May 13, 2018

Change of Mission


Change has been our topic during the Season of Easter, which is the 50 days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday. It is a time to think about the direction of our lives as individual Christians, and as a corporate body.

At the very beginning of the Book of Acts, the author summarizes Jesus’ appearances after the Resurrection. “After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This’, he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’” (Acts 1:3-5)

The disciples must have wondered about what being ‘baptized with the Holy Spirit’ might mean. As usual, they seem to have been confused, thinking that Jesus is going to do the work. They ask, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus sets them straight. “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:6-8)

Jesus tells his followers that they are the ones who will tell the story and change the world and even bring about the kingdom of God. Imagine the change of their definition of mission those words must have required. Instead of just following along as Jesus did things, the faithful men and women were now asked to act on behalf of God. Those who had been with Jesus throughout his ministry in Galilee and Judea were not ‘movers and shakers’ of the 1st Century world. They were fishermen, shopkeepers, wives, husbands-just regular folks.

The hymn I Sing a Song of the Saints of God is one I learned in Sunday School. It was written by Lesbia Scott, a young mother who composed several children’s hymns. She published them in 1929 as Everyday Hymns for Little Children. Scott’s hymn says, “And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,/And one was a shepherdess on the green…And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,/And one was slain by a fierce wild beast…” She goes on to note, “You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,/In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,/For the saints of God are folk just like me,/And I mean to be one too.”
Like the first disciples, we are to be “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Like the first disciples we are ordinary women and men who are to live out a life different than the one outlined by the world in general.

In a letter from a Nazi concentration camp, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian, stated “[it is] through the resurrection of Christ that a new and purifying wind can blow through our present world...If a few people really believed that and acted on it in their daily lives, a great deal would be changed. To live in the light of the resurrection — that is what Easter means.”
Scott sings, “They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,/And his love made them strong;/And they followed the right, for Jesus's sake,/The whole of their good lives long… They lived not only in ages past,/There are hundreds of thousands still/The world is bright with the joyous saints/Who love to do Jesus' will.”

How can we ‘live in the light of the resurrection’?

In what way can we live as if we believe God’s ‘love made them strong’?

Is there something you can do today or this week to be a ‘joyous saint’ who lives as if the ‘purifying wind’ of the resurrected Christ is actually blowing through the world? 

Palm Sunday

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