Profess by Rev. Gabrielle Martone at Pearl River United Methodist Church on Sunday 23 February 2020
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Matthew 28:16-20 NRSV
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
I was asked a couple of months ago to teach one of the lay servant classes for our district. So for those of you who maybe are not super familiar with United Methodist lingo, we have lay servants who are people like you all who are not ordained, who have felt a call to serve the church in a particular way. So can I get all of our lay servants who are certified from this church to just stand up for me, please.
Okay, thank you guys. Sit down. These are the folks who have felt a special calling to do something. They don't always know what it is that they want to do but they want to do something. So sometimes they'll preach from the pulpit, sometimes they will be lay readers, sometimes they teach small groups and run community building activities but one of the processes that you have to go through as you're a certified candidate is you have to take classes and you have to take refresher classes.
It's every time you want to renew your license you have to take some more. So I got an email from the gentleman who runs our district lay leaders and he said, "Could you teach this class on evangelism?" And I said, "Sure." So yesterday was our very first class and we had 16 people gathered in one of our classrooms and we did the first of two classes on evangelism. Now one of the things we had to talk about... Now these are all very good church people. They serve on lots of committees. They go to church every Sunday. They've rotated through a multitude of leadership positions. These are the over achievers of your class. Right, lay servants? You are all over achievers. Thank you. Appreciate it.
As we are talking, all of a sudden, as I drop the word evangelism, the tension in the room escalates. You begin to notice this sheen on people's faces because now they're nervous that we're going to start talking about evangelism. Because for us, in our mainstream United Methodist land, evangelism can be very difficult for us. I won't make you raise your hand but when I say the word evangelism, how many of you get hairs on the back of your neck stand up a little bit? It's a little uncomfortable for some folks.
And I will confess that I grew up in the Methodist church. I am a cradle Methodist. I was baptized, ordained and raised in the United Methodist church and evangelism for 90% of my life scared me, deeply, because I didn't want to be like those people. You all know what I'm talking about. You all know that fear inside of you that bubbles up.
So when I went to seminary and I realized that part of the job of being in ministry that comes to us directly from the Matthew passage of the Great Commission is that I was supposed to talk to strangers and to other people about faith. And so I took the scariest class I have ever taken in my entire educational career and I have a minor in ancient Greek, on evangelism and it transformed my entire life because what Jesus talks about in this passage, about how all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me, now you must go out and in my name baptize and make disciples of the whole world.
It's a calling to be in relationship with people and to be able to talk the talk. Now you're all very good people. I know most of you and I think you are all incredible, wonderful, good people. I don't think any of you has murdered anybody and if you have, do not tell me about it because I like in my brain that you are all wonderful, nice, good people. Nobody has any bodies buried underneath their front porch. Yes, Pastor Gabrielle, that is true. Yes, thank you. And I'm sure you all live very good lives when I don't see you, but I wonder how many people in your life know that you are a Christian.
I wonder if people in your day to day life know that you take Jesus seriously and I know it's hard and I know it's awkward because you don't want to offend or be that image of that person. But if we're going to walk the walk you also have to talk the talk. So my question to this class of lay servants yesterday was, does Jesus matter to you? When you really think about it and you live your day to day life, does Jesus matter? Is Jesus important to you? Has your life been changed because of the fact that Jesus Christ is in your life?
So then I ask you all when something really good happens to you, like when your team wins, do you ever stop talking about it? Now, some of you may or may not know this but I am a huge University of Kentucky basketball fan. Huge. There is a flag in my house right now hanging up the University of Kentucky. Last year I was at Madison Square Garden when Kentucky played and I was one of those super fans who stood outside at the gate and waited for the college basketball team, because they're a college basketball team to go to their bus. And I stood and I watched as coach Calipari walked by and I was in such an utter shock I couldn't even take a picture with him. I love the University of Kentucky men's basketball team. They are my team. I have jerseys. I have t-shirts. I have all kinds of stuff that tells you that I am a huge fan and let me tell you something, I never stop talking about the University of Kentucky men's basketball team in my personal life ever.
They win, it's all over my Facebook page. They lose, I'm justifying reasons why they lost. It's March madness. I have my YouTube TV with the SEC network on a double screen so I can watch basketball and do work. I have a problem but I will tell you that every single person in my life knows I am a University of Kentucky basketball fan. There is not a question in their mind what team I am rooting for every year. When I make my brackets, I don't care how terrible the team is doing. I don't care where they are ranked. Kentucky always goes all the way and I will argue with anybody who puts anybody else as winning. Just saying, I have a problem. I know this. I acknowledge it. It's the first step of maybe moving forward. People know where I stand. It is so important to me that I make yearly pilgrimages when the University of Kentucky team plays in New York to be there. It is a priority in my life and everybody knows about it.
This year I didn't get to go see them play because it was a 9:00 game on a Tuesday night and there was no way I was going to be able to make that happen and I cried for three weeks. I have an issue again, but people know. I'm sure that there are other people in this room who have the same sort of unhealthy obsession with another team or another thing. You all know that my other obsession is Star Wars. You are all aware of that. I don't have to tell you that. I bring it into every conversation. My confirmands are learning about Star Wars. It's fine, but I wonder if you apply that same zeal and excitement to the way you talk about the church and Jesus Christ's impact on your life. Do people in your life know that you take Jesus seriously?
Over the last few weeks we've been talking about the things that make us Christians and church members and this in the last week is the hardest one for people to talk about. We don't want to offend people. We don't want to upset people. We don't want to make other people feel weird. We don't want to feel weird. We don't want to be uncomfortable or driven out of our comfort zones and yet this is the great commission that we have been given to go out to all the world and spread the good news, baptize, make disciples and transform the world. So how do we do that? How do we do that in a culture and a time and a place where it feels really uncomfortable? Because we want to respect everybody and we don't want to go out and walk up to people and be, "You. You need to know Jesus. Become a Christian right now."
I still distinctly remember being five or six years old at vacation Bible school. My mom was a teacher so she had her summers off and that meant she had my sister and I and she needed to get us out of the house because we were both very high energy children. So I was one of those kids who went to every vacation Bible school humanly possible over the summer. So I was that super annoying kid by August if I had done that program four times already. I knew every song, knew every dance move. I knew the answer to every question. And I distinctly remember sitting in a tent with my vacation Bible school leader who asked me if I was going to heaven and I loved Jesus. Loved Jesus. And I said, "Of course I am. I love Jesus and Jesus loves me."
And she looked at me and she said, "But have you ever prayed this prayer?" She handed me what we call the sinner's prayer. And I said, "No." I was five. And she said, "Well, if you don't pray this prayer you're going to go to hell." And I was so afraid that I was going to go to hell at five years old that I was, "I'll pray whatever you tell me to lady. Just give it to me. I love Jesus." We don't want to put ourselves in a position where we are traumatizing people who all of these 20 some odd years later, I still remember that distinctly, but it is about how we are in relationship with the people around us. Does the life that you lead say you are a Christian? Does the person that you are in the darkest parts of who you are continue to say to someone, Jesus matters to me.
When you are driving down the Parkway or on the turnpike and you get stuck in traffic, are you still a Christian? Do you still act like you are a Christian? I am very bad at that. I confess. Does it matter to you in your everyday life or does it only matter on Sunday mornings? Can you talk about how Jesus Christ has transformed you and changed you? It's not about can we stand on street corners and hand out booklets that say if you don't come to our particular church then you're going to spend your life in the bad place. But can we begin to be a people that when ordinary everyday people that we encounter can say that person loves Jesus and not in a pushy, I love Jesus and so you have to love Jesus too. Because I'm very involved in interfaith work. Very, very involved in interfaith work.
But do people know that you on your own personal convictions love Jesus or do people look at you and go, "That person goes to church? Really? Did you see what they were doing?" Now, I told my evangelism class yesterday that I don't often tell people I'm a pastor because people get weird. People get real weird. You say things like I'm a pastor and then people start apologizing for not going to church and you're, "I'm just trying to get my coffee. I don't care why you haven't been to church in 72 years. You're not one of my parishioners. It's really fine." So if people ask me in the real world what I do and I'm not ready to kind of broach that conversation, I will say I manage a nonprofit. I will say I do group therapy work. Sometimes I say I'm a religious scholar depending on where I am.
Because people get weird and they don't show the truest form of who they are. So the most entertaining thing was when we were doing the vendor fair this year and I'm running around before the vendor fair starts in my typical pastor Gabrielle fashion. You all just know that this is who I am. I'm a little bit crazy and I will move tables and I will do whatever people need me to do. And I'm in a sweatshirt and jeans and I'm not pastoral in any way. I'm not running around with my stole on and I'm joking with the vendors and then Helen asks me to pray and my cover is blown and all of a sudden while I was there on Saturday, one of the guys pulled me aside and said, "You're the pastor here? Really?" And I said, "Yeah." And he looked at me and he said, "You're unlike any pastor I've ever met before."
And I said, "That's true for a lot of reasons. A lot you have no idea, sir." That's the kind of people we want to be. Not that we're afraid to tell people that we're the pastor or that you're afraid to tell people that you are a Christian, but that your actions speak louder than the stigma and the assumptions that people put on Christians today. We all know they're racist, they're sexist. They hate the gays. They hate people. There are all kinds of things that the rest of the world puts on Christians about who we are and who we are not. So if we can figure out how to walk the walk and talk the talk in a way that says Jesus Christ changed my life. I am different because Jesus Christ matters in my life and I love you enemy or not because the two most important things in my life are to love God and to love my neighbor and I am unlike any Christian you've ever met before because I can live authentically who I am and still know that Jesus has made a difference here.
And maybe you're still searching to figure out what your narrative is, how Jesus has changed you, why you keep showing up on a Sunday morning because let me tell you, it's not because I'm funny. I promise you. I think I'm funny. Most of you just laugh because I laugh. I'm okay with that. If you've not yet figured out how Jesus has transformed you or why you keep coming here, keep praying on it. What's different in your life because Jesus is a part of it? One of the things that we talk about when we teach evangelism is part of it is knowing your own narrative and part of it is walking alongside of people, showing up where they are and not judging people.
Everybody else in the world is judging people all the time. What kind of car do you drive? Do you have children? Do not have children? Are you married? Are you not married? What do you do for a living? What does your house look like? What kind of clothes do you wear? What kind of shoes do you wear? Are you a University of Kentucky fan or are you a Louisville fan? We have all of these questions and these judgments and we cast things on people and we as Christians need to not do that. We need to be the people who look at others and say, "You are a beloved child of God."
As you begin to look at the world that way, as you begin to love your neighbor and your enemy as you love yourself, as you begin to wish the best for people, you'll begin to see that people begin to take your journey seriously and they'll ask you questions about why. Why do you go to church every Sunday? Why is that important to you? There's about 100,000 things you could be doing today. You could all be at brunch. Delicious brunch with lots of bacon. You could be with your kids. You could be sleeping. You could be doing 100,000 different things than sitting in this room right now. Why are you here? What is your story? How can you use what God has done in your life to change somebody else's? And I will remind you that it is not your job to check off a box. Making disciples of all nations and the great commission is not how many people did we win for Jesus today. It's about planting seeds and watering seeds that have already been there and watching the growth that God does.
It's about coming alongside of people and reminding them that they are not alone. They are deeply loved by the creator of the universe. It's about not hiding who you are, who God has brought you to be and sharing it in the way that you love God and love your neighbor so you too can evangelize. You too can make disciples of all nations. You too can tell the story of your why and your why may change somebody else's life.
Because there is somebody out there who's going through the same thing that you have been through that needs to hear your story. That needs to know that there is light in darkness. Who needs to know that there is more to this world than what they are currently experiencing. There's someone out there who needs to know that they're going to be okay. Church should be a support group. Do you know what's beautiful about support groups? Y'all share the same stuff. You all have walked or touched a moment of something in which you all share the same experience of something and you come together in a place where you can talk about it without being afraid of being condemned or harassed or hurt by other people. Because what you've experienced, because the person sitting next to you has been through the exact same thing, or at least something similar enough to be able to have held your pain.
That's what church should be. A place that says no matter where we come from or what we have done, we have all touched the light of Christ. We've all seen God transform darkness into light, hate into love, fear into hope and death into life. So no matter where you've been or what you have experienced, we hold on to this together and we face the world, not separate, but as one whole. And the more people that we invite into this support group, into this kingdom of knowing that it doesn't matter what you've done or where you have been or the darkness that you try and hide or the shame that you have held onto, you matter and you belong here. We will journey with you today and every day. Amen.
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