Quick show of hands, how many of you are now or have ever been an
intern? What an eager and underpaid
congregation we have here. I once, many years ago, applied
for an internship with the Department of State.
I was rejected for this internship, but that rejection
LED many years later, 20 years later, to some of the content of
this sermon right now. So let me tell you a story.
So I'm sitting in my dorm room in Rochester, NY and figuring
out what I'm going to do for the summer.
I come across this internship with State Department and it
just seems like the coolest thing in the world, right?
I have no idea what one would actually do in such an
internship or how I would get there or what it pays probably
for the better. And but I'm, I'm I'm full of
passion, right? I'm I'm passionate about our
Lord. I've been growing by leaps and
bounds my faith recently and I'm just I want to see the Kingdom
of God come through everything in my life and I'm just super
fascinated by politics model UN nerd, all that stuff.
So start filling out the application name, college major,
boom, here I come, Foggy Bottom, right?
And then I get to the question that says, what are your goals
with this internship? What are you aiming for?
And I could sort of see at that moment 2 paths on the one side.
I know what they're asking for. Like, I'm naive, but I'm not
stupid. Like, I know what they want to
hear about democracy and human rights and American interests
abroad and all that stuff. And I'm like, you know what,
forget it. I'm just going to tell the
truth. I'm applying for this internship
with the Department of State so that I can see the Kingdom of
God come through US foreign policy and you know, send flush,
do something else this summer, whatever.
Couple months later, I get a call in my dorm room, my dorm
room phone and this woman says hi.
I'm so and so calling from the Department of State.
I was reading over your application.
I was interested and so I wrote down your info so I could take
it home and call you from my home phone, which intern
coordinators out there not supposed to do this kind of
thing, personal identifiable information, all that thing, she
said. I'm actually, I'm a believer
also. I've been pursuing my calling
here at the Department of State. And first of all, I just want to
encourage you in your own faith, your interest in politics, but I
also want to encourage you to think a little bit more deeply
about how your Christian calling and mission fits with your
career mission. And I thought, huh, actually,
I've never thought about that. I've just got all these kind of
passions and feelings drives, and they're all kind of the same
thing. And I don't know what they are.
Maybe you've thought deeply about those things you've
wrestled with, what your mission is in your life, how that fits
with the things that you're doing right now.
I'm sure some of you have wrestled with those questions as
you wrestle with them. I think one of the difficulties
is that the questions become more difficult as you get more
deeply into them. For example, some of us feel
like our mission is to materially make better the
social conditions around us in concrete ways to improve
fairness and justice and wealth so that these things become more
real around us. You know, like measurable
outcomes. That's the phrase, right?
Love that phrase. Measurable outcomes.
And some of us feel like our mission is to find the truth, to
know for certain that we are on the right side and we have the
truth. So I find the right church.
I find the right candidates, I find the right philosophy.
And once I've got those things, I know I've got it right.
Then I have a mission to tell other people and make sure that
they are on the right side of the truth.
And many of us feel this tension all the time because these two
groups of people both feel like they are on a powerful mission
and that the other people are probably never going to get it.
They're just never going to understand the mission.
We feel this in so many ways. Those groups of people sometimes
then will join different book clubs, listen to different
podcasts and sources of news. Many times they'll attend
different churches. Never mind all of the political
stuff associated with that. There's this exterior mission,
this interior mission, and you got to choose one of them.
Which one is your mission? Well, I'm here as the preacher
today to tell you that the biblical teaching is not so.
Not only is there no division between these two things, but
that it is destructive to act in such a way.
It divides us, It pulls us apart in some unnecessary ways.
So what is that mission? There is a mission that the Lord
has for us that ties together the exterior and the interior of
our ourselves. And we can experience that
through the mission to enter into the presence of God here on
earth. One word for that mission is
worship, the mission of worship. And I mean that not just in the
particular sense of singing songs and going to worship
services, but in the broader sense to live your life in such
a way as to enter into the presence of God here on earth.
Let's tease that out for a few minutes.
In the Old Testament, one of the great stories of the Old
Testament is the Exodus, which is found in the book of Exodus.
And in this story, the people of Israel are in bondage.
They are in slavery in Egypt. And so Moses goes to Pharaoh,
and he says to Pharaoh, let my people go.
And Pharaoh says, go where? To do what?
And Moses says to worship. God has called us to hold a
sacred feast of worship, to meet with him in his presence here on
earth. That is Our Calling.
And the story continues. They pass through the Red Sea.
They're liberated from their bondage and they go to this
mountain, this meeting place of God with humans called Mount
Sinai. And the whole rest of the Old
Testament sort of looks back on this moment of like, this is
what we should be doing if we really were who we're supposed
to be. This is what it would be like in
this moment right here. And they feel that way because
that's exactly what God says to the people at that moment.
And Mount Sinai, he says, this is your mission right here.
Exodus 19/6. He says you will be to me a
Kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
It is your mission to enter into the presence of God here on
earth through earthly realities, just like this mountain right
here, and then to minister that presence to the families of the
earth. That is the mission that God has
for us. It's the same mission that Jesus
came to fulfill and instantiate and cast to the four corners of
the earth. Jesus mission.
As we we heard just a few moments ago, Jesus mission
started with his baptism. His ministry begins at that
point and you can tell what Jesus mission is based on what
that baptism is. What is baptism?
Baptism is a washing. That's a consecration to enter
into the presence of God in worship.
So in the story of the Israelites, they come out to
enter into the presence of God. They come out of Egypt, and what
do they do at the base of the mountain as they're preparing
themselves in Exodus 19, they wash themselves to consecrate
themselves, to enter into the presence of God.
The Old Testament pattern is for worshippers to wash themselves,
to consecrate themselves, to enter into the presence of God
here on earth. That washing is a great theme in
the Scriptures. There's a beautiful phrase in
Psalm 26 that talks about this. Psalm 26 says I wash my hands in
innocence and go around your altar.
You see the consecration, entering into God's presence and
worship, proclaiming Thanksgiving aloud and telling
all your wonder, wondrous deeds. You're both sides there, right?
Entering into the presence of God and then ministering that
presence to others. Oh Lord, I love the habitation
of your house and the place where your glory dwells.
The ministry of Jesus was consecrated through his baptism
to go into the world, to consecrate followers, to go into
the whole world so that they might walk into the presence of
God and be his priest and a holy nation.
One of the most beautiful ways of putting this is in a book
from the 1960s. It's called For the Life of the
World by Alexander Schmemann and the author.
He was giving a series of talks at a a student missions
conference. And so the question before then
was, what's what's the goal of mission?
Like? What are we trying to do in
mission? And so Schmemman says, well, the
goal is what Jesus said his goal is, which is the life of the
world to bring. It's for the life of the world.
So the question is, what is the life of the world?
So he says biblically, the life of the world is to use the
material creation, the material world around us to use it,
eating, working, procreation, raising children, all the good
things of this world to use those things and to offer them
back to God in worship so that those earthly realities might
become a communion with God. Here's how he puts up the
natural dependence of man upon the world was intended to be
transformed constantly into communion with God, in whom is
all life. Man was to be the priest of a
Eucharist, offering the world to God.
And in this offering he was to receive the gift of life.
Now, as I look out at you, I know that there are so many
missions in your lives, so many missions in individual lives
that I see right here. Some of you have a mission in
the State Department's working out justice or fairness or
various foreign policy interests.
Some of you have a mission to provide for your families.
Some of you have a mission to be an integral part of the network
of relationships in your neighborhood.
All of these are small M missions that receive, that must
receive their character and their power and their direction
from a a big M mission. And the big M mission that
guides all of those things that informs them is to enter into
the presence of God here on earth to be a Kingdom of priests
and a holy nation. Now I know just as well as I
think most of you do, how easy it is for those small end
missions to completely overwhelm our lives.
They take all of our time and our attention and our problem
solve, problem solving abilities, our intellect.
They certainly take all of our patience, and there are so many
good things to be done through those things, informed hopefully
by God's mission. But that is the problem, isn't
it? It's so easy for those things to
become detached from the big M mission of our lives to uncover
God's presence and His glory through this world.
If that's you today and you're feeling some of that, that, that
that pull away in the small M missions of your life, today is
the day to reconsecrate yourself to the big M mission of God.
Today is the day for that because God has put you here in
Washington, DC, in this place in the world, so that this place
might be for you a Mount Sinai, a meeting place of God with
humans to enter into His presence through your job and
your relationships and your neighborhood and all of the
missions in your life. That in all of these things you
might uncover His glory. You might uncover it corporately
through living out your life in this congregation as a family of
God. That you might uncover His glory
intellectually by digesting the deep truths of the Bible for
your particular situation and your calling.
That you might uncover the glory of God spiritually as you
develop an active and vibrant prayer life to sustain the
missions that God has put you on.
That you might uncover the glory of God practically by serving
those around you, those in need, mentally and physically and
monetarily in your life. All some of those things seem
more religious than others, but all of them are various parts of
the Big M mission of God, which God has called us on.
It informs all of these other things in our lives.
How do we consecrate ourselves for that?
We need to do that at discrete moments in our life, but we also
need to do that every day. Here's a prayer to pray in the
morning. Before you've looked at your
phone, before you've looked at the news, certainly before
you've checked your work e-mail. You pray a prayer that says,
Lord, this day is a day from you that ioffer back to you in
worship. And then you walk through the
various things of your day. 9 AMI have a meeting with this
person. 11:00 Staff meeting. 12:00 Lunch with so and so,
dinner with my family, call with my father at 8:00 in the
evening. And you walk through these
things and you consecrate each one to the Lord.
Lord, how can I uncover and know your presence through these
earthly realities and be a priest for you in these
situations? Well, if you will pray that
prayer, then what you're doing is consecrating your life to be
a temple of the Lord, which is amazing.
It's incredible. It's a beautiful vision.
And you will also though, be consecrating your life to be a
zone of active conflict. The patterns of Jesus life and
ministry and the patterns of the ancient Israelites show us that
those who would consecrate themselves for God's purposes to
uncover his glory on the earth will face spiritual opposition.
And those spiritual forces will be opposed to you, and you will
be opposed to them. And their opposition to you is
called temptation, and your opposition to them is called
exorcism or casting out. We see this in the ministry of
Jesus, and this also is a part of our mission.
Jesus consecrates himself and his baptism for this ministry of
consecration, and then he goes out and immediately the first
thing that happens is that he is attacked by the devil in
temptation and he goes out and he attacks the strongholds of
the devil in a ministry of exorcism and casting out and
releasing people from spiritual bondage.
Now this can look many different ways.
Actually, sometimes we think of the like placing your hand on a
forehead and casting out a demon.
And that happens in the Scriptures, and it happens today
also. For example, in the Gospel of
John, that kind of confrontation looks more like a confrontation
between the truth and lies. Or in some other parts of the
New Testament, in the letters of Paul, the spiritual forces of
evil are part of a confrontation that's like behind all of our
moral life as we live that out in the world many different ways
in which there are spiritual forces of evil arraigned against
us internally in temptation and externally in casting out.
I point this out because it's easy for us to see these
discreet Bible stories as different things.
We get to 1 here and one there when in fact they are connected.
There is a pattern there. The story of Jesus baptism and
temptation and the casting out are one story.
The same thing. The same pattern is in the
Israelites. They, they come out of Egypt,
they're released from bondage, they enter into the presence of
God. They have this great calling
upon their lives be a Kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
And immediately they encounter spiritual opposition in
temptation. This is in the book of Numbers
in the Bible. And they go out and take that
spiritual opposition in a, in a ministry of casting out.
And this is what the Israelites are doing in their mission in
the promised land, casting out spiritual forces of evil.
If you read closely through Numbers, Deuteronomy, and
Joshua, that's how things are pictured.
Now, as I talked about this, it's easy for us to picture
spiritual opposition as if it's like a football game where
you've got one side lined up here and the other side on the
other part of the line of scrimmage, and they're facing
each other. You've got a red team and a
white team. Boom, go.
Someone's going to score more points than the other one.
Someone's going to stop the other team from scoring.
This analogy has limited value. And the issue is that what we
learn from the consecration of Jesus is that spiritual conflict
is ultimately a conflict of consecration.
That which is submitted to the will of God is consecrated to
his purposes and uncovering his glory, and that which is not
submitted to the will of God is potentially arrayed against that
mission. Some people hear that and they
think, what does that mean? Does that mean people who don't
believe the same things as I were like opponents in the
spiritual conflict? Well, actually the apostle Paul
is clear about this. In Ephesians 6, he says that we
wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers
and the authorities and the powers of this present darkness.
And those spiritual powers do still make attack today through
temptation. Temptation and in the world
around us. And it is present all around us,
opposing the mission of consecration.
It's there in self righteousness, self
justification, schism. It's there in impatience with
the long purposes of God, with nonchalance toward what is holy
in all of these things. If those things are not
addressed and confronted and dealt with and exposed and
forsaken and prayed against, we will experience vanity and our
desire to commune with God through His creation or.
All of this that we're doing will end up becoming like some
kind of great big religious show instead of what it ought to be,
which is experiencing the power of God here on this earth.
How do we go about that mission? How is that a part of our
mission also in the day today, then?
Well, I think we can enter into it fairly simply.
Again, at the beginning of each day, here's a simple prayer that
you can pray. It goes like this.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Lord, lead me and those in my small group, those who I walk
out my faith with, and those in my church.
Lead us not into temptation. Lead us not beyond what we can
handle. Lord, steer it clear from us so
that we might not be distracted from the big M mission, the
purposes of God in our life, so the small M missions may not
pull us away in a million different directions and pull us
away from the presence of God. Just as you, O Lord, defeated
and triumphed over the forces of evil on the cross, in the same
way would you defeat and triumph over these same forces here in
the world today. My friends, for all of you, all
of you have so many different missions in your life, so many
important things to enter into, so many things to which you feel
called. Some of them you really feel
certain you're on the right side of history.
Some of them you're not sure at all.
The important thing is for all of us to root those missions in
the big M mission and purpose of God, which is to be a Kingdom of
priests and a holy nation. To consecrate all of these
things to the Lord so that we might uncover his glory through
this earth, through our jobs and our families and our
neighborhoods, through our rejections from internships or
jobs or relationships. And offer these things back to
the Lord in the beauty of worship so that they might be a
kind of communion with God. I'm going to ask the parents
right now. You may go to get your children
while I say a prayer here as we ask for the Lord's presence in
this baptism. Lord Jesus, we pray right now
for all of all of us here, for all of my brothers and sisters
in this place. I pray, Lord, that you will
teach us the ways of mission, teach us to follow after Jesus,
to enter into the presence of God here on this earth, who pray
that this baptism right now might be the beginning of a new
ministry for the one who is baptized and for all of us as we
reconsecrate ourselves for the purposes of God, the name of the
Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen.