United Methodist Church Westlake Village

The Joy in Serving Others

• United Methodist Church Westlake Village

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Have you ever wondered about the real meaning behind Jesus's parable of the sheep and goats? This exploration of Matthew 25 takes us beyond simple interpretations into the heart of what it means to serve others.

The journey begins with a humorous confession about a teaching mishap involving teenagers and a misquoted Bible verse, setting the stage for a fresh look at familiar scripture. As we dig deeper into the text, profound questions emerge: What happens to grace in a story where people seem judged solely on their actions? Who exactly are "the least of these who are members of my family" that Jesus mentions? Does this refer only to fellow Christians or to all of humanity?

When paired with Jesus's Good Samaritan parable, we discover a revolutionary understanding of service that transcends tribal, religious, and cultural boundaries. This message resonates deeply because we all recognize moments in our lives when we have been "the least of these" – perhaps not lacking food or water, but experiencing vulnerability in other ways.

Through vivid stories of youth mission trips – from building wheelchair ramps on Native American reservations to constructing homes in Mexico amid challenging conditions – we witness the paradoxical truth Christians have discovered through centuries of faithful service: joy isn't just something we bring to service; it's what we discover through service. Standing just yards from the border fence between Mexico and the United States provides a powerful metaphor for the arbitrary divisions we create in a world where all are meant to be served.

Ready to discover the secret Christians know about service? Listen now to uncover how becoming a blessing to others might be the surest path to experiencing blessing yourself.

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Pastor Darren:

I start today with a little bit of advice. If you find yourself teaching this passage with a bunch of young people teenagers, let's say, maybe even you're on retreat with a bunch of teenagers and maybe even it is the culminating talk of the retreat and you're at the campfire and everybody's really pulled together and you're trying to solidify that theme and you begin to teach this passage and amidst all the I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink you mistakenly say I was naked and you visited me. That is going to lose the teenager crowd. That is going to elicit laughs and joy and any real hope that you might have driven your point home about the value of service will be lost. You may as well just pull out the s'mores material and go for it. That's just my advice to you if you are teaching this. The irony is it's a pretty good story to open a sermon 25 years later. Pretty good, I guess.

Pastor Darren:

Matthew 25, somewhat familiar passage, I think, probably people who have journeyed for a bit with their Bible and happened on this. It's a significant teaching from Jesus and Matthew, pretty straightforward too. We're supposed to serve others, right? Nothing too provocative there. We kind of know that was one of Jesus's things, right. But it is interesting when you actually dig in like you might getting ready for a sermon and like one question you might ask we got these sheep and these goats and we're all like dang, I don't want to be a goat, and it throws you into this place of well, where's grace then? That unconditional love? Where did it find its place? Is there no redemption for the goats among us? A second question is what's the nature of this blessing right, with the king separating sheep and goats, the sheep who served others and the goats who did not serve others? Is God handing out judgments? Is that how this works? Is God handing out judgments? Is that how this works? Or is it something like maybe some sense of the work being the blessing itself, the serving of others being its own blessing? It may help us answer this question of God's grace. In this passage, that grace, that unconditional love, is still there. It's just us. We cheated ourselves if we chose this goat route because we didn't get the blessing of being able to serve, to know what that feels like, to know what that relationship feels like.

Pastor Darren:

Now another interesting question about this passage, and we're doing like Bible study, to start this thing. Some of y'all really like Bible study. So here's, you're getting a little bit of it. And another interesting question, this last line. The king says truly, I tell you, just as you did it to the least of one of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. Interesting little caveat there To those who did it to the least of those in my family, you did it to me. Who's that family? Would that be the Christians? Is it the Christian family? Is he implying that this king's family is just Christians? Right, and we know the king is supposed to be talking about God and God's kingdom, meaning the whole world. So is he talking about just the Christians or was he really implying the king's family, god's family, being all of humanity? Are we to only serve the least of just the Christians? It's an interesting distinction to me. As I'm reading it I'm like, oh well, that's disappointing. You complicated this, matthew, you got it in there.

Pastor Darren:

And Matthew, for those of us who study our Gospels we know he's a little more hierarchical, he's a little more tied to the Judaic origins, so these kinds of distinctions sometimes are a little easier for him. But it's to me a little bit of a scary distinction, because we're creating this kind of separation, this illusion of a hierarchy amongst humanity that one is better than another. And my problem, my concern, my anxiety does this lead to some real division in a culture, in a community, in a society, a division where everybody thinks, well, they're in the right, right, we're in the king's family, you're not in the king's. Well, you know why you're not in the king's family. It's because you do that. Well, wait a minute, I'm in the king's family because I do this, and you can see how the divisions would start. And it may look a little bit like our culture looks today.

Pastor Darren:

I don't know, but I would put this passage up against a story, maybe from Luke's gospel, the story of the Good Samaritan. Some of you, many of you, another famous story we'll remember. It's the story of the man who gets robbed and beaten, left for dead, on his trip right, and other folks who are supposedly the ones who would help him. Don't help him, but who helps him? The good Samaritan. And I'll remind you, we were kind of rivals, slash enemies, with the Samaritans. So for the Samaritan to stop was actually not expected. That was contrary, that's counterintuitive. And so Jesus was pointing out, when he asked the question, who was the real neighbor, and it was the good Samaritan, the one who helped him out. But Samaritan the one who helped him out.

Pastor Darren:

It really does help us get a fuller idea, I think, of what Jesus means when he says we got to love our neighbor, and who our neighbor is. It's not just members of the king's family, but it's all of us, even our rivals, even our enemies. Nobody should be bereft of the love that we have been given to share with the world, in whatever forms we share that love, in whatever forms we offer it to others. We wouldn't want to pretend that everybody's all lovey-dovey. We know the world can be challenging, but there's always a form of love that we can share, you know.

Pastor Darren:

Taken with this emphasis, it's easy to me why people find comfort in this passage about helping the least. We like the idea that the least are being taken care of. Even in our current cultural environment, where we have concerns about whether we can afford to care for everyone, it's very few of us, I think, who don't want the needy to get the basics. We want to know people are being taken care of. We like this ethos, we like this belief. I think also that is why we like this teaching, because we all recognize that in some ways, in certain aspects of our lives and in our hearts, in our journey, we are the least of these. We know what our own vulnerabilities are. Maybe it's not water, maybe it's not food, but maybe it's love, maybe it's confidence, security. We know there are times when we are the least of these, or at least feel to be the least of these, and so we're comforted by this passage that says the least of these are going to be cared for, they're going to be looked after. It lands me right back to this guiding vision of the United Methodist Church here in 2025.

Pastor Darren:

And we tackle the second piece today serving joyfully. Serving joyfully, pay your taxes Joyfully, clean your room Joyfully, do all the detail work Joyfully. Doesn't it feel a little bit like that? Serving Wait a minute, Okay, we do it because we're supposed to, but don't put this marker on it. I don't have to be happy about it, am I right? Clearly, we're being urged by the United Methodist Church and through this passage, really from Christ, from Christianity, really from Christ from Christianity, to serve others.

Pastor Darren:

So in the journey, it took me to a story of my own life. I did a lot of youth work. I was one of those. For a while I thought I might be a lifer. You know that was what I was going to do, that was my calling. And then I got tired of sleeping on the floor at lock-ins, got to recognize your call.

Pastor Darren:

But one year, many years back I'm in the 90s, right when Nancy was doing her work here with your youth and we would go and take our church youth to Sierra Service Project, which I think you did a few times. I think that is part of your history here. Yeah right, sierra Service Project great program. You go off and you work on Native American reservations. You do work on their homes to get them more safe, get them more sealed and protected, and you learn about another culture too, which is kind of cool. Well, I remember when I first learned about Sierra Service Project and I was reading through and I says, oh and look, they pay you $150 to go to this thing. Then you read a little further and like, oh, no, you pay them $150 for the capacity, for the ability to go and serve.

Pastor Darren:

So I ended up. I thought, well, this will never work. But then I ended up at a church that goes every year, right. So I start going and I'm okay, I get this, I get this. I feel the warmth in my heart from this. I feel like our young people are learning the value of this. I feel the warmth in my heart from this. I feel like our young people are learning the value of this.

Pastor Darren:

So we went to SSP every single year, and there was one year I had been going enough that some of my kids were now going to be going to their fourth SSP and I thought, okay, I can feel they're ready for some movement, right, something. What's the next step we could take here? And so we started looking at a Mexico mission and we were up in Northern California. So that included more of a drive than it would have been from here. But a Mexico mission split my youth group. I'm going to take my older kids to Mexico. My younger kids we're all going to go to SSP again, and that year we took it was 63, I think unique people on mission in that summer, and so I wear it. It's a stripe I got. We took a lot of people on mission. Here's how I plan this out though young and foolish, we go to SSP.

Pastor Darren:

We come back on a Saturday. I sleep in my own bed one night and on Sunday we drive to Mexico Back-to-back missions. Second one, a mission we hadn't done before, so it's a first go. So we take our younger kids, we're all up at SSP. It's a really good trip, the kinds of things you would do. We learned about roofing, we learned about building wheelchair ramps, we learned about building decks. We're doing drywall in the houses, a lot of painting actually, because that's something that doesn't take too much training to be able to do. But we're getting into these homes and especially the kids are looking and they're seeing the need and then they're getting to fill that need. So it really was every year just such a good experience. But we come back, we have some car troubles, the whole deal, you know. And I get back. It's Saturday and I'm sitting on my couch and I'm thinking I got to go to Mexico tomorrow after this whole SSP adventure. Right, and I think we were in Paradise Valley that year, which is the desert, and I was on roofing, so I was roofing in like 105 degree weather. So I'm like, all right, here we go, tough guy's going to make this work. So we show up on the Saturday, I get one night in my bed.

Pastor Darren:

The next morning we brought both groups together into church, we celebrated the younger ones coming back, we sent off the older ones, we all hop into vans and we start cruising down Interstate 5, coming down to go to Mexico, and we start realizing that hot air is blowing through the vents onto everybody. In my big bus, you know. So, all nine, 10 people that are behind me, and there's one of these, uh, uh, well, 15 passengers with the van with the back bent, taken out. That's really hot, right, and we're like what's going on? What's going on? Meanwhile, driver, this guy is blowing. Fine, I'm getting cold air, it's great. Well, the teenagers behind me are like, oh, it's all fine. But I look back, they're taking their shirts off, they're sitting there in the back like, hey, it's hot. And what am I going to say? It's really hot. And you know, put your jackets on. I can't say this. So we get down. We're halfway down.

Pastor Darren:

We stay at my folks' house. There's 25 people in my folks' house. How many beds do you have in your house? They had about the same amount in my parents house, right, and so we're staying there. We took them down to the community pool. We hosed them all off, so they were, you know, clean them up.

Pastor Darren:

But I had to go down, take the van down, to figure out what the heck was going on with the cool air and the hot air. And so finally, I'm talking to the Chevron guy and he asks me this question right? He says, all right, there's a flap in there, it's broken. You've got to choose. Do you want all hot or all cold? I almost punched him in the face. It was July and we're going to Mexico, punched him in the face. It was July and we're going to Mexico. Cold please, I said without sarcasm.

Pastor Darren:

But then we go down. You know, and I've never done this thing I'm taking a bunch of kids into Mexico. They've got this thing. They escort you over. You're like, okay, I hope this all works well. And we get in and everything seems to be going all right. And then we get to the site, get in and everything seems to be going all right. And then we get to the site right, the site where we're going to more ministries you camp, so we have all of the equipment you need to camp, right. And you walk in and it's just this clearing, maybe football size clearing and they're like okay, just find a spot on dirt and I'm looking around, I'm not a camper, I had campers with me, I'm not a camper. And I looked around and I went what have you done? You brought all these kids to this crazy place, and you know. So I'll be honest with you. I grabbed a chair, I sat down and I said I need to sit for a while. You guys get started. Cool thing happens, though. That thing was set up in a half hour. They had dinner going in about 45 minutes. They all came together. This crew of young people and the adults that I brought down really came together. It was really pretty cool, right.

Pastor Darren:

And so the next day we start on our work adventure with the more industries you're doing kind of real work. We had to lay a slab, then we were going to build up walls and then have stucco walls and then we were going to have a roll roofing kind of roof. But we're building a building. We're not fixing stuff, we're building something. I remember day one we had extra large crew because it was our first go and I decided I'd rather do that than do two houses, right? So we get about two-thirds done with this slab that needs to be built and it starts getting dark and I'm looking at my kids again figuring. We got to drive back to our work site and I foolishly asked the workers. I said, well, can we stop at two-thirds and then we'll do the rest of the slab tomorrow? Any builders out here? How dumb a question was that one. Right there, you start a slab, you got to finish the slab. That's just how it works, right? But we hammer it out and we're doing the thing and we're mixing concrete. Next day we get our structure together and putting all the things in and finally we're climbing on the roof and we're putting all the roofing on. We do the stucco.

Pastor Darren:

It was just an amazing adventure because we thought we had seen need on the Native American reservations. Right, we thought that was real need. Then we went to Mexico and we're like holy smoke, there are houses that had garage doors. There are houses that had garage doors, likely from up here in the States, that were roofs that they had just put on the top of what was going on. And obviously you're not going to seal a house that way. You're just sort of shielding yourself. And it was such an eye-opener I remember distinctly at our work site. They pointed to a big, tall fence that we were maybe 50 yards away from and they said to me that's America. It was the weirdest thing, because we have this such a huge distinction between Mexico and the United States, and then to be staring at the literal distinction, which was just this tall fence, that we as human beings decided should go there. It was just such an eye-opener to the way our world has worked and the way it's been established.

Pastor Darren:

But we had a great time. We were camping in the evening and cooking and then we were working all day. We got this house pieced together. We ended up coming back on schedule, which was cool, and had a little fun on the way home, went to Laguna, laguna, maine Beach, played a little basketball, even got all the way home and I remember after the first week I was like I need a break. I got to take a couple of days when we finished the second trip, got back on a Saturday, had church worship on a Sunday. I showed up to work Monday morning ready to go.

Pastor Darren:

I think there's some secret that Christians have, and some other groups too, but we Christians we're kind of focused on it a little bit. The secret is we know the joy in serving others. We know the blessing that comes to us when we serve others. We know the blessing that comes to us when we serve others. We know the best way to get a blessing is to be a blessing.

Pastor Darren:

So when I see something like we need to serve joyfully, I don't hear it with that sort of odd connotation you need to clean your room joyfully. You need to get your house in order joyfully. You need to take your car into the mechanic joyfully. I don't hear it like that. I hear it as a reminder of the joy that comes from being part of the team that delivers joy, that delivers wholeness, that delivers healing, that delivers love to the rest of the world. We know there's joy in recognizing and having an experience of being part of the body of Christ and the empowerment that comes from feeling that I'm not just working alone here. I'm part of this movement that's blessing this world, that's building this kingdom, that's strengthening the love with which God has given us to share, serving joyfully. It can feel like a command, but we know differently, don't we? Amen.