|
"A Missionary Heart"
May 16, 2004
The Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson
There we were, in our Sunday best, in the back of a dump-truck. I'm referring to an experience I had a little over 23 years ago that really changed my life. It was a mission trip to the country of Uganda. When I went to Uganda with a group of seminarians, it was very much like Rwanda is today. You've heard about the atrocities in Rwanda and the genocide there. Well, Uganda had been ruled many years by a man named Idi Amin and he had been kicked out about two years before. I was part of a mission trip for a month in January of 1981. It was a wonderful trip, but there were parts of it that were pretty funny, and this was one part. We flew into Nairobi, Kenya and had to take an overland bus that we rented to the border. We expected to be picked up by some missionaries at the border and we were expecting good transportation, so I dressed up in the only suit I owned. We figured it was going to be a big day, going into Uganda. They showed up in this dump-truck and there we were! I was riding in the back of a dump-truck.
You know, you think about becoming a missionary or saying to God, "I'll do what you want me to do," but then you have the stereotype, "Are you going to send me to Africa?" Well, He did in my case! And there I was in the back of a dump-truck in my Sunday best. It was a great experience.
One of the things that happened to me there was I discovered that I had something to offer. In part of the trip we invited many pastors to come from outlying areas and we called it a "Congress." I was part of a small group of these pastors. I expected someone to lead that group, and lo and behold, that person didn't show up and everybody looked at me. I was all of 25 years old. I had three years of seminary. These pastors had been through a living hell for 15 years. They were spiritual giants compared to me, but I did have something to offer. It was a seminary education. And I taught them. I discovered that, even in my weakness, I had something to offer. I also came to believe, because of that experience, that everybody is a missionary--not just people who are crazy enough to go to Africa and happen to have some seminary training. Everybody is a missionary. And that's what God wants us to hear today.
I've chosen two Scriptures for you today that express the fact that God sends us all out. First from 1 Corinthians chapter 9. Paul says this:
Though I am free and belong to no one, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law, so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.
And then in 2 Corinthians it says:
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting sins against men. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 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. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Father, be with us now as we hear your Word. We have already heard it in song and have gloried in that. Now let us hear your Word through the Scriptures and through preaching. Move our hearts, we pray, by your Holy Spirit. Amen.
You are missionaries. You are. I think people are afraid to hear that sometimes. We tend to think those who have been called--like crazy preachers who go to Africa. Or just crazy preachers. Or strange people who go out into the middle of the jungle to translate the Bible. Or who sneak into countries like Iraq, or places where they are not welcome. Those are crazy, not ordinary, people. But God has called everyone to be a missionary.
Why do I think that? Not simply because the Bible says so. I think because of the nature of God Himself. What exactly is a missionary? I like to think of a missionary as a person who goes (if you will) somewhere else and attempts to reach other people. And in doing so, that missionary learns their language, their culture, their place--in some ways, becomes one of them, to reach them. That's what Paul was talking about. He's talking about how he became weak to reach the weak. He became like a Gentile to reach Gentiles. He became more like a Jew again to reach Jews. He became all things to all people so that he might reach some.
But think about it just for a moment--about God Himself. There are some conceptions of God out there that He sort of sits out in the universe someplace and watches things happen on earth and doesn't have anything to do with it. That's not what the Scriptures say. God is not a deist, or somebody who doesn't care. God is active in the world. God is always up to something. And the story of the Bible is very, very simple. In primordial history, human beings rebelled against God and became separated from God because of their sin--our sin. The story in the Bible is how God has instituted a plan of reconciliation throughout history, culminating in Jesus Christ. That's what Paul is saying. The gospel is the message of reconciliation. That's true.
The world doesn't see itself that
way. Most people are aware of their shortcomings, but being separated from
God? At least in our culture, we tend to believe that everybody's sort of good
and, you know, everybody's going to be all right no matter what they believe.
That's not what the Bible says. The Bible does say that God has come, like a
missionary. And instead of speaking from on high, or from afar, has become one
of us. That's who Jesus was. He was God in the flesh, coming to speak to us
like one of us--with our language, in our culture, to tell us about God and who
He is. God has a missionary heart and He calls all of us to have the same
missionary heart, to bring the same message of reconciliation to everyone around
us. Does that mean God will call me to go to
And we go with a couple of assumptions--that not everyone is a Christian, even in the United States. And I think particularly now. Chuck Colson tells the story about how, at the beginning of World War II, Hitler was marching across Europe and demanding surrender from all the countries. And many of us know the story about how many hundreds of thousands of French and English troops were attacked on the coast at Dunkirk and how all the boats from England came and got them and took them away. But before that happened, a British soldier sent back a message, and it only had three words. And it said something like, "And if not." It wasn't a code: "And if not." No, it wasn't a code. Everybody in England knew what that meant. It came from the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, in Daniel. When these three were being threatened by the king to be burned they said this. They said: "God is able to rescue us and He will--and if not, we will be faithful anyway." And everyone in England knew that. No one in England (or very few in England) would know it now, and certainly not many in America would know it now.
We do not live in a Christian culture now. There are many Christians--many Christians. So many churches around here, it's wonderful. So many Christians, but only a third of Minnetonka goes to church. Now, there are many Christians who don't go to church. Maybe they've become disillusioned with church, or maybe they're just lazy, or whatever it happens to be. But there are many out there who don't and aren't. Many people who are around you, and you are their missionary.
And they need Jesus. That's the other assumption: They need Jesus. We have become accustomed (and this is going to be hard). We have become accustomed to thinking as long as somebody has faith in something, it's good. We have become accustomed to hearing and thinking, "You Christians shouldn't think you're better than other people." We're not better people, but we have a better message, the message of Jesus Christ. Christianity is different from every other faith, every other religion. Every faith knows (to some degree) how we all need to be reconciled with God. But the message of every other one (and we can talk about that) is simply this: That human beings go find God; and they're reconciled by contemplation, by good works, by some kind of ritual, by some kind of action. It's what we do. But the Bible says, "No." God has come to us and has, by grace, paved the way in Christ. It is God who comes to us, not we who go to God. And that's the message that we bring. We don't do so arrogantly. We shouldn't do that. We shouldn't be arrogant. We're beggars, showing other people where to find bread.
But there are people out there who look so good without God. The pastor of a little church said when he began working with people who weren't Christians, he was jealous of them. He always noticed that they had beautiful clothes, and good cars, and big houses. And the more he worked with them, the more he found out that they had holes in their lives. That beautiful couple sitting there hadn't slept together for six months. That beautiful house they lived in was mortgaged to the hilt. And the guy who looked like he had it all together--that child, that woman, those wonderful clothes--was scared to death he might lose them. Not everybody is like that, but there are many people who are. People need Jesus. Jesus is the Shepherd, and we have a Shepherd to give them.
God has a missionary heart, and we would be His ambassadors. And that may mean making some changes. You know, I think that one of the things about how we "do church"--and I'm not particularly talking to you. I've been pastor of five churches and I've been in many more, and this is general. It's really human what happens in any organization. As we come together we get to enjoy one another, and there's an invisible wall that we build up around ourselves. It basically goes like this: "If you want to become part of us, you have to be like us." And so everybody else is expected to change. We can't change that, but we can be more open to other people outside. We can be more open to change.
I remember talking to a dear elder of mine at one of my churches and I asked her kind of a "what if" question. I said, "What if somebody came into our church and they were dressed all in leather, and they had long hair, and had kind of a biker thing on the back of that leather jacket they had." I said, "Would you welcome them?" She said, "Of course I would. But they would have to change."
Well, we would hope they would change, maybe (though I have seen churches with bikers dressed that way who have a tremendous witness). How do we welcome others? How would we be like Jesus and go to others and learn others' languages? And there is a different language, even among our youth. Parents, you know that. There is even a website to learn teen lingo. I can't understand what they're talking about half the time. They have a language all their own, so how do we reach people like that? We have to think about that.
I'm reminded of an old story about a pastor who was out in the parking lot and saw somebody drive in with one of those huge camper-type buses. The people got out and he started talking with them. They were talking to him about this bus and they said, "Oh, pastor, it's a wonderful thing! It sleeps eight." Then they got to talking a little more and they began asking him about his church. They said, "Tell us about your church. How big is it?" He looked at them and said with a grin, "Well, it sleeps about 80."
Friends, we need to wake up to the people around us. We need to be open to them. Don't get me wrong. I think you're wonderful people. I think you are very open. But all of us tend to get enclosed on ourselves. I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to think about going on a mission trip. Maybe something in Minneapolis--we're going to try to start doing more. Maybe to Tiajuana. Not everybody can. If you can't, pray for us. Think about it, sometime in the future, about what you can do to reach out.
I personally have been on and led many, many mission trips in churches. And every time I do I'm amazed at how, when people begin to act, they're changed. Their eyes have been opened to something a little bit different. They see the world as it is and they come back with a different heart. And it's not that they had a bad heart when they went. My life was changed in Uganda. We've all had experiences in life that sort of moved us to a different place. We may be able to count those experiences on our hand. Uganda was like that for me. I can remember every detail of that trip. I wrote it in a little diary that I had, but I don't really need a diary. I could tell you what happened on every bit of that trip. It was a tremendous experience for me. Other experiences have been reinforcing of that. I came back as a believer in going places and doing things, because you learn missions by doing. You learn to be a missionary by doing.
So I just want to challenge you to go if you can. Or if you can't, pray for us, support us, be involved as you can. Because God has a missionary heart and calls you and me to do the same.
Let us pray. Father, thank you for coming to us because we would have never come to you. Thank you for having that plan and acting on it to come to us in the person of Jesus Christ with your missionary heart that loved us and reconciled us. We pray that in our own way we might be missionaries wherever we are, whatever we are doing, to anyone around us, that we may also share the message of reconciliation. Give us a heart for missions, your heart for missions. We pray in your name. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson Senior Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota
[Transcribed from an audiotape of the 9:00 a.m. worship service on May 16, 2004.] |
|
|