Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, guys, this is Naim and you've reached the Mosaic Church podcast. So excited that you're part of our listening community and love for you to be even more connected.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: So check out our website.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: There's more content there and there's more opportunities for you get connected in our ministries and events as well. Also, love for you to share this content. If this is blessed to you. I know that God wants to use you to bless other people with it. So share this podcast you will. Lastly, would you consider supporting this ministry? This is made possible by other people's generosity, and I'd love for you to pay it forward.
Join us to reclaim the message and the movement of Jesus together. So would you consider giving to this ministry? I know that God is able to do immeasurably more through us when we come together. Thank you so much. God bless you. Enjoy.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Good morning. Good morning.
It's such a silly place to be. Mosaic. I love it. Thank you. Thank you.
You guys. Glad to be in the room.
Yes, I know. After two weeks of snow and ice, we're finally back here. And for those of you that are still watching online, we need to remind you that we are in the South. So when it snows, we literally don't know what to do with ourselves. Okay. The whole entire city shuts down, but everybody of all ages bundles up and goes outside to play. And it is so fun watching them from my window inside in my pajamas where it's nice and warm. Peter decided he coined the phrase during the last two weeks that we are inside mom and outside dad. And at first I was offended and I was like, you know what? In the winter, you're absolutely right. That's exactly who we are. Any other inside people, at least in the winter. Thank you, solidary Prince. I appreciate that.
No, it's really. I'm glad we're back. Cause it's something special right when we're here in person. And so we are continuing on with this series called what We Believe. Because people often ask us as a church, as leaders, as pastors, or like, what do you believe?
But I think you guys probably also get this same question. It's a very common question right now when maybe you meet someone and they're like, yes, I'm a Christian, and you have to go, but what do you believe?
Because it seems like right now there is maybe a vast array of Christians and maybe what it looks like to be a Christian, where not everybody seems to be agreeing on what that means and how it looks lived out. I know sometimes you Might see somebody that's a Christian and you're like, are we reading the same Bible?
We just have to differentiate here. And so for us at Mosaic, what that means is that we believe in living out the words, the ways and the values of Jesus.
So let me demonstrate it actually like this with all of these chairs that are sitting back here. Okay. These chairs represent different stages of maturity, of age, of faith. So some people sit here in this high chair. And this is, you know, baby Christians babysit in a baby high chair. And what they do is they sit there and they wait to be fed and then they eat whatever is just put here in front of them. They don't ask questions, they just take it in. And they assume that if it's given to them by someone that they trust that it's good and it's healthy and it's good for them.
Okay, Then we have people that sit here. I'm gonna pick it up, cause it's tiny. This is a chair from our toddler room. And so then we have toddlers. And toddlers, because they are mobile, will get up and go start to find their own thing. And it doesn't actually matter if it's something that's meant to be ingested or not.
They're going to put it in their mouths. Okay, so this is our toddler chair.
Then the next one we've got here is our teen, maybe the youth or adolescent seat. And people that sit here, I find, start to ask more questions. They might wanna wrestle or argue with you about some things. And maybe people that are sitting in this like adolescent in between chair are actually going out and trying things that they were never given as a kid. For me, that was Little Debbie's. Okay? But it can be a lot of different things.
People in this chair go out and they're like, well, I never got to experience that. So now I'm gonna choose for myself and I'm gonna ingest these things.
And then we get to the grown up chair, the adult chair, the one that most of you are sitting in.
And over here in the adult chair, you know, we try to be healthy and we learn about balance.
And so sometimes we know that the things that maybe are the best for us, we don't really enjoy them so much, but we do the best that we can to take them in anyway because it's healthy and it's the right thing to.
Now, none of these chairs are bad. None of these chairs are bad for people that are baby Christians. They are sitting in that chair. And that is exactly where they're meant to be. The issue comes when we continue to sit in a chair that maybe we should have already outgrown.
The issue comes when we don't find ourselves maturing. And if you've been a Christian your whole entire life, but you're still sitting in the high chair waiting for someone to feed you, it might be time to grow up, maybe move up in your seat and in your stage of faith.
And so what we believe at Mosaic is that no matter which chair you are in, the words, the ways, the values of Jesus will help you in your spiritual maturity as we all continue to transform and become more and more like Jesus.
So last week, Pastor Naim challenged us at the end of his message to take the words of Jesus seriously by picking one thing that he said and putting it into practice. And I really loved that when I saw that, because I'm like, yes, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna live it out. And some words that I go back to often will throw on the screen are found in 1 John 2. 6.
And it says, those who say they live in God should live their lives how, as Jesus did not just believe in Jesus, not just know the words of Jesus, not memorize the words of Jesus so we can argue about what they mean, but actually to live the way of Jesus. And so today, that's the question that I want us to ask ourselves.
Are we living the way of Jesus? Does the way we live look like him?
I want you to think about the last dinner party, party, or event that you hosted, okay? And think about, who did you invite?
You probably intentionally invited people because of what they were going to bring, okay? And I don't just mean like appetizers or desserts, but when people show up into a room, you know what they're gonna bring, right?
They bring something with their presence. When we show up at a party, when we show up in a room, when we show up in the world.
And so often we choose who we're going to invite or who we're going to include, because we know what to expect with their presence when they show up.
And isn't it unsettling a little bit when someone shows up with something that's unexpected or they show up in a way that's unexpected?
And maybe it is at a party, somebody brings a guest that you didn't plan for.
Maybe for those of you that are trying to date right now, there's someone that you've been talking to or texting with words, and then you meet them for the first time and you're like, huh, not the same person.
They didn't show up the way you expected them to based off of the words that they presented. We even see this on social media where people know the words of Jesus and they quote the words of Jesus. But then when they show up in your feed or in the comments, the tone that they bring doesn't necessarily represent the words that they have maybe on their own screens or the Bible verses that are in their bios. Here's the real question. When I show up in the world, what do I bring with my presence?
When I show up in the world, what do I bring with my presence? Do people trust my words because they see the fruit of what I say in the way that I live? Or do my words tend to land only as kind of like maybe empty because they don't line up with my beliefs? And so I say that I believe these things, but then when it comes to living out the words of Jesus, it's really hard to do.
So we're gonna look at a story today where Jesus shows up at a dinner party and he goes to this dinner and it's right before the Passover festival and he's there with his disciples and they're all gathered in an upper room, which basically just means like the top level of a home.
And Jesus knew exactly what was expected of him when he showed up to this dinner. And that was leadership. He was showing up as the religious leader, he was showing up as the teacher. And so he was going to walk them through this celebr of Passover, of remembrance and celebrating God rescuing their people from slavery. And Passover is one of those like deeply traditional things ceremonies. So if you think about like maybe your Christmas dinner or Easter brunch, like it's special and it's sacred, but it's also really familiar. And it's kind of the same year after year, like you do the same thing, you always have the ham.
So this is what they knew. They knew what to expect. And so we're gonna pick it up. In John 13:3 it says Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God. Now again, they did not know that this was just about to happen, but he did. So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing and wrapped a towel around his waist.
After that he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. Okay, so picture it. You're At Easter brunch at your family with your family, with all the people, and somebody that you think is about to stand up and bless the meal bends down and starts to touch your feet, okay? So picture this. This is what. This is how it would have felt to them.
So he came to Simon Peter in verse six, who said to him, lord, are you going to wash my feet?
Jesus replied, you do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.
Now, Peter often gets shade, okay? We're often like, oh, Peter, your resistance. You didn't understand why were. You have to ask all these questions. But if we're being honest, we would all have this reaction.
I already protest when I have to go to your house and take off my shoes, okay? I know spicy take for you that are like, no outside shoes in the house.
They're part of my outfit, okay? I need you to know that. Also, my feet get cold. I really would like to keep my shoes on, okay? So what's happening here is you're gonna take my shoes, and then when I'm trying to get after some deviled eggs, you're gonna bend down and start washing my feet. Absolutely not.
Do not touch me.
This is what Peter's thinking, okay?
At the time also, it was not just uncomfortable, but probably kind of unsanitary for this to be happening at the table where they were going to eat with their hands.
See, everybody back then wore sandals and they walked all over the place. And so there was dust and dirt in the street, and there was waste of all kinds. There was elimination from the donkeys and the mules, and all this kind of got kicked up and picked up on their feet as they were walking.
So it was a common practice for foot washing to happen, but it generally happened when you came into the household, and it was done by a servant or a slave or someone of very low status.
That's why we see Peter say in verse eight, absolutely not. You shall never wash my feet. Jesus answered, unless I wash you, you have no part.
We think that Peter is just uncomfortable or maybe even embarrassed, like we would be, I think, if that happened to us.
But he isn't resisting the water. He isn't resisting what's actually happening to him. What he's resisting is Jesus bending down low and lowering himself to do something that was considered beneath him.
Culturally, leadership only went one way.
The important people were elevated and the powerful people were served. And the religious leaders at the time would have stayed at the head of the table.
But Jesus, like we just read, knowing that he had all of the power and authority, used that to redefine leadership in a very countercultural way.
In the kingdom of God, your power isn't proven by who serves you, but by who you are willing to to serve. He completely flipped it around. So when Jesus says, without this, you have no part with me, it's not a threat, it's an invitation. He's saying, if you wanna have any part of me and the following me and the way I do things, then you need to actually know what it means to follow me. He wasn't just giving them words for them to believe good things. He was modeling for them a new way to live. And the invitation is, do you want to be part of living this way?
And so, to the best of his ability, as we keep going on, Peter kind of gets it. And he's like, all right, all right, all right. Well, then don't just wash my feet. Wash my hands and my head and all the things.
And Jesus answered, calm it down, Peter.
He's like, those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet. Their whole body is clean, and you are clean.
And then I just picture Jesus, like, remembering who else is sitting at the table. He's like, well, though, not every one of you. Judas. Judas.
When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place.
Do you understand what I have done for you? He asked them.
I don't think they did. You call me teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am.
Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you should also help me out, wash one another's feet. He's like, hey, if I am really your teacher, if I'm actually your teacher, then don't miss this lesson. It's not just enough for you to call me Lord.
And he goes on, he says, I have set you an example that you should do as I have done.
And then maybe, just maybe, because Jesus knew that people would people and look for loopholes so that we could choose to maybe only apply this to the people that were comfortable serving or were comfortable being around, he ends it again. And he says, very truly, I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.
Jesus, he's changing it. He says, there is no moral hierarchy. There is no spiritual standing. He had already told them just two days prior in the parable of the sheep and goats, that serving the least of these would be the way that they would serve him.
And now here he is, taking the words that he taught them, and he is modeling it, and he is showing them how to do it, demonstrating it with the invitation.
Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. Now that you know these things, you'll be blessed if you do them. And you can know the words of Jesus when you are sitting in all of these chairs, right? We actually put the words of Jesus to music for these different stages, so to help us remember them. So over here, we learn Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. And it's good for people here to learn that. Then we move up, and then maybe in this chair, we get to this stage. And then the song that we start to sing is Jesus loves the little Children.
So we've moved from Jesus loves me to Jesus also loves my friends Red and yellow, black and white they are precious in his sight Jesus loves the little children of the world and then we move up again, and then we maybe start to sing songs like, they'll know we are Christians by our love by our love yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love.
And when we get here, when we get to this seat, we sit down here, and then we go, okay, what does it actually mean to take the words of Jesus seriously?
And so let's read this verse again together.
Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
What that tells us is that the goal of all of this, the goal of spiritual maturity, is not to land here and sit in this chair.
It's actually for us to get up and to leave it, knowing that chair is always going to be there for us and no one can ever take it away. But the goal is actually to get up and to serve the people around us.
We mentioned a couple times that the last few weeks, you know, we were online only because of the snow. And I'm not gonna lie, it was kind of easy.
As a staff person, it was kind of easy. It took us about 90 minutes one evening to come in and record everything and get it ready. And we have to shout out Drew and Chris and Denny for coming in to make sure that Pastor Naim and I did not break the cameras or mess up anything with production.
But we are a small staff, and so we could do church online every single week, and our lives would be easier. We could do that if.
If creating content was what church was about, if just finding a leader that we could listen to their words and go check the box and go off about our day, then we could do church that way, but to create environments where people are invited in to be part of something.
It requires service.
It requires participation.
It requires someone standing at the front door when it's cold, when it's raining, when they'd rather be home making snacks for their football game or their Bad Bunny concert, whichever one you happen to be watching today.
It means that it needs people to serve our kids and to be in there loving them and talking to them about what it looks like for Jesus, to be their friend and to be super for them all the way through their lives.
You know, I'm gonna tell you, if it was up to just my husband and I to develop the faith of our girls, we would be in trouble.
Like, I really don't do as much spiritual stuff at home as you probably expect a pastor to do, and I have my own guilt to worry about with that. Okay? But what I do love is that both of my girls get to be here, and they have developed relationships with other adults and other people who do show them what the lived love of Jesus looks like for them, and they've gotten to experience that for their entire lives.
We could all just show up, take what we need, and leave. But when you're served, think about it. It changes the experience.
It's the difference between going and getting coffee out of a vending machine or having someone hand it to you and saying, hi, how are you? Careful. This is hot.
It makes you feel seen and cared for. It's a better experience when we're served.
This year, Mosaic turns 20. We're celebrating 20 years of being a church in Charlotte. And last night, I was at a dinner with some other people who have also been around for 20 years.
And before I was a staff person, I was a volunteer. I volunteered on pretty much every team imaginable, I think, except for security. So I guess I'll join that team next.
Derek, I'm not taking your job. Don't worry. Don't worry.
So we're talking last night with all these people that have been around for 20 years, and as I listened to the stories of not just how they found Mosaic, but also what kept them here all this time, all of the stories started, like, well, when I started serving in toddlers or, well, when I joined Mike's team.
And I'm so glad that Jimmy and Crystal are here this morning, because I was talking to them last night, and Crystal was telling me that when they used to serve coffee, it became more than just serving coffee and putting out the creamers. And Crystal told me that they would see people coming in from the other side of the building. And they had not only learned their names and about their families, but what kind of creamer they liked and how much. And so by the time people walked over to them, they already had their creamer ready and they would just hand it to them.
Not because they were trained to do that, because that's what it means to come together and to create an experience where you welcome someone else in and you make them feel seen. And you say, I'm so glad you're here.
Look at your perfectly creamered coffee.
I would mess it all up. You're all getting what I like is what I.
Serving also changes us.
When we help create a space for other people to experience Jesus, you're also creating a space of belonging for yourself.
And at Mosaic, we want to help you be able to live the way of Jesus.
You always have the opportunity to join in with what God is doing here. But today we're gonna be super intentional in asking you, who are you serving?
Do you know the words of Jesus, or are you living the way of Jesus?
So there is a circle, a white circle. It's called a tap tag on the back of the seat right in front of you. The chair that you're sitting in that looks like this front row. People already volunteer, so we didn't worry about you guys.
If you tap that, and you can either tap it with your phone or scan it like a regular QR code, and what's going to happen is it's going to pop up some things and if you hit that first one that says volunteer, it's going to open a volunteer form and you will get to see some different teams and different places that we are in need of volunteers. And a couple that I just want to highlight for you is mkids. We always, always are looking for people in M kids. You don't have to have an education background.
We will provide the curriculum for you. You will not be left alone in there. It's all good. If nothing else, you start singing them the songs, they'll be fine.
We are looking also for about 18 people, Pastor Mike said, for the hospitality team, where you can welcome and make coffee. And it also includes our security team. So again, if you're built like me and you want to be on the security team, we would love to grow that as well.
MX Our youth has middle school. At the 11 o' clock service, they gather then. And then in the evening, our middle schoolers and high schoolers come together and they're looking for people to come and hang out with the youth. Don't be scared.
I will actually tell you, though, I do have to warn you, if you sign up for MX to work with our middle and high schoolers, you will become a cooler person because they would love nothing more than to tell you of all the new terms and the slang and the trends. And they're gonna tell you because that is their thing. And our kids are so much fun. So if you want to do that, if you're like, I need to be a little more hip, come sign up with our middle and high schoolers. We would love that.
And we are humans. We understand this is relationship. Okay? If you fill out this form, when you fill out this form, it's not gonna lock you into anything. It just gives us your information. So we know, hey, we're gonna call you or text you and talk about where do you best fit on the team, where do you best fit in our community? And we're very relational and we're real people. We're not going to tell you that you can't go out of town because we're scheduled to serve and we truly do not want you to burn out. So we've got rotations you're not on every week.
We'll work with you in case you've got past maybe church serving experience that's making you nervous right now.
However, this is how we create the church that the world needs.
We serve the people that show up at our door and at Mosaic, we serve the people who have been told at other places that they could not come in.
We serve the people who have had doors closed in their face and they show up here and we serve them the way Jesus would serve them.
There's research by a company called the Unstuck Group and they found that churches that have a higher percentage of volunteers actually reach four times more new people.
Churches that are mostly staff run, they also see a 40% more decisions to follow Jesus in churches that have higher percentage of volunteers. And this is not about growth for like attendance metrics. This is not about growth for just the sake of being a big size. We're not trying to be a megachurch, but it's about reclaiming the message and the movement of Jesus in a way that is attractive and honest and healthy.
Because we believe that there are people in Charlotte who need to be reintroduced to Jesus.
We believe that there are people that you know who maybe like many of you have heard the words of Jesus, but they were not taught in a way that upheld his very counter cultural way of life.
They were not taught to get low and to serve in a world where no one was beneath them.
And there are people out there that are looking for a place that they can belong, where they feel like they matter even as they're working out their own spiritual maturity and growth.
And we get to create that place for ourselves, for each other, even as we are also growing and. And progressing.
See, the beautiful thing about Jesus is that we don't have to wait to get into a particular chair before we start living the way that he modeled.
But living that way might just be the thing that does actually help us to grow.
In Mark 10:45, it says, for the Son of man himself has not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life to set many others free.
See, I think for some of you, maybe you are in one of these first three chairs over here because this is where you are in your relationship with Jesus, and that's good, and that's where you need to be.
But I wonder if there are others of you who are in one of these three chairs because you accidentally have become stuck and you've accidentally become trapped by a narrow view of theology without even realizing it. And it's not your fault, because we're only held accountable to what we know. But maybe you've been taught that knowing is enough or believing in Jesus is enough, or that your faith is just between you and God. So as long as you're doing what you need to do and you're praying and you're showing up to church and you're believing and you're having your quiet time, that your personal salvation is fine, and so you're good.
Or maybe you heard the words of Jesus and they were presented to you as good news, but it was not good news that could be applied to all people.
And so what this verse in Mark actually reminds us is that Jesus served all of humanity to set us free.
He served you and me and all of us to set us free not just from a life controlled by sin, but from the limitations that have been put in place by religious leaders to set us free from all of the things that have been added on to the words of Jesus.
And so no matter which chair you're sitting in, no matter where you might find yourself, maybe today that is gonna be the thing that will help you be able to move up to your next stage in your faith.
And a really important detail that I don't want you to miss is the why behind Jesus mission to live this way.
And we see it actually in the setup Right before the passage that I read you, when Jesus washed his disciples feet, same chapter, verse one says, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
He loved them to the end. Jesus knew that his time was up, the disciples did not. But he knew, he knew he was in his last hours and he had a captive audience.
So what Jesus could have done in his last moments was to teach more scripture.
He could have laid out for us which sins are the really, really bad ones and which ones are worse than the others.
He could have explained what he meant by some of those parables so it was real clear and we didn't have to wonder.
He could have really like laid out and made it clear to say who belonged and who didn't.
Instead, love compelled him to serve the people in front of him, to kneel down before them and wash their feet, to let them know that they were loved and valued and worthy of everything that he had to offer them, that they were worthy of receiving everything that Jesus had.
So wherever you find yourself today, whatever chair you feel like you might be sitting in, I wonder if this can be the day where you maybe stop seeing church like a consumer, where you come in and make sure that you and you get what you need, which is important, but also that you decide to be part of the movement to reclaim the church, to reclaim Christianity by letting love and compel you to serve.
Because the world does not need more people who just know the words of Jesus.
It needs more people who are willing to live them out.
So let's be those people. Amen.
Amen. Let me pray that for you.
God, we thank you for who you are. God, we thank you for Jesus.
Lord, we thank you that this is not a top down power structure where you just tell us what to do. And like robots we just unemotionally obey God, we thank you that because of Jesus we get to be in a relationship with you.
So Lord, would you show us where we need to maybe turn a little bit outward? God, would you show us the people around us who need to be served?
God, would you show us the way that you have uniquely created us with gifts and skills and talents and personalities?
God, that can be used not in a manipulative way, God, not in a controlling or forcible way, but God, where you're inviting us in to use the things that you've given us so that we can serve other people and love them well.
God, help us to know in a word that sometimes can be inward focused, God, that your way is countercultural that you did this on purpose. Thank you for loving us, Jesus. Help us to show that love to others.
It's in your name we pray. Amen.
Thanks for listening to this message from Mosaic church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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