His Mission and Ours: To Preach and to Heal
--Luke 4:14-21 and Isaiah 61:1-4
As I shared last week, I am convinced that Jesus through this series of messages “His Mission and Ours” is beginning to form in my heart His vision of ministry for Trinity United Methodist Church. Last week we saw that our mission begins by “Bringing Good News to the Poor.”
The term that Jesus uses for “poor” in Luke 4:18 refers to people who live in abject poverty, individuals who are utterly helpless, those who are completely and absolutely destitute, persons who are extremely poor, or those who lack the means to provide for themselves. The poor in our contemporary society include the almost 100 persons in Kankakee—our brothers, sisters, and children—who are homeless and seek shelter anywhere they can escape the bitter cold of winter or the humid heat of summer. Our poor encompass the 12.5 million children in these United States who daily endure hunger and the 24,000 persons who die from starvation in our world each day.
One day this week as I returned home, my heart again broke in two, as I saw one of our homeless Kankakee brothers pushing his shopping cart containing all his worldly possessions down Water Street in January’s bitter cold. Jesus calls us to minister to such as these. If we truly love and follow Jesus, we can not turn them away empty handed.
‘Bringing Good News to the Poor” is our call to “social holiness,” social action. John Wesley and our early Methodist forbearers cared for society’s poor in love, compassion, and understanding. Methodism was born out of a spirit that continually collected and gave funds, food, clothing, and fuel to the poor; and all the while Wesley reminded the “people called Methodists” to personally deliver these gifts to those in need rather than simply send them. Wesley’s three-fold plan for ministering with the poor was so simple:
1. Meet their needs yourself.
2. Solicit resources for the poor.
3. Become an advocate for the poor.
I discern that is a practical, workable plan for the Church to put into action in the twenty-first century.
Now we come to the second phase of His Mission and Ours for Trinity United Methodist Church. Following “In His Steps,” our Mission is “To Preach and to Heal,” for Jesus proclaims His Mission and Ours is “to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.”
As the Spirit of the Lord sent Jesus, He sends us into ministry today. What does it mean to be a sent people? It means that as the people of God the Holy Spirit sends us forth on a mission, and that mission is to preach, to speak, to bless, to redeem, and to save. We are sent by God with a message to proclaim, and we are backed by the most powerful Authority in the universe, the Spirit of the Lord who is upon us and has anointed us for His ministry.
God sends us on the mission of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the entire world. This mission is itself two-fold, for it involves a ministry of both preaching and teaching. Matthew 4:23 declares that Jesus “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” Our mission is the Great Commission, to make disciples in all nations by preaching and teaching people to “obey everything Jesus has commanded us” (Matthew 28:20). We are anointed by God’s Spirit to announce to the world that Jesus is God’s Messiah promised through the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. The message the Holy Spirit sends us to proclaim to all the world is the personal testimony of Jesus in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” We proclaim the same message as did Peter in Acts 4:11-12, who, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” preached:
“This Jesus is
‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders;
it has become the cornerstone.’
“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”
Our mission is to proclaim to everyone that Jesus Christ is God’s Only Way to eternal life and peace. All roads do not lead to God. Satan’s biggest lie is deceiving people to believe that all religions lead to peace with God. Jesus is the Only Way of salvation. This is our mission the Holy Spirit anoints us to share with everyone.
Jesus sends His Church “to proclaim release to the captives.” Our message is a message of release from bondage or imprisonment. In the Exodus God liberated His people the children of Israel from 400 years of bondage and imprisonment of slavery in Egypt. As Israel was enslaved in Egypt, so sin has enslaved all people. David testifies in Psalm 51:5:
I have been wicked even from my birth,
A sinner even when my mother conceived me.
Sin enslaves us from birth. Jesus liberates us from slavery to sin, as He assures us in John 8:4-6, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” The mission of the Church is to proclaim, i. e. to preach and to teach, to the captives that Jesus alone can free us from bondage and slavery to sin.
This second phase of our mission is one of evangelism. Remember what we said about the three words “bring good news” in last Sunday’s message. These are only one term in the Greek New Testament. That Greek word is the root of our English equivalents evangelism, evangelize, and evangelist. As we preach and teach “release to the captives” under the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit, we are actively evangelizing our neighborhood, community, and our world in making disciples for our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus calls us to follow “In His Steps” not only in “bringing good news to the poor,” not only in proclaiming release to the captives, but also in proclaiming “recovery of sight to the blind.” Jesus did not come into the world only to save souls; He came to save the whole person. Therefore, our ministry is not just spiritual in nature; led by the Holy Spirit we too must minister to the whole person, both physically and spiritually. There are two types of blindness—physical blindness and spiritual blindness. Jesus ministered to both needs, and He calls us to do the same.
Jesus defines spiritual blindness so well in Matthew 15:25-26: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisees! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.” Earlier in Matthew 15:14 He warned his disciples to “Leave them (i. e. the Pharisees); they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”
36 of the 42 times the term blind or blindness is used in the New Testament, it refers to physical blindness, and Jesus on several occasions restored sight to those who were physically blind. His ministry was one of not only caring for the poor, forgiving sins, and restoring our broken fellowship with God our Father, His was also a ministry of healing the physically sick. As we have already seen in Matthew 4:23, “He healed every disease and sickness among the people,” not just blindness. When John the Baptizer’s disciples asked Jesus if He was indeed the Messiah or if they were to “wait for another,” our Lord replied in Luke 7:22, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.” Jesus brought sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, healed lepers, restored hearing to the deaf, and raised the dead. No disease was or is beyond His ability to heal.
As His Church we too are called to a ministry of healing in His Name, and that ministry is to the whole person, both spiritually and physically. Jesus is not only our Saviour from sin; He is also our Great Physician no matter what disease may afflict us. We are called to anoint and pray for those who are physically sick according to James 5:14-16: “Is any of you sick? They should call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the Name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess you sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” One service we conducted last summer focused on healing and anointing and praying for the sick. This must always be a regular part of the ministry of the Church.
What is the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ? He calls us to “bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to those in bondage to sin, and to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind. We are called to minister to the poor, those enslaved in sin, and those who are sick. As He ministered to whole persons, Jesus calls us to follow “In His Steps.” Jesus does not “call the powerful; He empowers those He calls.” As His obedient Church, He will empower us to bring good news to the poor, to evangelize those held captive to sin, and to offer healing and hope to those who are afflicted by any disease. By His Spirit working in us we will be His instruments to fulfill His mission and ours in His time.
