Do you have a life mission?

A lot of times I associate a personal life mission with the type A personality; somebody who is super organized, who plans their day, who has a perfectly formulated mission statement for their company, their work, and their life.

That’s not exactly what I mean. I mean, what do you live for? What’s your purpose? What do you want your life to accomplish?

It’s much easier, of course, to let life happen to us, to not worry or plan for what comes. “Each day has enough trouble of its own.” And of course, in crisis, all we can really do is figure out how to survive.

But the reality is that many of us here are not at a crisis point. We have the luxury of thinking about and planning for how we will live our lives.

Today is 9/11.

It’s the first time since September 11, 2001, that it’s happened on a Sunday. I find it sort of amazing that we’re now grappling with the catastrophic results of Hurricane Katrina, just as four years ago we were grappling with the tragedy of terrorism on our own soil.

Four years ago, many, many people said they wanted their lives to be different. Nothing would ever be the same. We’d make life precious. We’d value what was important, and not what was trivial.

And we’re feeling much the same now, as we still are seeing people being rescued from their homes in New Orleans.

So what will you make your life mission?

How will you make plans to have your life be different as a result of the tragedy we’ve seen?

If the question is framed that way, (and you can only blame me…I framed the question myself!)...if we only think in terms of how do we live differently IN RESPONSE to 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, we’re going to fizzle out.

As horrible as each of those experiences have been, they will fade in our memory. If our life mission becomes reacting to or addressing a problem, whatever it is, we run the risk of losing steam and direction when the urgency fades.

I’m proposing some of Paul’s words from Colossians as a proactive, lasting, positive possibility for a life mission.

We’ve spoken these words several times already today, because our not so subtle plan is to get these words in each of our heads…and our lives!

When I was in high school, we had these cool youth group shirts. They made us feel connected to each other, and connected to our church, to wear them. One of my friends did the artwork, but on the back, my youth pastor, Jon, snuck in a bible reference: Colossians 2: 6 and 7.

It was just the reference, though; and after I’d been wearing it around for a few weeks, Jon asked an annoying question: “What if someone asks you what that stands for? Could you tell them?”

I made up my mind to memorize the verses.

Pastors are so manipulative and sneaky that way!

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”

I started to see why he chose these words to stick on our shirt. These are life mission words. This points us in the right direction; it’s not about reacting to crisis. It’s not about accomplishing good deeds. It’s not about making a name for our selves.

Where are we rooted? How are we living? What’s our foundation? These metaphors, these pictures, are things we can put into our lives to make a difference over the long haul. They’ll sustain us through a lifetime of bad dates in history…they’re enough to survive dates like Oct. 28 and 29, Black Monday and Black Tuesday that started the Great Depression; enough to get us through Dec. 7, 1941; through Sept. 22, 1963; through Sept. 11, 2001; and through whatever other dark days the future will bring to us.

I want to be a voice today that calls us to a radical commitment to Jesus Christ.

I want to call us to own a life mission that is centered on what Jesus is doing in our world, that draws its power and strength from a real, living connection with God, through people who know who they believe in, what they believe, and who overflow with thankfulness because of what God has done.

Let’s look carefully at these words, so that we can make them our own.

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him.”

There’s more to life with God than receiving and accepting Jesus! That won’t come as much of a surprise to people who have been around Newberg Friends or other Friends’ churches. We’ve often said this.

I’ve heard people say that first acceptance of Jesus is seeing him as our savior. To use Paul’s words from earlier in the letter, it’s experiencing God “rescue us from the dominion of darkness and bring us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.”

The “continue to live in him” part is understanding Jesus as the lord of our lives. We live in him; think about the power of that little word!

Not live like him. Not even live with him.

Live in him!

Let all of what we do, say, think, and pursue with our lives be within the person of Jesus Christ. I can imagine a pretty big circle that might represent the values and issues and character traits that are important to Jesus, that are a part of who Jesus is.

Paul is telling us to let everything in the circle of our lives be made up of things that are found within that big circle of Jesus’ life.

That sets the standard pretty high. But there is no getting around it. Our life mission as Jesus people is to continue to completely live in him.

What challenges does that put to your life today? [PAUSE]

Ok, I said earlier that we can’t just set up a life mission that reacts or responds to difficult things.

And if all we had to go on was verse 6, we’d be stuck with the same thing on the positive side. We’d be left trying to live up to an incredibly high standard on our own, without the means of doing it.

We can think of verse 7 as Paul’s way of showing us how to live differently.

“Continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him.” I love this about Paul. He’s an amazing communicator. He gives us an organic metaphor, and a building metaphor, both of which are essential in getting to the HOW of living differently, of living in Christ.

Rooted.

Many of you are gardeners, I know. What is it that roots do? What purpose do they serve for a plant? [ASK]

And what happens if you have a plant with the best root system in the world, but the soil turns bad? [ASK]

I remember a garden we had as a kid with carrots that only grew this long. I remember earlier this summer not being careful enough with the Round Up, and seeing the brown effects that had on green bushes and grass.

Every plant has a root system, that is drawing the nutrients and water it needs for life out of the soil. And what that plant becomes is absolutely dependent on what it can pull out of the soil.

Over here is a white carnation that’s been sitting in water with food dye added to it.

You can see that it has drawn the colored water up into the flower, and there’s no doubt about it. It’s green, just like the water its roots sit in (ok, it’s a stem…it’s not a perfect analogy; cut me a little slack).

Imagine these other white carnations meet the green carnation, and say, “Wow! Green! That is amazing. I want to be just like that. We’ll hang out right by it. We’ll try to be like it. We’ll do everything we can to be green like it.”

If it just stays in its own little clear water vase, it ain’t gonna get green, no matter how hard it tries.

It’s gonna have to pull up its roots and stick itself into that green water. It’s going to have to cut itself off from the plain water, and draw all its nutrients and water and life from the green water.

This is the picture of being rooted in Jesus.

It’s not just modeling our lives after others, though that helps. Being rooted is drawing everything that gives us life from Jesus himself.

It means saying “no” to other avenues of nutrients. Does that make sense? We have to uproot ourselves from previous soil, from the things that used to guide our thinking and our goals and our values.

What are some of those things? What are some of the things, besides Jesus, that we sink our roots into? What are practical things that guide our thinking and values that we need to uproot? [ASK]

You can probably guess the next question.

What in a practical sense does it look like to root ourselves in Jesus? What are specific activities you do that help you draw your values and way of life from Jesus? [ASK]

Sinking our roots into Jesus is what gives power to a life mission. It involves cutting off and uprooting from the other things that guide our thoughts and values, and finding practical and tangible ways to listen to Jesus and draw life from him.

Steve Fawver loves to say that if we really are listening to Jesus, we can’t help but act in love toward the world around us. If our roots truly and actively are in Jesus, we will grow and bear fruit.

“Continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him.”

The word implies building up on a strong and firm foundation.

I learned almost everything I know about building from Legos. As a kid, we had a really steep driveway. We used to build cars out of Legos, and launch them down the driveway.

It was great fun! They’d tumble and explode into pieces. So then we’d rebuild them, bigger and stronger and faster than before.

We’d start with a strong foundation, and big wheels…the bigger, the better. As we built the layers, we’d learn to plan, and build carefully, not haphazardly.

The most important thing was to never let cracks extend through a few layers. There’s always a crack when you put blocks next to each other; the thing was on the NEXT level to make sure that a block covered the crack instead of lining up with it.

Build on a firm foundation, and then be careful how you add to it.

I love having this metaphor connected with the roots and gardening and growing. Once we’re rooted in the right place, God does the work in us.

Adding the building metaphor reminds us that we’re still completely dependent upon God for the right foundation, but how we build up on that is a responsibility for us, a responsibility to add the right pieces in the right ways.

“Continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”

One of the realities Paul had to deal with as he wrote this letter to the Colossians was the fact that they were beginning to believe things that went against what they had been taught at the beginning.

We’re to be strengthened in our faith, the faith in which we were taught.

We need to teach each other. We need to learn from each other. We need to hold firm to the right things that were placed before us.

That’s not the same thing as being stagnant and static. It’s using the metaphors from just before; root in the right place, and build on the right foundation, but grow! Build! Take ownership of our need to strengthen our faith!

I’ve been reading some challenging books lately, books which God has used to help me re-think my beliefs about our responsibility to the poor in our country and around the world. It’s been part of the strengthening God is doing within me, built on the foundation of Jesus’ care for the poor and oppressed in the world.

I’m grateful that I’ve made the effort to read, to stretch, to talk with others, and strengthen the faith which I was taught.

And overflowing with thankfulness.

Paul won’t let us be ungrateful. Paul keeps bringing us back to a lifestyle of thankfulness, recognizing what God has done in us.

In our time of open worship, will you invite God to show you how to make these verses your life mission? They’re printed several times for you in the worship folder.

Is it uprooting some things that have guided your thinking and values? Is it finding ways to own your faith, to grow and learn?

In this time of open worship, invite God to speak to you. It’s a way of sinking our roots into Jesus.