Let us go to the Lord in prayer:
Gracious God grant that the words, I use to communicate your
message this morning will find meaning in their hearts of those gathered here
today so that we may come closer to you and be prepared as disciples to do your
work in both Lynchburg and the greater World.
Amen
Good morning to each of you and may the "Peace of God"
be with you.
When Will first asked me to bring the message, while he and
Meagan are at conference, I must admit feeling both a sense of excitement
and trepidation. Stepping up and placing yourself in a new
situation is not always easy. However
after a little soul searching, I found that this was an opportunity for me to
answer a call from God and to serve my church.
When in due course Will and I meet to discuss the scripture for this
morning, and I found the topic would be discipleship, my mind raced with
thoughts on the meaning of Peters words and a quote, learned long ago, from the writings of the Protestant
Reformation leader Martin Luther came to me.
"The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat
under it, it turns and grinds the wheat into flour. If you put no wheat in, it still grinds on,
but then it is itself it grinds and slowly wears away."
Now this may seem an odd quote but I feel it speaks to the
very heart of today's text and the need for Christians to be engaged in
discipleship. Have any of you ever gone
to an old mill and watched the grinding of wheat into flour. The mill is alive with motion and activity as
it completes its work. In 1st peter 2:4-5
We are called to be living stones built into a spiritual house and offering
spiritual sacrifices. Each of us has
been chosen by God to be living stones and as believers and followers of Christ
we, like the Mill Stone, must grind wheat into flour through discipleship and
service least we grind ourselves away until nothing is left but broken and worn
away stone.
Now if you are like me the question you ask yourself is how
can, I be a living stone? For me the
response was found in another quote from Martin Luther. "Good works do not make a good man, but
a good man does good works." God
call us because we are Christians, this is a consequence of faith and we never
know when the call will come nor what form it will take.
God's Call may come at work, in our home, at church, or
anywhere in the world around us. Being a Christian means, that we are called
to join as a community of believers ready to serve for any purpose that God has
in mind. Peter said the living stones
were to be built into a spiritual house.
Such a house has no edge or end, no walls to confine, or to restrict our
presence in the world. And if that description is true we need not ask to what purpose our community of believers
is being called to perform, but rather we should allow God to lead us as he
will. On our church's website we have a
page for missions and at the top of that page we find this statement "The
Mission Team seeks to put our call to service into action as the hands and feet
of Christ we reach out to our community in love and service. " If you go to that page you will see many of
examples of the living stones at work in our church, but so much more can and
should be accomplished. Everyone of us
is called to discipleship, Peter calls it the holy priesthood, which will offer
sacrifices acceptable to God in the pursuit of God's Holy will
To be a faithful Disciple we must be willing to witness
to others the virtue of Service to God.
Christian Discipleship is more
than coming to church. Singing and
reading the words in the hymnal does not fulfill the call to discipleship
because discipleship is an active response to the call of God, that will make transformative
demands on us as we live out our belief and faith in order to proclaim and
expand the community of Christian. I know, that it is simpler to say be a
disciple than to be one. We all
experience trepidation when faced with unknown outcomes but if we believe, that becoming a living
stone is a joyful experience, which will enrich life and that God never calls
us in vain we can overcome all obstacles to discipleship. Belief is knowing he always has a purpose and
accepting this concept this is essentially what it means to be a Christian.
In 1st peter 2:9-10 we are told we are God's own people
called to proclaim the mightily acts of him who called you out of the darkness into
his marvelous light. . . Once you had not received mercy but now you have received
mercy. Now it is our time to share
that mercy with the rest of the world.
That can only be accomplished if we all Every man and Woman practice discipleship
through Witness, Patience, Faith, and service to those we know and those we
have yet to meet. Let the Mill stone and
the Mill be a metaphor for your life in discipleship. Be filled with noise and activity in the name
of Jesus Christ, the Keystone of our house built of living stone, as you
complete your work. Is God calling you
today . . . . if so say "It is I Lord, I will come if you call."
Amen
Presented by Mark R. Day 6-22-14 at Heritage United Methodist Church, Lynchburg, VA.
