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[ Music ] If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me. If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me. Take my hands, Lord, and my feet.

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Touch my heart, Lord, speak through me. If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me. If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me. If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me.

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Take my hands, Lord, and my feet. Touch my heart, Lord, speak through me. If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me. I remember the story in the Bible days.

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You took a man called Moses with a rod in his hand. Told Moses, "Take the rod in your hand, stretch it forth, and walk on dry land. If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me. Use me, Jesus, use me."

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♪ If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me ♪ ♪ That's our prayer today, Lord ♪ ♪ If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me ♪ ♪ Take my hand ♪

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♪ Take my hand, Lord, and I'll never leave ♪ ♪ Touch my heart ♪ ♪ Touch my heart, Lord, speak to me ♪ ♪ If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me ♪

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I remember her story, I remember it well. You took a shepherd boy David, with a sling in his hand. He took the rock with a sling in his hand. He flung the rock and the giant fell dead.

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♪ If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me ♪ ♪ Take my hand and my feet ♪ ♪ Touch my heart ♪ ♪ Speak through me, Lord ♪

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♪ If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me ♪ ♪ You can use me, Jesus, yes, you can ♪ ♪ You can use me ♪ ♪ Oh, take these feeble hands ♪

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♪ Touch my stony heart ♪ ♪ If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me ♪

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♪ Oh, you can use me, Jesus, please use me ♪ ♪ If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me ♪ ♪ Oh, use my hand ♪ ♪ Your hand, Lord, help me ♪

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♪ Touch my heart, Lord ♪ ♪ How I love speaking to me ♪ ♪ If you can use anything, Lord, you can use me ♪ ♪ You can use me for your goodness, Lord ♪

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♪ You can use anything, Lord, you can use me ♪ ♪ Anytime, anywhere, you can use me ♪ ♪ You can use anything, Lord, you can use me ♪ ♪ Oh, touch me, Jesus, and use me ♪

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♪ If you can use anything, Lord ♪ ♪ If you can use anything, Lord ♪ ♪ You can use me ♪ ♪ Me ♪

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- Amen, amen. I was engaged in working with children and youth at Mission Center in Dallas. They were taught certain gospel songs.

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One of them was this. ♪ One door and only one ♪ ♪ And yet the sides are two ♪ ♪ Inside and outside ♪

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♪ On which side are you ♪ ♪ One door and only one ♪ And yet the sides are two. I'm on the inside.

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On which side are you? So we are either insiders or outsiders. place in one of these two categories. Politicians are often referred to as being insiders in Washington or outsiders. So in the beginning God made us insiders. He planted a garden

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within Eden and in it he placed the man and the woman that he made, Adam and Eve, and told them to be fruitful and multiply. So there we have the beginning of the human family. They were insiders. They were in the know. They knew how to get along with each other. They knew how to get along with each other.

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They knew how to relate to God. They lived in holy communion with the eternal. They were insiders. But after Adam and Eve sinned, they were driven from the garden.

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They were condemned to an existence east of Eden. They were outside of God's garden. years later Jesus Christ God's beloved Son is born outside the garden and he comes as an outsider he has no home he is regarded as homeless he's born in a

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stable. He is in a poor family. So Jesus' ministry was largely to outsiders. In his inaugural message he took his text from the book of the Prophet Isaiah. It was in his hometown, the humble village of Nazareth, of whom it was said in a sarcastic manner, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

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So Jesus was considered an outsider. He was born outside the beltway. He was an outsider. He was not included among the power brokers of his day.

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It was on an occasion when he was attending church that Jesus was asked to read the scripture. This is what he read, and this is our text. The Spirit of the Lord God Almighty is upon me,

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because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,

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to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord. Jesus closed the book and gave it to the minister

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and sat down. Every eye in the congregation was upon him. Then Jesus said to them, And today is this scripture fulfilled in your hearing.

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They heard the word. They listened to the marvelous words that flowed from his lips. But they knew him, they thought.

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He'd grown up in their midst. Though they were impressed with his wisdom, his insights, his interpretation of scripture, they knew him so well.

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And as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. They knew him so well. And they said, "Isn't this Joseph's son?"

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The carpenter's son, we know this fella. He's one of us. He speaks well, but why doesn't he perform here in Nazareth the miracles that he performed in Capernaum?

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Well, Jesus is giving his inaugural sermon giving his inaugural address. And he focuses on outsiders as the primary objects of his concern.

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The poor, the poor. The broken hearted. The prisoners. The blind, the oppressed, regarded as outsiders.

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They're not just outsiders for the first century. They're outsiders for the 21st century. The poor have no voice. In the recent election, many of the things addressed

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as burning issues like tax relief, when you look real closely, it's not the poor that benefit so much from these particular issues. Jesus said, "The poor you have with you always."

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So there is a tremendous gap. We call it the global divide, the haves and the have-nots. The homeless and those who have homes. Those who have houses that they can afford to live in

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and those who have no affordable housing. Several years ago, I attended a meeting in Dallas during the Reagan administration. They had, it was a meeting under the umbrella of strategies

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for the elevation of people focused on the poor. But believe me when I tell you that that hotel was a plush hotel, so fabulous, you know, that the poor would not even dare darken the door,

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but yet they were there, we were, I was there as a visitor, discussing strategies for the poor. Now some people who have been born poor have escaped from poverty and they look down their noses

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on those who are still caught in the clutches of poverty. And they say, well, let me make it like I did. Once they become what they consider insiders, they forget about the outsiders.

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And they really forget that they once were outsiders. So our government is soliciting the participation of faith-based organizations in helping the poor. The church has always been concerned about the poor.

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Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, was poor. His parents were so poor that they could not make the sacrifice of a lamb, they had to sacrifice a pigeon dove which was provided in the law for the poor.

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But the poor received priority in Jesus' ministry. Spirit of the Lord God Almighty is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. That's the first one. It receives priority. So the church founder Jesus Christ himself comes in his inaugural message emphasizing the

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poor, focusing on the poor. And the people of Nazareth did not accept him because he accepted people they rejected. In order for them to accept him, he must be an insider with their approval. Bernard Johns, who pastored the Dexter Avenue Church

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and really in a way made a, laid the foundation for much that was done in the city of Montgomery, the cradle of our modern civil rights movement, movement. When he went to the Dexter Church, he identified with those

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ordinary things and the people couldn't tell you stand that. They really put him out of the church because he identified with those things that were just extraordinary and commonplace and the things of the soil and had a militancy for what is right rather than a particular class. But we have a tendency to focus on class distinction.

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If you don't dress in a certain way, you're not accepted. You're an outsider. There's an article a number of years ago where several rich people went out to one of the top stores, fashion stores in town, and they were dressed in very, very casual clothes. And the salespersons looked at them and didn't wait on them. They went home and changed clothes and came back

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and they were waited on because they had on expensive clothes. We accept people. We look at someone out there as we may be on our way home. If we aren't careful, if they are dressed in rags or whatever, we already have our opinion

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of that person. What does it really mean to welcome the outsider? They criticized Jesus. they saw him accepting everybody.

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Now what would happen if we were frequenting the taverns? If they saw you coming out of the tavern, they have an opinion.

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If they see you coming out of the liquor store and you sing in the choir, (audience laughing) They have an opinion.

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And we put people in certain pigeon holes because of that. And so because he came from this humble family in Nazareth, may say some good words, but he didn't attend our schools. He doesn't have a degree from our seminary.

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And so he is an outsider. He's an outsider. Well, Jesus said, now, let me remind you of something that is in scripture.

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Let's look at scripture. Remember, remember the prophet Elijah? That during a time of famine, that God sent him to a widow in Sarepta

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in the land of Sidon, remember? Remember? There were many widows in Israel that he could have sent Elijah to,

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but he sent him outside the country to a foreigner, to an outsider, for this poor widow to minister to the needs of the prophet Elijah.

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And also his successor, Elisha, who was sent on a mission to heal Naaman. He was a foreigner, he was in a foreign country, he's not a Jew, but God used him.

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So he used scripture, he quotes scripture to let them understand that God is concerned about the outsider. God is concerned about the poor. All of us, all of us, every one of us is concerned about being middle class.

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middle class, middle class, struggle. It's a struggle, but we're struggling to be middle class. Middle class. And most of the needs of this country,

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Congress, the executive branch, and all of them are trying to do some things. They first deal with the rich, and then the middle class.

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And they forget the poor. And with all of the gains that we have made as the middle class, the underclass, those under the middle class, are greater than they have ever been before. So what does this mean to us?

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You know, I remember when I was pastoring a number of years ago, and I was going out trying to work with some of the indigent, and one of the sisters came up and said, "Reverend, it's fine to work with those people, but we don't need them in our church." Well you can see the problem that I had.

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And I had another experience that Jesus talks about the poor, brokenhearted, we don't want to be bothered with people who are always telling us about their broken dreams, how they've been mistreated. We get away from them.

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And when they do stop us long enough to dump it all on us, we try to see that we're not stopped anymore. But Jesus is concerned about the poor, about the brokenhearted, and about the prisoners. Now I know some of us have possibly never been to prison in our lives.

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I was talking to a group of sisters here some years ago. they didn't even want to write a letter to the prisoners. Said nothing about going down there. Said, "Rev. if we write a letter they'll know where we are and if they get out they may get us." But Jesus is concerned and if as followers of the Master we are to be concerned.

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We follow in his steps. We are to be concerned about the prisoners, the blind, the lame, the beggars, the outcasts, the outsider.

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Jesus makes these his chief concern. Chief concern. A few weeks ago, well, it's maybe, it was a few months ago,

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there was a situation in which a man known as Cardinal Bernadine Cardinal in Chicago, he gave an interview to the New York Times and he told of many experiences in his ministry

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and including a day that he visited a prisoner on death row on the day of his execution. You know, the cardinal told the doomed man, both of us are going to die soon.

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You're going to die tonight. And I'm not sure when I'm going to die, but it won't be before too long. He says, "Oh, so let's talk and let's pray."

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The prisoner was not a Catholic, but it didn't matter. The Cardinal's words gave him some confidence and a measure of satisfaction. He was executed.

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Shortly after the execution, one of the man's attorneys asked to see Cardinal Bernadine. Apparently, while this prisoner was in jail, he had learned to paint, and he painted a picture.

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It was a picture of a bird, And he gave it with this instruction, "Be sure to give this to the Cardinal." Small painting it was,

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but it showed that in those last hours, the Cardinal had reached his spirit, had built a bridge to his heart. And that's what God calls us to do.

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to build some bridges. We don't have to go back to where we came from, but we can build some bridges, enable us to come across that bridge just as we've come across it.

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So the religious leaders tried to destroy the bridge. Jesus was criticized, he was scandalized, because he accepted outsiders. He welcomed them. He fraternized with publicans and sinners.

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Because Jesus accepted outsiders, He was falsely accused, He was arrested, He was unjustly condemned, He was led outside the city walls and put to death.

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The outsider. And there on the cross He was crucified between two thieves. He was crucified with outsiders. These were men who were rebels and Jesus was crucified with them.

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"But one of them cried out in his dying hour, 'Lord, when thou comest into thy kingdom, remember me.' And Jesus said to death, stay ahead. Wait a minute. I hear an outsider crying out to me and Jesus spoke a word of redemption saying today shall thou be with me in paradise.

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Paradise! I'm gonna take you right up to the Father myself. paradise. Joy, peace, acceptance, paradise. Well, they put him in the grave. They said we've gotten rid of this outsider. Got rid of him. They sealed the tomb. We don't have to worry about him anymore. But early, early, early on Sunday morning he got up,

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Walk the streets again and say welcome to the outsider. Says to his disciples go and tell our people, teach them my way and my will. He says welcome to the outsider. And I'm so glad that just as that dying thief was included that he included me. He included me when the Lord said whosoever, he included me. And aren't

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you glad he included you? Thanks be to God. We've all been outsiders, but he has welcomed us to come into the fold and to become the family of God in the truest sense of the word. So as we come now to extend the invitation to anyone who may be outside, you can come inside right now. If you're living in Austin without a

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church home, we invite you to come. My letter, my Christian experience, our own profession of faith. Come. It's an open door he sets before us. He comes outside the garden to bring us into the garden. Come. Broken, victim of oppressive circumstances, whatever may be your

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Circumstance, come. Come, come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Come.

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Come. Weary, worn, sad, come. He'll make us glad. Come.

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(piano music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (soft music)

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(singing in foreign language) ♪ He is consoling ♪ ♪ Heaven, heavenly ♪ ♪ Welcome to the ♪

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♪ Rest in peace ♪ ♪ Reverend ♪ ♪ Lee B ♪ ♪ He ♪

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♪ Reign ♪ ♪ Your ♪ ♪ Rule ♪ ♪ With us ♪

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♪ Deep in your anguish ♪ ♪ Burn like smoke the sorrow ♪ ♪ That never can I heal ♪ ♪ Can I hear ♪

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♪ Joy of the ♪ ♪ Desolate ♪ ♪ Light of the ♪ ♪ Praying ♪

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♪ O ♪ ♪ Father ♪ ♪ Heaven ♪ ♪ And Earth ♪

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♪ Faithless ♪ ♪ And you ♪ ♪ His peace the comforter ♪ ♪ Heavenly Savior ♪

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♪ And endless love ♪ ♪ Oh, that heaven can my cure ♪ ♪ Kissing the brain of life ♪ ♪ We want it ♪

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♪ Glory ♪ ♪ For the crown ♪ ♪ Of God ♪ ♪ You crown ♪

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♪ Come to the peace of love ♪ ♪ Come ever glory ♪ ♪ Come ever glory ♪ [ Music ]

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Welcome to the outside. That's good news. Brother Marshall, will you present your guest here? He came in after our visitors were presented.

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- Well, I have a sponsor, who's gonna be with us again. - Oh, now this-- - He's a Spanish man.

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- He sells suits too. (audience laughing) I've gotten several from him, so if you see me looking real good,

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he has some responsibility for that. over at Men's Clothing over there. All right. Lord send us forth to be diligent in pursuit

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of those who are outsiders. Remembering that we were once outsiders, we give you thanks that we are now inside and commissioned to go and work outside.

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Grace, mercy, peace be with you from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. ♪ Amen ♪

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♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ Amen. [ Silence ]