Mission Sunday

Note: This sermon is written by Daniel Kirkendall, prepared for July 3, 2022.

Honduras Sunday

As I share about my experience in Honduras and the opportunities that are available to us here at Forsythe, there are a few questions I want us to think about moving forward.

John just wrapped up a series on the “chief-of-sinners” who went on to become the standard for mission work. The first known Christian missionary, who discarded every important thing in his life apart from preaching and teaching that Jesus is the messiah. As we followed the journey of Saul of Tarsus, this verse I am about to read to you surfaced in my mind. See Paul was more than converted, he was transformed. He was devoted, and religious, but what he accepted as truth was not truth. He saw the same things that everyone else saw, but closed his eyes to the truth of King Jesus. So Jesus blinded him a few days, and when his eyes were opened by Ananias, he was completely consumed by this need to be a witness of the love and the grace of God through Jesus of Nazareth. This is the parable that is appropriate for Paul’s epitaph.

Matt 13:44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

This is a good parable, and the simple and practical words of Jesus guide the Christian of today not just in what they do but also in the way they think. This hypothetical man somehow finds a treasure that nobody else knows is there and goes and sells ALL HE HAS, everything. Not just enough to buy the field, but everything he owns.

It says a lot about this man’s priorities, and one of the biggest lessons that I learned from the chief-of-sinners has a lot to do with priorities in our life.

As we talk about this today, I am not going to ask you for anything. This is not going to be a sermon on materialism. Instead I want to help frame the idea of “mission work” in a way that includes opportunities for Christians and the church. We will do that by bringing up 3 questions:

-What does it mean to follow Jesus?

-Who is my neighbor?

-Am I in or out?

These questions are about the mission of the church, the purpose of Christians. I don’t believe that “missions” make up a small part of Christianity, or even a large part of Christianity. I believe that mission work is Christianity. What I mean by that is you cannot say that you have been saved without feeling compelled to minister to your neighbor.

So let’s talk about the first question, What does it mean to follow Jesus?

While in Honduras, one of our team members talked about a long bike race in Spain he watched on tv. The commentary was in Spanish and he had a pretty thorough knowledge of the language, but noticed that the word for “follow” that was being used to describe the 2nd place racer as he was attempting to catch up to the race leader was not the one that he had learned was translated to the word “follow”. So he had to look it up and the verb “seguir” that he was using did mean to follow but the true meaning was to pursue and to persist, not to “vigilar” which means to follow, or walk behind. So he opened his Spanish Bible and in Luke 9:23 when Jesus if anyone would follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me, both translations are used. The Spanish translation, to paraphrase, says that if anyone wants to walk behind me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and chase after me with persistence and resilience. This simple linguistic shift in the way I read this verse drastically changed the ramifications of what Jesus is saying. It also helps us make sense of Jesus’s response later in that same chapter when three different men come to him and say they are ready to follow him, I’ll let you read those on your own, Luke Chapter 9. This is the challenge.

This is the spiritual battle going on in my life right now between the cross of Jesus and my quest for comfort. You are all experiencing that same battle. This idea is difficult to talk about because it certainly is uncomfortable, but hang in there, persist and pursue, and let’s see what Jesus says, We are going to run through a few Jesus quotes kind of quickly.

Luke 9:23 If anyone would follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.