How do you show your love for Jesus?

It’s not by voting for a particular candidate in the election of our next Virginia governor. It’s not by understanding the history of Presbyterian thought about predestination. Nor is it by achieving perfection in your personal life, and showing unblemished morality in every situation.

No, according to the Bible, you show your love for Jesus by feeding his sheep.

Today is the sixth and final sermon in our series on the mission and identity of Fairfax Presbyterian Church. Please, no applause. We started on September 18th by focusing on how we understand ourselves to be a Community of Faith that is sent out to do Christ’s work in the world. I mentioned on that first Sunday that this idea of being sent has connections to being mission-minded, because the word “mission” comes from the Latin word that means “to send.”

Being sent out to do Christ’s work is at the heart of being a mission-minded church. Our sermon-series has now come full circle, from being sent in the first sermon to being mission-minded in the last.

But what does it mean to be a mission-minded church?

Jesus gives us a clue when he sits down with Simon Peter a few weeks after the resurrection. Jesus says to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” Simon Peter is no doubt surprised by this question, and he says, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus says to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time Jesus asks him about his love, and Simon Peter says yes, leading Jesus to say, “Tend my sheep.” Then a third time he asks the question, and this time Peter shows that he is hurt; he says, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Once again, Jesus says, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17).

A lot of people have wondered why Jesus asks this question three times, leading to three expressions of love from Simon Peter. The explanation that makes sense to me is that Peter says he loves Jesus three times in order to cancel out the fact that he denied Jesus three times. But for our purposes today, it is more important to focus on what Jesus asks Peter to do in order to demonstrate his love. “Feed my lambs,” says Jesus. “Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.”

To feed Christ’s sheep is to help anyone who is in need of physical, emotional, or spiritual nourishment. Serving others is what demonstrates our love for Jesus Christ, and it is what is at the heart of being a mission-minded church.

We feed Christ’s sheep by giving of ourselves in at least three different ways — through gifts of our treasure, our talents, and our time. Your gifts of treasure are offered primarily through your pledge to God’s work at FPC, which we have been focusing on throughout our fall stewardship campaign. Did you know that there are 26 different mission organizations that are supported by your pledges? All are dependent on your generosity in order to do the work of feeding Christ’s sheep. Our stewardship campaign has been encouraging every one of us to tithe, to give 10 percent of our income, so that funds can be available to help the homeless, minister to prisoners, assist the Children of Chernobyl, and ease the suffering of AIDS orphans in Africa. It isn’t right for us to cut corners on projects that do exactly what Jesus commands his followers to do.

I love a recent Dilbert cartoon — one that surprised me by addressing the issue of tithing. The character Dogbert says to Dilbert, “I decided to start a discount religion. The tithing would only be 5 percent and I’d let people sin as much as they want.”

“The only problem,” says Dogbert, “is that I don’t want to spend time with anyone who would join that sort of religion.”

How about you? Do you want to be part of a discount religion, or one that digs deep in order to feeds the lambs of Christ?

We give of ourselves through gifts of treasure. But we also offer gifts of talent, which is what Lisa Armstrong does every day through her medical mission in Honduras, and what we members of the Midlife Men on a Mission will do when we construct a dining hall at the Christian camp Rancho Vida, and help install a generator at the Plan Escalon School. Even if our talent is limited to lifting concrete blocks — which is about all I can do — our efforts help to care for the lambs that Christ has entrusted to us.

We can also offer the gift of time, which is a tremendous need in our fast-paced, over-committed world. A few weeks from now, when the chill of winter will have taken hold, many of the homeless in our area will be looking for a warm place to sleep. This is a matter of life or death for them, as the cold killed two people last winter. This year, our homeless brothers and sisters will have a warm place to sleep every night of the winter, from December through March, because 17 area churches have banded together to provide shelter from the cold. FPC has volunteered for the week of December 12 through 18, and we need church members to give the gift of time as we host the homeless in our fellowship hall. I can think of no better gift to give, especially as we prepare to celebrate Christmas, and as we remember the baby who was born outside, on a winter night.

Lou Major will tell you more in our Stewardship Word, and is distributing forms today so you can indicate how and when you want to help the homeless in December. You can put these forms in the offering plate today, or drop them by the church office.

Gifts of treasure. Gifts of talent. Gifts of time. This is how we feed the sheep that Christ has given us, and how we demonstrate our love for Jesus. If we live this way, we will find the deep happiness that can come from focusing on others, instead of on ourselves. Jesus says that those who save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives for his sake will actually save them. It is only in giving of ourselves that we discover the profound joy and peace that Jesus desires for each one of us.

So let’s embrace the challenge of feeding the lambs that Jesus has put before us. Serving others is what we are sent to do, and it is what makes us a mission-minded church. Amen.