I need to tell you about someone that was the, the, the great
hope of my hometown growing up a lot on Bidwell, Rodney Road or
Rodney, Bidwell Rd. depending on whether you were starting in
Rodney or Bidwell and, and, and, and it was Norma.
Her name was Norma, still is Norma.
And Norma was brilliant in school.
She got straight as everything, kindergarten through 12th grade.
She was a tremendous athlete, gifted athlete.
She lettered in four sports even though we only had two girls
sports. It was just incredible.
She went from high school. She had everyone had great
dreams and hopes and we thought, you know, no one's ever heard of
Bidwell Rodney Rd. before and most people don't know where
Bill Well or Rodney are. And Norma's going to put us on
the map. Norma's going to change the
world. Everyone will know how how
wonderful this part of the world is.
Because Norman and she, she started off great.
She went off to college, went to an Ivy League school.
She majored, majored in nuclear physics, pre Med literature and
international economics and got straight A's in all four.
Then went on to Graduate School and got got doctoral degrees in
all those areas. And we just knew.
We knew she was going to change the word.
She was either going to discover how cold fusion works or she was
going to find the cure for cancer.
She was going to figure out how to how to end poverty all around
the world. Or she was going to, you know,
write the greatest novel ever written that would change
people's lives forever. We knew it.
After she graduated, she was a
little tired. She said, before I really get
started and all of that, I'm going to take a gap year, travel
around the world. We said, we understand, Norma,
you've been working hard, take a break.
We know great things are coming from you.
And so she started traveling around the world.
She happened to go through Luxembourg, where she happened
to meet the king of Luxembourg. And they were having brats
together. They were enjoying some
conversation. He said, Norma, you got to come
see my aquarium. It's amazing.
Now for me, an aquarium's a glass tank, you know, like this,
with a few fish in it. For the king of Luxembourg, it
was like a whole water park kind of thing.
And his prize possession and his aquarium was his dolphin, whom
he had named Queenie. And when Norma saw Queenie, she
just fell in love. It's the most wonderful thing in
the world to her, absolutely love Queenie.
It's time for her to move on, to continue her trip.
And she did. But even as she traveled the
rest of the way around the world, her heart kept going back
to Queenie. And when she finished her gap
year, she didn't go on to cure cancer or to figure out cold
fusion or to end poverty or even to write a novel.
She went to Luxembourg and said, hey, I'd like a job taking care
of Queenie. And the king was like, well, I'm
not sure you really qualified for that.
She said, I'm a quick learner. She figured it out.
And she devoted herself. She she fed Queenie every day.
When Queenie was sick, she gave her medicine and took care of
her when she cleaned out her pools.
So her water was always fresh and clean.
And she was a friend and, and companion to Queenie.
It was, it was just wonderful. But the folks in my town were
really disappointed and we were feeling like Norma was letting
us down, 'cause no one's going to know about someone who's
doing that. We need someone to do something
important. And that someone was Norma.
So we nominated a representative, thank goodness
it wasn't me, to go speak to Norma and share our collective
disappointment with her. And they went over to meet with
Norma and they said, Norma, you know, we all had such high hopes
and such grand dreams for you. You were going to do all of
these wonderful things and change the world, but, but what
are you doing here? And Norma thought for a minute.
She said. Well, I do believe I'm serving a
noble porpoise. That's a long, long way to go
for not a lot of pay off. But here's the thing, we all
have a noble porpoise. All of us.
We are all children of the King, followers of Jesus Christ, the
King of the universe, which means we all have a noble
porpoise. We do the Easter life.
Easter life is not only a life in a world turned upside down.
It's not only a life of faith and a life of surface.
It is a life of purpose. We have purpose because of
Easter. And it is really, really
important that we are clear about that with ourselves and
with other people because there is so much noise in the world
that suggests that that there is no real purpose, that life is
meaningless. But Easter life is a life of
purpose. Life is not directionless, life
is not meaningless, Knife is not pointless and life is not
futile. Now, these kind of voices, they
wax and wane over the years. They get louder, they get
quieter, they're more popular and they're less popular.
But right now in the Western world, in the US and and Europe,
these voices that say life is meaningless, that there is no
purpose, it's all pointless, it's all futile.
These voices are very loud, you know, Wow, we're only here by
accident. And one of these days it's all,
you know, all collapse back into another singularity, a black
hole. It'll all blow up again.
Everyone that has ever lived, everything that's ever been
built, everything that's ever been done, everything that's
ever been said, every song ever written will come to absolutely
nothing, will be totally, completely obliterated and
forgotten. There's no point.
It's pointless. It's futile.
No matter what we do, what you do, it will come ultimately to
nothing. Life has no meaning.
That's one way to get off the rails.
The other way to get off the rails is, well, we'll grant you
that life can have meaning, but we have to make that meaning up
ourselves. We have to manufacture our own
meaning. Meaning and purpose are social
constructs. They are not given realities and
and we just have to invent them ourselves.
But when you scratch that, you know, below the surface on that
way of thinking, you just get back to the fact that life has
no meaning and life has no purpose.
Now, the fact is, life does have purpose.
That purpose is not yours and ours.
We are not creating our own meaning and our own purpose in
the world. It's not up to us to do that.
In fact, it's not even within our capacity and our power to do
that. We're going to talk about that a
little bit more later, but right now I'm going to say the purpose
is not yours. Your purpose is.
Our purpose is not ours to define and to describe.
The Easter life is a life filled and directed by God's purpose.
God has a purpose for us, and that purpose does not change
whether we agree with it, whether we buy into it.
God has a purpose for us, whether we accept it, whether we
reject it, whether we think life is futile.
In meaning. It's not.
God has a purpose. Every single human being that
has ever been conceived, that has ever drawn breath has done
so on purpose with God's purpose in their lives, whether we
recognize it or not. Jesus said when we talk about
purpose. But you will receive power when
the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses.
This is what Jesus this is Luke writing.
We have 4 evangelists that that take different slants, different
formulate and phrase and and proclaim God's purpose for us in
different ways. Last week we looked at John and
and and his formulation of God's purpose for us is a life of
service. Feed my sheep, tend my lambs,
take care of my sheep. This is our purpose.
Luke phrases it and proclaims it a little bit differently.
And just before Jesus ascends into the heavens, he says to his
followers, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes
on you, and you will be my witnesses.
That word power in the Greek is a little different than an
English and English power doesn't have to have any kind of
direction. Power can can have a purpose and
have a direction like the power generated over at Gavin or Tiger
Creek. That has purpose.
It has direction. It travels out from there and it
goes out to accomplish things in the world.
But, you know, there's also the kind of power that's like a
stick of dynamite or a great big old bomb that just just explodes
and destroys in Greek. The word power there carries
with it a sense of direction, a sense of purpose, and, and Jesus
is not just giving us the Holy Spirit so we can do whatever so
that we're walking around with some sticks of dynamite and we
can blow up. What we can do this, we can do
that. Just we've got power to use for
whatever purpose we wish. Jesus gives us power for his
purpose and that purpose is to be his witnesses.
What do witnesses do? Witnesses report on what they
have seen, heard, and experienced.
And we are to be Jesus's witnesses.
Our purpose is to share and proclaim what we have seen,
heard and experienced Jesus doing.
What we see and hear and experience Jesus doing.
Now to share that with others so they can better hear, see and
experience what Jesus is doing too.
It's a legal term. And, and by saying you will be
my witnesses, Jesus is excluding some things.
Jesus did not say the Holy Spirit will come on you with
power and you will be my investigators going out to
figure out what's wrong with other people.
He did not say that. He said you will be my
witnesses. He did not say the Holy Spirit
will come upon you with power and you will be my prosecuting
attorneys going out and trying to punish people for the things
they're doing wrong. He did not say that.
He said you will be my witnesses.
He did not say the Holy Spirit will come on you with power and
you will be my judges in this world deciding who's good, who's
bad, who's going to heaven, who's going to hell.
He did not say that we receive his Holy Spirit.
We receive this power for the purpose of being Jesus's
witnesses, seeing what Jesus, we need the Holy Spirit to
recognize the Holy Spirit in the world around us so that we can
follow the Holy Spirit and tell others about the Holy Spirit.
Matthew phrases it a little bit differently.
He emphasizes a little bit differently.
Here Jesus is gathering with his disciples outside Jerusalem and
Matthew, they're gathering in Galilee.
And this is this is part of what he says in Matthew.
John read the rest of it this morning already.
Jesus said all authority in heaven on earth.
That authority, power, it's been given to me and I'm giving it to
you. So go and make disciples of all
nations. This is a little bit different
nuance, a little bit different inferences.
Now that go and make disciples, there are no word for word
translations of the Bible or any complex writing from one
language to another, because different languages do things
differently. Greek does amazing things with
participles and verb tenses that are very difficult to do and to
sound reasonable in English. And and it that this make
disciples is one of those spots where it's tough to really
completely captured in the English.
The most literal way to translate it might be to say go
and disciple all nations, but that doesn't quite capture the
full nuance either because because how do you disciple a
whole nation? Making disciples makes it feels
like you're you're manufacturing something.
I'm going to make you into the disciple.
Even if you don't want to be a disciple, this is something I am
going to make, doesn't it Sort of gets there, but not quite.
Another way to phrase it would be to say, therefore go and
bring disciples of me out of all nations.
Bring disciples. But whether you think of it as
discipling nations, making disciples of the nations, or
bringing disciples from the nations, it's all active.
It is doing something. We have a purpose to go out and
bring people into discipleship, to enable people, help people,
facilitate people to become followers of Jesus.
A disciple is a learner, but it's more than just head
learning. It's more than just academic
book work where you need to learn information so you can
write it down and communicate it on test.
It's it's more like an apprenticeship learning how to
live like Jesus lived. And we get we get kind of a 2
step process in that from Jesus here.
And it's been its most distilled, simplest form.
Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit bring them into the family, initiate them into the
community and, and that initiation, the sign of that
initiation that welcome that reception.
It's different from the old covenant with Abraham where the
sign was circumcision. That sign only half the people
could ever participate in that sign and that was the men.
Everyone can be baptized. Plus, circumcision is a
physical, physical change, a physical sign that represents
the covenant. If want to be too graphic.
But if someone says, hey, can you prove you're circumcised?
Yeah, people can prove whether they're circumcised or not.
You can do that. Someone says prove to me you're
baptized. It's different.
That sign is not a physical alteration.
It's an internal transformation. You can get dunked or sprinkled
or poured or whatever, but if the love of Jesus Christ is not
flowing out of our hearts and our minds into the lives of
others, serving and caring and nurturing them, how can anyone
know We've actually been baptized, been made part of the
family of God? So that's part of it.
The other part of it then is teaching them to obey everything
I have commanded you faithfulness.
That's right back to that life of faith, obediently hearing the
word of God doing that, recognizing what God is doing,
what God is saying, where God is going now and obediently
following that in our context, in our situation.
And that's our purpose. That's our purpose to bring
disciples out of all nations to bear witness to Jesus Christ
throughout the whole world. Now I've been preaching this
long enough that I, I, I have done it poorly.
I, I, I think that's not I, I, I have, I've preached this poorly
in the past. I'm OK with that.
I didn't used to be OK with doing stuff poorly, but then
someone said, you know, everything worth doing is worth
doing poorly at first. And, and you have to learn, you
have to grow. It takes time.
I'm older now. I hope I'm doing things better
than I was when I was in my 20s. When I used to teach this, I
didn't make any distinction between sensing God's purpose
and acknowledging God's purpose. And one of the things I've
learned is there are some folks in every church that have a
really strong sense of God's purpose in their life.
They can feel it, they recognize it.
It's just part of the air they breathe.
It's part of the background music that's in their head all
the time, part of the the, the canvas that's in front of their
eyes, that sense and feel of the reality of God's purpose in
their lives. There are some people that don't
have that at all. They have no sense of God's
purpose. And what I learned as I was
preaching it that way is that some people would hear me
preaching and teaching about this and they'd say, you know, I
don't have any sense of God's purpose in my life.
Maybe I don't have God's purpose in my life.
Maybe I'm not part of the Kingdom of God.
Maybe I'm not really saved. Maybe I'm not really being
faithful if I'm not sensing it. But there is a world of
difference between sensing God's purpose and acknowledging God's
purpose. You can acknowledge God's
purpose to say God has a purpose for me, whether I can sense it
or not. And that's the key thing.
I now have the perfect illustration for this.
That perfect illustration is my dog Bruno.
I should have had a picture of Bruno for the slides, but I
don't. Bruno is a 70 LB knucklehead.
And, and, and I, we adopted Bruno.
I had he's, he's my dog. I adopted Bruno for a purpose.
I adopted Bruno to be my buddy, hang out with me, one of the low
energy dog that like to lie around.
Best thing Bruno can do for me is if I'm sitting on the couch
and can put his head on my lap and snore while I scratch him
behind the ears. I enjoy that he enjoys that.
He crawl up and sit on my 70 lbs, sit on my lap, rub his
belly. I can't see the TV because he's
right here scratching his belly and he loves it and it's good.
And that's Bruno's purpose. That's not what Bruno thinks his
purpose is. Bruno has a very strong sense of
his purpose and has not to do with being my buddy.
Bruno's sense of his purpose is that he is there to protect our
house and our family from the mortal threat of Shelly, our
mailman. We have a mail slot, so she has
to come up under our front porch every day.
And Bruno, wherever he is in the house, launches himself in the
direction of the front door, barking and growling like Satan
himself is attempting to break in the front door.
And, and, and Bruno's not. He's not real particular.
Anyone or anything that walks along the sidewalk in the front
of our house is a mortal threat. And Bruno is confident that his
purpose is to keep all mortal threats out of the house and he
will bark ferociously to do that.
He's very committed to this purpose.
He is a coward by the way. He's frightened of loud noises
and and as soon as you open the door, suddenly he's not so
ferocious. But we'll be in the backyard.
We got a long house, smallish backyard.
We'll be in the backyard. If Bruno is on the edge of the
backyard and he sees someone walking down the sidewalk,
particularly if they're walking a dog, he will run into the
house to the front door, it's a glass door, and bark at them
ferociously as they walk past the house.
He won't go outside because then he doesn't have a door between
him and he's a coward. But that's what he thinks his
purpose is, is to protect the family.
Bruno is not going to protect the family.
He tries. He really does try.
He's very afraid of loud noises and even some not so loud noise.
I have an electric. He's terrified of motorcycles.
Anywhere that he can hear a motorcycle, he'll run in the
house. But I have an electric
lawnmower, push mower and he's afraid of that.
That's too loud for him. He'll when I start mowing, he'll
run in the house. Except one day recently, I was
out mowing in the backyard and we got a fence in the backyard.
On the other side of that fence are neighbors that have a
mammoth big German Shepherd that, that again, I have no,
I've never met the German Shepherd on the other side of
the fence, just across the fence.
And but that when you get close to the fence of the German
shepherds back there, he barks like if that fence weren't
there, I would have a dog on my throat.
I mean, he he barks like he wants to kill me.
So I'm out mowing by the back fence and that dog is barking
and Poro Bruno comes running out of the back of the house to
protect me from the dog. He tries, he tries.
He doesn't run straight. He kind of zigzags 'cause he's
afraid of the lawn mower. But he had his tail between his
legs and his ears down and he was shivering a little bit.
But he got between me and that fence.
Bruno will never protect. It's just not in him.
But that's not why I got it. That his purpose is to be my
companion, my buddy, not my bodyguard.
This is the thing. Bruno will never understand his
real purpose. He will never sense what his
real purpose is. His sense is always going to be
I'm here to protect. It's the same for us.
Even if we can't sense what our purpose is, what God's purpose
is for us, that doesn't mean God doesn't have a purpose for us.
God has a purpose for us, whether we can sense it or not.
God's going to accomplish his purpose through us, whether we
understand that purpose or not. But if we acknowledge that
purpose, that opens up opportunities to act
intentionally. And here's the thing.
I mean, even if we don't even perceive it, Jesus, when he said
to his disciples, they're outside Jerusalem, the Holy
Spirit will come on you and you will be my witnesses throughout
the whole world. Not, not the Holy Spirit will
come on you. And if you do things the right
way, then you'll be my witnesses.
Not the Holy Spirit will come on you.
And if if you don't make any big mistakes, you'll be my
witnesses, or if you learn the right things, or if you go,
Jesus the Holy Spirit will come on you and you will be my
witnesses throughout the whole world.
Jesus wasn't giving them a command.
He was making a prophecy. He was prophesying what would
happen. They are going to fulfill
Jesus's mission for them, whether they can sense that
mission or not. And that was the promise.
And that's the promise Jesus makes for us, whether we sense
it or not. But if, even if we can't sense
it, even if we can't feel it, if we acknowledge it, it allows us
to act intentionally in ways that we might not otherwise act.
And I want to tell you a story now.
I love this story. I, I keep saying that like 3
weeks in a row here, but I love these current contemporary true
stories of people just doing God's stuff as part of their
regular lives. Tiffany Whittier and Michael
Kent. And I'm not going to, I'm not
going to give any introduction to their specific story.
I will tell you that if you've never been to the website
iamsecond.com, it's a great website.
It's a Christian website. And the idea is God is 1st and I
am 2nd. And it's lots of stories and
lots of personal testimonies, some from regular ordinary
folks, some from fairly reasonably famous folks about
how God has changed their lives. And the the videos are well
produced. Their stories are well told.
And it's there's some really, really beautiful things on
there. Their search feature on their
website is not the greatest. If you want to find Tiffany and
Michael's video from I Am second, it's easier to go to
YouTube and search Tiffany Whitaker, Michael Kent I am 2nd
and then you can find the video. I'm not playing their I am
second video. It's too long.
It's like 1213 minutes long. But once they did their I am
Second video, some mainstream news media, this case in
particular ABC News picked up the story and made it into a
national news story. And so I'm going to it's only a
3 minute segment. I'm going to show you that one.
Then we're going to talk about it.
But let's let's see and hear about Tiffany and Michael.
My name is Michael Kent. I'm over here at Fallen Heroes
to get a swastika covered up. I've never, never, never been in
a inside of a tattoo shop getting a professional tattoo.
It's a lot different than the prison style one.
It's not done with guitar strings.
It's painful to get it out. Yes, but it's going to be worth
it. Tell me your story.
Behind that shirt is a lot of ink.
I was a part of a Skinhead group, a very violent group.
My first tattoo, the racial tattoo was my white pride when I
got 2 swastikas, 1 on my chest. How long have you had that on
your chest? Over 20 years.
Talk about that transformation process.
This is kind of a good story, but odd story.
I got my caseload transferred to a black woman.
She just marched up to my house. If it wasn't for her, I probably
would have been deep back into it.
You feel like she became much more than a probation officer.
Yes, she's much more than that, so I would look at her as
family. I'm Tiffany Whittier.
I haven't seen him in over a year.
He doesn't know that I'm here. We're going to surprise him.
Say hello hi.
She gave me a chance and it opened my eyes.
You 2 are unlikely. Friends.
Yes, yes, I had a German war flag, she says.
You need to take that crap down and start putting up more
positive stuff. Put up smiley faces so when you
wake up you see positive instead of hate.
That's a big difference. Yeah, that's a big change.
When you wake up and you see a :), you're going to go to work
and you're going to smile. Before all this, I wouldn't work
for anybody or with anybody that wasn't white. 13 people that
work with me, I'm the only white person there.
We have company parties, or they have quinceaneras or barbecues
or birthday parties. I'm the only white guy there.
Last night we were with him and he got a tattoo taken up, he
said. Tiffany was one of the people
that helped me make this transition.
I'm not here to judge him. That's not my job to judge.
My job is to be that positive person in someone's life, try to
make a difference. I'm getting trucked up again.
If you got a strong support system and you have people that
believe in you in a positive way, you can change.
Oh wow, that's. Crazy thing.
Do it, Michael. You're touching before and after
now. Did you ever think they'd come
off and have you been a part of that?
Not in the million years I would have ever guessed.
That Michael. Changed his life for the better.
She gave me the strength and the courage to do what I'm doing and
changing my life because I know it, she can do it and she
believes in people, good in people.
I know I can't too. This side one of the the good
things about this clip is it was short enough to show the whole
thing here in this morning because it's ABC News and their
focus is just on information. They they cut out all of the
faith stuff from their story there.
I am second interview and and they've been on Kelly Clarkson
show an interview there and some other places as well.
There are several different interviews for them there where
they are very explicit about their faith in the role that God
played in this. But in particular on that I am
second interview Michael, which was I believe the first one they
did. Michael asked Tiffany.
He said, I've always wanted to know why you did this for me.
Why did you do this for me? Why did you do this for me?
And and her response, she seemed baffled by that.
And she just said quite sincerely, well, it's my it was
my job. And he's like, this wasn't your
job. And they're both right.
I, I, I, I, I know a few probation officers.
I guarantee you that there is nothing in Tiffany Whittier's
job description that says her job is to share the love and
hope in Jesus of Jesus Christ with people.
I, I guarantee you it's not even to love people is not part of
her job description. She's assigned.
And Michael was a bad dude by his own admission, he destroyed
the lives of many people. And, and here's this, this
woman, a, a black woman coming up and investing in him, sharing
the hope, sharing the love of God in a way that leads his life
to be changed. The way it began, which they,
they again, they, it's a short clip, but the way it began was
when she was assigned his caseload, he'd gotten out of
prison. She was assigned him as a
probationer. And, and she looked at his file.
She saw the tattoos, she knew his history, she knew what he
was about. She was going to make her
initial contact with him. And she said she had a gut
feeling to just go alone. And so she showed up at his
house by herself. She walked up.
She knocked on the door. He walked out.
And the first thing he said to her was, did you come alone?
She said her response was, yes, I'm alone, Is that going to be a
problem? And he said, no, it's not a
problem. He said, no one's ever had the
courage to come to my house alone before, said even the
white folks, when they come, bring back up with them.
But you had the courage to come alone.
That courage, that willingness to risk, that willingness to for
someone who would have been so easy to judge and condemn and
write off, but instead speak to with hope and grace and
compassion and love. Because she, and again in the
larger interviews, you hear it, she understands that God has a
purpose in her life. She has a job that she has to do
and she has a responsibility to do that job.
But God has a purpose in her life.
And that purpose is there whether she feels the purpose or
not, to share the hope, to share the compassion, to share the
love. And this is what she did.
And Michael's life was changed and in her life was changed as
well. I think it's interesting that
that when when the news reporter asked her did did you ever think
those tattoos would come off? Did you catch what?
Catch what she said? She said no.
Said never in a million years did I expect Michael would
change his life for the better. You know, talk to some.
Oh, I always knew they'd come. I always knew Jesus would get
off. All right.
She's like, I didn't. She was just doing what God had
called her to do. She was doing the work in front
of her. She was doing it in the name of
Jesus Christ. And God accomplished his purpose
through her. And, and I guarantee you that
Michael is the exception rather than the rule in terms of
dramatic transformation and her life.
But that doesn't change the miracle.
It doesn't change her purpose. Every single one of us has a
noble purpose. We all do.
Whether we can see it or not, whether we feel it or not.
God has purpose for all of us. God has purpose for New
Beginnings United Methodist Church in this community, in
this town. God has purpose for us, and God
will accomplish that purpose through US.
Let's acknowledge that purpose and pursue it together in Jesus
name. Amen.