironic. Our service must be sacred and silently humble. And Jesus encourages this because he knows how much God longs to eternally reward us. Sacred and silent service is the only path to genuine reward.
Isn’t that utterly ironic? Our rewards are mentioned three times in this passage! Our Father, who sees what is done in secret, longs to reward us one day! Almighty God wants us to see our service as sacred and silent because it is only in doing so that we will earn rewards of any eternally enduring value. Only by sacred and silent service can we ensure pure motives and enduring rewards. So selfishly speaking, if you’re looking for the very best return on your service investment, then serve selflessly and silently. Jesus wants to see us meaningfully and eternally rewarded, not superficially, temporally rewarded. He says all this for our benefit!
How cool is that?
On Thursday afternoon at the conference last week, a young woman named Jessica Jackley was interviewed. In 2005, she and a few friends decided to do a little microfinance experiment. For those unfamiliar with the term, microloans are nothing but relatively small loans typically going to poor people or groups of people whom banks would never consider loaning money. One tiny loan can often change a life dramatically. In any event, four years ago, Jessica and some friends scraped together $3,500 to loan to seven poor people in Uganda – a goat herder, a fish monger, a cattle farmer and a small restauranteur among them. Within six months, lives were changed and all the loans were repaid. And so Jessica and her friends considered their little experiment a success and launched a web-based microloan networking site called Kiva.org. They now help facilitate approximately $5 million per month in microloans to poor people all over the world! And all of that loan money comes from mostly anonymous people signing up to lend as little as $25 to any particular person or group of their choosing.
How utterly cool is that? Is that not a ready-made way of sacredly and silently wracking up mongo eternal rewards? And do you know what Jessica Jackley’s advice to 120,000 leaders gathered around the world for this conference was? “Never apologize for small beginnings! If we truly believe in the innate value and possibilities of people, all the rest is just logistics!” Can you imagine what would happen in the world if 120,000 people actually thought that way?
What do you suppose could be accomplished by a group of people utterly committed to the sacredness of service and the secret surprising of the world around them with the goodness and grace of God? What do you suppose could be accomplished by even a smallest group of people, much less 120,000 people, utterly committed to seeking only heavenly reward?
We can do all things through Christ who gives us strength! The devil must truly quiver at the thought! As we begin to pray for God to show us how to “be the surprise,” as we enter these beautiful baptismal waters once again this morning, may God wonderfully and powerfully fill the world around each one of us with many secret surprises.
Amen.
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