Introduction
Our focus statement tells you where I want to go
with our text this morning. My thoughts, then, come in response to the thinking
ahead question in last week’s bulletin: “Have you ever thought of what your
life’s mission statement would be? What is it?”
Many of us are at a stage of life that means we are
looking back over our lives more than forward at what we hope to do and to be,
but the question remains: Who have you been? Who do you want to be?
When I was in college, I had a clear idea of what I
wanted to do with my life. I don’t know if I said it out loud or just thought
it to myself, but I was quite clear: I wanted to be a pastor, a missionary, and
a teacher. Guess what? I spent 12 years as a pastor, seven years as a
missionary, and the last 25 years as a teacher. And now I’m back in a pastoral
and teaching role in retirement.
But when I look at my life, I don’t think as much
about the roles I have played. I wonder more about the person that I’ve been.
How have I functioned as a son and brother, as a husband and father, and now as
a grandfather. What kind of person have I been as a teacher and pastor, as a
co-worker in the various jobs I’ve held? Have I been the person God wants me to
be?
1 Timothy 4
In the passage we heard from 2 Timothy, Paul is in
this same position. Near the end of his life, he answers the question, “Have I
been the person God wants me to be?” His reply: “I have fought the good fight;
I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved
for me the crown of righteousness.” We might say it, “I have done what God
wants me to do. I have been who God wants me to be. I am ready to meet God face
to face and live with God in eternity.”
To put it another way, Paul had a clear mission
statement in his life, and he knew that he had lived according to that mission.
What was his mission?
In Acts 26, Paul stood before Agrippa and Festus,
representatives of the Roman Empire. He was on trial, charged with creating a
public disturbance. In his defence, Paul told the story of his encounter with
Jesus. Here are some excerpts:
4 “All the Jews know my
way of life from my youth, a life spent from the beginning among my own people
and in Jerusalem. 5 They have known for a long time, if they
are willing to testify, that I have belonged to the strictest sect of our
religion and lived as a Pharisee. …
9 “Indeed, I myself was
convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
10 And that is what I did in Jerusalem; with authority received
from the chief priests, I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but
I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death. 11 By
punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme,
and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign
cities.
12 “With this in mind, I
was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief
priests, 13 when at midday along the road, Your Excellency, I
saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my
companions. 14 When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a
voice saying to me … , ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? …’ 15 I
asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The Lord answered, ‘I am Jesus whom you are
persecuting. 16 But get up and stand on your feet, for I have
appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the
things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you. 17 I
will rescue you from your people and from the gentiles—to whom I am sending you
18 to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to
light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness
of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’
19 “After that, King
Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision 20 but
declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the
countryside of Judea, and also to the gentiles, that they should repent and
turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance.”
That was Paul’s mission statement: to tell Jews and
Gentiles alike that they should turn to God and follow him. That meant, as his
life and letters make clear, that he called people to follow Jesus. It was this
mission that he refers to when he says, “I have fought the good fight; I have
finished the race; I have kept the faith.”
Our Own Mission
Statement
Should this be your mission statement? Should it be
mine? Not necessarily. Paul was expressing what God laid on him in his
encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. God has something for each of us
to be and do – and we are not all meant to be Paul.
In my own life, my encounters with God made it clear
to me that teaching and preaching were essential parts of my identity. I could
describe those encounters, but I won’t today. It is enough to say that these
three roles – pastor, missionary, and teacher – flow out of God’s Spirit present
in my life.
I think that is actually the lesson of Paul’s words
in 2 Timothy 4 – that, just as he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, each of us
also meets Jesus in our lives. God may call you to life in the business world.
Your personal mission statement is going to look different than Paul’s or mine.
Perhaps you will be more like Lydia: You can read about her in Acts 16: 14-15.
She dealt in the sale of “purple cloth”, a luxury product in her own context,
and was reasonably well off. When she came to faith in Christ, she became the
one who supported Paul’s ministry in Philippi financially. Her support for the
ministry was as essential as Paul’s call to preach to Jews and Gentiles.
God may call you to life in an office. Like Matthew,
who was part of the bureaucracy of his day, you may spend your time behind a
desk. Like Matthew, the way that you live there depends on God’s call in your
life. Who does God want you to be? What does God want you to do? I can tell you
my own personal mission statement: Love God; Love God’s People; Love God’s
World.
Looking Back
You can (and should) ask this question at the
beginning of your life. But for those of us nearer the end of our lives, we
still ask this question. Who does God want us to be? What does God want us to
do? And, most importantly, what kind of person will we be while we do it?
Joel 2
This question brings us to Joel 2. Joel is a
surprisingly anonymous book, given the importance of the verses we read in the
life of the early church. We don’t know when the prophet Joel lived. We don’t
know what the great catastrophe of chapter one is. Joel speaks of a locust
plague. Does he mean literally or metaphorically? We don’t know. We don’t know
very much about the setting of the book at all. But we can read it and see the
flow of the ideas in Joel’s prophecy.
A great catastrophe comes on the people in chapter
one. Given fears of war and destruction in our own day, he could be talking
about us! Then we have the promise of God’s intervention – if God’s people turn
to God and give themselves to him. That’s the passage that we read. Finally,
chapter three describes the extent to which God heals and restores God’s people.
In the middle, we have this “great and glorious day
of the Lord”, with the promise that we heard read in our first reading: “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and
your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young
men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days I will
pour out my spirit.” (Verses 28 and 29) In Acts 2, Peter uses these verses
(28-32) to describe the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We are right to
see them as describing what God wants to do in our midst.
This pouring out of God’s
Spirit gives us some understanding of how we go about discovering God’s mission
in our lives. You notice that God’s Spirit is poured out on young and old
alike. Sons and daughters – old and young – those in charge and ordinary
workers – men and women: God pours out the Spirit on all of us.
You see, then, what God’s
Spirit gives us in this “baptism”. Two things are named: One, we prophesy –
that is, we speak God’s word; and two, we dream about what can be and have a
clear vision of what God wants to do.
Bringing Paul and
Joel Together
We heard from Paul: He had
a mission or life vision that came from his encounter with Jesus on the road to
Damascus. At the end of his life, he could say, “I have followed that vision to
the end!” From Paul we learn the value of embracing God in the person of Jesus
Christ. That’s where our life mission comes from. As our congregational mission
statement puts it, “Steinbach Mennonite Church is striving to faithfully follow
Christ …” Our individual mission statements fit into that overarching goal – to
follow Christ faithfully.
We heard from Joel: When
the dangers of this life threaten to destroy us, God comes to us and calls us
to turn around – if you like, God calls us to follow Christ faithfully. In the
process, then, God’s Spirit is poured out on us and enables us both to dream
(find our vision or mission) and to live out our dream.
How do these two readings
fit together? Paul encourages us to follow Jesus wherever he takes us in life.
Try it! I guarantee two things: one, you will have wonderful experiences and be
amazed at how good life can be; and two, you will eventually fail (perhaps
badly). Sometimes our desire to be good and do the right thing is overwhelmed by
the pressures and dangers of life. The “locusts” eat up everything we try. We
find ourselves trapped like our farmers in a perpetual spring where the rain
never stops.
How do keep going when we
fail? At SMC, we support each other and care for each other. During the Sunday
School hour, we will talk more about the way that we provide care and support.
It is a wonderful thing, and you will find that the effort to reach out gives
you strength to do more than you ever thought you could. But again, sooner or
later, our strength runs out. Sooner or later, you cannot provide the care you
want to. Sooner or later, you will feel abandoned and helpless. How can we keep
going when that happens?
Joel provides the answer.
This time in which we live – the time between Jesus’ resurrection and his
return at the end of time – is what the Bible calls “the last days”. These are
the days in which God’s Spirit is poured out on us and gives us the ability to
do what we cannot do on our own. We need God’s Spirit to live the life God
wants us to live.
Some Closing
Thoughts
I remember my own
encounter with God’s Spirit. As Mennonites, we are a cautious people. This kind
of talk may sound to us like calling for a kind of charismatic phenomena that
we are uncomfortable with. My own experience was not so dramatic. I prayed and
asked God to fill me with his Holy Spirit. God did so. I have had at least three
times in my life when I was overwhelmed with God’s presence, and I was made
aware again that any good thing in my life is the result of God’s work in me.
We started the sermon with
the question, “What is your own personal mission statement?” You will have to
answer that question for yourself. What I have told you from the two passages
we read is that your life’s goal flows from a personal encounter with Jesus and
that meeting that goal is made possible by God’s Spirit working within you.
These two ideas will look
different when we are young than they do when we are near the end of our lives,
but age is really not the point. I am asking you to look for God’s direction
every day of your life – when you are young and when you are (as a friend of
mine puts it) “ancient of days”. Keep looking for Jesus and listening to what
he wants you to do. What Jesus wants most of all is simply for us to stop
fighting him and let him do his work in us.
It is best to spend your
whole life following Jesus and say with Paul, “I have fought the good fight; I
have finished the race; I have kept the faith.” But whatever stage of life
you’re at, you can set your heart and mind on Jesus and make following him your
life’s goal.
Focus statement: As we begin our lives, we
have dreams and visions of what we hope to become. As we end our lives, we look
back and evaluate where we've been. God also has dreams and visions for us, and
God also evaluates who we have been.
Steinbach Mennonite Church 23 October 2022
Scripture Readings:
Joel 2: 23-32
23 O
children of Zion, be glad, and rejoice in the Lord
your God, for he has given the early rain for your vindication; he has poured
down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. 24 The
threshing floors shall be full of grain; the vats shall overflow with wine and
oil.
25 I will
repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the
destroyer, and the cutter, my great army that I sent against you. 26 You
shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously
with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame.
27 You
shall know that I am in the midst of Israel and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other.
And my people shall never again be put to shame.
God’s Spirit Poured Out
28 Then
afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see
visions. 29 Even on the male and female slaves, in those days I
will pour out my spirit.
30 I will
show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of
smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to
blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord
comes. 32 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved, for in Mount Zion
and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors
shall be those whom the Lord
calls.
2 Timothy 4: 6-8 and 16-18
6 As for me, I am already
being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good fight; I have
finished the race; I have kept the faith. 8 From now on
there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have
longed for his appearing.
…
16 At my first defense no one came to my support, but all deserted me. May
it not be counted against them! 17 But the Lord stood by me and
gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and
all the gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. 18 The
Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly
kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
