What's Important?

What’s Important?
Last week we began our series looking at what our legacy will be…A legacy is not something that we think about in relation to our death, but in relation to how we live our lives…Also because God has fulfilled God’s promises, what are we doing to fulfill our promises to God?
Part of deciding what our legacy will be also means that we take a kind of inventory of our lives and figure out what’s important and what, well what’s not…You’ve probably heard the saying that when someone is on their deathbed or near death, they don’t say that they wish they had spent more time working or collecting stuff…usually it’s that they wish that they had spent more time with friends and family…What’s important in your life?
Randy Pausch is the professor of Carnegie Mellon who taught his last lecture titled “Really Living Your Childhood Dreams” which was viewed millions of times on the internet and turned into a New York Times Best Seller. The lessons that are shared in his lecture are life lessons and things that Randy Pausch learned upon his journey of life…But they are also ways that he lived his life. Randy Pausch fully admitted to being a workaholic, but there were times when he knew that life was more important than working. And from very early in his life, he understood that stuff was not as important as people…When he was a child, his parents let him paint his room…Whatever he wanted…He painted sayings and math equations on his walls and of course an elevator door…He said that when he painted his room he learned from his parents that creativity, imagination, and people were more important that walls and paint. But even more telling than that story is a story that he tells about his new car…
When Randy was a bachelor, he drove up to pick up his niece and nephew ages 9 and 7…He of course drove to pick them up in his brand new Volkswagen Cabrio Convertible…Now Randy’s sister, the children’s mother told them exactly how they should behave and what they should and should not do… “Be careful in Uncle Randy’s new car. Wipe your feet before you get in. Don’t mess anything up. Don’t get it dirty.” All things that I’m sure you’ve said at one point or another…And that aren’t bad rules…But as Randy’s sister was outlining these rules…He was slowly and deliberately opening a can of pop and turning it upside down and pouring it all on the cloth seats in the back…He said that his message was clear… People are more important than things. He also said that he ended up being glad that he spilled that pop because later in the time with his niece and nephew, his nephew got the flu and got sick all over the back seat of the car. Randy said that his nephew didn’t feel guilty for getting the car dirty because it was already dirtied by Uncle Randy. People are more important than things…He goes on to share with this story that as his niece and nephew are now adults, that they take his children out for events like he used to take them and when the kids mess up their cars, they think of him and the lessons he taught them…
What’s important to you? Is it more stuff or is it something else? Now, I know full well that to say that stuff and things aren’t important is completely counter cultural to the world that we live in…We live in a world that says whoever has the most toys wins…Or whoever has the best stuff is the winner…And yet that’s the opposite of what Jesus taught and did…Jesus didn’t heal people because they had the most stuff, but because they had faith…He didn’t eat with people because they had the best food or the biggest homes…He ate with them because he was invited…In a culture where we are taught that bigger is better, Jesus teaches us something different…Something opposite…Something radical…That there is something more important than stuff…
Now that’s not to say that everyone should trash their homes and pour pop all over the back seats of their cars…But instead of looking with an eye to what is bigger and better, being satisfied with what we have…And using what we have as a tool and not the be all and end all…
The way that Randy looked at his car was a way for him to drive his niece and nephew to various places…It was a tool for him to do what was really important…It wasn’t the important thing…The important thing was building the relationship with his family…What’s important?
As Jesus talks with his disciples on the top of the mountain and he’s telling the disciples what their responsibilities are in what is referred to as the great commission…Jesus tells the disciples “All authority has been given to me.” And in that statement is a boldness from Jesus…That he has all the authority on earth and in heaven…That Jesus is Lord…Not only is Jesus Lord, but he’s giving an important task to his disciples…Now, he’s not giving up any of his authority, because certainly Jesus is Lord! But, he’s giving the disciples an authority to continue to share the message of the Gospel and to continue to share his teachings with the world! Jesus didn’t tell the disciples to find a safe building and store everything that he had ever given them and hide out there until it seemed like it was safe or until Jesus returned…No, Jesus told them to Go…That the message was more important than anything else…The same commission that Jesus gave to the disciples is one that is still passed on to us…When we are baptized we are baptized into service…It’s a time when God claims us as God’s own…a promise that God makes to us that we are God’s children…But it’s also a promise that we make to God…When we are baptized, we are baptized into ministry with God…To continue the ministry of Jesus…to go and make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world…That is a charge that as baptized Christians we all have…It’s not just for those who are on committees or just for pastors or just for the saints of the church…It’s what we are all called into as baptized Christians…as ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ…
After Jesus told the disciples to “Go,” he gave them the rest of the instruction… “Go and make disciples of all nations”…Go and make disciples of all people….ALL PEOPLE ARE WELCOME! We are to invite all people into a relationship with Jesus…Baptizing them in the name of God three-in-one…The triune God…The Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost…And teaching to obey the commandments of Jesus…The commandments where Jesus said, “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as you love yourself.” And all of the teachings that Jesus shared with his disciples that helped to give examples of those commandments and those that challenged the society of the day…And those are things that we all should be diving into to work at understanding our faith…What’s important?
What are we doing as a church to encourage people to meet Jesus? What are we doing to tell them that Jesus meets them right where they are…that Jesus is present in their very lives? That Jesus is calling to them…That Jesus is calling to us? How do they know? Our mission as Sheridan/Norway United Methodist Church is…Mission statements here…That is what we have claimed as our legacy…There isn’t anything in that mission statement about stuff…it’s all about how we share the message of the Gospel…How are we living into that mission?
The message of the Gospel is radical…it’s radically different than our whole society teaches…It’s radically different than our whole culture preaches…The message of the Gospel shares what is really important…That people matter more than stuff…That love is more important than hate…That forgiveness is more important than not…That Jesus is Lord…That God fulfills God’s promises…And it’s a message that we are commissioned to share with the world…To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world…Mission Statement…That’s what’s important…