What Are You Living For?

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.

The Mission of God's People (with apologies to Christopher Wright)

Introduction  

Last week I said that the mission of God is to reconcile the world to himself. We have messed up God’s good world, and God wants to fix it. God works ceaselessly to mend the broken relationships that flow from human sin. This is our joy and our hope in all the trouble that surrounds us. 

 

What then is the mission of God’s People? What do we who call ourselves Christians do? We cannot save the world: Only God can do that. We cannot renew the whole of creation: Only God can do that. So, what do we do? We participate in God’s mission by living into God’s desire to reconcile the world to himself. As the text from 2 Corinthians 5 reminds us: In Christ, God is reconciling the world to himself, and God has given you and me the ministry and message of reconciliation. 

 

This morning, I want to look at the mission of the church, the mission of God’s people, and consider those things that we do in response to God’s great act of redemption. 

 

Holistic Mission 

Consider the key statement that serves as the foundation of the Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples.” That all-encompassing authority echoes the basic Jewish prayer, which you can still hear if you go to the synagogue: Baruch attah Adonai Elohenu, Melech ha olam. Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe. When Jesus claims ultimate authority, he is claiming to be the king of the universe, the Eternal King. Our mission as his followers, then, is “holistic”. That is, it includes everything in life. There is no part of our lives outside of God’s mission, and there is no part of our lives outside the mission of the church. 

 

Six years ago, I heard Christopher Wright lecture on the nature of mission. Wright has written a magisterial work titled “The Mission of God”, with a companion volume, “The Mission of God’s People”. He was the speaker for a gathering of the Evangelical Missiological Society, meeting in February 2016 at Ambrose University. He made the point that, if all authority has been given to Jesus, then our mission as followers of Jesus must encompass everything in this world. 

 

Wright developed this idea then by constructing five basic areas of the mission of the church: 1) Evangelism, 2) Teaching, 3) Compassion, 4) Justice, and 5) Creation Care. He simplified this five-part outline into three basic areas: Building the church (evangelism and teaching), serving society (compassion and justice), and creation care. We can use this outline to consider briefly the mission of God’s People in today’s world. [Note that at the centre of all three is the constant invitation to life in Christ.] 

 

Building the Church 

Consider the ministry of building the church. Last Sunday, I talked about the liberation war in Zimbabwe, which led to significant church growth in the Brethren in Christ Church. We noted that God’s reconciling mission was at work through the problems and pain of that war. How did the church participate in God’s mission? 

 

I remember a report from the Lobengula church – a church of several thousand people in Bulawayo. The congregation sent out “gospel teams” into the surrounding countryside to preach to people in the rural villages. One of the teams reported the response. They came to a village in the Matopo Hills and found the people at work in the fields. They told them they wanted to hold a service with them. The people said no, they were busy planting their fields before the rain came. The young people in the gospel team then asked if they could help finish the planting. When they were done, the people gladly agreed to hear the gospel. 

 

This is the church in mission – God at work through God’s People. In this case, the church combined preaching to others with teaching the young people what it meant to live in the light of Jesus’ resurrection. We could give other examples, but this one is enough for now. I encourage you to learn from the people in your congregation who are engaged in missionary work. I encourage you also to go to Missionfest Manitoba, which this year is being held April 29 to May 1 at the Church of the Rock. Illustrations abound, and there is more than enough room for all of us to participate in the preaching mission of the church. 

 

Serving Society 

Serving society includes ministries of compassion and justice ministries. We could consider the work of International Justice Mission or talk about the work of agencies such as MCC, World Vision, or Samaritan’s Purse. I note this morning a local venture in Steinbach, which has grown out of our own congregation. I’m on the board for this group, so it’s close to my heart. 

 

Some years ago, one of our members named Irene Kroeker was a teacher at the SRSS. She worked especially with young people who were not able to function well in society. When they graduated from high school, they did not magically become able to function in society. They trusted Irene, and when they got into difficulties, they would call her for help. Her response led to the formation of something called Steinbach Community Outreach. Our congregation gave Irene office space and a room to hold some clothes and food. She gathered a small team of workers around her and began helping those people in Steinbach who had no fixed address. They came to her, and she helped them navigate the system of social support set up in Manitoba. 

 

Today, SCO leases the second floor of our church building. They serve the invisible people of Steinbach, which includes those who have no bed inside even when the temperatures outside hit their January lows. Last Sunday, while I was speaking here, Irene was describing to our congregation what that looks like. Charlene (our administrative assistant) arrived at the facility last week, when it was close to minus 30 outside, to find one of their regulars huddled up against the door. She thought at first he had frozen to death there, but he was just waiting for us to open up so he could go inside. Now we are considering options for providing shelter for those who are left outside in such conditions. 

 

One may wonder, can’t we provide housing for everyone? We’re working on it. We have plans and government funding to build a 24-unit apartment block in Steinbach. We have several individual houses and apartments that provide for people who are temporarily homeless. Even so, there is a small group of people who refuse all offers of housing. That’s who is caught outside when the temperatures descend to the depths. 

 

We don’t make preaching or evangelism part of the ministry. We help people fill out their taxes or deal with Service Canada. We give out food and clothing. We have classes on cooking or sewing. This is essentially a ministry of compassion. Even so, we see people come to faith in Christ. I think of Arthur (not his real name), who came to SCO some years ago. Over the years interacting with our volunteers and the staff, Arthur came to faith. Then he died, about a year ago. We were able to have a real funeral for him and rejoice in the final healing that he had experienced. He died with hope because compassion and evangelism flow naturally together. This is the church in mission – God at work through God’s People. 

 

You notice that in my first example of the gospel team compassion and evangelism went together. James told us that it is wrong to say to someone in need “God bless you” while refusing to help with the physical need in front of us. In holistic mission, it makes sense that physical and spiritual and social and political will flow together. Sometimes, we have tried to say that the church’s mission is one or the other. One person will insist that MDS or MCC is real mission; another will insist that only preaching leading to conversion is real mission. The truth is that both are part of the mission of God’s People. We participate in God’s great work to reconcile the world to himself. 

 

Creation Care 

The third area – Creation Care – may surprise us. It shouldn’t. The Bible begins with the creation of the world, and as the climax of creation God gives the mandate to care for the earth. We are both part of creation and stewards of creation. This category of steward reminds us that God demands an accounting of his images, his representatives, in the world. When we think of the judgment at the end of time, when God holds all people to account, one of the questions God asks you and me is, “How did you care for my creation?” 

 

Given the distress that we see in the physical world around us, it makes sense that a gospel of hope must also bring hope for the creation. I wonder sometimes what kind of a world my granddaughters will live in. I fear for the problems that human greed and overconsumption have caused, and I grieve for the distress my grandchildren will experience. 

 

One thing is completely clear to me. The root of the problems our world faces is human sin, and only the gospel can fix them. When God reconciles all things to himself, God brings hope for the healing of the earth as well as of all people on the earth. 

 

This idea is not so new as you may think. Twenty-two years ago, George Verwer, the founder of Operation Mobilization, preached a sermon he called, “Seven people lying on the side of the road.” [This message was part of his ministry to Providence College and Seminary in November 1999.] He asked, if the Good Samaritan travelled the road today, who would he find lying on the side of the road? Here is his list: Children at risk, Abused Women, The Extreme Poor, HIV/Aids Patients, People with Impure Water, The Unborn, and The Environment. OM is completely focused on preaching the gospel, and they see clearly that the gospel includes the whole world. 

 

A Rocha is one organization that has focussed on the environment, on creation care. Peter and Miranda Harris began A Rocha, with their first centre in Portugal in 1983. “A Rocha” means “Rock” in Portuguese. Peter Harris has written two books about the early years, Under the Bright Wings and Kingfisher’s Fire. The Harris family with another family moved to Portugal to do an environmental project. They ended up planting a church because they wanted a place to worship. Over the years A Rocha has moved into many different countries – Lebanon, Kenya, France, the UK and Canada. 

 

I remember reading about their work in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. Peter Harris noted that they were working in a combat zone, trying to reverse environmental devastation. The Aammiq Wetland had been degraded by agricultural runoff, and efforts to reverse the damage were seen as impractical given conflict between Israel and Lebanon. Nevertheless, starting around 2000, A Rocha was able to work successfully in a conflict zone – a dramatic example of God’s reconciling mission, reconciling both the earth and the people of the earth with each other.  This is the church in mission – God at work through God’s People. 

 

Today, A Rocha is in 20 countries including Canada and including Manitoba. They work with government agencies and church agencies and Christians who care about God’s creation. 

 

God’s Missionaries for God’s Mission 

Consider, then, the kind of people we have been talking about. The people in A Rocha are ordinary people who care about creation. The evangelizers from Lobengula church were young people who had just come through a war. The volunteers at Steinbach Community Outreach range from young people to retired folk. God’s missionaries include us all. There are specialist missionaries who go on special assignments. Sometimes we think that they are the only ones who carry out the mission of the church, but the truth is that everyone of us is part of God’s mission in the church. 

 

I remember a story Jon Bonk told about Prem Pradhan, sometimes called the apostle to Nepal. Pradhan had been an airplane pilot in World War 2. Born a Hindu, he converted to Christian faith after the war under the preaching of Bakht Singh. Over the next 40 or more years, he was instrumental in leading thousands to Christian faith in the Hindu nation of Nepal. 

 

Bakht Singh. He was a secular Sikh who was pursuing his studies at the University of Manitoba. His first winter in Winnipeg (I think in 1929), he was at the YMCA, when a man named John Hayward befriended him. John and Edith became good friends with Singh and hosted him often in their home. There he began to read the Bible. Reading John’s gospel, he became convinced that Jesus was the one he should follow. On his return to India, he became an evangelist, whose ministry led to Prem Pradhan’s own ministry. 

 

John and Edith Hayward exercised a ministry of hospitality and set in motion one part of the mission of God’s people, working with God to reconcile the world to himself. 

 

Conclusion 

Our Scripture passage reminds us that all missionary outreach – whether evangelistic or teaching, whether compassion or justice ministries, whether creation care in its various forms – all of this is intended to invite people to faith in Christ. You hear how Paul says it: “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God.” 

 

We are ordinary people, but God uses us to bring the wealth of the gospel to the world. Paul describes us in the passage we read. We may not see how what we do brings people to Christ, but we follow Christ daily, because God has given us the ministry and the message of reconciliation. As a conclusion, I read these words from the New English Bible (the 1970 translation), which captures something of what I am trying to say. 

 

A basic theme in 2 Corinthians is the way that God’s power works through human weakness. The young people at Lobengula may have felt that the aftereffects of the liberation war were beyond their healing, but God worked through them. The problems of homelessness seem too great for us in Steinbach on a bitter winter night, but God is working through us to touch the lives of all God’s children. The environmental problems we fact in our world are absolutely overwhelming, but God is at work through God’s healing to bring new life. What we see on the surface is our weakness and inability. What is in the depths of reality is God’s power at work. As Paul puts it in 2 Cornithians 6: 

We wield the weapons of righteousness in right hand and left. ⁸ Honour and dishonour, praise and blame, are alike our lot: we are the impostors who speak the truth, ⁹ the unknown men whom all men know; dying we still live on; disciplined by suffering, we are not done to death; ¹⁰ in our sorrows we have always cause for joy; poor ourselves, we bring wealth to many; penniless, we own the world. 

 

 

Fort Garry EMC 

13 February 2022 

Text: 2 Corinthians 5: 11 to 6: 11

Where It All Begins

The New Year is well underway. We have had three weeks to break all our resolutions, plenty of time to see how the new year is different from the old. As the pandemic continues its course, I saw a comment from one person that said, “I didn’t realize that 2020 was the first part of a trilogy.” We’ve had time now to ask ourselves again what life is all about. As Christians, then, we look back to the heart of our faith, to the place that it all begins.

 

That, in a way, is what the gospel reading is about. Jesus’ appearance in Nazareth was not the chronological beginning of his ministry, but Luke uses it to show the seed from which the whole of Jesus’ ministry grew. We begin by looking at Psalms 19, and then we consider the passage in Luke 4. In both cases, my controlling question is, “Where does our faith begin? What’s it all about?” 

 

Psalms 19 

The psalm divides naturally into three sections.

 

Verses 1 to 6 describe the way that the creation praises God. Creation has no audible “voice”, yet creation speaks without ceasing, praising God from sunrise to sunset and throughout the hours of darkness in between.

 

Any Christian who has spent time in nature knows what the psalmist is describing. There is something awe-inspiring about sundogs on a bitterly cold morning. There is something that moves us deeply in the sight of mountains towering above and valleys dropping away below us. From the detail of a snowflake or a rose to the majesty of the stars on a cold bright night, the world around us sings praise to the Creator.

 

Verses 7 to 10 move from the evidence of the world around us to the evidence of God’s law within us. The psalmist would have thought of the Torah, of course, but we can refer more broadly to the ethics that we find in every religion of the world. There is a broad consensus from all cultures and times. Tell the truth and don’t lie. Treat others well. Don’t hurt or kill. And so on.

 

Philosophers and theologians call this consensus “natural law”. God has placed within human beings and cultures a basic understanding of how to live. When we orient our lives to God’s presence in the world around us and within us, life is sweet. “Sweeter than honey.”

 

Verses 11 to 14 sound a slightly different note. The first two sections do not hint at any problems. This third section makes it clear that the psalmist knows he is not in sync with the goodness of God all around us. He asks God to re-tune his heart and mind. There is evil in the world, and it is found primarily in human hearts and minds, in the choices we make. The cure for this evil is to be in tune with God, evident to us in the whole of creation as well as in our own direct relationship with the Creator. 

 

Luke 4 

So we turn to the Gospel reading from Luke 4. The first two verses make it clear that Jesus’ ministry began before the appearance at Nazareth. All four Gospel accounts tell how Jesus was baptized in the Jordan in the south of the country, nearer Jerusalem. All four describe him as going from his baptism back to the north of the country, to Galilee.

 

He began teaching in the towns and area around his own hometown of Nazareth, so that when he came to Nazareth he had already built up a reputation. You can almost imagine the headlines in The Nazareth News: “Hometown boy makes good!” “Jesus bar-Joseph makes his mark!” “Carpenter’s son makes and fills the pews!” When Jesus appeared in Nazareth, then, people were ready to check what the reports were about.

 

Verse 16 is interesting. Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, “as was his custom.” Clearly, Jesus did not begin his ministry to do away with Judaism. The law, which Psalms 19 extolls, was important to him. He knew Torah, and he listened to Torah each Sabbath, and he lived by Torah in his daily life.

 

The synagogue officials noticed him in their midst, and they offered him the privilege of reading from the Prophets. If their practice followed what is now done, they would have read from the Torah scroll itself – a passage from what we call the Pentateuch. Then they would have read from what today they call the haftorah – the Prophets and the Writings. As in our lectionary, the reading from Torah would be paired with a reading from the Prophets and the Writings – the rest of our Old Testament.

 

Our text does not make it clear whether Jesus chose the passage that he read. At the least, he had to read from Isaiah, because that was the scroll handed to him. My own guess is that he read the passage assigned for that Sabbath Day. In God’s design, the passage was from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

 

Jesus read this passage standing in front of the scroll, then he sat down. As everyone watched, wondering what this new teacher would say, he claimed simply, “My presence fulfills this scripture.” Wow! We could explore the people’s reaction, but we leave that aside. Consider what his claim means: These verses are the centre of Jesus’ own teaching. This centre consists of a series of simple statements: 

1)      Jesus brings good news to the poor. 

2)      Jesus proclaims release to captives. 

3)      Jesus gives recovery of sight to the blind. 

4)      Jesus sets the oppressed free. 

5)      Jesus proclaims God’s salvation. 

 

All of this is based on the fullness of God’s Spirit poured out within him. 

 

A Diversion into Mission Theology 

One of the courses I teach is the theology of Christian mission, especially what we call “biblical theology”.

 

Some missionaries turn to Matthew 28, what we call the Great Commission, for a summary of Christian witness to the world. They emphasize “making disciples” – the spiritual work of seeking conversions and teaching new converts how to live. The early Mennonites especially quoted Mark 16, “Go and preach the gospel.” They liked the emphasis on preaching and quoted Mark to show that preaching was the most important thing Christians could do.

 

Other missionaries turn to Luke 4, this morning’s passage. They see in it a description of physical ministries that meet immediate needs and base their work on this description. Mennonites today like Luke 4 better than Mark 16! The work of MCC, for example – “A cup of water in Christ’s name” – flows naturally from the ministry of Jesus seen as meeting physical needs.

 

So, which is the real centre of Jesus’ ministry? Is it meeting physical needs or is it making new converts? The answer, of course, is yes. Look again at Psalms 19. The world as God made it is good. Physical and spiritual work together in harmony to sing God’s praises. The human creature in this world is not good: “Keep your servant from the insolent” is sometimes translated as “Keep your servant from presumptuous sins.” Protect us from ourselves! The cure for our badness, for the physical and spiritual diseases of our world, is to be re-oriented to God’s moral and physical law. In other words, conversion to God’s Law (and therefore to God) heals the world.

 

Luke 4 suggests the same. Jesus says that his coming has certain consequences: 

1)      The poor receive good news: Their poverty is healed. 

2)      Captives are released: Those who suffer violence and warfare find peace. 

3)      The blind are given sight: Jesus healed many such physical ailments in his ministry. 

4)      The oppressed are set free: Those who are trapped by the way our society is structured find life. 

5)      God’s salvation is come: Physical and spiritual – life is made whole for everyone. 

 

The separation that we sometimes make between physical and spiritual is a false one. Fixing people’s political problems requires a spiritual conversion. Calling people to faith in Christ includes meeting their physical and social needs. God wants to make the world right again, the whole world. Jesus wants to heal Covid and depression and lying and stealing and political corruption and everything else that is wrong. 

 

So What? 

What do we make of the truth that we are broken people in a broken world and that God comes in the person of Jesus to bring healing and wholeness? The Psalm tells us that we can lean on God’s Law to find healing. Jesus tells us that we can find healing in him. He came into our world to make things right. We debate whether God’s salvation is physical or spiritual. It is both. God wants to restore everything – physical and spiritual, mental and emotional – and make us whole.

 

To put it another way, God has big plans for us. We can get the idea by thinking again of Psalms 19. The Psalm sings God’s praises by looking at creation. Consider God’s creation. God made all around us to sing God’s praise. More, God made the human creature to be God’s image in the world. We are God’s representatives. We are “the images of God”. 

 

Living Images 

I teach a course on the history of Christian missions. When we talk about the first 300 years of the church, I note that the first Christians were often drawn from the lower levels of society. They were people who did not impress anyone with their learning or wealth. Instead, they were servants and slaves and workers, ordinary people who represented God. Here is how one historian describes them: “In those days to be a Christian meant something. Doubtless among the pagans there were many who lived upright and even noble lives. Yet all our evidence goes to show that in that decaying world sexual laxity had gone almost to the limits of the possible, and that slavery had brought with it … cruelty and the cheapening of the value of human life. Christians were taught to regard their bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. The Church did not attempt to forbid or abolish slavery; it drew the sting of it by reminding masters and slaves alike that they had a common Master … and that they were brothers in the faith.” (Stephen Neill)

 

I could quote from Alan Kreider, who calls this “noble living” a habit of goodness that the first Christians wore like their clothing. [See The Patient Ferment of the Early Church.] I could quote Julian the Apostate, an enemy of the church, who complained, “[They] support not only their poor, but ours as well, and all men see that our people lack aid from us.” There isn’t enough time for all the quotes! The point is that the first Christians were broken people in a broken world, just like us, but they embodied Psalms 19 and they embodied the way that Jesus began his ministry. In Paul’s words, they were “Christ’s ambassadors” – that is, they were God’s images/representatives in the world. 

 

Moving Towards a Conclusion 

We often think that we are too ordinary to represent God in the world. But you have to realize that this is something God does in us, not something we do for ourselves. My thoughts turn towards a story from East Africa that I’ve told you before. I’m going to tell it again!

 

An old man was walking through the bush. At evening, he stopped at a village and asked for lodging. The owner of the village welcomed him, and they sat talking, as supper was prepared. Then, the old man saw a strange sight – an eagle eating corn on the ground with the chickens. He asked about the eagle, and his host said that he had found it fallen out of its nest. It had grown up with the chickens and now it thought it was a chicken. The old man was distressed. This noble bird should not peck corn with the chickens. He got permission to convince the eagle that it was an eagle, not a chicken. He threw the eagle in the air. It landed on the ground with a thud. He climbed a tree and threw it from higher up – and then on top of one of the huts from even higher. Each time, he said, “You are an eagle, not a chicken!” Each time, it hit the ground with a thud.

 

Discouraged, the old man went to bed. Unable to sleep, he got up and found the eagle resting in a tree with the chickens. He walked out the village with the eagle under his arm. He came to a mountain and started to climb. Higher and higher they climbed, until they came to a cliff overlooking the plain. One last time he told the eagle, “You are not a chicken. You are an eagle!” Then he threw him off the cliff. The eagle hurtled down, convinced it would die a messy death. But the wind plucked out one wing, then the other. Soon the eagle was floating in a big circle. It tried out its wings, and then began to rise with slow steady beats. As it flew towards the rising sun, it heard the old man call, “Remember! You are not a chicken! You are an eagle!”

 

May we live as God’s people, flying with the eagles lifted up by God’s Spirit. 

 

 

Texts 

Psalm 19 

God’s Glory in Creation and the Law 

To the leader. A Psalm of David. 

 

¹ The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. ² Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. ³ There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; ⁴ yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun, ⁵ which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. ⁶ Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and nothing is hid from its heat. 

 

⁷ The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple; ⁸ the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes; ⁹ the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. ¹⁰ More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb. 

 

¹¹ Moreover by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. ¹² But who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden faults. ¹³ Keep back your servant also from the insolent; do not let them have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression. ¹⁴ Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. 

 

Luke 4: 14-21 

The Beginning of the Galilean Ministry 

¹⁴ Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. ¹⁵ He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 

 

The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth 

¹⁶ When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, ¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

 

Focus Statement: 

Christians have often fallen off the horse on one side or the other – either we think Christian faith is a spiritual high or we emphasize the practical side of daily living. In fact, the Christian life includes it all. 

 

Looking Ahead Question: 

What’s the point of our faith in Christ? A spiritual high, or a better life physically? What's the point of being a Christian? 

 

Going Deeper Questions: 

1)      Can you summarize Psalms 19 in one sentence? 

2)      Can you summarize Jesus’ message from Isaiah in one sentence? 

3)      How does the Mennonite Church live out the gospel as expressed in Psalms 19 and Luke 4? 

4)   How can we (as individuals and as a congregation) live out the gospel as expressed in Psalms 19 and Luke 4? 

 

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church 

23 January 2022

 

Eternity in the Human Heart

I feel almost guilty picking up just one verse out of such rich texts and using it as a springboard for what Neil and I will say. Ecclesiastes 3 is perhaps the best-known chapter of that enigmatic book, and the beginning of this chapter has been immortalized by the Byrds (among others) singing, “To everything – turn, turn, turn …” I wish that we could reflect on what the editor of Ecclesiastes is saying by quoting this extended message from Qoholeth (“the teacher”), but we just don’t have time. 

 

Similarly, Romans 2 is part of a remarkable argument in which Paul develops the insight that God has come to all people throughout the world, bringing grace and truth to set us free from the power of sin. Probing that argument also must wait for some other day. Today we focus just on this one verse from Ecclesiastes: “God has set eternity in the human heart.” 

 

Eternity in their Hearts 

What does Ecclesiastes mean by this phrase, “Eternity in their hearts”? We live in time, moment by moment. The natural world around us moves through the seasons of the year and the seasons of our lives, past, present, and future. “Eternity” is a concept almost beyond our imagination. Eternity is where God is. Eternity is what God lives in. A basic Jewish prayer refers to God as “Melech ha olam” – the king of Eternity (or king of the universe, or eternal king). 

 

The NRSV takes this phrase, “eternity in their hearts”, to mean God “has put a sense of past and future into their minds”. This is an effort to find a meaning that fits the outlook of Qoholeth in the rest of the book, but it runs against the sense of the words. Most other translations keep the idea of “eternity in their hearts”. 

 

It’s a difficult verse: “He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Here’s what I think it means. God has placed something of God’s own self in every human heart and every human culture, but we are not able to see God clearly or understand what God is doing in our world. 

 

That second step is where the gospel comes in. We know something of God, but God remains hidden from us. Then Jesus comes, preaching the Gospel of God’s Reign. Jesus comes, showing what God looks like. Jesus comes, opening our eyes to God’s presence already with us. 

 

Don Richardson 

Don Richardson was a Canadian missionary who went to West Papua, part of Indonesia in 1962. At that time, it was called Dutch New Guinea. He and his wife and their seven-month old baby went to a group of people known as the Sawi and began to learn their language. This was a first contact situation: Neither group knew anything about the other when they began their relationship. 

 

The Sawi lived in the jungle, separated from other people by their geographical isolation and by the fierceness of their culture. They especially valued people who could appear to be your friend, but then at the crucial moment could turn and betray you. So when Don and Carol told them the stories of Jesus, they laughed at Jesus. They thought that Judas was the hero and Jesus was just a fool. 

 

So difficult did the Richardsons' life become in the jungle village that they decided to pull out and leave. The villagers were engaged in constant fights with a neighbouring village. Life was hard and dangerous. And worst of all, they thought Judas was the hero of the story. 

 

Then Don and Carol told them that they were leaving. The villagers were upset. They valued these outsiders and wanted them to stay. The Richardsons said they could not stay in such constant fighting and warfare. Finally, the villagers called a meeting with their fiercest enemies from the neighbouring village. Someone from one village picked up his son and ran to his enemies. He gave them his son and ran back to his side, while his son was taken in to his enemies. Richardson asked what had happened, and they told him. 

 

The boy was a peace child, they said. As long as the child lived, the two villages would be at peace. “But what if someone betrays him?” “That person would be cursed. No one dare betray the peace child.” 

 

Even in their culture, “eternity” – a revelation of God’s presence was already there. Don and Carol told them that Jesus was the peace child, and the people saw the truth. Judas was no longer the hero; Jesus was. They turned to Christ in remarkable numbers and embraced the fuller revelation of God in Christ. 

 

Transition 

This is an extreme example, but it is not as unusual as you might think. In his book, Eternity in their Hearts, Richardson tells many more such stories. God never waits for the missionaries to show up, because God is a missionary God. Wherever people are, God is there, reaching out to them to heal our brokenness and bring us back to God. 

 

I think Richardson is right – that God has placed bits of the gospel in every culture – and so I assume that First Nations cultures also show evidence of the gospel, present in their culture long before White settlers came to North America. God has always been here, and we can learn about God from those who lived here before we did, even as we tell them the stories of Jesus. 

 

Neil, can you pick up from this point and give us some idea of how God was already here before the explicit preaching of the gospel?

 

At this point, Neil and Edith von Gunten, our guests for the morning, took over with the teaching of the tipi, from the Ojibwe First Nations people. I cannot replicate their presentation; I don't know enough. But they made the point effectively, showing how their hosts had taught them about God and God's relationship with us as they lived among First Nations in Canada. 

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church 

5 September 2021