Serving God by Serving the World's 'Nobodies'

[This message has been shared with the people of Friendship Church this weekend.]

Acts 9:36-43

This past week, in an email sent by evangelist Wesley Paul, I read the true story of a man named Ponali John, a simple tailor in India. Paul describes him as "a tailor by trade and a disciple of Jesus by profession." One Sunday in worship, Ponali John's pastor challenged the congregation to reach out to others, sharing the Good News that all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus live with God in their lives for all eternity.

"Ponali John wondered how he could take on such a great challenge," Wesley Paul wrote. It was then that he sensed God telling him: "Use what you have in your hands." The only thing that Ponali John had was a portable sewing machine, the use of which allowed him to scrape by in life. So, one day, he grabbed his machine and walked to a neighboring village. He took a spot in the marketplace and, as Wesley Paul puts it, "waited to see what God would do."

Soon, a man whose shirt was torn happened by. Ponali John called out to him. "Would you like for me to mend that tear?" he asked the man. "How much will it cost?" the man asked. "The service is free," the tailor replied. Then, as he fixed the tear in the man's shit, Ponali John explained why this service was free, that he was responding to the free gift of God's love in Christ by serving others without charging. Ponali John continued to do this day after day, whenever he had the chance. Once twenty or thirty people had come to faith in Christ in this way, he left those folks to the care of the pastor of a local church. Then, he moved onto the next village to start the whole process all over again.

Now, when I first came to our area and went door-to-door to introduce people to our congregation, I carried brochures to leave with folks. I thought it would be good to have a memorable motto on them. So, I stole one from Willow Creek Community Church, a church in the Chicago suburbs. It’s a simple one: You matter to God.

When you think about it, those four words sum up the message that we in the Church carry into the Monday through Saturday world we inhabit. They also well summarize the message that Ponali John takes to villages in India, with his sewing machine and his words about Jesus Christ.

People ask me how do we go about sharing Christ with others? Very simply, we, the Church, what the Bible calls “the Body of Christ” are the ones called to let others know that they matter to God.

And we authenticate the good news that all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus will live with God forever by our dedication to a life of service in Jesus’ Name.

We do this most of all by showing life’s often-forgotten people that they too, matter to God.

In Biblical times, widows were forgotten people, nobodies. They had no rights, except to whatever provision their fathers or eldest sons might make for them. They almost never inherited anything from their deceased husbands. Many were so impoverished that they became prostitutes or beggars. Yet, within the life of the first-century Church, provision was made for widows. All participants in the Church pooled their money, using only what they needed, and then allowed widows and others in need to live off of the collected resources.

Our Bible lesson for today revolves around a woman, a believer in Jesus, who died. Her name in one language was Dorcas, in another Tabitha, and her death might have been ignored, in just the way we ignore most deaths today. We take note when celebrities like Kirby Puckett or Dana Reeve die early, tragic deaths. But we rarely know the names of the hundreds whose lives are ended by car bombs in Baghdad or Kabul; or of the thousands of African children whose lives have been snuffed out by the AIDS epidemic they inherited in their mother’s wombs; or of the more than 200,000 people who have been massacred by the marauding Janjaweed terrorists in the Darfur region of Sudan. Nor do we often taken even enough note of the hundreds of children right here in our own communities whose lives are wracked by poverty or parental indifference or both to even utter an occasional prayer on their behalf. I know this is true because I’m as guilty of ignoring the many deaths--physical, emotional, spiritual--that are happening around me every day as any other person.

Dorcas was a woman grateful for the grace of God, given through the resurrected Jesus Christ. A man I once knew, a widower, told me that every night he fell on his knees to thank God for His goodness. I also knew that every day, he looked for ways to express that thankfulness practically through acts of love and service to others. He did it through everyday kindness and cheerfulness and courtesy. He also did it by volunteering at a local nursing home.

Dorcas was like that man. Her way of thanking God was to sew inner tunics and outer garments for others in her community, especially the widows. Her designer clothes would never be seen on red carpets outside the Oscars or Grammys. But every garment she made and the love that went with them, was appreciated. When this woman died, the people of her congregation and community in Joppa wept openly.

But they didn’t stop at weeping. The folks in that church had heard reports that the apostle Peter was in the nearby town of Lydda. They’d also heard that while there, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, had told a paralyzed man, “Jesus Christ heals you” and the man was healed. The church in Joppa decided to send two men to Peter with an urgent message: “Please come to us without delay.”

When Peter arrived at the bedside of Dorcas’ body, he shooed all the mourners away and prayed that God would make a miracle. It happened, we’re told, when Dorcas came back to life.

Now, far more interesting to me than the question of how Peter performed this miracle through Jesus, is the level of faith and the quality of Christian servanthood this entire incident displays:

Grateful to Christ, Dorcas was a servant of God.

Touched by Dorcas’ practical expression of the love of Christ, a church community mourned and sent two representatives to Peter to see what could be done.

And Peter, who could have ignored the death of just another person who, after all, hadn’t been a contestant on Project Runway, went to Joppa when Dorcas died.

In the topsy turvy Kingdom of God, even people who the world sees as nobodies are given royal treatment!

In the weeks that the Forty Days to Servanthood team has been praying and preparing for this Lenten Season, one of our members has considered all the painful and poverty-stricken lives that go on right at our doorsteps each day and said: “I live in a bubble.”

I do too, much of the time. I insulate myself from the rest of the world, spending my days in a self-contained cocoon, treating the people in the hurting world around me like nobodies whose lives or deaths are inconsequential to me.

But as followers of Jesus Christ, you and I are called to live differently! We’re to be servants like Dorcas who used needle and thread to show others that Christ died and rose for them, or like the Church in Joppa that decided to try for a miracle, or like Peter who walked seven miles to a town where a bunch of people he didn’t know wanted his help for a dead woman he’d never met.

Christian servanthood, as I mentioned in one of the readings this past week, is God’s love with its work clothes on!

And, like all the people in our lesson today, Christian servants are prepared to go to work sharing Christ’s love even when it’s inconvenient.

True story: A man’s wife had just left him. It had been years since he’d darkened the door of a church. But as he considered who of his friends and acquaintances to call for advice, the answers became obvious. He would call his Christian friends, who had always shown him such compassion and had always demonstrated good-natured patience when he’d made fun of their churchgoing. It was one-o’clock in the morning when he got in touch with his friend, Bob. “Come on over,” Bob told him, “I’ll fix a pot of coffee.”

We can sing our hymns, make our offerings, and recite our creeds. But if we don’t take the time to serve the nobodies and the hurting people of the world, the people everybody else ignores or overlooks, how real is our faith in Jesus Christ?

And before you deal with that question, answer this one: If we’re really grateful for the new life that Jesus has given to us as a free gift, won’t we be willing to go to any lengths to express our gratitude to Him by loving all the nobodies He loves? Some day, I hope that I will have matured enough in my faith to be able to give an unequivocal answer of “Yes!” to that question.

In the kingdom of God, nobody is a nobody!

In Christ, you and I know how much we matter to the God Who died and rose for us. When we serve, we let others know that they matter to God, too.