I am a missions
professor. That’s what I do. The greatest danger this morning is that I will
try to say everything I have been teaching for the past 22 years in one short
sermon. A bad idea! At least I have to begin with what the words “mission/missions”
mean. They come from the Latin word for “sending”. In the New Testament the
same word occurs in Greek as “apostle”. The apostles were missionaries – sent ones,
sent by God to their world. God sends us also into the world as God’s people.
In John 21, Jesus said to the disciples, “As the Father sent me into the world,
I am sending you.” We are sent both as God’s representatives and in the way
that God entered our world as the Incarnate Son.
From the beginning of
Scripture to the end, God’s people are called from every nation and sent to
every nation. Paul puts it this way, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world
to God’s self, and God has given to you and me the ministry and message of
reconciliation” (my paraphrase from 2 Corinthians 5).
To put it another way,
God sends us into the world around us as a reconciling people. We are Christ’s
hands and feet and voice to all those we meet. In Martin Luther’s words, each
one of us is a “little Christ”. Together we are the presence of Christ in the
world. A key point in this overarching statement is that it applies to
everyone. There are no barriers in the Reign of God.
This morning, I want
to reflect on this basic theme by looking at Genesis 12 and the call of Abram
and Sarai, Matthew 28 and what we call “the Great Commission”, and Revelation 7
with its picture of God’s people at the end of all things. A common theme in
all these passages is that we are God’s people for the sake of all people on
earth, now and forever.
Genesis 12: 1 to 5
The call of Abram and
Sarai is sometimes thought of as the beginning of missions. God calls them to
follow because humankind had rebelled against God. This call is the beginning
of God’s work to reconcile humankind to the eternal Godhead. There is much here
that we will not treat this morning – such as the contrasting parallels with
chapter 11 (contrast “Let us build, let us make a name for ourselves” with “I
[God] will build you, I [God] will make a name for you”). Rather I will focus
in on one main point.
We see that Abram was
already part of a nomadic family, which had moved from “Ur of the Chaldeans” to
Harran, on their way to Canaan. Ur was southeast of Babylon, close to the
Persian Gulf in modern Iraq. If the text means for us to think of Babylon when
we read about Babel in Genesis 11, Abraham’s ancestors moved southeast from
Babylon towards the Gulf. Abraham’s father, Terah, set out from Ur to move to
Canaan (Genesis 11: 31), but settled in Harran instead. Harran is northwest of
Babylon and Ur, following the great rivers of that land almost to their source.
It lies just within the modern state of Turkey.
God called Abraham and
Sarah to finish the journey that Terah began and follow the road southwest into
the land of Canaan. The story of that journey and its results takes up much of
the book of Genesis, but I want to emphasize the accompanying promise God made
Genesis 12: 2-3,
I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make
your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and
whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed
through you.
More issues to mention
briefly and then leave alone: The place of blessing and cursing; the way that
these people therefore represent God; and so on. In all these ideas I see one
overarching idea: That God is using Abraham to bring God’s blessing to “all
peoples on earth”. Who are “all peoples”? At the beginning of the promise, God
says that Abraham and Sarah will be the first parents of a great “nation”. This
seems to be a larger category than “peoples of the earth”. The difference is like
the difference between Canada and the Randolph Peters. Sometimes the phrase,
“the peoples on earth”, is translated as “the families of the earth”.
I see three simple
points here.
One: We are individuals who always belong to a group. No one is a full
person in isolation. Anyone who is cut off from all others is unhappy and
alienated. Fully human life is lived together in community.
Two: Every community finds its fullest joy in God’s blessing. Indeed,
salvation here appears to be directed first towards the group. We are saved in
community and for community.
Three: There is no one left out of God’s plan – no individual and no
group of people. God wants all people to receive God’s blessing. God wants
everyone to be saved.
This emphasis on
“everyone” – every individual and every people group – is what we carry forward
as we turn to Matthew 28.
Matthew 28: 16 to 20
We usually call this
brief passage that concludes Matthew’s gospel, “The Great Commission.” Again,
there are many important themes we will mention and then leave aside. The
commission is set up by the location, a mountain in Galilee to which Jesus had
directed them. Evidently, Jesus wanted to echo the way that Moses went up the
mountain to receive the Law. This commission is part of “Christ’s Law”.
Then, Jesus reminds
them of his authority. He is the King of the Universe. The theme of Jesus’ rule
over all runs throughout Matthew’s Gospel from beginning to end. Jesus’
exercises this authority in giving the mandate that follows. The actual command
is to make disciples. The setting for the command is the lives of the
disciples: “As you go, wherever you go, make disciples.” The content of
discipling is the invitation to join God’s family (“baptizing”) and the
commitment to obedience (“teaching them to obey whatever Jesus commands”).
Sometimes we stop
there. We hear the commission and emphasize the necessity of witness and
invitation and obedience, but Jesus did not stop there. Jesus includes the
scope of our missionary mandate: “Make disciples of all peoples.” The
word that Jesus used for “peoples” could be translated as “Gentiles”. In
Matthew 10, during his earthly ministry, Jesus used the same word to restrict
his own ministry: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, but go only to the Lost Sheep
of Israel.” Now, at the end of his ministry, Jesus lifts the exclusion: Go to
the Gentiles also. Make disciples of the Gentiles also.
It is hard for us to
see how revolutionary this extension of the gospel to Gentiles was. The
boundary between “God’s Chosen People” and all the rest was strong in the
Jewish identity. In times of strength and peace, the people might be open to
outsiders – such as Ruth, Moabite woman, who was brought into Boaz’ family in
the book of Ruth. In times of danger, such as the Return from the Exile
recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah, they were not open to outsiders of any kind.
Ezra the priest forced those who had married non-Gentile wives to send their
wives away. Those outsiders could not be part of God’s People.
Now Jesus removes the
boundary decisively and forever. No one needs to remain outside God’s blessing.
No one is automatically excluded. Everyone, which really means everyone, is
invited to God’s Banquet. Here the blessing extended through Abraham and Sarah
and their descendants is fulfilled within the church.
Revelation 7: 9 to 17
This brings us to our
third passage, a vision of the end of time. John portrays events in human
history, showing both their earthly appearance and their heavenly or spiritual
reality. So, in chapter 6 we read about the fifth seal:
9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw
under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of
the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. 10 They
called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and
true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our
blood?” 11 Then each of
them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer,
until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers and
sisters, were killed just as they had been.
Chapter 7 does not
present a subsequent scene, but rather we see the lives of John’s readers from
a different perspective. Both chapters describe, not future history, but the
readers’ present experience. In chapter 6, we see the results of persecution,
“the souls of those who had been slain”. In chapter 7, they are described as
“they who have come out of the great tribulation”.
I see no benefit in
trying to work out time schemes and predict when some event called “the great
tribulation” will occur. This is rather a description of life here on this
earth as servants of the Living God. In 2 Corinthians 6: 9-10 (NEB), Paul
describes us as “the unknown men whom all men know; dying we still live on;
disciplined by suffering, we are not done to death; in our sorrows we have
always cause for joy; poor ourselves, we bring wealth to many; penniless, we
own the world.” This description captures the scene in Revelation 7.
Again, I want to
emphasize one theme only from this description. “I saw a great crowd of every
nation and kindred and people and tongue.” With great force, John picks up the
description from Genesis 12 (“all families of the earth”) and Matthew 28 (“even
the Gentiles! – All of them”), and he spells out what “everyone” means: People
from every country, people from ethnic group, people from every social group,
people from every language on earth. Everyone!
Synthesis
This description could
be the poster verse for any conversation on diversity. From it, I take one
simple lesson: The church is meant to include everyone. In the first sermon I
preached from this pulpit, I said that there is something about being Christian
that breaks down barriers and includes everyone. I believed it then, and I
believe it now.
Missions is the life
blood of the church because we are always in danger of turning into our own
little community, unintentionally excluding those not like us. When that
happens, we become only a social group, a sub-culture within the larger
society. God wants us to be open, inviting everyone, always reaching out to
those who do not know God and participating in Christ’s great work of
reconciling the world to God.
What Does This Look Like?
We are in a three-part
series on missions. Next Sunday, Dorothy Fontaine can give us more of a picture
of what our participation in God’s mission looks like, but I will begin today
with four simple observations.
1. Missions begins with the people around us. We look around us for
those who are experiencing alienation from God and from other people, and then
we reach out to them as the mouth and hands and feet of Jesus. (I am relying on
Paul’s description of mission in 2 Corinthians 5: God has given us the ministry
and message of reconciliation.)
We naturally reach out to those who look like us and think like us. We
grew out of the migrations of Russian Mennonites to Canada in the late 1940s.
People who share that experience fit well with us, but Scripture emphasizes the
reach of the gospel to everyone. In being God’s reconciling people, we look
also for people who do not look or act just like us. The only requirement is
that they are people whom God loves and we know.
Our SCO is a good example of such outreach. We reach out to the people
around us, wherever they are in their lives, and together we become community.
2. Missions includes people across the oceans, as far away as you can
imagine. I have friends in Egypt and in United Arab Emirates. I know people
from Ukraine and from New Zealand. Any place you can imagine, God is there and
God wants the people there to experience reconciliation. God calls all of us to
minister to the people closest to us, and God calls some of us to go far away
as Christ’s reconciling agents.
[Here I talked about some of our own missionaries: Descriptions omitted
online.]
3. Missions is a group ministry. You notice the group language in all
three texts. God normally calls God’s people to mission in community. We go as
community, and we call people into community. Our lives together as God’s
people is at the heart of mission.
4. This fact leads to the relationship between nurture and evangelism.
We don’t have time to develop this relationship, but I will say this much. The
Great Commission begins in worship (v. 17) and ends in our intimate
relationship with Christ (v.20). We can say it briefly: Revival is the engine of
missions. You cannot give what you do not have, and when you are filled with
God’s Spirit, you cannot keep from sharing what you have with everyone around
you.
Emil Brunner once said, “The Church exists by mission, just as a fire exists
by burning. Where there is no mission, there is no church; and where there is
neither Church nor mission, there is no faith.” (Brunner was Swiss theologian
who could have said it in German, which would sound even more impressive.) Think
of that. It fits well with the texts we read. If people around us do not receive
God’s blessings through us, we fall short of being God’s Church. If we do not
invite people around us to Jesus, we fall short of being God’s Church. If our
fellowship does not reflect the diversity of the world around us, we fall short
of being God’s Church.
Many years ago, the
founder of Operation Mobilization, George Verwer, recited a parody of the old
hymn, “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Here is part of what he said:
Like a mighty tortoise moves the Church of God;
Brothers we are treading where we’ve always trod.
We are much divided, many bodies we,
Having many doctrines, not much charity.
Of course, this is a
parody. The original hymn is what Verwer wanted us to hear, and it is what I
would call us to as well.
Like a mighty army moves the church of God,
Brothers we are treading where the saints have trod.
We are not divided, all one body we.
One in hope and doctrine. One in charity.
God calls us to move
forward in love and community, united by God’s Spirit, and blessing everyone we
meet. May it be so.
Steinbach Mennonite Church
12 May 2019
