Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ + Amen.
Today we take a moment in our life as the church to note and celebrate the work of the Lutheran Women in Mission organization. This organization helps bring the Gospel message near and far, in word and in deed, living out the mercy that God calls us to have for one another. I know that my family has been personally touched for many years by the LWM. My grandmother has been a long-term member as a zone officer, my family received support from my home church’s Ladies’ Aid, and as a seminarian my classmates and I were well taken care of by the ladies who work in the headquarters at the campus of Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis. Even here at Athens Lutheran Church, our LWM group does so much to benefit our community and share the love of Christ with others. Thanks be to God that He has raised up ladies throughout the Lutheran Church to serve people in this way! But as any time we highlight groups or individuals in the church, we need to do so in such a way that points us back to Jesus. When we consider the great service done by the LWM, we must understand that it is Christ working through them to deliver His Good News and great mercy. We recognize that as servants of Jesus our master, all service, when done rightly, is done humbly and dutifully in the name of Jesus, not in our own. Our celebration of the LWM and the reason why churches throughout our Synod celebrate LWM Sundays, while it is good to thank these servants of the Lord, is focused on gratitude to the LORD for the work He accomplishes in the church.
Our Gospel reading for this Sunday is actually well equipped to speak on these matters of service and humility. In our text for today, we begin with seeing Jesus teaching his disciples, which are all those who believe and follow Jesus. Then, the teaching homes in on the apostles, the twelve that Christ called to be the ones specially tasked with beginning His church. These men, minus Judas and plus Paul, would be foundational members of Christ’s church on earth. They would spread the Gospel, baptize, serve, and do all sorts of great things for the continuation of God’s kingdom on earth. Yet, as Jesus is teaching His disciples about temptation and the rebuking of sin, His disciples get nervous. They feel the weight of their calling. The apostles came to Jesus, saying “increase our faith!” They did not think they were up to the task as is, and rightly went to their Lord asking Him to lift them up. Jesus gives them a stern, but comforting word: “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘ Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” Jesus charges His disciples to have faith, but He assures them that even the smallest amount of faith in Christ opens doors for miraculous things among those who serve Him and spread His Good News.
While we are not the apostles, but while the great miracles of their ministry are much less common among us today, this message is still for us as well, at least in part. While we always should seek and pray for great faith, even weak faith is still faith. As the waves of darkness assail us, it is just as the great Church Father Tertullian writes “therefore, cling to repentance, as a shipwrecked person takes hold of a plank, and this will prevent you from drowning in the waves of your sins and carry you back to the port of divine mercy.” Even in moments where life is daunting and things seem bad, when we find ourselves joining the apostles in fear and saying “Lord, increase our faith!” He promises to hear our prayer, to remain with us and to strengthen us. Throughout Jesus’s ministry the symbol of the Mustard Seed is used as a way to symbolize how God’s great power can be found and hidden even in small things. While we might not go around commanding trees to be planted in the ocean, the sharing of the Good News of our Lord Jesus’s death and resurrection, even in small ways, is enough for the Holy Spirit to bring the miracle of salvation to those who hear and believe.
Still, when we consider the ways we serve our neighbor, be it in our daily lives or in an organization like the Lutheran Women in Mission, we must be careful to note what is truly taking place, and where our focus is.
Just after Christ teaches His apostles about faith like the mustard seed, He encourages them to be humble. We, too, must be humble in our service. When we serve our neighbors, are we doing it for the sake of being thanked or recognized? Are we doing it to build up our reputation? Are we doing it because we take pride in positions we’ve earned for ourselves over time? If the answer is yes, we must repent. All service to the Lord ought to be done in humility. When we see or do acts of service, we should look to the Almighty God as the source and deliverer of all good things. When we serve our neighbors, it is not our own work that is accomplishing anything, but the work that God does through us! On our own, we are only capable of sin, but through Christ we are used as tools to bless others even in spite of the sin within our hearts.
When we celebrate LWM Sunday, we rightly thank the women in this and other churches for the work they have done for the church. They have done good things and we appreciate the service they give. Yet, we must endeavor not to place the focus on them. Instead, we celebrate the work of our Lord Jesus. It is Christ who became incarnate to be put to death on a cross, to rise again, and to deliver us salvation. It is Christ who makes us all Christians, who makes us all to be “little Christ’s” who serve others in His name. It is Christ who is behind every work of service done by the LWM or any organization of believers across the globe.
The service to our neighbor in each and every one of our lives finds its source in Christ Jesus. Like tributaries of a river, our acts of service are dead and empty works without Christ as the source. The service is God’s service, the mercy is God’s mercy. Even today we must echo the words that Christ gives to us in our Gospel reading today: “we are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.” So thanks be to God not only for Lutheran Women in Mission, but all Christians in mission, but thank Him all the more that His will is done and His mercy is given through humble servants to those who are in need.
In the Holy Name of Jesus + Amen.