Sermon for CATM - August 26, 2007 - “Go!”
Genesis 12:1-3; Matthew 28:16-20
If you were here last Sunday you heard Maryellen’s message. It was, as usual for her, pretty extraordinary. When we’re given a chance by God to really hear what He is saying to us as a congregation, I always feel that I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to really be challenged and changed by His Word.
If you recall the message was about radical love and Maryellen told some stories about some people who in very simple ways, through simple acts of love, have been used by God to accomplish extraordinary things.
27 children in Malawi adopted by a pastor and his wife who used to live in Toronto. A prostitute transformed because of ‘shining’ Christians who just reached out to her and loved her, made her feel welcome and loved.
Maryellen’s own story of being blessed by a woman who, when she came to understand Maryellen’s situation with Joshua, extended care and compassion toward her. All of these are acts of love. And it is the individual acts of love that have the greatest impact.
As we heard, the decision to live out our love is not something necessary for salvation.
More truthfully, as James says in chapter 2 vs 18, “I will show you my faith by what I do”.
So I’m thinking to myself this week as I’m considering what to say today...what about us as a congregation? What can we do...together? I think that it is true that we experience our faith more fully when we can actually see it being expressed in tangible ways, when we can see that our faith has feet, so to speak.
The stories of the Bible are powerful and true and life-transforming, but it is true that they can sometimes become a bit too familiar to us. That over-familiarity can be overcome by doing more than reading them over and over again.
The Bible is a trumpet call to action. The truth is we need to do more as a church family than come together on Sundays. And we do. A lot of us are in training...we’re involved in Foundations or Journey through the Bible or Lay-Ministry training.
For those of you who have been around for a while, do you know what the purpose is of all the training and education and spiritual formation that we do? It is one hyphenated word: “Ministry-Activation”.
All the classes and training that we do centre around one thing: The Bible. Do you know why that is? It’s because Holy Scripture transforms us. It transforms whole persons and entire communities to live differently.
When we really pay attention to all that Scripture says...not just our favourite parts, not just the parts that support theologies that are dear to us...when we really listen to what the Bible says, and when we allow the Holy Spirit of God to be at work within us...we will be changed.
For some of us the biggest challenge around listening to the Word of God is just that: It will change us. Shake up the status quo. It will release us into new ways of living. New ways of loving. It will make actions that seem impossible to us now actually imaginable.
I spoke with Wes, the new manager of our clothing store, Double Take the other day. He’s been a volunteer at Yonge Street Mission for years, and so he knew that we work with all kinds of people, including people who live on the street. He gave me permission to tell his story.
Wes realized a few years back while still a volunteer that his experience with the mission had thus far not yet helped him fully understand what it was like for people to live on the street. To be a homeless person. So he decided to live on the streets for a year. He left the comforts of a middle-class life and then he did just that.
He lived in hostels and hung out where homeless people hung out...in order to feel what it is like to live on the street - for an entire year.
And talking to him the other day it was clear in his countenance and in his words that risky year was an incredibly enriching experience for him.
Very likely, such a venture, such an adventure was unimaginable to him a few years before that. But God did something in his spirit.
God challenged him to dare to connect with others in this way, and he worked through all the reasons why not to and then just did it.
Wes is one of those “shining people” that Maryellen spoke of last week. Someone who dares to say “yes” to God. Someone who dares to step out of a comfortable life to simply love another person.
Right now let’s have a look at our key passages today again. And let’s really try to hear what the Spirit of the Living God is saying to us today. [Put passage up]
The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Gen 12:1-3
Now there are a few things in this passage that are always characteristic to God’s call. Firstly: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you”.
God wants us to be ready for the unexpected. He wants us to be prepared for change, no matter what that change might entail. For some of us that may mean that He’s calling us to actually leave our country, for most of us it simply means we need to be ready to step out of our comfort zones.
The reason I’m here in 2007 is that in 1984 God called me to be a missionary. I was a young Christian eager to serve God and at the same time, after four years of being a Christian, I had a pretty realistic idea of how sinful and limited I was but also how absolutely faithful and trustworthy God was.
Being a missionary at that time in the church I was in meant going to Asia or Africa and planting roots and serving in a culture and country foreign to me. A friend encouraged me to test the waters of mission work and go to Yonge Street Mission’s Evergreen Centre for Street Youth.
So I came here and over the course of three months on Evergreen’s summer team, my calling was refined to working with people of all races and ethnicities and social classes in Toronto.
Often, all God needs from us is a willingness to love. A prepared-ness to go. A willingness to say “yes”, even if that “yes” follows a thousand “no’s”.
A willingness to step outside of what we know as normal, for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Abraham was willing to do that. He believed God and trusted God’s voice before there was a lot of evidence.
What else do we learn from Abraham’s call? God said this: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing”.
Now we can take from this that God wants to appeal to our vanity. But that would be a mistake. I think the main point here is that when we listen to God and choose to do what he says out of love for Him, He is going to do something in our lives that will make us greater than the sum of our parts.
He will multiply the blessings in our lives.
He will also multiply the relationships in our lives.
So yes, we are not lost in the equation. We benefit personally from responding in love to God’s call. My whole life since 1984 is a testimony to that. My wife Barbara and our children. The deep and rich relationships I have here at the mission. In this church.
But more importantly, God’s promise is that we will be a blessing to others. Our lives will make a difference...a Kingdom difference in the lives of others.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Gen 12:1-3
Now of course these are God’s words to Abraham. But there’s also a principal here. When God says “Go”, and we go, we can trust that God’s character does not change, and that he will always walk with His people. He will never abandon us.
Here there’s a promise that God will be watching over us and protecting us as we serve...and here there’s a promise that when we hear God say “Go and love”, and we respond with a “Yes!”our lives will be fruitful.
Let’s look at our passage from the book of Matthew that brings the challenge home to us. [Put passage up] Jesus here is talking to his disciples, the ones that walked with him for three years, the ones that he taught, the ones that He had given power to, the ones that had made commitments to Jesus and the ones that had fallen short of their commitments to Jesus.
In other words, this is Jesus talking to his very imperfect friends. And in this passage, in this scene He is talking to the disciples who, after Jesus was killed, had been left, they thought, with nothing: no answers, no purpose, no meaning. Only despair and questions and grief. Jesus had since returned from the grave, appeared to a great many people and proven his resurrection power.
Now Jesus has appeared to his friends and, in his final words to them he says: Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
First, Jesus says “Go”. Which, you’ll notice, is quite different from “stay” or “stay seated”. Their vocation, their calling from the living God is to get ready to get moving. Not a lot of room for passivity.
What are they called to go and do? To go and make disciples. What is a disciple? A student of Jesus. A follower of Jesus. If you’ve received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, you are a disciple.
And Jesus doesn’t say “Stay where you are. Hold the course”. He says move.
Who are they to make disciples of? All nations. Everybody. Every tongue. Every tribe. Every ethnicity. Every colour. Every language. No exceptions. All humans qualify.
“Baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. That’s the very identity of God. That’s who God is. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The very definition of the sacred and holy community into which we are called.
“Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded”
Jesus refers here to his teachings. Interesting that while he presents his stories and parables and teachings as just that, he refers to them here as commands...as things necessary for believers to do if they are to be disciples. We must together struggle through a way to enact his teachings. To give them flesh.
And then the promise that offers us the courage needed to overcome our fears, our frailties and our apathy: And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
So what are we to do with all this? Are there not a million reasons why we shouldn’t be ready to “Go!” Of course there are, but as we were challenged last week, what this all amounts to is God asking us if we’re reading to love. Are we willing to love? Are we willing to be a blessing to other people.
In a recent article in Christian Week, a Canadian newspaper that we are sometimes able to give out her, there’s an article about an unconventional Christian radio host, Drew Marshall, who offered $500 to two non-Christians - one a self-professed pagan and the other an agnostic, or someone who hasn’t decided if there’s a God - he offered them $500 to visit five evangelical churches.
By evangelical we mean churches that teach the Bible and hold to what we might call the ‘historic’ Christian faith.
So they visited the five churches. The first one was a conservative evangelical church which they couldn’t really connect with. The second was a very modern church that tries hard to reach unchurched people and they were offended that the church service seemed like a ‘show’ that was being put on.
They went to a church in Toronto known for some interesting physical manifestations and they were terrified. They went to a Word of Faith church that taught that if your missing something in your life its your fault because you’ve limited God.
Then they went to Sanctuary church, which is actually called “The Sunday Thang”. Sanctuary is a sister ministry to Yonge Street Mission. It’s lead pastor, Greg Paul, used to be my mentor. They found the “practical, helpful” Christianity there very appealing. The article said that Sanctuary practices a “Shut up and love” Christianity to the people in the downtown core.
I like that. A lot. There’s something to be said for a “Shut up and love” approach to faith that puts the emphasis not on words, but on actions. That puts the focus not on doctrine or theology - things that we can get really obsessed with but which can keep us locked up in very safe, secure places of little risk and even littler opportunity to share a living faith in Christ.
There’s something to be said about an approach to life and faith that says “What matters most is love. How do I grow in love, and how do I give it away?”
In the light of the passages we’ve been looking at today, we might ask: “If, as odd a thought as this might be, if I, if we as a church - remember that Jesus was speaking to the disciples together as a fellowship and not as individuals - if we really are here to bless the nations, how might God be calling us today to “Go!” To go and love. To go and serve.
And...very importantly for us as a family of believers, how are we called together to reach out to our community? To the city around us? To those not yet of the faith? To those who might never come to faith in Christ but who, nevertheless, Christ sends us to in order to be a blessing?
In the upcoming weeks we’ll be looking at just exactly what does it mean to connect to our community. What does it mean to reach out? What are the objections, valid and otherwise, to the whole notion of reaching out to our community. What do we stand to gain? What do we stand to lose?
These are some questions we’re going to be looking at in the next number of weeks. It’ll be a challenge. It’ll be a journey, to be sure. Are we up for that, Church? Are we ready to ask God: “How might we serve you more fully in this community?” Are we ready to say: “Here I am, O Lord. Send me to do your will?”
In closing I’d like to call Maryellen to come up to sing a song that we wrote for the Yonge Street Mission staff last year. I’d encourage you to close your eyes, rest, and listen to what the Spirit of the Living God is saying to your spirit today.
