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Foundry United Rev. |
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Why We Still Need
Missionaries Sunday, July 3, 2005 |
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Romans 10: 12-17 Matthew 28: 16-20
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Our
young people are back, sunburned and mosquito-bitten, from a week in the
farthest stretch of At the
end of the service today, we have a team that we will pray over and bless –
nineteen Foundry folk who are leaving this Tuesday to go to This
week Jane and I will leave for Then, next
Sunday, we will commission a junior high mission team. This is a new project that
Matt Smith has pulled together because, after hearing so much about ASP and
other mission projects, our junior high said that they wanted to be part of
the action, too. So, we will have a junior high weekend mission trip. Those
of us who participate in these kinds of service projects are often called, in
church lingo, “short-term missionaries.” But we really aren’t the kind of
missionary I thought of when I heard the word “missionary” when I was growing
up. We are more like sojourners with brothers and sisters who live in other
lands. Last
week, my friend Rev. Gladman Kapfumvuti, who is here from So to support our VIM team, let’s
learn that word together: “zvakanaka.” The new word that Gladman taught us
is “chabadza.” Chabadza is really more than just a word; it is a philosophy. The
way Gladman explained it was this. In What Gladman was saying to us is
that our mission trip to So, this is how Gladman told us we
should understand our Volunteer in When I was growing up, I thought of missionaries
as people who went from here to lands where people did not know about
Christianity to teach them about Christianity and to help them become
Christians. Most of the time, when we do our mission trips now, we are going
to work with people who frankly are often more faithful in their discipleship
than we are. I have never been part of a visit to United Methodists in some
other part of the world, when I have not come back saying to myself: “How can
it be that I am not more committed and devoted to the gospel, to love and to
Christian service when I have so much and these folk that I have just spent
two weeks with have so little and give of themselves so generously? How can I
be so selfish with my blessings when I have so much and they are so generous
and they have so little?” In fact, my experiences are that I
have usually come back having been challenged to become more committed in my
faith rather than taking faith and leaving it with other people. So, I
want to ask the question this morning whether we still need the old kind of
missionaries – the ones who went into parts of the world in order to invite
people who are not Christians to become Christians. The reason I ask this,
the reason this is a question for me, is because I do not believe that only
Christians are saved and the rest of the world is lost, including those
followers of the great and beautiful religions of Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism,
Islam, Shintoism, Confucianism, and our parent faith as Christians, Judaism. I am a
believer in what Paul Tillich called “logos” theology. It was based on the
first chapter of the gospel of John which says this: “In the beginning was
the word and the word was God and everything that came into being came into
being through him.” In other words, the word, the logos, the Christ is
present in creation everywhere and in all people. I, in
fact, believe that there are some Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims who resonate
with the spirit of God more than some of us who are Christians. The reason I
believe that is because I know Buddhists and Hindus who are filled with the
spirit of Christ even if that is not the language they use. It is Christ,
remember, and not Christianity, who is the way, the truth and the life. So I
do not believe that Christianity and the Christian Church has the corner on
Christ. I believe that in the beginning there was the word, the logos, the
Christ. In creation, Christ permeated the world, including other religious
traditions. So, if
that is the case, why do we still need missionaries to share the gospel and
the faith with people who are not Christians? The
answer, I think, is this: we need missionaries, not because everyone in the
whole world has to become a Christian and a member of the Christian church to
know Christ, but because the Christian church needs to include some of
everyone on the face of the earth. I don’t think that everyone on the face of
the earth has to become a Christian to know God. But I think that the church needs
to be inclusive of every nationality, culture, ethnicity and race on the face
of the earth. The
reason that needs to happen is because the job of the Jesus
told his disciples and us to go into the world and make disciples of all
nations, to make disciples from all nations, so that we can be a sign that
there is a community that transcends nationality, culture, ethnicity, and
race. I believe that God has placed in the hearts of some persons of all nations
and peoples everywhere a receptivity to the
Christian story, so that the church can be universal. But the call of the
church to be universal does not mean that we should be imperialistic or
assume that we have the corner on Christ. The job
of missionaries is to go into the world, to learn the culture to which they
are sent, to discover Christ already there in that culture, and then to
extend a warm invitation to those who may choose to become part of the
institutional church, the structured community of Jesus Christ. It is never a
missionary’s job, or any of our jobs, to tell others they are wrong, or that
they are ignorant, or that they are bound for hell because they are not a
part of our particular community, because we just don’t know that. We just
don’t know that. I think
Jesus tried to remind us of this when he said: “Other sheep I have that are
not of this fold.” (John 10:16) It was a reminder that there are people of
other folds, of other religions, of other communities who belong to Jesus the
Christ. Our job is to receive those who would come join us and not to condemn
the ones who have other ways and other paths of being Christ-like. Part of
the reason this is important is because it affects our own spirituality.
Here’s my theory: the same way that we treat people who are different or
foreign to us out there is the same way that we are going to treat the parts
of ourselves, inside ourselves, that are different and foreign. You
know, we are really quite complicated beings. There are parts of ourselves, each and every one of us, that we do not know,
parts of ourselves that we do not understand, parts of ourselves that have
not become Christian yet and may never become Christian. Carl Sandburg used
to say: “There is a zoo in me.” Whatever way we treat those people out there
that we consider different or foreign is the same way that we will treat that
which is different or foreign within ourselves, within our complicated
selves. If we
cannot tolerate and love difference and diversity in the world around us and
find Christ there, we will be unable to tolerate and love that which is
different and foreign within ourselves and we will not be able to find Christ
in those parts of ourselves either. So our
calling is to go out into the world and to love people, to listen to people, to
understand people, to find Christ in people and then to extend a warm
invitation to any who would join us in the church and in this particular path
of the Christian, of the Godly journey. It is also our job to go into the
nations inside ourselves, to try to love and understand the nations within
our souls, to find Christ there and to make a disciple of my own very self. |
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