Gathered to Worship, Sent to Serve

You may wonder at the theme of Stewardship this year, “Gathered to Worship, Sent to Serve.” As I planned this sermon series “Please, Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” I learned that Fred Rogers had 2 mantras. One he kept on his desk and the other he kept in his wallet. The one on his desk was from the French classic, The Little Prince, “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” The photograph that he carried with him everywhere in his wallet was of a marble plaque that hung on the wall of his alma mater, Rollins College. Four words, “Life is for service.” These two phrases served as pillars in his life and they shaped who he was and how he lived. What is essential is invisible; God’s love, God’s desire for relationship with you and me. God gathers us to worship, and life is for service. Fred Roger’s wife, Joanne, remembers that during his junior year, he went to France with a professor from Rollins and they visited an orphanage for war orphans. She says, “He talked about it a lot. It broke his heart.” His life would forever be changed; before he went and after. Fred Rogers saw the deep hunger of those orphans, and it influenced how he would respond to God’s call to serve.

The story of the church, like the rest of the stories we will tell about our lives, will at least for the rest of our lives be changed by 2020 – divided into pre-COVID and post-COVID. I believe it is essential for us to pay attention to God’s presence, where we see God’s fingerprints in the life of the church, where there is grace, joy, hope, to be open to God leading us to new possibilities and ministry. At the same time, we must remember our pillars. COVID has not changed God. God’s work has not changed and neither has the work of Farmington Presbyterian. We continue to be a home for God’s family with a heart for God’s world because God gathers us together to worship and sends us out to serve.

If you found Farmington Presbyterian and started worshiping with us during COVID, you may think you are alone and be nervous about reaching out. We don’t have any way to know who you are, but we do know that God is gathering many together to worship here who were not worshiping with us pre-COVID. Our average attendance in the Sanctuary was about 95 folks on a Sunday morning. We now average 190-200 unique viewers each month, and we know that many who are worshiping are not worshiping alone. If you haven’t already, we encourage everyone to subscribe to our YouTube channel because the analytics of YouTube will then recommend our services to more people, to like and share our services, to allow God to gather God’s beloved children to worship.

It’s a new way, but it is not a new message. One day, Matthew was sitting in his office. He was a contract-worker for the Roman government. His friends and family couldn’t believe it when he took the job. The money was good; the cost was enormous. He was seen as a traitor to Palestine, living under Roman occupation. He was seen as a means to an end for Rome, expecting him to collect taxes with no mercy, no concern for the plight of his people. No one trusted him. Tax collectors were permitted to overcharge taxes; extortion, theft, and bribery were commonplace. The assumption was that if you were a tax collector, you were shady and crooked, and you were despised.

As he sat there, what is important is not what Matthew thought of himself, or what his friends and family thought of him, or the Romans he worked for, or the people he taxed, what is important is that Jesus saw him and said two words to him, “Follow me.”

Matthew was no saint. Matthew didn’t just have a past, he was living a present that was immoral. When Jesus saw him and said to him, “Follow me,” he stood up, came out from behind his desk, and followed him. God gathered Matthew. Like I said, I have no idea who is worshiping with us today, or what your past is, or how you are living now, but I know Jesus sees you and says to you, “Follow me.” Not because you are a saint, but because you aren’t.

When the Pharisees saw that Matthew had been accepted as a follower of Jesus, they were appalled. “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” They didn’t go straight to Jesus. Instead, they went to his disciples. But, Jesus heard it and responded, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

The Pharisees, remember, were the experts in the Jewish law, they were the ones who taught what was righteous and what was sinful. I love the way The Voice translation of the Bible interprets this exchange: Jesus, overhearing this, said: “Look, who needs a doctor—healthy people or sick people? I am not here to attend to people who are already right with God; I am here to attend to sinners. In the book of the prophet Hosea, we read, ‘It is not sacrifice I want, but mercy.’ Go and meditate on that for a while—maybe you’ll come to understand it.” Jesus quotes Scripture to them! In Hosea chapter 6 verse 6 God says, “I don’t want animal sacrifices, but mercy. I don’t want burnt offerings; I want people to know Me as God!”

Why does Jesus eat with sinners and tax collectors? Because God wants them to know him. God has mercy. When Jesus says, “Follow me” he speaks God’s Word – he is offering an invitation of healing. And when they follow, he sits down and lets them get to know him. Today, this is the movement of worship.

God is the one who issues the invitation – through a friend or a neighbor, through a Facebook algorithm or a YouTube suggestion – God has invited you, gathered you to worship. Rev. Dr. Tom Long says Jesus’ words “’Follow me’ are powerful and accomplish their mission simply by being spoken. Jesus, who healed a paralyzed servant with a word, calmed the raging winds with a word, sent howling demons hurling into squealing swine with a word, and rolled back the tidal wave of human sin with a word, now begins to form a community, a church, with a word. This is why services of Christian worship even today begin…with a call to worship…Even now, the word from Christ, the word from beyond us, comes to us, powerfully beckoning us from our workplaces and our ordinary routines into a life of faithful following.”

We are gathered to worship because God wants us to know him as God. Here, God meets us, here we feast at this table, here we get to know God.

Matthew didn’t go back after he ate with Jesus; when Jesus called him, he began a life of faithful following. We gather to worship, and then we are sent to serve.

The format may change. In the early church, they met in homes; worship has taken place everywhere from soaring cathedrals to desert battlefields; today, you may be sitting in your pajamas on the couch or in your suit behind your desk or, well, really anywhere. And perhaps it is good for us to remember that God gathers us to worship, truly, everywhere. And God sends us to serve, as individuals and as a church, Christ’s Body in the world.

COVID may change our format, but it doesn’t change our call to have a heart for God’s world. This week, we hosted an online Holiday Fair Trade Sale through Ten Thousand Villages. This ministry makes it possible for women and young adults in developing countries to learn and sell as artisans and support themselves and their families. I walked through the halls here at Farmington and saw God working as children talked about the virtue of thankfulness, as I saw plates that had been decorated into the days of creation outside one classroom, and another class had drawn Adam and Eve and a tree with apples. As a marveled at a rainbow colored in ROYGBIV order and read the words on the boat underneath, “God keeps his promises!” We are serving our neighborhood and our God.

This afternoon, if you are able to come to the church between 2-3 pm, I look forward to praying with you as you make your Estimate of Giving for 2021 with thankful hearts, for Farmington Presbyterian Church has indeed been gathered by God to worship, to be a home for your family, and sent by God to serve with a heart for God’s world. Amen.