Serving a servant King

This past Sunday I was given the opportunity to give a sermon at Huntertown United Methodist Church.  We have been giving a series of sermons on The Kingdom of Heaven coming to our lives, families, church, community, and world.  I was assigned to speak about how to participate in the growth of the kingdom in our church. While researching the topic, I came across an old book I read in college.  The book is by Michael Yaconelli and is entitled, Messy Spirituality.  I definitely recommend it.  I had forgotten how good it was.  Here is a passage from the book that is really powerful.

“What landed Jesus on the cross was the preposterous idea that common, ordinary, broken, screwed-up people could be godly!  What drove Jesus’ enemies crazy were his criticisms of the perfect religious people and his acceptance of the imperfect nonreligious people.  The shocking implication of Jesus’ ministry is that anyone can be spiritual.”

“Scandalous? Maybe.”

“Maybe truth is scandalous.  Maybe scandal is that all of us are in some condition of not-togetherness, even those of us who are trying to be godly.  Maybe we’re all a mess, not only sinful messy but in consistent messy, up-and-down messy, in-and-out messy, now-I-believe-now-I-don’t messy, I-get-it-now-I-don’t-get-it messy, I-understand-uh-now-I-don’t-understand messy.”

The message of Christmas is that Jesus came into our messiness to plant the kingdom of God.  He was born in a stable, a very messy place, in order to show us he wasn’t too good to serve.  The King of the universe is willing to humble himself and be a part of our brokenness.  I want to serve a King like that.