Modern Worship

37:58 Well, this is Father's Day weekend. And as we continue in our series of sermons focusing on the beautiful game, what we're going to pay attention to this week is how our life of faith, just like the game of soccer, becomes beautiful when it's shared. And I want to begin by sharing what a privilege it was to be able to attend this past Tuesday's first ever World Cup game in Kansas City. I was able to do that and spend my time there with my son, Freddie. And it just so happened to be his 11th birthday. And so what a gift it was to be there. Here's a picture of the two of us at the game, taking it all in. And it was such an awesome experience. It was something that I got to share with my dad back in 1994 when I was about Freddie's age. And so it was so special to be able to be there, to be a part of it and to experience it. The only reason I was able to be there was because I was a volunteer. I was serving alongside Megan Del Grasso, who's our director of student ministries here at Leawood. And I was with her and several other students and student leaders who are preparing to raise funds to go on a serve trip to South Africa in July. And so there we were serving at this special event, and we were assigned the volunteer role of taking tickets, which meant for three hours, the three hours before the game, we had a front row seat to seeing the facial expressions and the disposition change of all of these Argentinians as they walked through the gate to enter into the stadium. And it was so contagious to see how they were so filled with excitement and anticipation. And it was almost like they couldn't contain it. And for three hours before the game, they were just singing and dancing and experiencing the joy and the power of what happens when we come together. To give you a sense for what this felt like, you've probably seen videos that have describe this, but this is what it felt like for three hours before the game had even started.

39:47 Let's take a look. There was so much excitement and nothing had even happened. They were just excited to gather together because there is power when we come together. We are better together. And you see this all throughout the game of soccer. It's this beautiful game because it involves other people. You cannot succeed in soccer by yourself because soccer is a team sport. It requires that you depend upon other people. And those other people, 10 other people to be specific on your team, they each have very different roles and unique gifts and abilities, different responsibilities. And your ability to succeed requires that you can work well with that diverse team, a team filled with people who have diverse skills and responsibilities and gifts.

40:48 and that's how you become successful is your willingness to see yourself as somebody who works with others. We become better together. And so I want to start by asking you that question. How are you at being a team player? How are you at working with people who are very different than you, who have different ways of seeing the world or different unique gifts or responsibilities, roles? Are you a good team player? I think about Lionel Messi. I think about arguably the best soccer player ever to play the sport, certainly the best today. And he scored a hat trick in his very first game in Kansas City, so he's pretty great. But for a long time, a lot of his detractors wouldn't consider him or even consider him to be a candidate for the greatest of all time because he had all these personal accolades. But for years, he was never able to win the World Cup with his home team, Argentina. He just couldn't do it until four years ago. And four years ago was a moment where he got to experience the power of a team. That Argentinian team, I don't know what happened the years before, four years ago, but that Argentinian team from four years ago was considered to be the most cohesive team to play the game, maybe even all time. They were not Messi's team. They were not a team built around one personality or one, you know, person or player. They were a team that was fortified, merged together, unified as one. They were Argentina, and they were able to accomplish extraordinary kinds of things. And so Lionel Messi, he became the greatest once he understood what it meant to become the greatest teammate. Same is true of superheroes.

42:28 And I know that these things might not make sense to you, but I have an 11-year-old boy, and he thinks Iron Man is the greatest on his own. Iron Man, maybe even he considers to be the best ever. But when he thinks about Iron Man as being the best ever, he'll even admit to me, my son Freddy that Iron Man has nothing when compared to his assembled team of superheroes known as the Avengers. When you compare the two side by side, there's no comparison. We are better capable of more things when we come together. This is true of Iron Man and Avengers. It's also the story with Wolverine, who is maybe the greatest, you know, of the X-Men, but he has nothing when he's on his own compared to the work that they do together as X-Men. They're more capable. They can accomplish more. The same is true of, you know, Superman and Batman. We can argue all day long about which one of those individuals is better, but when they come together and they form the Justice League, they are stronger, more capable. We are better together. There's more power whenever it is that we come together. And of course, this is church, and we should be talking about Jesus. And so I was thinking even about Jesus. You know, he enters into this world. This is the Son of God, the Word of God.

43:33 He is God with us. He comes to be with us under the cover of night on Candlelight Christmas Eve, in that little town of Bethlehem. He pierces the darkness as one solitary light and the darkness cannot overcome it. And he comes not to be a solo show. He comes not to go it alone so that everybody can be spectators and can watch and can celebrate with awe and wonder all of the things that this one can do. Jesus comes to us on candlelight Christmas Eve and he pierces the darkness, not so that we can watch with awe and wonder, but so that he can come and meet us where we are and invite us to come and to share in his light, to share in his life so that we could go and become part of the team, that we can go and let our light so shine before others that others would come to see our good works and give glory to God because of what they see in us. Jesus comes to us so that we might form this team, so that we might build Christian community together, so that we might have the capacity to carry on and do what he does.

44:32 I'm reminded of what the Gospel of John reminds us of. Jesus says, anybody who believes in me will also do the works that I do. And in fact, we'll do greater works than these. Jesus came to play with us so that we could become a part of this team. Because when we come together, we become better. We can forge forward and do things seemingly impossible things. The church is at its best when we don't see ourselves as passive spectators, people sitting in the crowd watching with awe and wonder. The church is at its best when we're one with God, one with each other, and one in ministry to the whole world. When we see ourselves as teammates, vital parts of the team, this is how we experience the beautiful life. It's better when we're shared, when we share it.

45:25 So I'm going to ask you a slightly different question now. Do you see yourself as a vital part of the team? Earlier this month, I had a chance to talk with Blake Arney, and Blake Arney is the voice of Sporting Kansas City. He dedicates most of his time to calling games, to bringing the game of soccer, Sporting Kansas City, to the masses. And when he calls these games, he calls them in such a way that invites all of the people listening to feel as though they are a part of the game, because he believes that to be true. When I was talking to Blake, he and I had this great conversation and we spent a lot of time talking about team and the power of team. And he talked a lot about describing how big the team actually is. He said, finding success in the game of soccer has everything to do with the entirety of the team. And that goes far beyond the 11 guys on the field. He says, in addition to those position players, he said, there are also backups and reserves.

46:22 There are coaches, there are training staff, doctors, equipment managers, others who support the players. And then you have all of those front office people in addition, the marketing team, the PR folks, the ticket sales, the advertising, operations, security. And he said, that's just scratching the surface. He said, good teams, they become great when every level of the organization sees themselves as a vital part of the success of the entire team. When everybody understands their role and the part that they have to play and how they contribute to making the team best. better together. Whenever this happens, he says, we become better. We become the way God intends us to be. We become living representatives of this picture of humanity at its best. This is a little bit more of what Blake had to share when we were talking about the power of coming together or the power of team. Let's take a listen.

47:19 Surrounding yourself with people that are leading you towards where you want to go is so important. I think you see that all across sports, but especially in soccer. At the end of the day, no team is going to be successful just because of one player. Like Messi can be as good as he is, but the best teams he's been on, it's because he's been surrounded by other players that know how to work with him. They know how to bring the best out of him. And to be honest, I think that's what makes him such an incredible player is he brings the best out of other players. And so when you have a team of people that are able to bring the best out of one another, I think that's kind of similar to faith where you know, I Of course have my my faith and I have uh My practices and the way that I do things But if I don't surround myself with people who are also going to help push me towards that I mean, that's what we're called to do We're called to be a body of believers and I think that that's so important to find one another and to push each other towards You know, whatever it is in soccer It's it's trying to work as a team to win games but in faith, it's, I want to push you to be the best version of you that you can be. I want to push you to living God's will out in your life because I'm trying to do the same thing. And if, if I do that on my own, I may get led a little bit of a, a little bit astray, but if I'm doing that alongside you and I'm doing that alongside a group of other friends or 11 other, you know, 10 other people, it's 11 of us out there. We're, we're able to at least work closer to that so that we can, you know, we can all try and live our faith out in the best way we can.

48:50 I just love this. I was talking with Blake about soccer and the power of team, and he begins to describe it to me in terms of faith. Why would we choose to go it alone when we become stronger together? We can encourage each other, strengthen each other, challenge each other, inspire each other. There's so much more power there when we come together in our faith. When I was talking with Blake, I was reminded of the letter to the Hebrews, the early church there, and I was hearing these words kind of echoing in my mind where the author says to the early church, let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day approaching. The author is describing this posture of encouragement. We need to come together. We need to draw near to each other, provoke each other, to always do the loving thing. And when the time gets tight or when things get difficult, we can't separate. We need to lean in all the more. We need to continue to encourage each other all the more. That's when we really have to stick together and never give up or give in. This is how we experience the beautiful life. As we were talking, Blake and I, he began to then take a tangent. And he said, you know, and I think that's the most beautiful thing about the game of soccer, which separates it maybe from any other sport. He says, even the crowd, soccer fans, they see themselves as a part of the team. Maybe this happens in other sports, but the commitment of the crowd seems to be something very specific to the game of soccer, meaning that the team extends beyond what happens on the field and the front office and the back office and all those kinds of things. The field extends, the team extends even to the crowd. The crowd is committed.

50:30 Soccer fans, they don't see themselves as spectators. They don't see themselves passively. they see themselves as a part of the team. And I think about this because, you know, in Kansas City, that's like the cauldron, which are these groups of supporters of the sporting Kansas City team. They will sing songs about their players. They will cheer. They will stand. They will persevere. And when things get difficult, they don't criticize. They actually cheer the louder to try to spur their team on because that's what teammates do. They don't divide or give up. They double down even when things get challenging. Or I think about the blue crew for the KC Current. Or I think about all of those other examples that we see and have seen over the last week of all of these different countries playing in the World Cup and the way that their fans are taking on their responsibility as members of the team, as supporters of the cause. I love the pictures of the Norwegians who are doing their row as they're rowing in their seats.

51:28 They're rowing up escalators. They're doing everything they can as Vikings to bring their team victory. These Norwegian fans see themselves as a part of the team. Or all of the Scottish fans, they call them the Tartan Army. They're walking through the streets of Boston, dressed up in their uniforms, playing their bagpipes, doing whatever they can to urge their team forward. You think about the Argentinians singing and dancing hours before the game starts and all throughout the game, no matter what happens, each one of these groups of fans, they see themselves as extensions of the team. They're a vital part. And they're going to do everything that they can because they know the power of what it means to come together. And I think this is what Jesus wants us to recognize. The living body of Christ, the church, becoming a disciple or a follower of Jesus, it means that we need to shift from this mentality of being passive spectators or being the crowd watching with awe and wonder to becoming supporters.

52:30 to seeing ourselves as vital members of the team, called and equipped to do our part. It takes all of us. And so I'm going to ask you, what are you doing? What is the role that you're playing as a vital part of God's team? This past week, I connected with Samir Loyo Renaga and Shannon Teft. Shannon and her family, they have been recently attending our church. And after the first sermon in this series on the beautiful life and the beautiful game, she messaged me. She said, you need to meet Samir. Samir is a professional soccer player. He was recently signed to a five-year contract with Sporting Kansas City. And he was the youngest player ever to play a game for Sporting's second team at the age of 14. And then at the age of 15, he's projected to be one of the youngest ever to play for Sporting's first team. Samir moved to Kansas City three years ago at the age of 12.

53:26 to play for Sporting, which is how Shannon Teft and her family got to meet Samir for the very first time because they had signed up to be the ones to take him into their home so that he could develop and grow to become the soccer player that he is today. And I wanted you to hear a little bit about their story from our conversation this past Monday. Let's take a look. My husband and I saw this opportunity on Facebook to be a host family for Sporting Kansas City for their academy players. and I asked my husband Brian and he said, absolutely not. And then as any good wife does, I asked him two weeks later after I'd already done the paperwork. And he said, you really wanna do this, don't you? And I said, yeah. We met his family on Zoom on Christmas day of 2023. And he moved in, I don't know, three weeks later of January of 2024. I was really nervous at first because obviously, I mean, I was 12 and coming to move into a new family or like different was very different.

54:30 So I was actually really nervous, but it took me like a couple of days to kind of settle in and just like realize that I'm going to be here for a while. So then after that, I mean, I was pretty, I started to get pretty comfortable with them, started to talk to them a little bit more. When we approached this as a family together, you know, asked the boys and they were excited and what we didn't realize was the things that we would gain. I think, you know, we knew we would contribute to his overall success and we would help him out, but the things that we gained back are the things that I didn't realize would be so impactful. So things like seeing his work ethic, seeing his bond with his family, same things we have in our household, but for our boys to see that like on this level in the pro environment, I think that that has been something that you wouldn't see otherwise and has been really remarkable.

55:22 I think just because of the people they are, having other people support me kind of pushes me to go even farther. I think that just helps me a lot and even when I'm really tired and just having the nice people to like asking me, oh do you want me to make something for you since you're really tired? Just kind of that little the little stuff just helped me and motivated me even more. While we put something into us, we also gained a lot back out of it. And Zamir will be our family forever. So he's in our Christmas name drawings and he's wearing matching PJs on Christmas morning. Like he doesn't he doesn't get to get out of all those fun things, but yeah, he's with us forever. As I met with these two, I just found myself so impressed by Samir. And I was thinking about, here's a 15-year-old who, for the last three years, he's been living, starting at the age of 12, like in a different city without his family.

56:23 And he's playing professional soccer against like grown men. Like, who does that? And yet he's succeeding. And I was so impressed by his devotion and his discipline. Here are some pictures from when Samir was much younger as he was growing up. He was encouraged by his family and supported as he was growing as a player. His dad mentored him and shaped him and trained him. And it's just so cool to see all that he's becoming. I mean, he's making it, becoming the best version of the person that God created him to be. And it was just inspiring. But as I was thinking about that encounter, I was also becoming increasingly impressed by the Teffs as well, by Shannon and her family. And I was thinking about none of this would have been possible if Shannon and her family didn't take it upon themselves to welcome Samir in, to care for him, to love him, to encourage him, to support him, to treat him as though he is one of their own. And this was them being teammates. This was them playing their role. And with all the success that he's inevitably willing to experience, like you'll never see the Teft family on any of the stat sheets. They're not going to get a ring or be able to hoist a trophy because of his accomplishments.

57:34 but they're a vital part of the team. They know their role and they're living into it fully because they recognize the power of what happens when we all come together, when we all do our own part, not for our own glory, but for the common good. And I think this is so beautiful when it comes to understanding our life of faith, just like it comes to understanding the game of soccer is it requires all of us coming together with all of our own distinct and diverse gifts and abilities to have the courage to employ them, to do our part so that we can together experience the beautiful life. And I think this is what our life of faith is intended to be. The Apostle Paul, he says, beauty emerges in community. It doesn't happen in isolation. And he starts these churches all throughout the Roman empire. And one of those churches was the church in Corinth, the Corinthian church.

58:28 And he was the founding pastor of this community. He spent 18 months there as its pastor. They were a strong, influential, dynamic, growing church. But once he left this growing church, this dynamic church, they began to struggle. The vision began to arise as people began to become disinterested or they forgot the mission or the vision and they began to see their differences as divisive. Their disagreements led them to move astray, to become divided. And so Paul, he writes these letters to the Corinthian church. And in his first Corinthians, the first letter to the Corinthian church, he's trying to encourage them to carry on, to realize that they're all on the same team. They're one with each other. And he starts to describe all of the different gifts, but the same spirit. How this spirit binds us all together despite our diversity in a way that leads us to this picture of beauty. This is what he writes in the scripture that we read today. There are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit.

59:28 There are varieties of services, but the same Lord, and there are varieties of activities,

1:00:33 is, to put it mildly, remarkable. It's a picture of community where each one of us is empowered by the Spirit or gifted with extraordinary gifts, and nobody is excluded. The church, our life of faith, what it means to follow Jesus involves everybody pulling together despite our differences. It takes all of us coming together. We are all considered to be a vital part of the team, and that's what I see every time it is that I lead in worship. You know, I have this perspective or this vantage point of looking out over the entire congregation every time you stand on this chancel. And when I look out, what I get to see is the full diversity of the gifts of this body of faith, of this living body of Christ. And I look out over the crowd and what I get to see are all these different people. And I get to look and I get to see the compassionate and the caring kinds of people. I get to see people who are way smarter than me, who are gifted with, you know, wisdom and reasoning and logic and memory and all those different kinds of things. I look out and I see that we have welders and I see that we have salespeople and consultants. I see that we have doctors and lawyers and CEOs and CPAs and students and kids. I see all of these different people, each with their own gifts, coming together to create something entirely different and absolutely beautiful, comprised of distinctly different people with different worldviews and gifts and responsibilities and abilities. And yet when we bring them together for the common good, what happens is something extraordinary. We become one with each other and one with God and one in ministry of the whole world. And we get to experience the beautiful life here on earth, just as it is in heaven. This is what Jesus does. He chooses us. He calls us. He invites us.

1:02:24 He equips us. And then he challenges us, inspires us to go and do likewise, to follow him as we seek to love one another the way that he loves us first. And when we do that, when we say, you know, here I am, Lord, send me, he will fill us with the power of this Holy Spirit, that same spirit that binds us all together. And he'll send us forward in ways that we can accomplish far more together than we could ever do on our own. And this is the power of community. A beautiful life is shared. The beautiful game is shared. We are better together, but it takes all of us. But it's challenging to work with people who are different than us. Sometimes it's exhausting to spend time with people who see things differently, have different gifts, different roles or responsibilities. And then sometimes it's challenging because life gets really hard or painful and we experience loss and we just don't want to be with other people. But good teammates, even when it's challenging, when you want to give up or give in, become divided because of your differences, the best teammates don't abandon the team. They turn toward each other all the more. Which brings me to my closing video. I was thinking this week of Ted Lasso, which is this, you know, TV series about a soccer coach, and And I'm sure you're familiar with it.

1:03:56 But one of my favorite episodes, scenes, happens in the final episode of the very first season. And it comes not at like a high point, it comes at a low point, perhaps the lowest point of the whole first season. Richmond has lost their very last game and that meant they were gonna be demoted from their league down to an inferior league. And so everybody is dejected. And if ever there was a time to separate, to divide, to give up or give in, it's like in that moment. And it was in that moment that Ted Lasso offers this word of encouragement to his team that is just at the depth of their despair. Let's take a look. Hey, y'all played a heck of a game out there. We may not have won, but y'all definitely succeeded. I mean, you gave the champs 90 minutes of hell. Zerow, where you at? That dude had more saves than a Baptist preacher. Give it up for Zerow.

1:04:49 Yep. That's right. What about Roy? Roy chased down his grandson. Stopped him from getting an easy one. Now look, this is a sad moment right here. For all of us. There ain't nothing I can say standing in front of you right now that can take that away. But please, do me this favor, will you? Lift your heads up and look around this locker room. Yeah? Look at everybody else in here. And I want you to be grateful that you're going through this sad moment with all these other folks. Because I promise you, there is something worse out there than being sad, and that is being alone and being sad. Ain't nobody in this room alone.

1:05:42 Sam, do you remember what animal has the shortest memory? A goldfish. That's right. It was a goldfish. Sam, what do you think we should all do once we get done being sad and or angry about this situation? I think we should all be a goldfish. I agree. Let's be sad now. Let's be sad together. And then we can be a gosh darn goldfish. I love that scene. And he just has them looking around the room at each other in the locker room. And he encourages them to realize they're not alone. And I think that's the greatest gift that God gives us. He gives us each other. And he equips each one of us with these unique gifts and skill sets that allow us to become better together. But it requires that we remember that we're all inspired by the same spirit.

1:06:38 God chooses us and invites us. Jesus calls us and asks us to do the same things that he does, to be a part of the team together. And it takes all of us saying, yes, here I am, Lord. Use me. So what will you do? What role can you play? How can you be the best teammate you can be? And as we find that out for ourselves in our own unique way, let us come together and employ our gifts to become the best supporters, the best teammates, the best Christ followers we can be until we experience the kingdom of heaven here on earth just as it is in heaven. Would you pray with me? Gracious God, we pause and we thank you for today. And we thank you for choosing us and inviting us to follow you, to do so together with this community of the faithful.

1:07:39 People each bringing their own gifts, being a part of this team to make a difference, to change the world, to do things that we couldn't do on our own, but when we come together, anything could be possible by your grace. And so inspire us to take our part, to take action, employ us, use us, and do so together that we might experience your kingdom. here on earth. In Jesus name.