Good morning, friends. This comes like a beat later than I expected. Good morning, friends. My name is Alex. I’m one of the pastors here. If you’re visiting, it’s just a pleasure to have you here today, praying for you as you figure out whether this is a community for you to be a part of. I’m noticing more of an obnoxious orange color in the building today.

So if you resisted the temptations of the big game and are here today thank you. It’s great to have you here. It is almost a year to the day from the day that we had a jet scream over the top of this building, and without thinking, from the depths of my heart, some ugly place within me, I said something like this.

Maybe it’s going to the Broncos game. Not a playoff game, obviously. And less than 50 percent of you wrote letters to the elder board asking for me to be instantly dismissed, so I’m still here. But look at you now. You’re there. Way to go, guys. I’m so proud of you. And if a Super Bowl should happen to be the Broncos versus my beloved Lions, and we were to rip your hearts out, I would be all for it.

But, would you stand with me for a moment as we read? If you’re someone that likes to follow along with the text, we’re reading from Matthew chapter 17, verse 1. This text is holy words. Just take a moment to prepare yourself. There’s a weight to this passage we’re about to read. Some of the other passages we’ll dot into around it seem lighter, but this one feels heavy.

After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before him Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus.

Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah. While he was speaking, a bright cloud came over them and a voice from the clouds said, this is my son whom I love with him. I am well pleased. Listen to him. When the disciples heard this, they fell down to the ground terrified, but Jesus came and touched them.

Get up, he said. Do not be afraid. When they looked up, they saw no one but Jesus. Jesus, to see you like this, we can only imagine. The beauty, the reverence, to experience you in that way. To be transformed because we see you transfigured.

Help us to see you today and to know that you see us with all of the burdens we carry all of the heartache, the trauma, perhaps the uncertainty about ourselves, the doubts about who we are. The doubts about what you feel about us. We’re coming in all sorts of different places. Some of us walked in leaping this morning.

Some of us walked in limping. And regardless, you see us and you care for us. You say of us, we are your beloved children. Thank you. Amen You may be seated We are in a series Called in the way of Jesus. It’s a series that really darts through Multiple what we might call spiritual disciplines spiritual practices but the goal in the end is that you might be able to articulate something of a rule of life I have a couple of books that maybe if you’re curious about rule of life There’s some books you might like to dot into.

This one is called God in my everything by Ken Shigematsu He’s a pastor up in Vancouver Just beautifully unpacks how God enters into every part of your life and maybe helps you Create some words around how your life might be shaped. This other one is one I’m reading at the moment practicing the way by John Mark Coma both books that just would maybe Unpack a few more of the words because there’s only so much time in the course of this series that we’ll devote to talking About rule of life because we have so much to talk about on any of the given weeks I do though want to talk about it a little more today Around this concept just this last Friday was what’s known as quitters day Out of all the people that, maybe some of you did it right, you entered in, you celebrated that holiday well.

It’s the day when people of all sorts, who undertook to take up a New Year’s resolution and got to the point where they said, this just isn’t working for my life. So they just cast it off to one side said I’m done with it. That’s what happens with a resolution. The moment it’s broken it’s broken.

It’s no good to you anymore. A rule of life is profoundly different to that, in that it’s the rule that bends. There’s times in my life that I’ve had a rule in place, and then there’s times later where my life no longer fits that rule. When I was following Jesus in my late teens. I would sit around in the day reading huge portions of scripture.

I don’t get as much opportunity to do that anymore. I would just take times just for solitary play. Again, finding time for that is a little harder now. My rule looks different. How my life is shaped look different. And if you’re on the fence with this language, rule of life the truth is, You have a rule.

You have one. The question is just more this. Is your rule intentional or is it accidental? Has your life just formed? Has it just grown up around you? Or is there something more that you’ve done to construct it in a way that will help you manage the life God has given you? And perhaps as we’ll see, just something else.

So as you wrestle with that, just notice that you can do. things you’ve put into place that may be accidental, maybe the invite here is to begin to do some of those things a little bit more intentionally to decide how God is asking you to shape your life. We’ve used this language over the last week of a trellis.

On one hand, life grows, as we’ll see, and the rule of life is simply something that supports the life that you have. If not, life tends. to look a bit more like this over here crushed by the weight of the life that has grown and able to grow any further simply because it has nowhere to go. It doesn’t have the strength to support itself.

If you’ve ever grown anything that wants to grow upwards what is that if there’s no support system It just literally sits on top of itself and the plant underneath begins to rot from down below It has no way to continue to sustain itself I would suggest this our need for a rule of life is twofold one One, to manage the life we have, and two, to create space for God.

And if you haven’t picked up on it yet and you would like one, I would recommend to you this outline that’s dotted around on the piece of paper that maybe you were given on the way in. If not, there’s some guys at the back that would love to hand it to you, and you get the joy of filling in some blanks.

A rule of life is a trellis on one hand that ensures your life can be lived. That as I already said, as life changes, you have a way of supporting it. A bunch of years ago, my wife moved over to England with just a couple of suitcases. She didn’t elope, that’s all the stuff that she had. She just had a couple of suitcases when she moved at 19 years old.

And then, she a few years later when we moved to the states, we came with a child for boxes that we shipped and then a couple of suitcases that we took along with us. We moved again two years later and that time we moved with a 15 seater passenger van with a trailer. Bye bye. Behind it we moved again a few years after that with a 20 foot truck with a trailer with a car on top of it and then another car and then a trailer behind that one with the backseat packed to the brim and then two awfully cute kids and a third one on the way.

Man, I remember them when they were like that. They were just so easy. It was wonderful. Somewhere life continues to grow. When finally we moved to Colorado, we required a 28 foot truck, and it was packed to the edge. We hired three guys to pack it for us. They turned up drunk, which surprisingly seemed to make them better at packing trucks.

They did it with a Fluidity and a wisdom that was not natural. Somewhere what we read in Genesis 1 11 is indicative for all of life. Then God said, let the land produce vegetation, seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit, with seed in it according to their various kinds. It turns out God doesn’t just make trees, he makes trees that make other trees.

Life has a way of continuing to expand, and you feel that. some of that. How does your rule of life support the life that you now live? And perhaps is that different than it used to be as life continues to abound? For you in Genesis 1, we read that God created a world in which life abounds. We live in that world today.

But as well as supporting life and helping you manage all of the things that come up on everyday levels, helping you perhaps survive. Childhood, helping you survive, having children later on, helping you survive work life, finding space for all of those different things. Life also seems, the rule of life also seems to do this too.

The rule of life is a trellis that ensures your life can be lived well, but it’s a trellis that ensures your life has room. It’s an intentional way of creating some space for God to show up. So while throughout this rule of life, this rule of life series, I’ll suggest different ways that you might practice this to help you manage the life that you have.

I’ll spend most of my time suggesting ways that you might make room for God. You can be creative with the first part. That’s on you. But there’s only so many times that I can tell you that taking a nap might be good for your soul without feeling redundant. So for most of the series, we’ll spend time dotting into what are often called spiritual disciplines, spiritual practices.

And so today our focus will be on the practice of service. South has within its community what might be described as a gem, amongst many other gems. Her name is Carolyn Schmidt, and I told her today I was going to talk about her for a while. She actually gets talked about in churches all over the place, so we might as well talk about her in the church she goes to as well.

She’s probably hiding somewhere out the back. Carolyn’s someone who loves to serve. You’ve probably met her. She gives wonderful hugs. She’s surprisingly able at 82 to keep up with eight year olds as well. And she often brings water supplies to the tech team and to the teaching team. The other day, we had a question that arose in our startlingly unusual building that God has gifted us with.

As this building’s about 60 or so years old. We purchased it, maybe, 20, 30 years ago, and it has all sorts of problems in it. And just the other day, somebody asked whether we could possibly make sure that the toilet seat in the women’s bathroom could be tightened, because it seems to just sway from one side to the other.

We started to wonder why this is a problem that only just came to our notice. Turns out before she broke her wrist, Carolyn was turning up with a screwdriver and tightening the toilet seat in its place so nobody had to fall off it. It’s that kind of service that is just beautiful to see in a community, but surprisingly Carolyn isn’t alone.

She’s not even alone in her family. Her husband, Phil, served. doing our books for us as a church for years, back when, before there were computers, when everything had to be written down manually. Her son, Eric, was involved on the sound desk for decade after decade. There was a time when we would talk in this community about Schmitt fairies.

There would be things that were surprisingly done, and nobody was quite sure how they came to be done. A cable might be laid. The books were done. Some water. But perhaps even better, Carolyn isn’t even unique in this community. Her family isn’t unique in this community. If you’re dotting in to South, maybe you’ve been here for a little while, you may not know some of the backstory.

This community was formed out of a church that was kicked out of its denomination in 1979. Left with no bank account. Left with no building, this community survived by dodding around from place to place, setting up chairs early in the morning, packing them down afterwards. I would try for a moment to name every person in my head that I know came from that era, but I’d be afraid to leave somebody out, so Carolyn gets to be the example for so many people that have called South home for just two years.

Soul. This is a community shaped vol by volunteers. Back at a time when South was twice the size it is now, but had less than a quarter of the staff it has now. This is a volunteer led and shaped community. South is a community that I would suggest has service. In its DNA, and in that I would suggest it beautifully reflects the way of Jesus.

This morning we’re actually going to look at a few different pericopes from the Gospel of Matthew. A different stories that come up in alignment and they teach us something overall. So for a moment we’re going to go back to Matthew chapter 16, 24 to 26 again, open your text if you’d like to.

Matthew 16, to remind you, is a story, is a passage that we tapped into maybe four or five weeks ago, just before Christmas. At the beginning of that passage, there’s a revelation of Jesus. The disciples were asked by Jesus, who do people say I am? And then afterwards, he asks them, who do you say that I am?

Peter, not knowing what he’s saying, says these words, You are the son of the living God. Somewhere, Peter, this disciple, sees Jesus not as he is seen by everybody else, not by his subriquet of the son of man, but sees him as divine. Right afterwards, after his wonderful moment, Peter has a moment that is less good, to say it frankly.

He has a moment where Jesus reveals that he’ll soon be crucified, and Peter says, No, that will never happen to you. Jesus gives him the stinging rebuke of, Get behind me, Satan. Get behind me, tempter. These stories seem to suggest that somewhere Jesus is revealed, and then somewhere, Post revelation, he tells of his fate, his suffering, and then suggests that might be our story as well.

That somewhere, there’s a cost to following him. We pick up in verse 24, where Jesus gives a teaching point to follow up with his examples. Then Jesus said to his disciples, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. There’s some kind of idea that the ands maybe function not just as an and but almost like a that is.

Read it again with those included then. Jesus said to his disciples, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves. That is take up your cross. That is, follow me. He’s continually explaining the point of the cost of following Jesus. For whoever wants to lose their life, We’ll lose whoever wants to save their life.

Sorry, we’ll lose it. But whoever loses their life for me will find it What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul? Somewhere Jesus picks up this theme of cost the cost it turns out in following him may be significant. Some people have suggested simply that following Jesus has a passive cost to it.

It’s just a service that comes up. You’ll have some suffering and your job as a follower of Jesus is to bear it. Some people have said it’s an active cost that actually you have to go out of your way to find that difficulty, find that point of cost. But whatever it is, there is some cost. Jesus suggests in this passage that our continual human hope that our life will be good and have more good and add more good, that our life will begin and be long and rich is not necessarily true.

It reminds me of some ways from of this quote from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. About 1600, Shakespeare said this, All the world’s a stage. And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances. Somewhere Jesus suggests that we shouldn’t be overly concerned about what our exit may look like.

That our deep fear that our life might be taken from us isn’t, to him, the main point. He says things like, what benefit does it give you if you were to gain your life but lose your life? Your soul and yet most of us would say our life is especially dear to us We desire to hold on to it with everything we have perhaps we desire also to be significant along with it the Actor Michael Caine who has that deep British cockney accent that we perhaps all know and love said this I’ll try to do the accent for you But there’s some people that have this kind of accent so so I may just blow up terribly Michael Caine said This is how I choose parts.

I’ll read the first page of the script, and the last page, and if the part they want me to do is on both pages I do the picture, it wouldn’t get a clap from an English audience, but I appreciate it. Somewhere for Michael Caine, as he tries to determine how he enters into the world, he wants to know how significant will I be. Will I be there at the beginning? Will I be there at the end? To Jesus, it seems, that kind of way of deciding your role would not be a significant decision making point.

Jesus teaches that to follow him is to lay down our lives, to serve, to give our lives to him. for others. He goes on to say this, So what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, then he will reward each person according to what they have done.

Their actions. This is what caused the missionary Jim Elliot to say these words, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. If we left it there, those would be awfully heavy words. Indeed. In fact, I think most of us would go away saying, I’m not sure what to do with that. How do I obey that?

It reminds me of a conversation we just recently had with one of our kids where we told them something like this. As far as schoolwork goes, there’s always something to be done. To which they replied, then we just always do school, right? We never do anything else. Is that what Jesus is saying? Is it just a constant pouring out of your life?

Is there nothing else on offer? Is that it? Just continually work work, serve, work, serve. Serve, because perhaps that leads to some of the burnout that we see in people following Jesus. Perhaps that is some of the things that we lead to people walking away from the church when they feel simply they are used by a church community.

Is that what Jesus is saying here? I would suggest this passage becomes so much richer when you see how Matthew, this biographer of Jesus life, skillfully weaves together multiple stories in a row.

Ends with this very cryptic remark in verse 28 truly I tell you some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom at some point He says some of you will see the glory of God will see this Son of Man Unveiled as Peter understood him for just a moment and the question is when does this happen?

There’s a whole bunch of ideas behind this. The great commentator on the Gospel of Matthew, Frederick Dale Bruna gives seven different options for where this might happen, but the first one is my favorite. The answer is simply in the next passage. If you’re like me when you read scripture. You find it very hard to get over the fact that there are numbers.

There’s numbers for chapters, there’s number for verses. And what they suggest to you over and over again is this story that we’re just finished with here is completely detached from what comes next. Because that’s what we feel when we read a novel. The chapter ends with some kind of building of tension and you almost pick up the next chapter and start again.

But those chapter numbers, those verse numbers, they’re perhaps a thousand years old. They’re beautiful because it enables me to say something like, turn to Matthew chapter 16, verse 28, instead of just turn to somewhere in the gospel of Matthew. But they’re not supposed to suggest that a new thought is about to begin.

So often the story continues talking about the same thing, illuminating the same thing, unpacking the same thing. So watch what happens if you just continue and head into Matthew chapter 17. After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John. This is the passage that we read at the beginning of the teaching.

Six days is unusual to put in this place. Matthew very rarely uses specific numbers. It suggests or reinforces the idea that perhaps this thought is important for what we just read. After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, the brother of James, and led them up a mountain by themselves.

And usually for a biblical writer, it doesn’t say which mountain. Perhaps that isn’t the focus. Perhaps it might be any mountain. Perhaps it might be a spiritual mountain. A mountain perhaps that you yourself one day, might climb. There we’re told he was transfigured before them. He was seen differently, no longer as just human, but something more, revealed in a new way.

His face shone like the sun, his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared with him Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus. It might remind you if you were in a Revelation series of some of the revelation of Jesus there in Revelation Chapter 1. But here is Jesus glorified, different.

Here is an experience of him that is new, that is fresh. There’s some comedy in Peter’s response. Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it’s good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters. One for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah. I’m not sure what he thinks Jesus will do with a shelter at this point, but apparently he thinks this might be important.

Some suggest that this, in this moment, is Peter finding a new way to stop Jesus going to the cross. Look at this, isn’t this wonderful here? Perhaps other people will come mountaintop and experience this wonderful moment. This is what we’ve been hoping for. You revealed in a different way. While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them and a voice from the cloud said, This is my son, whom I love.

With him, I am well pleased. Listen to him. The language here is brilliant. It doesn’t come across in most of the English translations. If you’ve ever had a moment where you’re talking to someone and it becomes really obvious that their attention has been captured by something someone, something else.

They’re looking over your shoulder. They’re not focused on you and what you’re saying. This is exactly What happens to Peter here? Mid sentence, everybody starts looking at what’s happened just over his shoulder. While he was speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the clouds said, This is my son whom I love.

With him, I am well pleased. Listen to him. After a story about how important services and how central it is to the Christian life, there’s another story in which God is revealed in a particular way. Jesus is revealed. Afresh. When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified.

But Jesus came up and touched them. Get up. He said, don’t be afraid. When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus. This is a mountaintop experience that is has commonality with a whole bunch of mountaintop experiences within scripture. Regularly. People go up to the mountaintop and experience God in different ways.

The same has been true of the spiritual journey of Christians for a couple of. thousand years now. This is a picture in Santa Barbara of Mount Calvary. It was a monastery from about 1947. It sits in a mountain above the city and you get to see this just beautiful visto. It probably grabs us particularly given the wildfires we’re seeing in that region at the moment.

It’s a place of retreat. You make your way up the Gibraltar road, high up to the top of this mountain, and then you get this moment of seclusion, this moment of escape. This is a mountaintop experience, and there’s something fascinating about these mountaintop experiences. I think it’s this. Mountaintops are hard because you have to climb them.

That’s true both physically and spiritually. People who have these experiences where it feels like the gap between heaven and earth is reduced where God is revealed in a particular way will say regularly they come from two things. Perhaps from suffering, from a moment of cost, deep loss. But regularly from contemplation, from saying, I long to experience God in a new way and entering into looking for him particularly.

They’re hard because you have to climb them, but they’re easy because nobody else is there. It’s just you and God. There’s no service. There’s no cost because nobody else is there. He’s there to make life hard. Nobody’s there to get in the way. It’s this moment of separation, this moment of hiding. And that’s why across all of scripture, mountaintop experiences, those moments where God is experienced in a particular way, they don’t last very long.

They are always followed by something else. By this moment of descent down a mountain and service, suffering perhaps, usually. People who experience the mountaintop in a particular way usually feel called to enter into this Christian life and serve all the more. Whether it be George Muller of England who had a specific revelation of God and then started an orphanage for about 80 to 100 children.

Constantly waiting and hoping that God would provide and seeing him do that over hundreds of years. The same journey happens here. There’s a mountaintop experience and then a descent. In verse 9 of chapter 17, As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, Don’t tell anyone what you have seen until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.

When they came down to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. Lord, have mercy on my son, he said. He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him. You unbelieving and perverse generation, Jesus replied.

How long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me. Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed. at that moment. Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, why couldn’t we drive it out? He replied, because you have so little faith.

Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed you can say to this mountain, move from here to there. And it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. Perhaps some of the versions you have in front of you will add a verse 21, which seems to come from Mark’s account of this story. This kind of healing can only come by prayer.

Jesus goes up a mountaintop, experiences, he’s always revealed in a particular way. There’s some things that suggest that the story or the moment is just as much for Jesus as a reminder of who he is as everybody else in the story. And then Jesus comes down and heals a child that his disciples cannot hear.

Jesus, who’s been on the mountaintop, heals the boy, the disciples cannot hear. The story seems to follow this pattern where verse 5 reiterates this is my son, listen to him, followed by verse 21 that says and also talk to him. The disciples are invited to experience God first and then enter into service.

afterwards. It seems that the flow of this story is designed to emphasize this point that if you remember nothing else, remember this. Life with God empowers life for God and never the other way around. The moment that you try to twist that, something gets broken inside you. The stories that we hear of people who say I’m just done with this ministry, I’m just done with serving, I’m just done with church, tend to come because we put the other part, the second part first.

We twist them. Life with God is designed to empower life for God. That’s what we see in the story of Jesus washing the disciples feet, the most menial of all tasks. In John 13, we read this. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, that he had come from God and was returning to God.

A tiny word that says everything about the sentence. Because of all he had experienced, because of what he knew about himself, he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples feet, drying them with a towel that was wrapped around him.

Jesus, the Son of God, is enabled to take up the most menial task precisely because he knows who he is, which suggests this, that if there’s no task too menial for Jesus, there’s no task too menial for me. either. Henry Nowen said, the world became flesh so as to wash my tired feet. He touches me precisely where I touch the soil, where earth connects with my body that reaches out to heaven.

He kneels, takes my feet in his hands and washes them. Then he looks up at me and his eyes and mind meet. He says, do you understand what I have done for you? If I, your Lord and master have washed your feet, you must wash your brothers. and sister’s feet. All of that story is made possible by Jesus certainty of who he is, by his own self revelation.

And I would suggest for you and I, service of people around us is made possible when we understand too who Jesus is, what he has done for us. Eleanor Stump said this, the thing that ultimately leads to flourishing is loving connection with God and sharing this loving connection. With others, the Christian discipline of service seems to be central in a particular way.

It seems everyone is designed for this. Somewhere those that have experienced God and don’t enter into service, find that some of the joy of spirituality is profoundly missing. Those same monks in the monastery that I mentioned at the top of Santa Barbara in the mountains were forced to flee in 2007.

The T fire of 2007 came in and wiped out the picturesque monastery on a hilltop. The monks were forced to flee down to the city of Santa Barbara where they stayed with some nuns at St. Mary’s retreat house. They spent the next year or two there waiting for the insurance money to come in so they could go back to their mountaintop, go back to hiding up in the hills.

But by the time the insurance money came through, the monks decided with one voice that they would stay in the city. Over two years they’d experienced the joy. Of the rush hour traffic, of the shouts of children as they went to school. They’d experienced life in the city, the slowness on a Sunday, the busyness on a Monday.

They’d got themselves involved in the everyday lives of the people around them. They decided that the mountaintop was not the place for them. But the city was the place for them. The mountaintop had empowered them, had transformed them, but they were called in a particular way to service. Margaret Gunther asks this, how do we give the gift of ourselves?

That seems to be a fundamental question that Jesus asks his followers to ask of themselves. How do I, as you’ve shaped me with the gifts that you’ve given me, immerse myself in a community? in the world around me? How do I share me with others? So often the narrative of this world reminds us or enforces on us that we don’t actually have anything to bring.

We’re not that important. We’re not that gifted. It seems like the story of Jesus says that is true of nobody ever. Everybody has something. Everybody’s gifted in some way. It seems somewhere that this is true throughout these passages. Serving in the way of Jesus requires that we see the image of God in our neighbors and that we surrender our own ego to serve.

A mountaintop allows us to see God. Coming down we’re invited to see others as we ourselves have been seen. Carolyn is here today, probably hiding in a tech booth. She probably bought water. She probably hugged a whole bunch of people. She’s someone who continues to replicate the way of Jesus through the way she serves others.

And this church is filled with people just like that. Filled with people who mirror the God who serves. Mirror the God who knows who he is and can get down on his knees and do the most menial asks. Who wouldn’t want to follow a God like that? Jesus, remind us that service comes out of knowing you. Remind us that you shaped us and formed us.

As we are, remind us that you love us. Empower us to serve those around us. Draw us towards you and send us to the world. Amen.