[The Easter Life is] A Life of Purpose (New Beginnings UMC)

I need to tell you about someone that was the, the, the great

hope of my hometown growing up a lot on Bidwell, Rodney Road or

Rodney, Bidwell Rd. depending on whether you were starting in

Rodney or Bidwell and, and, and, and it was Norma.

Her name was Norma, still is Norma.

And Norma was brilliant in school.

She got straight as everything, kindergarten through 12th grade.

She was a tremendous athlete, gifted athlete.

She lettered in four sports even though we only had two girls

sports. It was just incredible.

She went from high school. She had everyone had great

dreams and hopes and we thought, you know, no one's ever heard of

Bidwell Rodney Rd. before and most people don't know where

Bill Well or Rodney are. And Norma's going to put us on

the map. Norma's going to change the

world. Everyone will know how how

wonderful this part of the world is.

Because Norman and she, she started off great.

She went off to college, went to an Ivy League school.

She majored, majored in nuclear physics, pre Med literature and

international economics and got straight A's in all four.

Then went on to Graduate School and got got doctoral degrees in

all those areas. And we just knew.

We knew she was going to change the word.

She was either going to discover how cold fusion works or she was

going to find the cure for cancer.

She was going to figure out how to how to end poverty all around

the world. Or she was going to, you know,

write the greatest novel ever written that would change

people's lives forever. We knew it.

We knew it. After she graduated, she was a

little tired. She said, before I really get

started and all of that, I'm going to take a gap year, travel

around the world. We said, we understand, Norma,

you've been working hard, take a break.

We know great things are coming from you.

And so she started traveling around the world.

She happened to go through Luxembourg, where she happened

to meet the king of Luxembourg. And they were having brats

together. They were enjoying some

conversation. He said, Norma, you got to come

see my aquarium. It's amazing.

Now for me, an aquarium's a glass tank, you know, like this,

with a few fish in it. For the king of Luxembourg, it

was like a whole water park kind of thing.

And his prize possession and his aquarium was his dolphin, whom

he had named Queenie. And when Norma saw Queenie, she

just fell in love. It's the most wonderful thing in

the world to her, absolutely love Queenie.

It's time for her to move on, to continue her trip.

And she did. But even as she traveled the

rest of the way around the world, her heart kept going back

to Queenie. And when she finished her gap

year, she didn't go on to cure cancer or to figure out cold

fusion or to end poverty or even to write a novel.

She went to Luxembourg and said, hey, I'd like a job taking care

of Queenie. And the king was like, well, I'm

not sure you really qualified for that.

She said, I'm a quick learner. She figured it out.

And she devoted herself. She she fed Queenie every day.

When Queenie was sick, she gave her medicine and took care of

her when she cleaned out her pools.

So her water was always fresh and clean.

And she was a friend and, and companion to Queenie.

It was, it was just wonderful. But the folks in my town were

really disappointed and we were feeling like Norma was letting

us down, 'cause no one's going to know about someone who's

doing that. We need someone to do something

important. And that someone was Norma.

So we nominated a representative, thank goodness

it wasn't me, to go speak to Norma and share our collective

disappointment with her. And they went over to meet with

Norma and they said, Norma, you know, we all had such high hopes

and such grand dreams for you. You were going to do all of

these wonderful things and change the world, but, but what

are you doing here? And Norma thought for a minute.

She said. Well, I do believe I'm serving a

noble porpoise. That's a long, long way to go

for not a lot of pay off. But here's the thing, we all

have a noble porpoise. All of us.

We are all children of the King, followers of Jesus Christ, the

King of the universe, which means we all have a noble

porpoise. We do the Easter life.

Easter life is not only a life in a world turned upside down.

It's not only a life of faith and a life of surface.

It is a life of purpose. We have purpose because of

Easter. And it is really, really

important that we are clear about that with ourselves and

with other people because there is so much noise in the world

that suggests that that there is no real purpose, that life is

meaningless. But Easter life is a life of

purpose. Life is not directionless, life

is not meaningless, Knife is not pointless and life is not

futile. Now, these kind of voices, they

wax and wane over the years. They get louder, they get

quieter, they're more popular and they're less popular.

But right now in the Western world, in the US and and Europe,

these voices that say life is meaningless, that there is no

purpose, it's all pointless, it's all futile.

These voices are very loud, you know, Wow, we're only here by

accident. And one of these days it's all,

you know, all collapse back into another singularity, a black

hole. It'll all blow up again.

Everyone that has ever lived, everything that's ever been

built, everything that's ever been done, everything that's

ever been said, every song ever written will come to absolutely

nothing, will be totally, completely obliterated and

forgotten. There's no point.

It's pointless. It's futile.

No matter what we do, what you do, it will come ultimately to

nothing. Life has no meaning.

That's one way to get off the rails.

The other way to get off the rails is, well, we'll grant you

that life can have meaning, but we have to make that meaning up

ourselves. We have to manufacture our own

meaning. Meaning and purpose are social

constructs. They are not given realities and

and we just have to invent them ourselves.

But when you scratch that, you know, below the surface on that

way of thinking, you just get back to the fact that life has

no meaning and life has no purpose.

Now, the fact is, life does have purpose.

That purpose is not yours and ours.

We are not creating our own meaning and our own purpose in

the world. It's not up to us to do that.

In fact, it's not even within our capacity and our power to do

that. We're going to talk about that a

little bit more later, but right now I'm going to say the purpose

is not yours. Your purpose is.

Our purpose is not ours to define and to describe.

The Easter life is a life filled and directed by God's purpose.

God has a purpose for us, and that purpose does not change

whether we agree with it, whether we buy into it.

God has a purpose for us, whether we accept it, whether we

reject it, whether we think life is futile.

In meaning. It's not.

God has a purpose. Every single human being that

has ever been conceived, that has ever drawn breath has done

so on purpose with God's purpose in their lives, whether we

recognize it or not. Jesus said when we talk about

purpose. But you will receive power when

the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses.

This is what Jesus this is Luke writing.

We have 4 evangelists that that take different slants, different

formulate and phrase and and proclaim God's purpose for us in

different ways. Last week we looked at John and

and and his formulation of God's purpose for us is a life of

service. Feed my sheep, tend my lambs,

take care of my sheep. This is our purpose.

Luke phrases it and proclaims it a little bit differently.

And just before Jesus ascends into the heavens, he says to his

followers, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes

on you, and you will be my witnesses.

That word power in the Greek is a little different than an

English and English power doesn't have to have any kind of

direction. Power can can have a purpose and

have a direction like the power generated over at Gavin or Tiger

Creek. That has purpose.

It has direction. It travels out from there and it

goes out to accomplish things in the world.

But, you know, there's also the kind of power that's like a

stick of dynamite or a great big old bomb that just just explodes

and destroys in Greek. The word power there carries

with it a sense of direction, a sense of purpose, and, and Jesus

is not just giving us the Holy Spirit so we can do whatever so

that we're walking around with some sticks of dynamite and we

can blow up. What we can do this, we can do

that. Just we've got power to use for

whatever purpose we wish. Jesus gives us power for his

purpose and that purpose is to be his witnesses.

What do witnesses do? Witnesses report on what they

have seen, heard, and experienced.

And we are to be Jesus's witnesses.

Our purpose is to share and proclaim what we have seen,

heard and experienced Jesus doing.

What we see and hear and experience Jesus doing.

Now to share that with others so they can better hear, see and

experience what Jesus is doing too.

It's a legal term. And, and by saying you will be

my witnesses, Jesus is excluding some things.

Jesus did not say the Holy Spirit will come on you with

power and you will be my investigators going out to

figure out what's wrong with other people.

He did not say that. He said you will be my

witnesses. He did not say the Holy Spirit

will come upon you with power and you will be my prosecuting

attorneys going out and trying to punish people for the things

they're doing wrong. He did not say that.

He said you will be my witnesses.

He did not say the Holy Spirit will come on you with power and

you will be my judges in this world deciding who's good, who's

bad, who's going to heaven, who's going to hell.

He did not say that we receive his Holy Spirit.

We receive this power for the purpose of being Jesus's

witnesses, seeing what Jesus, we need the Holy Spirit to

recognize the Holy Spirit in the world around us so that we can

follow the Holy Spirit and tell others about the Holy Spirit.

Matthew phrases it a little bit differently.

He emphasizes a little bit differently.

Here Jesus is gathering with his disciples outside Jerusalem and

Matthew, they're gathering in Galilee.

And this is this is part of what he says in Matthew.

John read the rest of it this morning already.

Jesus said all authority in heaven on earth.

That authority, power, it's been given to me and I'm giving it to

you. So go and make disciples of all

nations. This is a little bit different

nuance, a little bit different inferences.

Now that go and make disciples, there are no word for word

translations of the Bible or any complex writing from one

language to another, because different languages do things

differently. Greek does amazing things with

participles and verb tenses that are very difficult to do and to

sound reasonable in English. And and it that this make

disciples is one of those spots where it's tough to really

completely captured in the English.

The most literal way to translate it might be to say go

and disciple all nations, but that doesn't quite capture the

full nuance either because because how do you disciple a

whole nation? Making disciples makes it feels

like you're you're manufacturing something.

I'm going to make you into the disciple.

Even if you don't want to be a disciple, this is something I am

going to make, doesn't it Sort of gets there, but not quite.

Another way to phrase it would be to say, therefore go and

bring disciples of me out of all nations.

Bring disciples. But whether you think of it as

discipling nations, making disciples of the nations, or

bringing disciples from the nations, it's all active.

It is doing something. We have a purpose to go out and

bring people into discipleship, to enable people, help people,

facilitate people to become followers of Jesus.

A disciple is a learner, but it's more than just head

learning. It's more than just academic

book work where you need to learn information so you can

write it down and communicate it on test.

It's it's more like an apprenticeship learning how to

live like Jesus lived. And we get we get kind of a 2

step process in that from Jesus here.

And it's been its most distilled, simplest form.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the

Holy Spirit bring them into the family, initiate them into the

community and, and that initiation, the sign of that

initiation that welcome that reception.

It's different from the old covenant with Abraham where the

sign was circumcision. That sign only half the people

could ever participate in that sign and that was the men.

Everyone can be baptized. Plus, circumcision is a

physical, physical change, a physical sign that represents

the covenant. If want to be too graphic.

But if someone says, hey, can you prove you're circumcised?

Yeah, people can prove whether they're circumcised or not.

You can do that. Someone says prove to me you're

baptized. It's different.

That sign is not a physical alteration.

It's an internal transformation. You can get dunked or sprinkled

or poured or whatever, but if the love of Jesus Christ is not

flowing out of our hearts and our minds into the lives of

others, serving and caring and nurturing them, how can anyone

know We've actually been baptized, been made part of the

family of God? So that's part of it.

The other part of it then is teaching them to obey everything

I have commanded you faithfulness.

That's right back to that life of faith, obediently hearing the

word of God doing that, recognizing what God is doing,

what God is saying, where God is going now and obediently

following that in our context, in our situation.

And that's our purpose. That's our purpose to bring

disciples out of all nations to bear witness to Jesus Christ

throughout the whole world. Now I've been preaching this

long enough that I, I, I have done it poorly.

I, I, I think that's not I, I, I have, I've preached this poorly

in the past. I'm OK with that.

I didn't used to be OK with doing stuff poorly, but then

someone said, you know, everything worth doing is worth

doing poorly at first. And, and you have to learn, you

have to grow. It takes time.

I'm older now. I hope I'm doing things better

than I was when I was in my 20s. When I used to teach this, I

didn't make any distinction between sensing God's purpose

and acknowledging God's purpose. And one of the things I've

learned is there are some folks in every church that have a

really strong sense of God's purpose in their life.

They can feel it, they recognize it.

It's just part of the air they breathe.

It's part of the background music that's in their head all

the time, part of the the, the canvas that's in front of their

eyes, that sense and feel of the reality of God's purpose in

their lives. There are some people that don't

have that at all. They have no sense of God's

purpose. And what I learned as I was

preaching it that way is that some people would hear me

preaching and teaching about this and they'd say, you know, I

don't have any sense of God's purpose in my life.

Maybe I don't have God's purpose in my life.

Maybe I'm not part of the Kingdom of God.

Maybe I'm not really saved. Maybe I'm not really being

faithful if I'm not sensing it. But there is a world of

difference between sensing God's purpose and acknowledging God's

purpose. You can acknowledge God's

purpose to say God has a purpose for me, whether I can sense it

or not. And that's the key thing.

I now have the perfect illustration for this.

That perfect illustration is my dog Bruno.

I should have had a picture of Bruno for the slides, but I

don't. Bruno is a 70 LB knucklehead.

And, and, and I, we adopted Bruno.

I had he's, he's my dog. I adopted Bruno for a purpose.

I adopted Bruno to be my buddy, hang out with me, one of the low

energy dog that like to lie around.

Best thing Bruno can do for me is if I'm sitting on the couch

and can put his head on my lap and snore while I scratch him

behind the ears. I enjoy that he enjoys that.

He crawl up and sit on my 70 lbs, sit on my lap, rub his

belly. I can't see the TV because he's

right here scratching his belly and he loves it and it's good.

And that's Bruno's purpose. That's not what Bruno thinks his

purpose is. Bruno has a very strong sense of

his purpose and has not to do with being my buddy.

Bruno's sense of his purpose is that he is there to protect our

house and our family from the mortal threat of Shelly, our

mailman. We have a mail slot, so she has

to come up under our front porch every day.

And Bruno, wherever he is in the house, launches himself in the

direction of the front door, barking and growling like Satan

himself is attempting to break in the front door.

And, and, and Bruno's not. He's not real particular.

Anyone or anything that walks along the sidewalk in the front

of our house is a mortal threat. And Bruno is confident that his

purpose is to keep all mortal threats out of the house and he

will bark ferociously to do that.

He's very committed to this purpose.

He is a coward by the way. He's frightened of loud noises

and and as soon as you open the door, suddenly he's not so

ferocious. But we'll be in the backyard.

We got a long house, smallish backyard.

We'll be in the backyard. If Bruno is on the edge of the

backyard and he sees someone walking down the sidewalk,

particularly if they're walking a dog, he will run into the

house to the front door, it's a glass door, and bark at them

ferociously as they walk past the house.

He won't go outside because then he doesn't have a door between

him and he's a coward. But that's what he thinks his

purpose is, is to protect the family.

Bruno is not going to protect the family.

He tries. He really does try.

He's very afraid of loud noises and even some not so loud noise.

I have an electric. He's terrified of motorcycles.

Anywhere that he can hear a motorcycle, he'll run in the

house. But I have an electric

lawnmower, push mower and he's afraid of that.

That's too loud for him. He'll when I start mowing, he'll

run in the house. Except one day recently, I was

out mowing in the backyard and we got a fence in the backyard.

On the other side of that fence are neighbors that have a

mammoth big German Shepherd that, that again, I have no,

I've never met the German Shepherd on the other side of

the fence, just across the fence.

And but that when you get close to the fence of the German

shepherds back there, he barks like if that fence weren't

there, I would have a dog on my throat.

I mean, he he barks like he wants to kill me.

So I'm out mowing by the back fence and that dog is barking

and Poro Bruno comes running out of the back of the house to

protect me from the dog. He tries, he tries.

He doesn't run straight. He kind of zigzags 'cause he's

afraid of the lawn mower. But he had his tail between his

legs and his ears down and he was shivering a little bit.

But he got between me and that fence.

Bruno will never protect. It's just not in him.

But that's not why I got it. That his purpose is to be my

companion, my buddy, not my bodyguard.

This is the thing. Bruno will never understand his

real purpose. He will never sense what his

real purpose is. His sense is always going to be

I'm here to protect. It's the same for us.

Even if we can't sense what our purpose is, what God's purpose

is for us, that doesn't mean God doesn't have a purpose for us.

God has a purpose for us, whether we can sense it or not.

God's going to accomplish his purpose through us, whether we

understand that purpose or not. But if we acknowledge that

purpose, that opens up opportunities to act

intentionally. And here's the thing.

I mean, even if we don't even perceive it, Jesus, when he said

to his disciples, they're outside Jerusalem, the Holy

Spirit will come on you and you will be my witnesses throughout

the whole world. Not, not the Holy Spirit will

come on you. And if you do things the right

way, then you'll be my witnesses.

Not the Holy Spirit will come on you.

And if if you don't make any big mistakes, you'll be my

witnesses, or if you learn the right things, or if you go,

Jesus the Holy Spirit will come on you and you will be my

witnesses throughout the whole world.

Jesus wasn't giving them a command.

He was making a prophecy. He was prophesying what would

happen. They are going to fulfill

Jesus's mission for them, whether they can sense that

mission or not. And that was the promise.

And that's the promise Jesus makes for us, whether we sense

it or not. But if, even if we can't sense

it, even if we can't feel it, if we acknowledge it, it allows us

to act intentionally in ways that we might not otherwise act.

And I want to tell you a story now.

I love this story. I, I keep saying that like 3

weeks in a row here, but I love these current contemporary true

stories of people just doing God's stuff as part of their

regular lives. Tiffany Whittier and Michael

Kent. And I'm not going to, I'm not

going to give any introduction to their specific story.

I will tell you that if you've never been to the website

iamsecond.com, it's a great website.

It's a Christian website. And the idea is God is 1st and I

am 2nd. And it's lots of stories and

lots of personal testimonies, some from regular ordinary

folks, some from fairly reasonably famous folks about

how God has changed their lives. And the the videos are well

produced. Their stories are well told.

And it's there's some really, really beautiful things on

there. Their search feature on their

website is not the greatest. If you want to find Tiffany and

Michael's video from I Am second, it's easier to go to

YouTube and search Tiffany Whitaker, Michael Kent I am 2nd

and then you can find the video. I'm not playing their I am

second video. It's too long.

It's like 1213 minutes long. But once they did their I am

Second video, some mainstream news media, this case in

particular ABC News picked up the story and made it into a

national news story. And so I'm going to it's only a

3 minute segment. I'm going to show you that one.

Then we're going to talk about it.

But let's let's see and hear about Tiffany and Michael.

My name is Michael Kent. I'm over here at Fallen Heroes

to get a swastika covered up. I've never, never, never been in

a inside of a tattoo shop getting a professional tattoo.

It's a lot different than the prison style one.

It's not done with guitar strings.

It's painful to get it out. Yes, but it's going to be worth

it. Tell me your story.

Behind that shirt is a lot of ink.

I was a part of a Skinhead group, a very violent group.

My first tattoo, the racial tattoo was my white pride when I

got 2 swastikas, 1 on my chest. How long have you had that on

your chest? Over 20 years.

Talk about that transformation process.

This is kind of a good story, but odd story.

I got my caseload transferred to a black woman.

She just marched up to my house. If it wasn't for her, I probably

would have been deep back into it.

You feel like she became much more than a probation officer.

Yes, she's much more than that, so I would look at her as

family. I'm Tiffany Whittier.

I haven't seen him in over a year.

He doesn't know that I'm here. We're going to surprise him.

Say hello hi.

She gave me a chance and it opened my eyes.

You 2 are unlikely. Friends.

Yes, yes, I had a German war flag, she says.

You need to take that crap down and start putting up more

positive stuff. Put up smiley faces so when you

wake up you see positive instead of hate.

That's a big difference. Yeah, that's a big change.

When you wake up and you see a :), you're going to go to work

and you're going to smile. Before all this, I wouldn't work

for anybody or with anybody that wasn't white. 13 people that

work with me, I'm the only white person there.

We have company parties, or they have quinceaneras or barbecues

or birthday parties. I'm the only white guy there.

Last night we were with him and he got a tattoo taken up, he

said. Tiffany was one of the people

that helped me make this transition.

I'm not here to judge him. That's not my job to judge.

My job is to be that positive person in someone's life, try to

make a difference. I'm getting trucked up again.

If you got a strong support system and you have people that

believe in you in a positive way, you can change.

Oh wow, that's. Crazy thing.

Do it, Michael. You're touching before and after

now. Did you ever think they'd come

off and have you been a part of that?

Not in the million years I would have ever guessed.

That Michael. Changed his life for the better.

She gave me the strength and the courage to do what I'm doing and

changing my life because I know it, she can do it and she

believes in people, good in people.

I know I can't too. This side one of the the good

things about this clip is it was short enough to show the whole

thing here in this morning because it's ABC News and their

focus is just on information. They they cut out all of the

faith stuff from their story there.

I am second interview and and they've been on Kelly Clarkson

show an interview there and some other places as well.

There are several different interviews for them there where

they are very explicit about their faith in the role that God

played in this. But in particular on that I am

second interview Michael, which was I believe the first one they

did. Michael asked Tiffany.

He said, I've always wanted to know why you did this for me.

Why did you do this for me? Why did you do this for me?

And and her response, she seemed baffled by that.

And she just said quite sincerely, well, it's my it was

my job. And he's like, this wasn't your

job. And they're both right.

I, I, I, I, I know a few probation officers.

I guarantee you that there is nothing in Tiffany Whittier's

job description that says her job is to share the love and

hope in Jesus of Jesus Christ with people.

I, I guarantee you it's not even to love people is not part of

her job description. She's assigned.

And Michael was a bad dude by his own admission, he destroyed

the lives of many people. And, and here's this, this

woman, a, a black woman coming up and investing in him, sharing

the hope, sharing the love of God in a way that leads his life

to be changed. The way it began, which they,

they again, they, it's a short clip, but the way it began was

when she was assigned his caseload, he'd gotten out of

prison. She was assigned him as a

probationer. And, and she looked at his file.

She saw the tattoos, she knew his history, she knew what he

was about. She was going to make her

initial contact with him. And she said she had a gut

feeling to just go alone. And so she showed up at his

house by herself. She walked up.

She knocked on the door. He walked out.

And the first thing he said to her was, did you come alone?

She said her response was, yes, I'm alone, Is that going to be a

problem? And he said, no, it's not a

problem. He said, no one's ever had the

courage to come to my house alone before, said even the

white folks, when they come, bring back up with them.

But you had the courage to come alone.

That courage, that willingness to risk, that willingness to for

someone who would have been so easy to judge and condemn and

write off, but instead speak to with hope and grace and

compassion and love. Because she, and again in the

larger interviews, you hear it, she understands that God has a

purpose in her life. She has a job that she has to do

and she has a responsibility to do that job.

But God has a purpose in her life.

And that purpose is there whether she feels the purpose or

not, to share the hope, to share the compassion, to share the

love. And this is what she did.

And Michael's life was changed and in her life was changed as

well. I think it's interesting that

that when when the news reporter asked her did did you ever think

those tattoos would come off? Did you catch what?

Catch what she said? She said no.

Said never in a million years did I expect Michael would

change his life for the better. You know, talk to some.

Oh, I always knew they'd come. I always knew Jesus would get

off. All right.

She's like, I didn't. She was just doing what God had

called her to do. She was doing the work in front

of her. She was doing it in the name of

Jesus Christ. And God accomplished his purpose

through her. And, and I guarantee you that

Michael is the exception rather than the rule in terms of

dramatic transformation and her life.

But that doesn't change the miracle.

It doesn't change her purpose. Every single one of us has a

noble purpose. We all do.

Whether we can see it or not, whether we feel it or not.

God has purpose for all of us. God has purpose for New

Beginnings United Methodist Church in this community, in

this town. God has purpose for us, and God

will accomplish that purpose through US.

Let's acknowledge that purpose and pursue it together in Jesus

name. Amen.

Amen.