A couple of crooks pick out an elderly woman as a likely victim. They stop her on the street and introduce themselves. As she watches wide eyed they show her a large amount of money, which they claim to have found. They are from out of town. They need someone to bank it for them and she looks trustworthy.

They are prepared to share it with her, if she will put up some money as token of her good faith. So she goes to her bank, withdraws a couple of thousand dollars, and gives the money to her generous, newfound friends. Later when the money is divided, her share is given to her in a carefully wrapped package. She thanks her benefactors, and they take off. When she opens the package she does not find her own money or her share of the promised bonanza. All she finds is a mass of shredded newspaper. She is a victim of the pigeon drop.

She has been used. The pigeon drop is a shocking example of what goes on regularly in our world.

People have also been used in the church. Some ministries have taken Jesus’ command “feed my sheep” and have turned it into “shear my sheep” or even “harm my sheep.” All too recently we have seen the sexual abuse and use of people, including children, by some members of the Roman Catholic clergy. We have also witnessed the widespread and systemic cover-up of the evil by the hierarchy of the church.

The perpetrators and the protectors are seemingly clueless. A few months ago, Archbishop Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles claimed to be carrying a cross like the cross Jesus carried through the streets of Jerusalem because of public criticism of his role in stonewalling the abuse scandal. He claimed the mantle of suffering for Christ.

I believe that Archbishop Mahoney needs to listen over again to the words of the Apostle Peter who wrote in 1 Peter 4:15-16: “If any of you suffers, make sure you suffer for Christ and not as a wrong doer.” Mahoney may be carrying a cross. But if he is, it is a cross he has built and roughed up for himself. It’s not the cross of Christ, but the cross of institutional arrogance.

But there are also genuine crosses that people carry for Christ. This is the kind the Apostle Paul carried. This is the kind of suffering Paul talks about in Colossians 1:24: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.”

Paul was a poster child for suffering. He tells us that on five different occasions, he was given 39 lashes by the Jews and three times by the Romans. Once he was stoned and left for dead. He was shipwrecked and spent 24 hours in the water. Paul was in prison on several occasions. In Corinthians he makes a cryptic reference to “fighting with wild beasts in Ephesus” which at least suggests the possibility of an appearance in the Coliseum. Paul experienced suffering in a huge way.

And through all of this suffering, Paul’s testimony in 2 Corinthians 4 is that “We are often troubled, but not crushed; sometimes in doubt, but never in despair; there are many enemies, but we are never without a friend; and though badly hurt at times, we are not destroyed. At all times we carry in our mortal bodies the death of Jesus, so that His life also may be seen in our bodies.”

Paul can proclaim the riches of Christ so freely because he has experienced them so fully. Through all the suffering Paul has endured, he experienced even greater riches and joy. So he also writes in 2 Corinthians, “This small and temporary trouble we suffer will bring us a tremendous and eternal glory, much greater than the trouble. For we fix our attention, not on things that are seen, but on things that are unseen. What we can see lasts only for a time, but what cannot be seen lasts forever.”

That is our faith. And it is in this light, it is in this confident hope, that Paul can write to his Colossian friends, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.”

“I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.” These are not the words of a manipulator. Paul did not use his friends. He was willing to suffer for them and even rejoice in that suffering.”

There is nothing theoretical about this. As Paul writes these words, he is not sitting in a Malibu beach home or Montecito mansion speculating about the suffering he might be willing to endure if the situation ever actually comes up. As Paul writes these words, he is in prison. The chains, the bars, the dungeon, the guards, the hunger, the isolation all of them are very real. All of them remind Paul of what his Savior had already endured for him. Paul is willing to do what Jesus had done if the same life, light, love, and hope can somehow grow out of his own pain.

Paul refers to his suffering in several of his letters. This isn’t so Paul can say, “look at how great I am” or “look at how much I love you.” It is because Paul needs to remind his readers what his suffering is really about.

Remember, for example, that the Colossian church is under attack by false teachers. These false teachers may well be using Paul’s imprisonment as a way to discredit Paul’s message. They claim that Paul can hardly to be trusted as a God honored teacher if the best he can do is to write letters from a prison cell and not come to visit the Colossians in person. So Paul has to counter this. He tells the Colossians that his afflictions are not self chosen and they are not deserved. However, they are endured for the sake of the Colossians Christians. “For your sake” in verse 24 does not mean, “because I love you,” or “in your place” but “for your advantage” or “for your benefit.”

How is Paul’s pain for the benefit of the Colossians and us? Paul answers with a daring statement maybe one of the most daring claims in the entire Bible – verse 25: Paul says, “In my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the church.”

This is a very daring claim. Paul is saying that somehow or another, what he is going through is an essential ingredient in salvation coming to the church, including the young believers in Colossae. He thinks of his sufferings as somehow completing the suffering of Jesus Christ Himself.

Does this mean that the cross is incomplete? Not at all. Jesus died to save His Church. There is nothing the least bit incomplete about the cross. Paul is not claiming that, in his beatings and imprisonments, he is somehow repeating or even perfecting what Jesus has already done for us. The gift of God is Christ is already perfect and complete.

But that doesn’t mean that there is no place for pain for those who follow Jesus. Jesus said this very plainly. Before Paul became a believer, as we saw in Acts 9, he was blinded on the Damascus Road. Jesus spoke to a disciple named Ananias and told him to go heal Paul of his blindness.

Ananias didn’t like this one bit. As Eugene Peterson writes it in The Message, “He protested: “Master, you can't be serious. Everybody's talking about this man and the terrible things he's been doing, his reign of terror against your people in Jerusalem And now he’s shown up here with papers from the Chief Priest that give him license to do the same to us.”

But Jesus said, “Don't argue. Go! I have picked him as my personal representative to Gentiles and kings and Jews. And now I am about to show him what he’s in for the hard suffering that goes with this job.”

Why is Paul suffering if the gift on the cross is complete? It is because Paul has been called, as we have been called, to get the message of the cross out into the world. The gospel is free. But there is often a substantial charge for shipping and handling. And it is this sometimes-hefty cost of delivery that Paul and we have been called upon to pay.

Jesus has already suffered for the sins of the world and Paul will suffer for the sake of Christ’s name not as a do over of the cross but as an extension and expression of it. The word for “complete”, antanapleroa, means “to fill up in turn.” Paul has been loved by Christ. Now it is Paul’s turn to love the unreached as he has been loved.

Paul wants everyone to experience the grace of the Lord Jesus. He believes that every person and every situation needs the cross. He is compelled to proclaim Jesus as redeemer in spite of the resistance and persecution of the Jews and Romans. The cross is complete. But what is unfinished is the task of telling the whole world about what Jesus has completed.

This is why Paul says that his suffering is not only for the Colossians believers. It is for the entire church. It is for the entire body of Christ. This is true even for us. For it was during his times in prison earlier in Ephesus and now in Rome that Paul wrote many of his letters.

Perhaps the reason Jesus kept Paul a prisoner was so he would have to write it down for us. We are reading and learning from Colossians today because Paul was in prison. Paul suffered and it was for us.

Now the thing is, the gospel is still free. But there is also still a delivery cost a cost of sharing the Good News so others may know of the God who loves them.

Take China for example. There is a state run and state controlled Christian church in China called the “Three self Patriotic Movement.” But the real growth in the church in China is in the unofficial, uncontrolled and therefore dangerous to Communism house churches. The gospel is spreading in China through these house churches which ten years ago were estimated to have about twenty million members.

The “unofficial Christians” of these house churches are persecuted. In 1994, for example, Communist officials in the province of Shaanxi got word that five young preachers would be attending a service at a local house church. Eight or nine policemen paid it a visit. They beat some people present with their clubs and handcuffed the three male and two female preachers. The three men were stripped from the waist down and beaten. The 26 other Christians present were then forced to beat the three men 100 times each with a bamboo rod or be beaten themselves.

The two women were also harshly beaten, and the officers tore open their clothes and abused them. The beatings continued until dawn, at which time they were all locked in one bare detention room for eight days. One of the men later died.

The result of such events is that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China today, especially among young people. Its dynamism owes much to the passionate commitment and spiritual hunger of Chinese Christians themselves. Their vibrant faith is captured in the words of one female house church leader. When asked if she was afraid of persecution, she smiled and replied, “That would be my time of glory.”

She sounds a lot like Paul.

Do we?

We may not fear persecution, beatings, and imprisonment as Paul did. We do not fear when the police come to our services. (Marty) They come because they are part of us as we are part of them. Where else would they be?

But there is still a message for us to get out to this East County. And there is still a cost for us. The costs of delivery don’t disappear just because they are not dramatic.

Let me give three examples of the cost we are called to pay and have paid. One of these is personal, the second is for a particular area of our ministry, and the third is for the congregation as a whole.

First, the personal example.

I love being here at Moorpark Presbyterian Church. There is nowhere I would rather be and nothing I would rather be doing.

But I have not always been glad to be here. In 1986, when we first moved to Moorpark to help establish this church, I paid an immense emotional toll. While I am not much prone to depression, I fell into a deep depression soon after I arrived. I felt over my head. I felt that I was attempting something for which I was unqualified. I felt like the slave girl Prissy in Gone With the Wind, “I don’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no churches” I really don’t believe that I smiled for the first nine months I was here because of my sense of foreboding.

Lest you think that this cross was entirely self-inflicted, let me say that I was also under the most intense period of spiritual attack I have ever gone through. That makes sense in retrospect. Satan has no desire for strong new churches to be established. They are an invasion of his territory. He wants to derail them from the beginning and the easiest way to do that is to derail the organizing pastor.

Now God is good and His people who supported me if prayer were faithful. Moorpark Presbyterian Church is here and strong. If I disappeared from the scene tomorrow, you would still be here and strong. I smile all the time now.

But there was a time I didn’t smile for nine months. I didn’t rejoice in that then but I rejoice in it now as I see what that time has helped produce and how many have come to benefit.

Second, the example from a particular area of ministry.

I could have highlighted any number of ministry areas here. I know how so many people here stretch in lots of ways – church school, youth, fellowship, facilities – you name it.

But this morning I want to spotlight the willing and even joyful stretching for the sake of spreading the Good News that takes place in our music ministry.

You all know how vital the music leadership is to our experience in worship. Many of you who are now members have shared that the music ministry is the first thing that drew you to this church.

Our music leaders do this joyfully. They are free from the “look at me” “showoffishness” that plagues so many music ministries and gets in the way of true worship. I think we can all see that.

But what most of you don’t get to see is the way the brothers and sisters who take part in our music put in hours of practice. You don’t get do see how they give up vital family time on days like Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday to lead in worship. Last Easter, some of our musicians were here for six straight hours. They were as happy and energetic at the third service as they were are the first and second. Then they went home exhausted.

Why did they do this? It’s because they know that that third Easter service is another opportunity to take part in sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ and that they have a vital role in that sharing. Their gift of time, their gift of family, their gift of exhaustion is for our benefit and for the benefit of those the Lord is seeking to add to His body.

The third example is for the congregation as a whole. You remember the theme of our building fund campaign last February – “God made room for you. Will you also make room for others?” You have answered that question with a resounding “yes!”

Someone rightly defined money as “frozen labor.” The money you have committed to give to build the sanctuary did not come to you without effort. It represents the gift of your time, your energy and your creativity. With it, we are moving toward the construction of the sanctuary. We have submitted our loan application to the Investment and Loan Program. We have begun the process of working with the City. On June 20th, we will have a congregational meeting to share preliminary drawings and bring you up to date.

The point is, we didn’t need to do this for ourselves. We are fine as we are if we are gong to stay as we are. Yes, the sanctuary will be nice to have. But the only reason to build is for the sake of the people who aren’t here yet. That’s the choice you have committed yourselves to make. And, in that choice, you are also part of the cost of shipping and handling – getting the free Gospel out to where it touches people’s lives. So I can say as Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Thank you for your participation in the Gospel from the first day until now.”

Like the Apostle Paul, in our own setting and in our own time, we see ourselves as God’s ambassadors for others. When we love that deeply, we become vulnerable to being hurt; our hearts are broken by the brokenness of people. When we see ourselves this way, we are willing to suffer. Suddenly our own schedules, conveniences, prejudices, judgments, egos and preferences seem secondary. Like Paul, we suffer the depth of the feelings of compassion and concern. And like Paul, when we see what it produces, we rejoice.