Imageo Dei

Text: Matthew 10:40-42

Focus: Imageo Dei

Function: The Ability to see Jesus in someone else.

Form: Story Telling

Intro:

Imageo Dei. The Image of Christ. We can see the image of Christ Jesus in every person we meet and it transforms ours and their lives together.

I remember the incredible joy it was for me when, after my period of rebellion from God and I rejoined the Church. I felt accepted. I felt forgiven. I felt included. I knew that I belonged somewhere.

Perhaps the greatest miracle at that time was the quick and ready forgiveness given to me by my Dad and my Mom. My daddy was a pastor and was always incredibly in love with Jesus. And it seemed that I went out of my way to offend his Christian value system.

But just like the father of the wayward some in the Bible, dad was quick to rejoice in the way that Jesus had forgiven me. Other Christians were not so quick, but that is what the whole story about the prodigal son is all about.

I began attending a church that did something awesome for me. They provided Kathy and I with a mentor couple. This couple spent a lot of time with us preparing us for ministry. About one year into our attendance of that Church, the church sent us out on mission with the couple that mentored us.

We literally sold our homes, packed our stuff into a U-haul van and moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey. We moved there with the first year of the first Casino that started to run its business.

It was anything but a safe place. I worked a job and on several occasions, found myself doing construction work inside the homes of mob bosses. It was not unusual to be driving down the main street, Atlantic Avenue for you Monopoly players, and see police cars and crime scene tape and a body covered with a sheet, sometimes at 9:00 on a Sunday morning.

We went into a playground in a ghetto on Sunday afternoons, Randy with his guitar and me with my tambourine. We started singing praises to the Lord and then prayed for and served whoever came.

It was shocking to see the little children running around a playground, barefoot with callouses so thick on their feet that the hundreds of shards of broken glass didn't cut them.

I remember the first Sunday we were there. This heavyset woman, in her 50's came slowly ambling across the playground to us to see what the commotion was. She asked us to pray for her because she was crippled.

We prayed that God would heal her.

The next Sunday, as we began playing and singing, a crowd came very quickly.

The woman came walking like normal with no cane, or slow pace.

We asked why people were all of a sudden so interested and they all told us of Mary. She had been lame her entire life, and on Monday past, she walked normally. They asked her how and she said: “Two men from God were in the park yesterday, they prayed for me and now I walk! They said they would be back next Sunday.”

Let me tell you, we were as shocked as they were!

Mary had a son who had been struck by a car when he was a toddler. He had a steel plate in his head and slightly diminished mental capacity. He was an unruly sort of boy. He would ride his bike through our meetings without regard for the people trying to listen. Some would say he was a brat.

Mikie ran his household. Apparently the family had received some sort of settlement for the accident that injured him, but they could only spend the money on the boy. I don't know how these things work. But everyone kind of played up to this little boy. I would have thought that the settlement could have bought their way out of the ghetto, but maybe they stayed because it was all that they knew.

I worked in the neighborhood and it was not unusual for me to see this little boy drinking a giant soda from the local bodega at 9:00 in the morning. No wonder he was so hyper, he was full of sugar.

Mary called us one night in a panic: “They are going to take Mikie away from me, they say I am an unfit mother because he will not obey. Please come and pray for us.”

We drove up to that rundown row of townhouses where they lived and prayed for Mary and her son. When we finished praying her son asked us for a specific request as well. He said: “would you guys pray for me that I would do better in school? I get very poor grades....”

At about that time, I was thinking to myself that what the boy needed was a swift kick in the behind. I said to him: “Mikie, you need to stop, listen and pay attention to your teacher if you want to improve at school....” I was all ready for a long speech to both him and him mother about discipline.

But Mikie interrupted me with “I know, I know, but I am sure that Jesus can help me as well. Won't you pray for me?”

Now you get the dilemma that I was facing. 1). I didn't want the boy using God as an excuse for his unruly behavior. And 2). I was still living under the false notion that the bible says: “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”

You know that Ben Franklin coined that phrase in his farmer's almanac. The Farmer's Almanac was sometimes referred to as “the good book.” But it isn't in the bible. As a matter of fact, in my study of the bible, I think the opposite could be said: The lord Helps the helpless. He is close to the poor, the broken-down, those who have given up hope.

When people give up hope, they can easily fall into sin, or self-destructive lifestyles because they think that through that, at least feel something.

And we can easily step back and say, “why should I help you when you won't help yourself?”

I believe in some of the social dynamics about self-esteem, enabling people out of poverty, or not enabling people to stay stuck.

But here we were; confronted with an 8 year old boy. At the time, I had never studied any social theory, and whatever means of coping that this boy had, they were behaviors that he learned incorrectly. Remember, we were there to pray about his not being taken from the home.

So, we relented and instead of preaching at the boy and the mom about discipline, we consented to pray that Jesus would help him in any way He could.

You probably got this figured out. Yep. Another miracle happened. God was way ahead of us. Two days later the mother called us ecstatic with joy. Her son, who was legally blind, now all of a sudden had 20/20 vision!

Immediately his behavior changed and his school work improved. For one, he could see the blackboard, he could see the reactions of people's faces to his behavior.

When that boy said: “I know, I know I have to behave better, but I also believe Jesus can help me!” He was acting out of a faith that was greater than mine.

My mentor, Randy, and I, were just as amazed as everyone else! We both looked down at our hands and said to each other: “It must have been your faith in that prayer, because I am pretty sure it wasn't mine.”

It was Jesus.

As is everything in life, the time for that ministry came to an end. I had three years of practical hands on training and Kathy and I believed that it was now time for me to start a formal education in ministry. So, we packed our stuff and moved back to Fort Wayne to start at Bible College and then Seminary.

What a bittersweet time we had when we were leaving that place. Randy mentored me. He was my pastor. But I always knew that my ministry to him was just as important. My job, was faith. He would quickly grow discouraged and God used me, just like He used Barnabbas with Paul, as son of encouragement.

I remember that last service together. We sang two songs that still bring tears to my eyes when we sing them. They remind me of the particular joy and bond of love that we shared together as Christians in that tiny group of people working in that ghetto. Some lived there, and others traveled in. But we were bound by Christian love.

We stood in a circle and sang the chorus: Bind us Together, bind us together....

And then we sang another one. I love you with the Love of the Lord. The song has a line that says: “For I see in you, the glory of my King and I love with the love of the Lord.

Let me go back and re-read this scripture:

⁴⁰“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. ⁴¹Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; ⁴²and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

This passage of scripture is about the commissioning, the sending and the faithfulness of those who have trusted Christ.

But it is right here, in the welcoming, forgiving, believing in and encouraging of each other that this passage is fulfilled. In our welcome of each other and in our welcoming of strangers, we welcome the Lord.

Jesus is telling us that whatever we do for someone else, we are do it to the Lord.

I was asked to pray for our Kairos team on the first day of our last weekend right before we went into the prison. We stood outside that terrible fence with coils of lethally sharp razor wire in a circle and I prayed: “Lord, in a few minutes we will meet you inside that prison when we meet the prisoners. Help us to treat you with the same love you treat us.”

It changes everything for me when I sitting next to a man who has told me that he has committed murder on more than one occasion and instead of seeing a killer, a sociopath, I remind myself that I am seeing Jesus.

In this passage, when we give that cup of water, we are giving it to Jesus and we will have the same reward.

If you get only one thing from this message, get this: We will be effective witnesses for Christ if we remember to look for Jesus in every person we meet.

Say that with me: We will be effective witnesses for Christ if we remember to look for Jesus in every person we meet.

Little Mikie was not a brat. He was Jesus. And when Randy and I prayed for him without judgment, praying his request, his faith, God did much more than I could ever imagine.

(sing) For I see in you, the glory of my King, and I love you with the love of the Lord.

We have been talking about the beginning of the Church. We have been studying how God did incredible things at their beginning. We have been seeing how the Holy Spirit is at work in our midst.

So let me read the passage a second time from The Message:

Matthew 10:40-42

The Message (MSG)

^40-42"We are intimately linked in this harvest work. Anyone who accepts what you do, accepts me, the One who sent you. Anyone who accepts what I do accepts my Father, who sent me. Accepting a messenger of God is as good as being God's messenger. Accepting someone's help is as good as giving someone help. This is a large work I've called you into, but don't be overwhelmed by it. It's best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won't lose out on a thing."

The man who is paraphrasing this translation is trying to point out to us Christians the importance of getting started and doing the work.

Just start. Just let God's love for people flow from you into others. The success of that us up to God.

You cannot lose by giving.