Message given at Grace Church Palm Sunday 2010

What did Jesus need these guys for? Did those twelve disciples add a lot of value to Jesus' teaching or ministry? They didn't get what it was He was trying to teach about. They argued all the time. Their number one debate was "who's the greatest?". If that isn't counter to the Spirit of God I don't know what is.

Two of them asked if they could sit in the choice seats when they got to Heaven. When the other ten heard about it, they got ticked off and started another fight.

They tried to keep children away from Jesus when Jesus wanted to see them. They promised to be with Him in Jesus' greatest trial and then when that trial came, they all ran away.

When Jesus said it was time to stay awake and pray in the garden, they all went to sleep. When Jesus went to sleep in the boat, they woke Him up to pray. In Luke 9 they went through a Samaritan town, which they didn't feel was sufficiently welcoming and they asked Jesus: Should we call fire down from heaven to kill all these Samaritans? Jesus said no.

One day they told Him that they saw a man who was casting out demons in His name, but it wasn't one of us so we stopped him. Didn't we do good? (Mark 9:38-40) Jesus said no.
Thomas was a doubter, Judas was a thief, Levi was a tax collector. Peter cut off a guy's ear. Where did Jesus get these guys? "Disciples are us?" What did He need these guys for? Why did He pick these twelve?

And the answer is: Because Jesus needed someone to love. I don't mean that He was needy or insecure or emotionally troubled. I mean that at the core, everything Jesus is about is Love. God loving us. Us loving God and us loving each other.
Somebody asked Jesus one time, all the Torah, all the prophets, all the stuff, what's this about? Jesus says understand them in light of these two Commandments: Love God with everything you've got and love people the way you love yourself.

And nobody had ever seen anybody love the way Jesus loved. He set a new standard.

Just before He died, Jesus gathered these twelve together and He said: A new command I give to you… (John 13: 34-35) It's why this Thursday is called Maundy Thursday… Jesus gave a mandatum, a new command, at the Last Supper. Love one another…

And then He added. As I have loved you… With a love that's so deep it's kind of scary. It just never ever stops no matter what. …As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all people will know you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13: 34-35)

On the night before He died, Jesus told these 12, "I want you to be the most loving group in the world".

And this is His word to us right here at Grace Church, Molokai. You don't have to be the smartest, richest, or prettiest people-just the most loving. Everybody will know that you are Mine, that you've got My stamp, you've got My signature, that you are My disciples, if they look at you and say, this is the most loving group I know. Jesus bet the farm on this.

I want to ask you to picture three giant signs that carry the Jesus factor of love. Ask yourself these questions: Do people see these signs when they look at me? And do people see these signs when they look at our church? Only three-real easy to remember.

Here's the first one: Everybody's welcome.
And what's staggering about this is that it means "every body." What scandalized Jesus in the eyes of folks, especially religious leaders was how He would welcome, love, accept, embrace, and include anybody who came up to Him. It didn't matter-prostitutes, Samaritans, tax collectors, gentiles, lepers, sinners, and the Romans who were regarded as oppressors-they could all come to Him. So the religious leaders looked down at Jesus and said, : This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. (Luke 15:2) That was not intended as a compliment. Jesus walked around like He had a giant sign on His neck that read: Everybody's welcome,
The outcast people all saw it and flocked to Him. But His disciples didn't really get it. They were often put off or confused by this themselves while He was with them. But after He died and rose from the dead, the Holy Spirit came on them and the strangest thing happened to His community. It became a place where everybody in the world was just welcome.
There had never been a place like this in the world before. Every other country, army or community was only for those like us. Everyone else was either shut out, enslaved, or killed if they came where they weren't welcome.

The world always has people who are on the margins, and folks don't have much space or use for them.

In the ancient world they didn't have much use for slaves. Slaves could be abused. They could be bought and sold. They could be punished or killed if they grew too old, or sick or at their master's whim. Nobody had much use for slaves.

Then one day a community of believers got together to remember that one evening their leader knelt down, took a basin of water and washed their feet as slaves do.
He said: Now you do this too. In this Ohana people who serve will be considered the greatest of all. So the Ohana of Jesus told all slaves, " You are welcome here. Come and let us serve you." The early church wasn't a perfect place, but it sure took seriously what Jesus said to do.

People in the church would love the poor so much that even if they were impoverished, people in the church would fast for two days so they would have food to give to the poor who came. I actually saw this happening myself in this day and age in a church in the garbage dump in Manila. Never been anything like this ever in the world.
The ancient world had no room for the sick, diseased or dying. It's hard for us to get a grip on this because we live in such a different world, but imagine a world with no medicine, no sanitation, no hygiene, soap did not exist, unbelievably crowded and filthy conditions in urban settings. When a disease would come, it would wipe people out. But there was this crazy little community of people who had remembered their leader would let lepers come up to Him and touch Him. And He'd be so tender with them when nobody else would touch a leper. And Jesus walked around looking for people who were blind or crippled to love them and to heal them. So His followers said, "I guess we had better to it too… And so they went to the roads and they picked up the sick and took them into their homes where they would bathe, clothe them and feed them. They would bury them, and sometimes even die with them. Again we can't romanticize the early church-but they actually became this family that tried to do what Jesus said.
A strange thing happened. Contrary to what everybody thought would happen; the plagues and the illness didn't wipe out the church. The Christians actually survived the plagues at higher rates than the pagans did. Isolation, which looked like the strategy of survival, is deadlier than community.

Fellowship and love are healing, not just emotionally but physically too.
A study published in the Journal of American Medical Association told how 276 volunteers were infected with the virus that produces the common cold. Kind of odd that people would volunteer for that, but they did. This study found that people with strong emotional connections did four times better fighting off illness than those who were isolated.

People who were connected were less susceptible to colds and they produced significantly less mucus than relationally-isolated subjects. I am not making this up. They produced less mucus. It is literally true. Unfriendly people are snottier than friendly people! And we can probably assume that it's better to eat Twinkies with good friends than to eat broccoli alone!

This is the power of love and community. It's in our bodies. It's in our souls. It is needed by our world! And Jesus bet the world that we would be a group of people who loved God so deeply, and loved each other so much, and served the world so passionately that we would be His miracle to the world.

Think God can do that? Do you think it could happen today? Has God's spirit lost its power? Do you believe God could build a community so loving that people who thought they would ever want to be in the same room would love each other like family? Can the Lord bring people who are different in every way together? Could He live among us so that people would say: I'm not sure I agree with everything they believe, I'm not sure I even understand everything they teach, but I want to be loved like that. I want to get in on that love. I believe that the power of God is so strong that even Yankees and Red Sox fans can be together and that MAC and Windows users can break bread together.

Do we wear the sign of Jesus that says, Everybody welcome. If not, can you ask Jesus to help you with that sign? He will.

The second sign in the Jesus community is this one: Nobody's perfect.
Isn't that sign good news? I'm glad that's one of the signs. Everybody is on level ground. All of us stand or kneel as sinners, in need of the blood of Jesus. So there's forgiveness for everybody at the foot of the cross. That means we don't have to follow the social dynamics that are part of normal human communities. We don't have to hide behind social status. We don't have to pretend that we are someone or something we aren't. How can we impress each other with our own inflated images when we know we are all just sinners, saved and living by grace? Nobody's perfect.

That doesn't mean that anything goes. It doesn't mean that we don't try to grow together to be holy. To do that means we will have to make some decisions about right and wrong: about making healthy choices and developing good habits. It means we will have to leave the old life behind. But in the community where the love of Jesus is at the center, we have a clear message from Him. Do not judge or you too will be judged. (Matthew 7:1)

We all come kind of pre-wired with certain vulnerabilities, certain temptations, and certain sins we wrestle with. We have certain traits and weaknesses that we were born with keep us from finding the deep peace that comes from knowing Jesus. But instead of judging each other we help each other. We speak truth, in love to each other. T do that, we name sin as sin. We call people to repent. We confess together. That's part of the fellowship deal. We ask for forgiveness a lot. We don't allow unresolved conflict to go on. We offer forgiveness a lot. We realize that even in the family of Christ, Nobody's Perfect.
For years one of my illusions was to think "God, I would be more loving if you would just put more easy-to-love people in my life. If I were just surrounded by more people who are normal and healthy like me, I'd be more loving." Then God sent me Scotty. And then I really learned to love.

But of course, reality is that all of us are somebody's hard-to-love people. It's very important we have people like that in our lives, because in the Jesus community nobody is perfect. In the Jesus community Everybody's Welcome. In the Jesus community Nobody's Perfect.

And then, love this one, in the Jesus community there's this sign: Anything's Possible.
When the Lord gets a hold of you, when, Jesus Christ is in your house then the Holy Spirit begins His work of transforming our hearts and minds. And He gives us special gifts to be able to do what we could not do in our own strength. You can see this when Simon who was kind of shaky and impulsive, was renamed by Jesus as Peter, which means the Rock.

He comes on Palm Sunday into Jerusalem. Everybody is crying out, Hosanna! But He doesn't get too high because He knows what's coming next. Five days later He is hanging on the cross. That same crowd that was yelling "Hosanna" now is yelling, Crucify! But He doesn't say, "God, blast them all!" He says: Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)

Just as the story ends, with the disciples hiding in shame, God prove that ANYTHING'S POSSIBLE. The tomb is empty. Jesus has risen from the dead. Jesus is alive.

So the Disciples are happy that Jesus has risen, but they are still confused, weak and ineffective. They pray a lot but don't know what to do next. Suddenly the Holy Spirit rushes into their lives and they see that Anything's Possible.

Peter becomes the Rock. He speaks and thousands turn to Jesus. And those new followers find out that when they follow Jesus that anything's possible too.

Later a wealthy guy with a lot of resources named Joe became so generous that they gave him a new name too: Barnabas which means Son of Encouragement. Then Saul, the Jewish zealot, hater of gentiles, becomes Paul, the man who sacrifices his energy and his freedom, and ultimately his life to love the gentiles because Jesus sees Anything's Possible.
And there and then this community, the Family of God, the Body of Christ starts. There has never been a community like this because with Jesus Everybody's Welcome and Nobody's Perfect and Anything's Possible. That's about it. The strategy is about that simple. It's about that clear cut. It doesn't take money. It doesn't take programs. It doesn't take buildings. It takes a relationship with Jesus Christ. It takes living in His presence and living like everybody is welcome and nobody is perfect and anything is possible. It takes sharing His love in homes, at work, and beyond the times we are together.

And when we live with Jesus like that, Anything is possible. The love of Jesus breaks chains of addictions. The love of Jesus heals broken bodies. The love of Jesus brings together relationships that are fractured. The love of Jesus opens doors for business, for education, for art, and for justice. But most importantly, as He pours out His love to us, the love of Jesus forgives sin and changes lives. He fills His community to overflowing if we let Him.

The last picture in the Book of Revelations is a picture of a wedding. Come. Let all who hear say "come," let the one who is thirsty driven by unsatisfied desires come taste the waters of life….. (Revelation 22:17)

Are you thirsty? Do you know anyone who needs to take a gulp from the living water? Let's drink together knowing that Everyone's Welcome, No One's perfect, and Anything's possible when we are with Jesus.

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