This Sunday at McCarthy, we are going to be focusing on what it means to be a servant. During our morning services we will be ordaining Ben Creedy as a Deacon, and I’m going to be looking at the life of Moses and how God prepared him to be a servant used by Him. As I’ve been thinking about this weekend, I’ve been reminded of what a privilege it is to serve–to serve the Lord, serve those in His church, to serve my family. However, I’ve also been reminded about the call we have to serve those who are, as Jesus put it, the “least of these.” So often, those on the fringes of society, the fringes of our routine, even the fringes of our church, get forgotten and neglected. I came across a post from Art Rogers at his blog 12 Witnesses that really convicted me. What he says really cuts to the heart of serving those who really are in need.
Among the established church, the true outcast is neither the Sanctified Saint, complete with “Testamints” breath freshener and “Bible Bar” candy bar made from the foods defined as acceptible in Leviticus, nor is it the truly separated sinner, whose lifestyle is so vastly different that the average Christian has almost nothing in common with them.
You might make the argument that the latter example has been outcast or even that the former example SHOULD be…
But the real outcast is the one who is emotionally needy. The slightly annoying. The one who is always right, in their own opinion.
These are the folks who get ignored and pushed to the side and sighed at and… well… tolerated.
Not much worse that someone can say about you than that they tolerate you.
What we really like is the on fire servant who is ready to go, just say when… or even the completely lost soul who can be a project. At least they have a reason to not be on fire.
The real outcast is the one we simply tolerate.
This Sunday, we’re going to be focusing on what the death and resurrection of Jesus really means to people who find themselves broken, hurting, alone, and seeking. The Risen Son of God, Jesus, loves nothing more than pick up the broken pieces of our lives and transform us into something beautiful. At the heart of the Easter message is that Christ has overcome sin and death–not in some general, theological sense–but He has overcome sin and death in my life, in your life. When we receive the Risen Christ through faith and repentance, He removes the shackles of sin, the stain of sin, and the power of sin in our lives. One of my favorite passages in Ephesians reminds us of that freedom:
