Sermon by Lily Greene: 7th Sunday of Easter
Below is the sermon that Christ the King parishioner Lily Greene preached for the 7th Sunday of Easter.
Good morning! My name is Lily Greene. I just graduated from Fort Walton Beach High School and Northwest Florida Ballet Summa Cum Laude and am going to be going to Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre next year. I’m a quirky, artsy, determined girl. I’m passionate about Jesus, ballet, art, the ocean, animals, the environment, & love and joy. But I’m definitely not someone to be known to agree to speak in front of an entire church of lots of people… and honestly, when I was asked, I didn’t really feel qualified or worthy to be up here — But as nervous and anxious as I am today, as Rachel Meyer recently reminded me: “you are a child of God, that’s the only qualification!” so, here I go….
Through the 17 years that I have been alive, I have come to realize 3 main things:
The first being that God created YOU to be YOU – not like the rest of the world.
As the body of Christ and as people of this world, we cannot be afraid to be different. The world needs us to be unafraid to be who we were created to be by the Creator in order to inspire others to do the same. God has created everything in this world to be so complex, intricate, and yet so insanely and simply beautiful, so why would we be any exception? Why would our own individual, passionate way of carrying out our calling, be unworthy compared to another’s way? We are all needed to do our own part – no matter how different or small it may seem – so that we can function as one, complete body.
Romans 12 says, “Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other. In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.”
So as my senior year went on and I started getting asked the famous question of “Where are you planning on going to college next year?”, I initially felt bad – and almost ashamed –to answer that I was planning on further pursuing my passion of ballet by working to get into a ballet company straight away, rather than following the so-called traditional route of going to a physical college. But with more consideration, I felt confident that I shouldn’t feel this way. I knew in my heart that ballet is my passion, my love, and what I feel called to do. It is something that I know I can bring glory to God as long as I remain faithful. And it is an art that I feel so passionate about. So why would I give up on this so easily???
All that really matters is that we do everything to ultimately bring glory to God and faithfully play our own, individual role of spreading God’s gift of love, joy, and hope with the world. With this intention, I truly believe that it does not matter what we do, or who we are, as long as we use every opportunity for the glory of God.
This leads me to my second realization: Life is an opportunity in itself – life changes when you start looking at EVERYTHING as an opportunity.
Our life, from the second we were born, has been an opportunity. But it is so easy to become numb to this idea. We can get stuck going through our everyday routines just as that, a routine. We can live in such a way that we are just jumping from one checklist to the next and are just scraping by. We forget that this life we were given is not meant to just merely be existing through, but to live through. We forget that this life we have been given is a gift and an opportunity.
Now with this undeserving gift, we get the opportunity to share with others the endless love of Jesus Christ in everything we do. Every second we have the opportunity to make choices – We can choose to be brave, kind, empathetic, loving, selfless, joyful, and hopeful, or we can choice to complain and be angry at a situation.
Personally, as a person who is not always very good at talking to other people in conversation, I know what it’s like to see a perfect opportunity to make a connection with someone and spread a little love, and then not act because I feel like I don’t have the courage to do so. But what would happen if I took the opportunity knowing that there is nothing that God can’t help me do? What if we all listened to and then pursued the opportunities that we feel called to take? As Benjamin Mee says in the movie “We Bought a Zoo”, You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.” As long as our life is lived to love and serve the Lord, we can never truly fail.
From this, I will dive into my third, and final realization that I am sharing today: God will provide.
With faith, God directs our paths. Not activities, or degrees, or careers, or other people – GOD DOES. Sure, all of these other things are great, and I believe that God can use us in all of these aspects of our lives, but God is really the one and only constant who will continue to direct us through the paths of life even when one part of our life just isn’t working out.
Proverbs 3:5 tells us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.”
As a perfectionist, I often finding myself trying to make everything perfect on my own accord. And when everything doesn’t fall into place just the way that I would like it to or I planned it to and I feel uncomfortable, I let worry, anxiety, and fear overcome me.
So, a particular quote by Francis Chan really hit home for me. He said: “Our greatest fear should not be of failure … but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”
For me, this just helps to put things into perspective and is almost a scary idea to think about. It makes me question and shift my focus towards the idea of whether I am truly focusing my daily intentions and goals towards the glory of the only one who really matters – Jesus? Or am I worrying about the small picture things that won’t really matter 5 years down the road? In a world where success is often defined by the amount of wealth, productivity, power, and popularity that one has obtained, it is easy to forget that those things are inconsequential in the big picture of things. We forget that we were created by God for a purpose to shine His light, love, joy, and hope into the souls of others.
We forget that as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “We know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”
Now I have no idea what next year will be like – I’ve never been to Pittsburgh, much less visited Pittsburgh ballet, I’m going to have to live on my own in a big city – filled with new surroundings, new friends, and a new church family; I am scared out of my mind and feel so vulnerable, but at the same time, I am overwhelmed with the joy of knowing that Jesus Christ has already claimed victory. I know that there is nothing that I can’t or would ever want to handle without God – for He is good, and He will ALWAYS provide.
I’m going to end today with the phrase Aloha Ke Akua. The direct Hawaiian translation of this phrase is: God is love. Aloha means to love others as one's self and to do so unconditionally, living a life of charity, compassion, and forgiveness towards others.) Ke Akua recognizes ke Akua, or God, as the supreme being, acknowledges His hand in all things, and encourages us to be appreciative of His many blessings.
……So, Aloha ke Akua—and thank you for this opportunity! I’m so blessed to have a church home filled with so many kind, beautiful souls. Thank you.