Are You A Worker Bee?

Are You A Worker Bee?

 

Good Morning Friends,

 
 

Today we consider our role as Christians spreading the good news of the love and peace of Christ and compare this purpose and important function to bees sent out to “pollinate” the world so we might live in a land of milk and honey. We consider what God wants us to be and the temperament of the hive as a local congregation and of its health. Here we consider what it might be like to swarm, to work, to harvest, to pollinate and even to sting like a bee.  Are You A Worker Bee?

 

Scripture: Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

 

Matthew 28:16-20 (NRSV)

 

After a while he returned to marry her, and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion, and there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey.

 

Judges 14:8 (NRSV)

 

He said to them, “Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet.” But for three days they could not explain the riddle.

 

Judges 14:14 (NRSV)

 

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

 

Psalm 119:103 (NRSV)

 

Message: For many years, before my wife and I began raising children we both taught Bible Study groups and we also raised bees in Southwest Florida. We never made beekeeping into a business. We were backyard apiarists. But we did learn about nature and got to share the experience with others. We learned the habits of bees and how they worked themselves to death and the comings and goings from the hive during the different honey flows of the year. For several Halloweens, we would dress up as, “the bee and the beekeeper,” “Sampson and the bee” or “To bee or not to bee” and give Mason jars of honey to friends at their door. That meant harvesting the honey, working the hive, extracting the honey from the frames, straining the honey and bottling up gallons upon gallons of the sweet stuff. Then one day the mature worker bees were gone leaving only the queen, eggs and a few immature workers. The critical link in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and our dinner tables was beginning to disappear all over the world as colony upon colony collapsed. We got to see it firsthand… perhaps it was over breading, malnutrition, pesticides, fungus, bee mites or other environmental factors. It is a bit of mystery but what is most disconcerting is that it mirrors in many ways what can be seen happening in the pews of mainline churches in America. Perhaps people in the pews have been exposed to too many spiritual toxins. Perhaps we are not diverse enough to survive. Perhaps we have spiritual malnutrition. Perhaps we need to consider the practices we hold so dear that may be killing us as surely as losing our stinger. Perhaps we should consider the health of the worker bees in our churches. Perhaps we should better understand worker bee motivations. Perhaps we need to obey God’s commandments rather than sacrifice ourselves needlessly.

 

Pray we consider the sweetness of our relationship with God. Pray we realize that God’s Word is sweeter than honey. Pray we realize that all authority rests in Jesus. Pray He uses each of our assigned tasks to benefit the whole. Pray we go out into the world with a purpose. Pray we make not just honey but also disciples that understand the work of the Church Universal. Pray we repent. Pray we change. Pray we learn to float like a butterfly and not just sting like a bee. Pray we pollinate the world with the love of Christ.

 

Blessings,

 

John Lawson