From the Old Testament
Ecclesiastes 4: 7-12 Again, I saw vanity under the sun: the case
of solitary individuals, without sons or brothers; yet there is no end to
all their toil, and their eyes are never satisfied with riches. "For
whom am I toiling," they ask, "and depriving myself of pleasure?"
This also is vanity and an unhappy business.
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.
For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone
and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together,
they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail
against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly
broken.
From the New Testament
Matthew 22: One of the Pharisees, a lawyer, asked Jesus a question
to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest
and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
Today at Emmanuel, a dozen young people are receiving awards for their
gathering of donations for Junior Mission for All, the collection for
Methodist World Mission. Young people don't probably understand what mission
means, fully, but then again, that probably isn't a limitation constrained
to young people. I think a lot of the time we talk about mission without
really thinking what that means. Some people seem to give the idea that
mission is about helping build village wells. Others seem to think its
about doing evangelism. I know that where I was living before I came to
Bungay, the Uniting Church in Australia is engaged in massive social welfare
organization and calls it mission. I'm not so sure it is.
The United Reformed Church says that mission is to:
Proclaim the good news of the kingdom
Teach, baptize and nurture new believers
Respond to human need in loving service
Sustain and renew the life of the earth
Seek to transform unjust structures of society
It sounds a mouthful. I want to get away from mouthfuls because they aren't
very memorable, and I want to distance mission from the stereotyped images
of evangelism and social work.
Someone once told me that they thought giving handouts to people who came
and knocked at my door was what ministry should be about. If that was
my mission, I'd quit now.
I had someone came to my door once and told me that mission was about
saving souls for Jesus. He didn't say what they were being saved from
or what too, but I got the idea. Mission was about evangelism
Christian mission, if its real to the whole idea of who Jesus was, doesn't
separate the body from the spirit. After all, Jesus was unity of God and
human. So Christian mission doesn't elevate one above the other, doesn't
see body and soul as divided. Actually, Christian mission works on the
basis that both body and soul are one. The idea of two separate aspects
to a person, sort of hanging together, one inside of the other, isn't
a very Christian idea, even if some Christians have thought that way,
from time to time.
Christianity knows that a person is a person. A unity. A whole. When you
reach out caringly to a person's body you are reaching out to care for
the whole entity. But Christian mission can't just see the flesh and blood
as the only important thing to address. We believe that mission is helping
a person to know their God, and physical compassion is connected to spiritual
compassion. They all come out of love.
In Christian thinking, you can't do truly Christian mission if the only
thing you are interested in is feeding the face. It's Christian when it
helps to feed the spirit too. And it isn't truly Christian mission when
it's only concerned about feeding the spirit. There has to be care for
the body too. That's why Christian mission sometimes gets mistaken for
social work and sometimes gets mistaken for evangelism.
Jesus said a really interesting thing about Christian mission. He said
that Christians are to love their neighbour as they love themselves. My
psychologist wife immediately thinks "aha, but does the person really
love themselves? And how do you distinguish this from narcissism?
It's a good question, but I'm not a psychologist so I'll have to leave
that one alone and retreat into something simpler, like theology.
Do you love yourself? What is it about you that makes you lovable? Those
abilities, those characteristics, spiritual, mental, physical, are you
and you alone. And with those characteristics is a capacity for good like
no other person on earth - because you and I are God's unique creation.
The things about us that are good, and admirable, and likeable, and grace
giving, the things we need to learn to love and value about us, about
the you that is a "me!", this is the loveable you that is to
love others in the same way. Do you love music. Let it be a mission to
bring God's grace to all the persons who listen and to the whole person
who is listening. Are you able to listen. Let it be a mission. Do you
hear and respond to people's concerns with compassion. Let it be a mission.
Are you a strong and practical person who is able to fix things. Do you
love someone? Let it be a mission. Are you able to talk easily about your
faith? Let it be a mission. Do you have a sympathetic understanding of
nature and the world. Let it be a mission.
What God has given us to work with, that which is life giving, what we
can love about ourselves, with this we are to love our neighbour.
We are not an island, and if we are, we have forgotten the centre of what
Christ taught. Like the writer of Ecclesiastes says, "I saw vanity
- solitary individuals. Two are better than one and a chord of three strands
is not easily broken. Christian living, Christian mission is relational.
We are created to do God's work, for others, with the very things that
bring us joy, that we love about ourselves, and to love others with that.
'Love your neighbour as you love yourself' Jesus said.
When we show a person that they are loveable, we are somewhere on the
way to helping that person begin to know the love of God and the possibility
that they can be God's blessing to another, with the same love that they
can learn to have for themselves.
One thing is certain, the Christian gospel teaches that it is in our unity
with God that we find healing, salvation, and that our unity with God
is tied up with our unity with other people.
The Christian mission, if you like, is to work for a world where that
unity is a reality for everyone - to bring people into the embrace of
God's love and at the very same time, into the embrace of love for each
other and the rest of creation. It's an integrated unity. It's the grandest
plan, the greatest vision of them all, that touches nation, race, heart,
soul, body and mind. As Jesus said, I have come that the world might be
saved.
It is in this loving as we know we are loved, that we are able to make
our whole life a part of that great scheme - that one day there will be
a world that is in unity because people have become in unity with God.
This is Christian mission. This is what Christ invites us to live for,
to love for, to die for. I think it's a vision worth living for.
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