One Person, One Place at a Time.

If you haven't met yet, my name's Abbie, and I have the honor of being the pastor here at New Culture. I'm so excited to be diving in this fall to a new series titled Create the Culture. So we're pausing this fall to take time to really go back to what we feel like the Lord has invited us into as a church community. A few things I want to note before we're going to be reading in Luke chapter 8 and 9.

If you have your Bibles, you can start to pull open to Luke chapter 8. We have our welcome table, our resource guide for this series. Every time we're preaching here at New Culture, we want you to be diving into the word outside of this. So we have some scripture readings and practices for you to do during the week, that we're going to be practicing together as a community. Want to make sure to get that in your hands, or it's on our website.

We're going to start today talking about creating the culture of Christ together in Madison, focusing on how we do this one person, one place at a time, following the ways of Jesus. Because Jesus, when we see him all throughout scripture, was on a mission to seek and to save the lost, to bring people into his kingdom. But we see he did that one person, one place at a time. So as we ask, what does it look like for us to be like Jesus, to be his hands and feet, we go to scripture and look at the life he lived.

Luke 8: the woman who could not go unnoticed

If you have your Bibles, or it'll be on the screen, I'm going to start reading in Luke chapter eight, starting in verse 40.

Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him. Then a man named Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, came and fell at Jesus' feet, pleading with him to come to his house, because his only daughter, a girl about twelve, was dying. As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him, and a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. Who touched me? Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you. But Jesus said, someone touched me. I know that power has gone out from me. Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet in the presence of all the people. She told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace. While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. Your daughter is dead, he said. Don't bother the teacher anymore. Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, don't be afraid. Just believe, and she will be healed. When he arrived at the house of Jairus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John, and James, and the child's father and mother. Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her. Stop wailing, Jesus said. She's not dead, she's just asleep. They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But he took her by the hand and said, my child, get up. Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat. Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened.

Luke 8:40-56

Let's pray again today. God, we just thank you so much for your word. We thank you that we can read it today and that your Holy Spirit is speaking to us. God, I pray that for these next few moments, would you meet us? In the same way that you noticed that woman, God, we know that you notice us, that you see us and that you are with us. So we just surrender everything else, and we just say, Holy Spirit, come speak. We're desperate to hear from you, to be transformed by your word, Jesus. In your name we pray, amen.

There is something so special in our lives when we feel seen, when we feel valued, when we feel noticed. I want you to think, when's the last time someone said something to you and you thought, I just feel so seen? They know me, they get me, this is real. This wasn't the very last time for me, but maybe about a year ago, I was flying, and I like to pride myself on having my travel stuff down when I have to do quick trips. I've got my really basic black backpack that goes everywhere with me, slides on top of the roller bag when I need it, can just be a carry-on. I'm sitting there after a long flight, and I'm always the person with my water bottle and my coffee and my compact backpack that should be all I need.

And then last minute I think, oh, I forgot this. Okay, I guess I'm bringing another bag with me. So the plane stops, we're ready to board, and I'm sitting there trying to balance everything. I see this kind man at the end of the row grabbing the black backpack and pulling it down.

And I have this moment of, oh my gosh, he sees my struggle of trying to balance everything. He noticed me, he saw me. I said, sir, thank you so much for grabbing my bag, that's so kind. And he looks at me and says, oh, do you want me to get yours too? It wasn't my bag.

It was his same basic black backpack that I was thanking him for grabbing. Meanwhile, it was his. And now I'm just like, oh yeah, sure, if you can grab mine, that'd be great. But it was that little moment where I thought, he sees me, he notices.

Because in so much of our life, we're surrounded by people, yet we can feel so unseen, unnoticed, and all alone. In the story we read, Jesus was physically surrounded by people. And we read about one woman. Verse 47 says, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, she came trembling and fell at his feet. This line right here is what I want us to catch today.

When we encounter the presence of Jesus, when we are drawing near to him, it is impossible for us to go unnoticed. Jesus sees you today. He sees people even surrounded in a crowd. He sees the individual need. He hears the individual voice, and he's a God who stops, a God who heals us and restores us for the specific things we need in the moment.

So when we talk about what it means to create the culture of Christ, the patterns, the customs, to follow in his ways, to practice his ways, it starts with us recognizing that we are seen, and we too are invited to see and notice people where they are. Even in the middle of our busyness, our crazy schedules, our back-to-back meetings, appointments, work, whatever it is, to be like Jesus and notice the people in front of us. Jesus here in this story sees this woman on his way to something else. Today, as we walk through some of these things, I want us to notice that Jesus sees, but he sees right away, in the middle of an interruption. I don't know about you, but I struggle all the time with interruptions.

I was studying for this message, sitting out with my tea on my quiet little patio, all alone. I live in a condo with a shared fence, very close living quarters, which I love most of the time, when I'm wanting to be interrupted. And lo and behold, almost every time I'm sitting there for a quiet moment, my neighbor pops his head over. Hey, how's it going? And it can creep up in me, why are you interrupting me? Don't you know I'm studying the holy word of God?

And I sense the Spirit in those moments saying, how can we not see these as interruptions, but invitations to where the Spirit might actually have us going right now? This is what I want us to catch about this story today: Jesus was walking along, people were following him, he was on a mission to go to the home and heal this girl everyone was saying was dying, and instead of giving in to this urgency, this rush, and saying no interruptions allowed, he takes time to see her, to notice her, and then to stop, to stop in the midst of the interruption and see it not just as an inconvenience or an annoyance, but as an invitation to see a person where they're at and bring healing. It says that when she fell at his feet, she was instantly healed, and he says, daughter, your faith has healed you, go in peace. This woman was someone who did not go unnoticed by Jesus. He sees her, he stops, and he lets the interruption become an invitation to heal her in that moment. I want us to think today about the people around us who feel that kind of waiting, the waiting she was in for 12 years, asking people to pray with her and to heal her and to see her. I even think, in this situation, when we talk about this woman with the issue of blood, that she wouldn't have been allowed to be around other people.

So how deeply ingrained was it in her that she wasn't worth being seen, that she couldn't be noticed? Yet Jesus is saying, you're the one I want to see. I share this today because I want us to feel that empowerment, to say we can be bold in the way we pause, we can be bold in the way we're interrupted, because we're people working on God's timeline and not our own. Even in the most crazy, stressful seasons, where it feels like, this is the place I'm supposed to be going, and it could be a really good direction, how can we still live with the perspective of saying, I'm interruptible, and I am not going to throw away these moments, but rather be present with Jesus in them. It's really interesting, psychology has a lot of research on what they call the bystander effect, and I think that's kind of what we're witnessing here in this story too. Essentially, if there are more people in a room and someone were to fall over, it's actually less likely that people will respond. If there were only three people in the room and somebody fell over, all three people would run over.

But if it's all of us, most of the time we would all just freeze, or we would ignore it, or we would think, I hope someone else takes care of that, and keep on walking. Think of it even in our city, sometimes at the busiest street corners, you see someone asking for help, and how many people go by, and go by, and go by. Whereas if it's just one person and a few people walk by, we're more likely to respond. Why is that? I think a lot of times it's because we think, well, someone else is going to take care of it.

Someone else is going to do it. Surely somebody else has more time. Surely someone else's schedule has more room to be interrupted or inconvenienced. But what does it look like for us, as we follow the ways of Jesus, to say we want our first response, anytime there's an interruption, not to say happenstance, whatever, let it be, but to say, Holy Spirit, is there something you're doing in this moment? In the same way that Jesus, on his way to do one miracle, still saw value in the woman coming and pursuing him, pressing up against him in the midst of the crowds, he says, okay, I'm going to take time for you too.

Called, taught, and sent

What does it look like, even on our way, in the places God has us, to still take time for the one? You see, the next thing Jesus does, as we continue through the gospels, is after he has spent time and called his disciples, gathered his team, and taken them along with him. That's where we read the story of them surrounding him. He brought a few of them into the home. So he's discipling them.

He's pouring into them. He's saying, you're in this journey with me. After he shows them that they were seen, and he's walking along with them and demonstrating that part of our call in following Jesus is that we see people, we stop, and we're going to be with them, we then see that he sends them. We read in Luke chapter nine: when Jesus had called the twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and cure diseases.

He sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He told them, take nothing for the journey. No staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. If people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave their town as a testimony against them.

So they went out from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere. We're going to talk about this more in the coming weeks, but I wanted us to start to see this, because Jesus is so intentional with his mission. When he comes onto the scene and calls people, sees them, stops for them, heals them, and then empowers them, he recognizes something. He's preparing them for after his death and resurrection, when he leaves the Holy Spirit and says, this is you, you are a part of this mission.

He shares his mission with them. He is still sharing his mission with us today. What I love about this is, first, there are these formational pieces here where he says, take nothing, and why is that? Because there's something so wild about having to show up empty-handed at someone's house. It means you have to receive hospitality.

The things we do, they do something to us. Jesus wants this to happen to the disciples. He's even in this moment forming the disciples toward complete surrender. You're going to have to rely on my provision.

We live in a world today where we have so many other ways to provide for ourselves that it's kind of hard to imagine not having a backup to the backup to the backup plan. Even now, if we're stranded, we can call an Uber, unless we're randomly somewhere that doesn't have Uber, which is really unfortunate. But we don't fully understand what it meant for them to just walk, to show up, to be sent, and to go into people's homes. Who here wants to just go into a stranger's home?

They're going to go and eat what's put in front of them. I've learned my lesson about this, and I don't practically recommend you just eat anything anyone gives you. It's contextual. I've had those moments. We used to be in another church space, and it was Easter Sunday, and there was another church that met there before us, and they said, here, eat all these deviled eggs, and I said, great, and I was trying to be kind, and they asked, Abbie, why are you just eating people's food? I said, I don't know, they gave it to me, I'm being nice, I'm receiving hospitality. We don't always practically have to do that, but Jesus is telling them that the food that sustains them, they're going to have to rely on other people for it. He's also inviting them to do this together, in partnership. He's sending out the 72, it says, later, when we read more details about it in chapter 10, sending them out two by two. So he's saying, I see you, you are someone worth stopping for, healing, restoring, and I want to share this mission with you, and now I'm going to send you out, but you're not alone in this. You are not alone in this. This is so key for us to remember as followers of Jesus, that we are not alone in the journey.

So the things he's asking us to do, when he's calling us to places, this is why we need to lean into community, why we gather on Sundays, why we have community groups throughout the week, why we have forum partners to continue to dive deeper with, to remind us that we're not alone, to learn to rely on other people. When it's like, I'm hungry right now and I need food, there's a humbling thing in recognizing that I can ask for help, that I can rely on other people for that. Jesus is so strategic in this when he starts to send them out. I start to think about this when I think about the city and the place we live in. For many of us here, we're working jobs all across the city.

Some of you here today are walking into this next week, into classrooms, into places where there are going to be people surrounding you. There are going to be people who, just like this woman, maybe they've been hidden for years, afraid to truly reveal the things they're desperate for healing for. People who maybe were told, you need to hide these things, you need to step back, healing is impossible.

I believe that as followers of Jesus called to create his culture, to continue to see his kingdom come through our hands, through our feet, through our words, through the ways we love people, this is more crucial now than ever. The Holy Spirit wants to empower us to continue to see the one around us, to continue, as we show up in classrooms or workplaces, not to just say, I'm here to get a job done, I'm here to get a paycheck, I'm here to go to class and get a degree, but to walk in and say, okay, God, you are here. Jesus calls the twelve.

He gave them power and authority. He sent them out to heal the sick. God has empowered us. He has given us authority to go and be his hands and feet. He wants to do that through us.

So how do we walk into every place and say, Jesus, your presence is here, I'm listening? How do we walk throughout our days in this posture of saying, I'm okay if I'm interrupted, it's not just an inconvenience? I can acknowledge that it might be annoying, but I'm going to say, God, what's the invitation here in this moment? Who is around me that you might want me to see, that you might want me to get to witness finding healing and freedom and restoration after longing for it for so long?

The power of the small, unseen moment

There is power in these small moments, because what I love about this story is that there were crowds around, and Jesus is known to do a lot of miracles in scripture. But this one story, which focuses just on one person, is no less significant than when there are healings of hundreds of people at the same time. Sometimes, if we're not careful, we can start to think there's more significance when it's this big, crazy moment where all these people had an encounter with God, that's so awesome, but this woman, she had family, she's someone's daughter. Think about the people in your life, and maybe even your own life, the things you're walking through. When someone sees you, when they take time for you, when you know they're praying for you and with you, it changes things. There are people in my life I'm praying for all the time, in the places they live, and I'm thinking, God, would you send people there, would there be a church, would there be pastors, would there be someone in their workplace, in their classroom, who would love them in a way that draws them to your presence? Every single person we encounter is someone's son, someone's daughter, brother, sister, child.

How can we see them the same way we see the people closest to us? Because when we see people like that, the people in my life, I think, they're worth stopping for. Someone, please stop for them. Someone, please pay attention to them. In my moments of anguish and distress and hardship, when someone reaches out and sends me a text, thinking of you, praying for you, how are you doing, those words mean more than they could ever express, because we experience God through that, reminding us that we're seen, that we're worth paying attention to, that we do not go unnoticed. So what I want us to grasp from this story, as we talk about what it looks like for us to be followers of Jesus creating his culture together, one person, one place at a time, it starts with us seeing people, knowing that Jesus sees us, so we can see people too. Jesus stops for us. He was interruptible.

He shares with us the glory of ushering in his presence, and he sends us. I want to go back to the call of his first disciples in Luke chapter five, because I think an important piece of this story is to recognize that you're not going unnoticed right now, that God sees you, that he's so delighted you're here, even in this space today. A piece of that is that we all had to show up. We are participating in this actively. Even if you're here today and still unsure how much you want to participate, you showed up.

Jesus is pleased to meet you here, because his presence is everywhere. More times than not, it's our distractions, our inability to look up and notice him, that keep us from getting closer to him. Because Jesus is always pursuing us, always walking with us.

The calling of the first disciples

So I want to read in Luke chapter 5, the calling of the first disciples.

One day as Jesus was standing by the lake with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, he saw at the water's edge two boats left there by the fishermen who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into deep water and let down the nets for a catch. Simon answered, Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets. When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled the boat so full that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, go away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man. For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken. So were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, don't be afraid, from now on you will catch men. So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything, and followed him.

Luke 5:1-11

Whenever I read this, don't be afraid, you're going to catch men, I would be afraid. That's a wild statement to hear. We have to acknowledge, some of these things, when we read them in scripture, it's like, don't be afraid, you're going to catch people. I would be like, what are you talking about? Other translations say you will be fishers of men.

That sounds a little nicer, gentler. We get it. We get it. But it's a little shocking, okay.

So he means, you're now going to go and reach people, and they're going to come close to me. You're going to gather people. So what I wanted us to read here, and why I wanted us to go here for a moment, is because I think we have to recognize that for us to be followers of Jesus who see his kingdom come and flow through us, in the same way he healed. Jesus is healing people.

He wants us to heal people. We have to be willing to respond and come close to those invitations, which sometimes means embracing the interruptions and the inconvenient parts of the interruptions. A few things I want us to notice here.

It says that Jesus was teaching, standing there, with a large crowd around him. So people are already there, and he looks over and sees this boat and says, yeah, you come here, and he just gets in the boat. Again, with context, we can read it later and think, wow, how cool for Jesus to walk into the boat. But if you were just out on your boat doing your job, this was their job, and some guy comes in and says, you do this, do that, I'd be thinking, what are you talking about right now? So this is what's happening, and after he's done, he starts paying close attention to Simon. Simon Peter goes on to be a huge part of the gospel story we know, but these are his first encounters with Jesus. These are the first moments of choosing to be present with him rather than just kicking this strange man off the boat, as he responded, as he took the time, as he was interrupted.

And then it comes where he recognizes what's happening, and the miracle happens, where they catch all the fish. And it's after this that Jesus calls him and says, now leave it all behind. In the passage we read a few minutes ago, take nothing with you for the journey, just trust me to provide. So he's praying for a miracle of provision. The provision comes, they catch all the fish, and Jesus says, yeah, that's actually not what you were really looking for.

I have something better, leave it all behind. This is what following Jesus is like. Sometimes the beautiful, best things we think we're after, that we think are going to sustain us, and if this could just happen, sometimes we experience them on this side of eternity. And even after that, Jesus is saying, that's not really what you're looking for.

What you're looking for is me, and being a part of my mission of seeing the kingdom of God come. This is what we were created for. The more we can start to see this, and notice Jesus in our stories, and start to live into that, and notice people in the same ways, this is when we start to live like we were created to live as followers of Jesus. This is when we experience the healing, the freedom, the fulfillment we're longing for. It's as we continue to say yes to those interruptions, embrace the inconvenience, and say, okay, I'm saying yes to that invitation too, to follow you, to see people, to stop for them, to share with them the gospel, the good news.

This is why, even today, as we go and stuff backpacks, some of these kids, we may never actually see their faces tomorrow when they come to pick them up. We get to know the families in the community. What I love about this is that we might not know the end of the story, but what we do know is that we get to say to a kid, hey, you're worth having a really cool backpack. Even a cool Spider-Man one, which we got plenty of. You're seen.

We want you to have pencils to write with. You're valuable. This is the gospel, the good news. Sometimes it's stopping and praying for someone for healing, and giving someone a Bible, but sometimes it's just holding that door and showing kindness. When I was a college student in Minneapolis, all of our buildings were connected by skyways, and after someone had preached something along these lines to me, my practical response, what I felt the Lord tell me to do, was to go, and every time I crossed a long skyway, not to look down at my phone, not to look side to side, but to try to look and make eye contact with someone and just smile and say hello. It was a painful couple of weeks trying this, because we're all so distracted. Think about a long hallway, and you're just staring as you walk down trying to say hello.

People were dodging me left and right. It's like we don't know how to be noticed. We're like, don't look at me. And I do the same thing. Sometimes if I want to go shopping, I go farther outside of Madison because I don't want to see anyone.

That happens sometimes, where I don't want to be noticed. I don't want to be recognized. But Jesus is saying, would we be people who learn to see people? And that has to take intentionality. So here's what I want for us today, and I'm going to invite the worship team to come back up.

Practicing presence, one person at a time

I want you to know that you are seen, because we're going to struggle to stop for people, and we're going to struggle to be interrupted. We're going to struggle, when people are pressing up against us, not to be so annoyed and say, get away from me. If we don't recognize that God notices you, that he's with you in the midst of your story right now and your struggle, that he sees you and wants to heal you and free you and restore you and welcome you into his family in deeper ways, even if you've been following him for years, he sees you right now in these moments. So will we continue to say yes to that invitation?

Will we let him into our boats, into our places of work? Even when he provides for us in every way we could imagine, like Simon sitting there, working on his boat, Jesus comes into the office, and business is booming. Everything's good. And he says, now leave it. The invitations just keep coming when we follow Jesus. So will we continue to say yes and participate? Are we willing to look up to see Jesus?

I just want to invite us, as we pray about what this could look like, if there are 40 or 50 people here going, okay, for the next few months, I'm just going to pray for one person, and throughout the week I'm going to say, God, would you help me notice even just one person? When we start to have a different posture when we're interrupted, when something feels inconvenient, what can happen for the kingdom of heaven? There are so many people who don't even know where to show up to get access to Jesus. As followers of Jesus, we have access to everything they're looking for. So what does it look like for us to live freely, ready to give that up? For us to start to see people, we need to feel seen. And then practically, is there even one distraction you can remove? Maybe you don't have skyways connecting your building at work, maybe you do.

But is there even one formative way you can respond this week, and say, okay, I'm going to try, I'm going to meet a new coworker, I'm going to knock on someone's door, I'm just going to say hi. You can start there. But continue to be open to saying, God, you love these people, you created them in your image, you notice them, so would you help me see them in that same way? Part of our practice this week is continuing to practice midday prayer and intercession, where as a church we want to be faithful to pausing and noticing God and growing in that discipline, so that when we are interrupted, we recognize it, because me and God, I pause and notice him every single day, and I pause and pray for someone every single day, so of course this would happen. So I'm going to invite you to stand today. I first just want to take a moment, if you want to close your eyes, and position yourself to hear from the Holy Spirit. If you're here today and maybe you've felt unnoticed and unseen, take a moment, and whatever it looks like for you, to position yourself and say, Jesus, I'm here. I'm present with you.

I'm choosing to look up. Would you just reveal yourself to me? Because his presence is here. He is with us. Would you just say yes to the invitation to choosing to look to him, and just welcome in his love, his healing, his freedom? And then I want us to just pray: God, if we struggle with interruptions, would you show us. If we struggle with inconvenience, would you show us. And even now, Holy Spirit, would you just put people on our hearts that you want us to notice, that you want us to pray for. God, would we not negate the power of even one person?

Every person is worth stopping for. Every person is worth noticing. So Holy Spirit, would you just speak to us in these moments? Would you draw us closer to you, to your heart? Would we feel so held and seen and safe with you, so that we know we can let everything else go?

Because you are all we need. We thank you, Jesus. As you continue to pray, the team is going to lead us in a time of worship and response.