There is a thought that gives me pause to ask the question, "why are we here?"
It is a thought about stewardship:  Stewardship of the church's resources.
The Presbyterian Church in Canada has invested a lot of money into us. A Lot of money.
My best guess is somewhere between three quarters and a million dollars to date. The land alone cost half a million dollars.
That's a lot of money.

That money came because ordinary people like us put their offering envelopes into a plate Sunday by Sunday.
Many ordinary people like us.
And it is therefore our responsibility to be able to stand before them and give answer to how we have spent their money.
Was it for a cause that many many people would think worthwile?

Or here is an even more sobering thought:
What could the Presbyterian Church in Canada have done with over three quarters of a million dollars in Malawi?
How many wells could have been dug?
And you know wells means clean water. And you know lack of clean water is one of biggest killers in Africa.
How many lives of how many Malawian and Kenyan children is that?
Or what could that much money do in Guatemala where we are focusing our attention this year?

Now I want to ask you to think about the faces of all those people in Africa and Guatemala or north India.
Now think of telling them what we did with the money that could have done that much in their communities.
Can you think about standing in an African village and explaining how we spent the money they did not receive?

But we are engaged in building a church and hopefully that church will produce many new disciples for Jesus who will go on to making their contributions in even greater numbers.
The idea of course is that we will reproduce our faith in as many people as possible so that the seed money spent here will be multiplied in its effect here and abroad....right?

The scriptures we read say as much.
Jesus says I came into the world so that whoever might believe will be saved.
Then he says to us, "just as I was sent, I am sending you.'
And he gives us the task for which we are sent. "Go into the world and make disciples, teaching them to follow", and it is understood that he means, "just as you are following and obedient" There is no sense in us trying to teach people to follow Jesus if we are not.

Just now we are engaged in trying to build a church, both people and structures.
There is a great temptation when we are thinking about the church community that we are working toward.

The temptation is to say to ourselves "what I really want is..." or a different variation on the same theme, "all I really want is..."
That is is a great temptation to us. To approach the kingdom as if we were consumers.
When you go into a restaurant you say to the server, "I think I will have..." and then you place your order. Or maybe if you aren't very hungry you say, "all I really want is..."
That is good in a restaurant. Its what's expected in fact.

But when we go into a restaurant we are consumers. Here we are not consumers, we are disciples.
In a restaurant we pay the bill so we get to choose. Here we can never pay the bill. We are debtors to the grace of God and the generosity of others. What is expected is that we are good disciples of Jesus.

Let's look at Jesus own life.
When he is baptized, John says in effect, "you don't have to do this." Jesus says, lets do it to be obedient to God.
In the wilderness Satan says to Jesus, "you don't have to do this." Jesus says, man lives not by bread, but the word of God.
Peter says to Jesus more than once, "Lord you don't need to do this." Jesus says, "get behind me Satan.
In the garden Jesus asks "Father, do I have to do this?" and answers his own question, "not my will but yours".

Jesus says, "here is my food...to do the will of the one who sent me."
And so I would say to us once again, here is why we are here:

1. To do the will of the one who sent Jesus and who sends us. The only question that needs to be answered is "what is God's
     plan in this?"
2. To follow the one who sends us in return. Jesus said, "I came that any who will may have eternal life." Why"
    Because of what John 3:16 also says, "because God so loves the world."
    Ergo, we are sent not to satisfy our desires, but to reach out to the world in which we live.
    God so loves the world, Jesus so loves the world he lay down his life.
    We must so love the world we lay down our lives for it as well.

3. We are here on authority of Jesus to reach out to all we can to teach them to become disciples just as we
    have become disciples.

That's a rather formal reason. Listen to something more personal from a preacher named Matthew Woodley:

Two years ago I nearly ditched the pastorate. I started focusing on the negatives of my job: the Saturday-night sermon-anxiety attacks, a pitiful raise, the disintegrating basement tiles in the parsonage. After eight years of frantically meeting needs, pleasing people, and tracking down plant stands for weddings, I could identify only trace elements of spiritual growth in my congregation. A dangerous ice slowly spread throughout my heart—the ice of cynicism, the ice of pastoral sloth, an attitude that didn't care if people changed because, of course, they didn't want to anyway.

God didn't answer my prayer for escape. Instead, God resurrected the call to ministry during our family vacation to Libby, Montana.

While I was reading and praying at an elementary school park, three children with bag lunches, dirty clothes, and dirt-streaked faces plopped themselves on the grass beside me. Before I could object or move, the oldest child launched into a complicated story of family dysfunction: "Hi, my name is Deanna, and I'm 12; my sister is Kristy, and she's 10; and Mikey, my brother—doesn't he look fat in his Lion King T-shirt?—is 6. Actually, though, we all have different dads. My dad is dead; Kristy's dad disappeared; and Mikey's dad beats him up, so our mom is divorcing the creep. My mom and her fiancé, Larry, are at the casino because they need time alone, so she bought us all a barbecue burrito at the Town Pump and told us to stay in the park for two hours. Can we sit by you?"

In order to be polite, I said yes, then asked if they lived in town.

"No," Deanna, the family spokesperson, answered again. "We used to live in town, but my mom lost her job. I don't like living in a tent. By the way, what's your job?"

"Well, I'm a pastor."

After a long silence, she asked, "Mister Pastor, can you tell me something? I've heard stories about Jesus walking around healing people, loving people. Why doesn't he do that anymore?"

I launched into a lecture on the Incarnation. Three children simply stared at me with big, love-hungry eyes. I looked at Deanna and Kristy, with their limp burritos, and fat, little, abused Mikey, with barbecue sauce smeared on his Lion King T-shirt.

I stopped lecturing. With tears welling in my eyes, I said, "Deanna, Kristy, Mikey, let me start over. Do you have any idea how much Jesus loves you right now?"

How did God rebuild my call to ministry? He broke my heart again—with his love for these three children. ^1.

That is why we are here. To seek the will of God. To reach out to our world. To bring our world to Christ.
Whenever we do that with everything we have in us, we can look anyone in the eye, in Malawi, in Guatemala or in Toronto and say, we are being good stewards of God's resources because we are investing ourselves in our world, just as Jesus did.
The rest of the sentence, "all we really want is..." "all we really want is to do the will of God"
That is why God put us here.

Amen

Preached by Dr. Harold McNabb
January 20, 2008
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Notes
^1. Mathew Woodley, "My Second Call to Ministry," Leadership (Winter 1998); submitted by Kevin A. Miller, Vice President, Christianity Today International