Friday Morning Prayer – Sept. 28, 2010 -- Lisa Morton
For the past two summers, I’ve worked for YouthWorks, a non-denominational mission organization for
youth. Here are some things you need to know about YouthWorks: YouthWorks hires 4 or 5 college
students to organize and facilitate week-long summer mission trips at one of 76 sites across North
America. Each site hosts about 70 Jr. and Sr. high school youth and their leaders per week, guiding them
to work or service projects and children’s ministry in urban, small town, and rural communities. The
youth also prepare meals for each other and clean the housing site in service to one another, under staff
leadership (just imagine: You, 1 kitchen, 1 meal to prepare, with 15 high schoolers, for 70 hungry
teenagers and adults, and usually with only 1 working can opener; and the destruction of each meal to
follow). While the youth work and build the Kingdom by day, they worship and grow in relationship
with each other and with Jesus by night.
That was my job. As a program coordinator for YouthWorks this past summer in the Adirondack
Mountains of upstate New York, it was one of my responsibilities to facilitate worship and give a short,
Christ-centered talk each night based in a thematic curriculum. I was the teacher. I was the one helping
the youth live “attentively” in Jesus’ presence. In this week’s portion of On Our Way, we are encouraged
to walk with Jesus, “notebook tucked under one arm, scouring the landscape for teachers: the widow,
the traitor, the child, the fields.” As many of you well know better than I, how quickly the teacher can
become the student.
In my talks each night, I wanted to share Jesus’ attitude, his servant’s heart. So, I was vulnerable with
the youth and shared some of my most difficult battles, my most debilitating fears, and the
incomparable freedom found in surrendering each to Christ.
As you can imagine, a summer of vulnerability can provide for some beautiful, genuine relationships.
Especially during week 4 of programming, I made particularly strong connections with the youth and
adult leaders, seeing and cherishing Jesus’ joy, love, and depth I saw so clearly in each of them. Jesus’
clear presence encouraged me, enlivened me to share more openly, to go deeper, to be more
vulnerable. Taking the attitude of a servant, I was also humbled that week. I don’t know why I was so
shocked, but with one single moment I was betrayed and rejected, mocked by the ones I loved and
whom I knew loved me.
Another thing you need to know about YouthWorks: Every Thursday evening of the summer, all across
the continent, at about 9:30pm, youth were encountering Jesus’ humility in a foot washing service. The
staff washed the adult leaders’ feet and prayed over them individually, the adult leaders then washed
their youths’ feet and prayed over them individually. In a foot washing ceremony, we remember that in
Jesus’ final hours with his disciples, he takes the duty reserved for the lowest household servant and
washes their feet; all to remind us in this climactic moment, right before his arrest and his
condemnation to death on the cross, Jesus reveals why he has come: to serve. Us. Out of love.
My deepest connection made during week 4 was with a youth named Adam Kiefer. To give you an idea
of Adam’s character, he is the crazy charismatic, who never, in all his liveliness, loses his genuineness.
Adam is Jesus’ joy embodied and words cannot express him or my love for this younger brother in Christ.
So that night, after being betrayed, rejected, and mocked, participating in Christ’s sufferings, His
humility, his humiliation, you can bet I was scouring my mountain landscape for a teacher. Like Jesus, I
knew that these week-4 brothers and sisters knew not what they had done. But I had a deep desire for
Jesus’ resurrection to be made manifest. I didn’t want to just share in Jesus’ death- I wanted to share in
His rising! I wanted to experience the power of His victorious love!
Then, I remembered that my “attitude should be that of Christ Jesus,” who “made Himself nothing.” So
I dismissed this desire, thinking it selfish, and prepared for the foot washing ceremony that was to take
place that same evening. I organized, facilitated, gave my talk, washed adult feet, prayed over them,
and left to a private room for the nightly staff team meeting. I doubted the possibility of any more
teachers that night. A typical Thursday…but with the added weight of the cross looming over me,
casting a darkness across my landscape.
While discussing typical business in the staff room, there was a knock on the door. It was Adam and two
other young men, Chase and Chase, who walked in with a basin and a towel. They asked us if they could
wash our feet. One Chase prayed a prayer of thanks for the team, the other Chase washed our feet, and
Adam prayed over each staff member individually. And breaking through that dark landscape, brighter
than the day, was Adam, who started with me. He thanked God for me, and couldn’t wait for the day
when he’ll see me again in heaven where we’ll worship together, praising God in the name of Jesus
forever!
While scouring our landscape, notebook tucked under one arm, looking for teachers, open your eyes to
the stars. In On Our Way, one author reflects on basic astronomy. He writes that stars, whose light
takes years upon years to travel to us, are a collision of the past meeting the present. The star that you
see in the night sky is a vision from years ago. So, all of the work that star did to shine, to create light, in
the past, happens all over again in our present. Every star shines with all it has done, and gives us a
chance to see that it has been shining even during the day and a hope to wait and see how it will
continue to shine in the darkness of the next night.
Adam, Chase, and Chase, are stars. Shining in the work Jesus did years ago, happening all over again in
this present. They took the very lowest place and made themselves nothing to serve me through Love
Himself. In my darkness, in my brokenness, Jesus shined through three youth who I confidently expect
to see again, shining, praising God forever on that day when every knee bows and every tongue
confesses the victorious love of Jesus, our Bright Morning Star.
How will you stargaze, looking for Jesus here and now in the widow, the traitor, the child, the fields?
And how will you shine?
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
A reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians:
5Your
attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
The word of the Lord.