This past week began as routinely as most weeks do.  But, on Monday night word came that Nancy’s Aunt Jodie, her mother’s only sister, had finally lost the battle with the cancer they discovered just before Thanksgiving.  So, on Thursday morning, we found ourselves sitting at the front of the sanctuary in the White City Baptist Church in Tulsa for a funeral service.  In some ways, it didn’t seem that far from here. 

It turns out that the pastor’s wife there is the niece of our late and much loved Bernie and Nadine Niederer.  I couldn’t help but be amused yet again by the fact that, no matter where you go, you either run into former Cliff Templers or someone related to them.  This church is a much bigger community than meets the eye.  The roots go deep generationally; they also reach a long way geographically.  Now, since these folks have been our family’s pastor and wife for twenty-seven years, they are almost like family.  I used to joke that you couldn’t be a member of this church unless you were related to or intended to become related to someone in it.  When I was in Tulsa I realized that I had actually come very close to marrying into the Cliff Temple family.  You see, when I married Nancy, I married the niece of some people who are members of the church where Bernie and Nadine Niederer’s niece is the pastor’s wife!  You can do the math later.  Suffice it to say, it’s almost like you don’t really join this church as much as you become part of a great big family!

As I was sitting there during the funeral service, however, I couldn’t help but look at Uncle Glenn and wonder about him.  Like so many of their World War II generation, Glenn and Jodie met in high school but had to wait until the Navy turned him lose to get married.  But, as soon as it did, they said their “I do’s” and spent the next fifty-five years keeping their promises to each other.  So, I couldn’t help but wonder how life will be for him now without Jodie.

I’ve wondered that about so very many of you, too.  So many of you have sat in that same lonely place in the pew to say goodbye to the love of your life, your best friend and your soul mate.  Every time I’ve heard your stories of five and six decades together, I’ve wondered.  How do you go on living after that kind of loss?  I’ve wanted to know that for myself, too.  It’s sobering, even scary, to wonder what life will be like for whichever one has to stay around a little longer.  So, I’ve genuinely been interested in finding an answer to that question not only because I’m a pastor but because I’m married to my best friend, too.

So, it was with a real sense of relief, while Jodie’s pastor eulogized her, that I found part of the answer coming to me.  Glenn and Jodie had been getting ready for this day for a long time.  Years ago, not only had they made a promise to each other but, when they trusted Christ, they promised to love and serve him and spent the last several decades keeping that promise, too. 

Jodie began losing her eyesight about thirty years ago.  But, that didn’t stop her.  Up until she had to be hospitalized she kept her responsibility as a coordinator for Meals-On-Wheels.  And, that was on top of serving as the Mission Action Coordinator for her church for several years and that was on top of serving as a volunteer at a local hospital.  In his late seventies, Glenn doesn’t sit around much, either.  Because of Jodie’s eyesight, he had years ago assumed many of the household chores.  Toward the end, he cared for Jodie day in and day out in ways that exhausted the people who watched him.  He’s also served as a volunteer chaplain at a local hospital for the better part of two decades, driven for Meals on Wheels and served his church in innumerable volunteer capacities, like getting the weekly bulletin to and from the print shop each week.  I could go on.  But, you get the picture.

The reason I know Glenn is going to be o.k. is because, for so many decades, how he felt or what was happening to him was never as important as helping others who needed what he had to give.  And though he retired from a senior management position with Getty Oil, he wasn’t the center of his own world.  Long ago, he learned the secret of the community factor.  That God had blessed him for the specific purpose of blessing others through him and that the happiest people are those who have devoted themselves to growing in Christ through serving the larger family community of faith, the family of God, the church.  A family that, in turn, nourishes them when they have lost so much.  Simply put, it’s possible to make a strong case for the fact that your life will be rich or poor, lonely or full of love, in direct proportion to your level of service to others.  God designed it that way.  That is the promise of his word.

The scripture says that, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”  That means that there is something of God in you.  There is something unique you have to give that no one else really can give but you to the work of God through his church, the family of faith of which you became a part when you came to Christ.  It’s incredibly important to believe that about yourself and everyone else in this place. 

Early on, obviously, a problem had arisen in the early church.  There were some who had come to think of themselves as indispensably important above all others and some who had come to think of themselves as insignificantly dispensable.  Paul responded to both attitudes by describing the church as a body in which all the parts are interdependently essential.  “If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body . . . The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’”  You see, it is the gift of God in us that defines our worth more than our position of prominence in relationship to each other.  And, because of that, the church is the one place where insignificance can never define anyone.

One of the biggest news stories of this past week was about Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman splitting up after only eleven years of marriage.  It was the lead story of People magazine, after all.  In truth, it’s only the more visible news.  The biggest news, the more significant news, is something less visible.  Last night our youth sponsored a Valentine’s banquet for those of our church family who are chronologically advantaged.  During the banquet, we honored everyone who had celebrated fifty years of marriage.  Those who were honored will never be on the front cover of People magazine.  The Cruise-Kidman story was certainly the more prominent of the two I just told you.  But, does anyone want to debate which is of greater significance?

It works that way in the church, too.  There is something of God in you.  You are gifted.  By the way, though I’m not diminishing the significance of training classes that come and go and are designed to help you discover your spiritual gift, there really is no magic formula.  If you don’t have a clear sense of what it is God has given you to do, let me suggest one thing.  Follow the joy.  I didn’t say pleasure or happiness.  I said, joy.  One of my favorite verses of scripture says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  (Hebrews 12:2, RSV)  We are here today because Jesus followed the joy his father put in his heart for the unique work he called and gifted him to do.  He followed it as it led him through much that was not pleasurable to the higher calling of God.  There’s not a much better pattern.

Several weeks ago, we heard Stephanie Wacker tell us of this beautiful idea she had for making money for missions around here.  She knits these little booties that are apparently the hottest thing these days and then sells them at craft fairs and then donates the proceeds to Mission Oak Cliff.  She asked for volunteers to help her with that and several women have pitched in so that the earning potential of this project for missions has been multiplied several times over; they stand to make multiplied thousands this year.  Now, I have to confess that I haven’t attempted to knit even one bootie.  I find no joy there.  But, I am overjoyed that some do and are willing to give of themselves in that way.  Those who knit may never make the cover of People, but is there any question that their contribution will touch the lives of many people, nonetheless? 

Follow the joy.  You may be surprised where it leads you.  It’s led Roger Turley into the bowels of our state prison system to minister to men who are profoundly alone and lost there.  Follow the joy.  You are blessed.  And, every time you give your gift, even if only God knows about it, you have done something that is of eternally good significance.

By the way, the happiest I’ve known in church have not been those who sat around and calculated what the church had done for them lately.  The happiest I’ve known in church, and I’ve known many who were not, are those whose most significant expectation of their church is that it give them a tangible place to follow the joy God has put in their heart for serving others.  They honestly do the math more in terms of what’s going out than in terms of what’s coming back to them.  Yet, oddly enough, they never seem to get less than they give.  Listen again.  “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” 

When you become a Christian, you don’t so much join an organization as you become a part of a living organism.  This church is not just a group of people who get together once a week to rehearse doctrines they have in common as though what bonds us together is that we all happen to think alike.  (It’s a good thing because, like all families, we have arguments from time to time.)  The church is a family of people interrelated, literally, by blood.  The roots go deep generationally and reach out to the ends of the earth geographically.  Wherever you go, you will find nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, all related to you by your common faith in Christ. 

It also means that, when you give your gift, the body grows and is strengthened.  The body of which you are a part.  So that, as the body grows because you gave to it, you grow because you are a part of the body.  Those who do the math more in terms of what is going out than coming in never are diminished by what they give.  In time, what they gave put down roots that now serve to stabilize and nourish them in their hour of greatest need.

In 1953, Glenn and Jodie were in a car wreck in which their infant son, Timothy, was killed.  The year he would have started college they established the first of three scholarships in his name.  For almost thirty years now students have been getting Christian educations they might not have otherwise because of that investment.  Those roots of faithfulness, service and ministry they put down and nurtured will still be bearing fruit for God’s eternal Kingdom long after we are all gone from this place.  And, by the design of God, those things they quietly gave to the larger body of faith are now serving to strengthen and nourish an old man who gave in his youth and has just lost his best friend.  You should have seen the sanctuary.  Young and old by the score people came to stand by Glenn when Jodie had to go. 

How aware of it you are, I don’t know.  But, you need this church.  It’s a tangible place for you to grow by following the joy God has put in your heart.  In time, the roots you put down here may well prove to be the only thing holding you up when everything or everyone else is gone.