10/22/06 Internship Sermon

I have been horrible at keeping this blog up to date... I have at least a 1 month backlog at posting sermons and such...so I thought I had better crawl out from under my rock and post this weeks before I start with the backlog...so here it is...ignore any obvious spelling and grammer errors... I'll catch them later...

Chrisy

Sunday Oct 22, 2006
Gospel: Mark 10:35-45

Coming from Michigan, I grew up reading the Sunday edition of the Detroit Free Press. Well to be honest, as a child I really didn’t care about the Detroit free press but I really liked reading the comics every week. We would get home from church, change our clothes, eat lunch, watch the football game and read the paper….My Mom grew up in the Detroit area so she would usually read the paper cover to cover while my brother and I would each get a page of the comics to read and then we would trade with each other. As soon as we were done, we had to give them to Dad so he could read his “funny papers.” Dad would read the comics like Doonesbury, Prince Valiant and the Lockhorns, ones that we never read and didn’t understand. As we got older, we stopped getting the paper as often as before but when we did, Bear and I would read the comics and sports section but that was about it, other than the occasional article Mom might point out to us about something where she grew up.

These days, I find myself reading the Detroit Free Press almost every day online…among other newspapers online. It helps me to keep up on what is going on in my home state and has great coverage of my favorite hockey team, and of course these days my favorite baseball team. Since this past summer the paper has been publishing stories about Maddie Trudel and her father Paul. These stories began with a feature article about Paul on father’s day and his life now as a single father with a 7 yr old daughter with bone cancer. Maddie’s mother Alison had died 4 years ago with an unrelated ailment. Maddie is a very sick little girl….she has 6 tumors in her lungs and has had to have one rib removed. She has been though chemo, radiation and spends 75% of her time in the University of Michigan’s Mott Children’s hospital. The love between Paul and Maddie jumps off the page and they are very honest with each other. More than anything Paul just wants his daughter to be well, and if it were humanly possible Paul would take on the cancer and fight it for Maddie. He never wanted to be anything but a great Dad and a hard worker to be able to support his family. But Paul knew and knows that taking his daughters cancer away and battling it himself is not an option…still it doesn’t stop him from wanting it to happen, and it doesn’t stop him from wanting to ask god for a favor…

As Maddie got sicker this past summer she expressed her wish to go to Disney and see Cinderella. Two days before Maddie, Paul and her two brothers were scheduled to leave on the trip arranged by the make a wish foundation, Maddie was so weak she could barely lift her head up off the hospital pillow. She was heartbroken not to be going so Paul and many of the hospital employees tried to bring a Disney party to her…cake, 50 relatives and friends and even two Disney characters…but it wasn’t Maddie going to Disney…it was everyone thinking they were saying goodbye…after the party, Maddie, her dad and several of Maddie’s friends from Mott went on a limo ride around town… for Maddie to be able to see the city one last time as it appeared she wouldn’t make it through the night…

In today’s Gospel text, James and John came to Jesus asking him for a favor….a request that Jesus seemed pretty agreeable to at least initially . Jesus was a teacher, and he had many people that he was teaching, and many people making requests of him…just two Sunday’s ago, we had the Pharisees asking him about divorce, and last week people wondering what they would have to do to get to heaven and experience eternal life.…when James and John made this request of Jesus, he probably figured it couldn’t be any harder than those requests… until he found out what they were asking for…

Somehow the disciples have finally figured out that Jesus will one day be king, but it doesn’t seem to have sunk in what it will take to Jesus to take on the mantle of kingship…the disciples seem to be forgetting the part about the crucifixion and resurrection… They apparently still believe that Jesus will become an earthly king with a physical kingdom--these disciples are still the ones with the most knowledge but the ones that understand the least…they are still the men that not only want to figure out which one of the them is the greatest, but now two of them want to sit right beside Jesus when his is king. If they only knew what that meant.

Jesus tried to tell them…that they would have drink the same cup that he drinks and experience the same baptism that he was baptized with…James and John tell Jesus that they are able…they essentially say…See Jesus, we can already do all of that…won’t you please please please take us with you when you become king…Jesus responds that that decision is not his to make… Jesus has no control over who those people will be because those places have already been prepared.

Jesus then goes on to reemphasize a point he had already made. Who ever wants to be great must be a servant and whoever wants to be first must be a slave to all... we’ve heard that before…just this month…the last shall be first and the first shall be last. It’s not about who get to see at the right or the left hand… its about serving instead of being served, its about going outside of yourself and your little world and seeing what is going on around you and helping in any way you can. The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve…Jesus didn’t tell James and John that they would have to wash his feet 20 times and get him the best honey and locusts around and then after they had served him, he would do as they requested…No…. he reminded them that he was there to serve and in my opinion implied they were also…and serve Jesus did…the Son of Man came…to give his life a ransom for many. Jesus knew what his path was….that in is serving, he would be crucified…that when he was crowned King…the persons to his right and left were going to be criminals. Jesus came to serve and that is exactly what he did.

In many ways, just as Paul Trudel is doing right now…and Maddie and all of the people that surround this family. Paul is a tool and die supervisor at a Mercedes Benz parts supplier in the Detroit area, and went into the company office to fill out family leave paperwork when Maddie got sick. When Paul’s bosses found out what was going on, they told him not to worry about his job….work when he could, but take care of his daughter whenever he needed too. Paul estimates that he has missed 2/3 of his days scheduled to work and his paycheck has never changed. He says the people he works for and with are amazing. Paul’s company is serving Paul in a way they have the ability too…keeping food on his table and a roof over his head for the times when Paul is either able to get away from the hospital or the rare times that Maddie can leave and go home. Paul is an embodiment of Jesus’ love for humanity in the way he loves and cares for her daughter. He would do anything for her and will continue to do so for as long as she is on earth. And Maddie is serving too…she cares for friends at Mott, and tries to keep their spirits up when they are sicker than she is, she teaches the readers of the free press what it is like to be a child of the world facing almost insurmountable odds, but facing it with her game face on most of the time and being a scared little kid crying for her dad at others. And Maddie keeps on serving and fighting… She was released from the hospital Oct 10 and made the journey to Disney in Orlando. She brought two pictures that she colored to give to Cinderella in the hopes that she would see her. After going on several rides, Maddie met a Disney greeter by the name of Nancy who arranged a very special meeting for Maddie. In the middle of a room while Maddie and her family were resting away from the hot sun, Cinderella walked in and greeted Maddie and told her that she was a princess. Maddie was able to give both colored pictures to Cinderella, who exclaimed that her fairy godmother would love them and that she had the perfect place in her room for them. Maddie was on a high for two days, until the pain from her cancer and treatment returned…Paul gave her a higher dose of pain medication, and they flew back to Detroit the next day, taking the donated limo straight back to Mott hospital. Paul and Maddie can only hope and pray that the tumor behind her lung is not growing again. And I can only hope and pray the same thing for them, just as many people and churches are doing for Maddie and Paul.

Paul Trudel knows about serving…and knows that Jesus is right there serving with him, suffering with him, hoping with him. Paul gets strength from God. He describes himself as deeply spiritual. He prays so hard that "you can actually feel it coming out of your stomach, through your heart," he said. "There have been a lot of churches, in other states, praying for her." Today we, this church can serve God by serving the Trundels a little today, and join the cloud of witnesses lifting this family in prayer…Serving doesn’t have to be a huge bells and whistles event. It often isn’t. Many times, serving happens when we can’t do anything…when we feel helpless…when we like Paul can’t take Maddie’s cancer away… but we can always pray or think a good thought or smile at someone walking down the street…and we can have faith that Jesus is right there with us serving us… in our times of joy and pain…of perfect health, aches and pains and a 7 year olds with cancer. The Son of man came not to be served but to serve.
Amen