Dan Hoffman
Whitton Avenue Bible
October 18th, 2009
Sermon: "It's Not Someone Else"
Good morning,
I've set a rather high expectation for myself this morning: I hope to preach half as well as Chris does on any given Sunday. So thanks for joining me in seeing just how well that works out.
This morning is yet another installment of Mission & Mercy month, where we, as a church look at exactly that: Missions and Mercy. I'm not entirely sure who thought it would be a good idea to have the guy whose first "mission work" was in Iraq, preach, but I do appreciate the honor. I guess being in Africa a few times after later rectified that.
We'll be starting in Luke chapter 10, verse 25. All you bible scholars out there will recognize that as the parable of the Good Samaritan. You would be correct. But first I want to let you know that I'll be incorporating a number of texts today because you get to do that in a topical message, so I'll let know when I go elsewhere. Today's message is titled "It's not someone else" and we'll be exploring the radical and personal call of proclaiming the Kingdom, and doing the Kingdom.
We'll get to Luke in a second but first I'm going to read Matthew 4:17, where Jesus has just come back after a rather exhausting time in the desert with Satan. The verses before started off stating that Jesus is fulfilling a prophesy in Isaiah, and then Jesus just gets to what he really wants to say to those he was speaking to: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand". We could stop there. That's an incredible way to start a ministry. He gives the Jewish people an imperative: "Repent" and then exciting news… good news…"the gospel": The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Amen.
One could preach for years on the implications of this statement alone, but I want to go a little further into Matthew. Jesus' first sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, explores more the vertigo that is this "Kingdom of Heaven". In 5:3 He starts with one of the most, in my opinion, profound statements in scripture, "blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." There, he just said it. He just cleanly rejected the idea that we could earn heaven, that we could work to gain heaven, that the powerful have an upper hand in gaining heaven, or that the weak and oppressed couldn't gain heaven. And that's only the first verse. He goes on to give us what we call the Beatitudes, some of you probably have them memorized.
Hmmm… what does all this talk of the "Kingdom of Heaven" really mean?
Well… Jesus modeled it every day. He embodied what He was ushering in, and in doing so gave us glimpses into the radical nature of the world that is to come…
So to bring this new radical Kingdom reality to our level we'll look at Luke 10:25-37:
25On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
26"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"
27He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"
28"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."
29But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
30In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'
36"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"
37The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the Kingdom of God.
Notice that after the lawyer, in true lawyer fashion, states the facts about the laws he has kept, that Jesus tells him that he will "live". Now I'm not going to lie, I don't know the Greek, but he doesn't really seem to say it as if by live he meant "add a couple more years to your life" because when the lawyer asks him about his neighbor Jesus is ready with a story about how to truly LIVE and it's called "Go and do likewise". This, my friends, is the invitation we've all been waiting for. An invitation to truly live.
I think sometimes we're like the lawyer, keeping the rules and knowing with the precision of logic and reason the general outcomes of our decisions. I spent a lot of time with lawyers this past summer, and they're some of my favorite people ever, but what was crazy about this group of lawyers is that they're lawyers for International Justice Mission. They make a living by living for the Kingdom of Heaven. They are all about ushering it in. Granted, they're not the average crew of lawyers. These guys, and the rest of the staff at IJM, work tirelessly to Seek Justice, Encourage the Oppressed, Defend the cause of the Fatherless, and Plead the case of the widow. And every brothel shut down is a reflection of the Kingdom of Heaven and every slave freed is a reflection of the Kingdom of Heaven. Oh my friends, in this hell we call earth there are more than mere traces of the Kingdom of Heaven….
You see, Jesus lived the Kingdom of Heaven. He modeled it for us. He ate with prostituted women; he hung out with tax collectors, and skipped out on spending too much time with the infamous Pharisees, the power elite of the day. He had no use for their concept of "the Kingdom". So He, in doing all of these things, modeled the Kingdom of Heaven.
As Christians, we're to be like Christ. A pretty basic definition for Christian: "One who is like or emulating Christ"; big shoes to fill, no doubt. However, there is good news: It comes back in Matthew, back to chapter 5, verses 14 & 16. He says "You are the light of the world… let your light so shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in Heaven."
Jesus just said "You". When He did, everything changed… When he did he opened up the biggest invitation to life and life more abundantly that had ever crossed His listener's ears. It didn't matter if they were poor, in fact, in a manner of speaking it was to their benefit that they were poor, for in our weakness He is strong. When Jesus said "You", He meant it.
The Apostle Paul says something amazing in 2 Corinthians 5: "God is making his appeal to the world through us."
What an incredible invitation: That you & I would be emissaries of God's truth and Kingdom – telling and showing the world of the great goodness of God.
So this is exciting, freeing news! We, all of us, are his emissaries, perhaps his "missionaries" to a broken world because there is no fine print to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it's us he has sent to "Go, and do likewise"
We here at Whitton Avenue Bible can think of a number of quintessential cases of "Go and do likewise". The one I will mention today is our very own Abby Tracy. Abby heard the call to Africa a long time ago although at the time I don't think she knew what it would end up "costing" her. Many of you know that Abby now lives in Uganda where she lives among the most despised and invisible of the world: street children.
According to the United Nations there are 120 million children living on the streets. That's roughly the equivalent of the whole US west of the continental divide living and sleeping on concrete and in squalor. These aren't aliens from outer space, nor are they dogs….
They are humans…. I want you to look to the person on your left and right… Imagine them beaten, raped, kicked, forgotten, and dead before they turned 21. That's Abby's daily reality.
Abby went to Africa in a response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. She stays there, however, in a life-giving surrender to Christ and the Kingdom. You see when many people look at Abby they put it into terms of what she has lost, but she would put it into terms of what she has gained. She did lose a lot of things, but all of them well worth losing. She has gained something incredible, something magnificent: She has witnessed the Kingdom of Heaven and its joy.
This is an excerpt from one of her latest blog posts: "Here I have the joy of working with street children, of watching their lives change, of earning their trust. Whenever my heart is broken for street children by something that happens here, it is also filled by the knowledge that I am here doing something about it, that God is using me to change the lives of street children in Kampala."
Anyone who has ever read her blog knows that she has countless stories of pain, redemption, and God's providence.
Just last month when the riots in Kampala were happening, Abby and her coworkers were able to get many of the street children they worked with to relative safety in homes and other places of refuge. The police and society in general, who blame street children for every evil, were looking, during that chaotic time, to kill and destroy. Due to the interventions of those committed to the well being of those children, none of the children, that they know of, were hurt during the riots. This is but one story, among many. God is surely moving in the darkest and hardest places.
Abby and her coworkers daily are on the frontlines for the Lord, they stand against the unjust Ugandan government and their treatment of the least of these, they stand against the kids going to sleep at night thinking that no one cares about them, that they could die alone and no one would miss them. They stand against Satan's onslaught against those he despises: the beautiful creation of God, children.
Did you know that in the two homes Abby has been a part of creating, Ssenge home and Kivulu home, there are over 30 children who no longer have to lay their heads on the street at night? Did you know that by creating strategic partnerships with churches, the body of Christ, which she's been able to mobilize a group of Christians to care passionately about the least of these? Through their collective work there is a school and medical clinic for street kids…. This is more than a mere rumor of another world…
This is Justice & Mercy ministry. For in Micah 6:8 says: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." I want to say that again. It's so, so good. "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
But to be perfectly honest, however, Abby is not a special case. She's not…. She's sold out for God, but God never, when we boil it down, asked from Abby anything He isn't asking of us. He asks all of us for everything…. Derek Webb, one of my favorite songwriters, says of Jesus (quote) "he says, more than just your cash and coin, I want your time, I want your voice, I want the things you just can't give me"
But this, my friends, is actually really good news. It destroys, again, our pesky default to think that the adventure and risk in radically living for Christ is for someone else. It's not. It's for you and me. It costs all of us everything. We, as we learned earlier, are God's solution for the world. There is no plan B. It is not someone else; it's you and I.
So in a world like Solomon's, as we live in today, in which he looked out across the land and said in Ecclesiastes 4, "I saw the tears of the oppressed and they had no one to comfort them, but on the side of the oppressor was power", we are the ones who are supposed to do something about it. So in a world in which conservatively one-third of women will be sexually abused or raped, we are God's plan to counter it. We are God's plan to "Go and do likewise". What an invitation!
But we often say: "I'm not a missionary!" But who are missionaries? I mean, what does a missionary do? The dictionary says a missionary is "a person sent by a church into an area to carry on evangelism or other activities, as educational or hospital work." Paul seems to have a different definition…
But is it just vocally preaching the word of God? Or is it more? Don't they bring the Kingdom of God, in all its magnificent totality, as well? Don't they come to speak of a wondrous truth that God became man so that we might be set free?
· They are sent because large portions of our world have never heard of the freedom that is in Christ.
· They are sent because they are on a mission to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven.
· They are sent because those with power abuse those with out.
· They are sent because there is slavery of the body just as there is slavery of the soul.
· They are sent because almost half of the planet lives on less than 2 dollars a day.
· They are sent because AIDS is decimating entire populations of people.
· They are sent because there are more slaves today than there was at the height of the Atlantic slave trade.
· They are sent because tens of thousands of children die every day from malnutrition and curable diseases.
· They are sent because kids in certain cities simply don't get the education that folks in other cities get.
· They are sent because in some parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo you're the exception to the rule if you are female and have not been raped.
· They are sent because daily street kids all around the world are raped and murdered at a staggering rate.
· They are sent because a group of 13 year-old girls in a brothel IS an unreached people group.
They are also sent because others… wouldn't go.
They have to come to terms with many things, but first and foremost that pesky little fact that demands EVERYTHING. That God, our Father in Heaven, weeps when one is lost anywhere; that a soul in Canada is worth just as much as a soul in Algeria, that a soul in Mumbai is worth just as much as a soul in Phoenix.
It's like God's own establishment clause: he respects no nation state, no racial lines, no cultural mores, or the establishment of any human-constructed demarcation between His people. In His justice He calls us to reject that part of our humanity that falsely causes us to create hierarchies based on race, socio-economic status, language, legal status. We simply haven't the luxury to see anyone other than how He sees them, as His children. He just calls His people to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven by taking the Gospel, in all its immensity, to every person on the globe, whether next-door or in Russia.
This is what the "missionary" has had to accept: that the kingdom of Heaven is radical and that it is for everyone… "Go, and do likewise"
This is not a new concept, to be sure. But I wonder what Christianity would look like if we all believed it as if it's truth of falsehood were a matter of life and death, as C.S. Lewis would say…
So we know that Jesus modeled the Kingdom, and then sent us all out to proclaim it and to live it, but are our passions the same as Jesus passions? In Luke 4:18-19 Jesus let's us in on why he's come to earth. He says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
At the end of Luke 4:18-19 He almost could have said "Go, and do likewise". I remember Abby's Dad, Steve, telling me once that people often ask him, "how could you let your daughter go to someplace so dangerous?" to which he could only reply "how could I not? What is more dangerous for her to go to the place God has put on her heart to serve, or for her to stay here in disobedience?"…. in saying that he almost echoes Shane Claiborne, the founder of Philadelphia's "Simply Way", who says "the most dangerous place to be for Christians is in safety and comfort" This was said while he was in Iraq during the US invasion. I tell you, "Go, and do likewise."
The body of Christ is a body of "missionaries" of the Kingdom to people who haven't audibly heard or haven't "heard" through Christians living out their faith. Gary Haugen, founder of International Justice Mission, used to tell us: "how will they know that God is real and that he is good if we don't show them?" A group of girls in a brothel is an un-reached people group.
We are all to join Christ in His ushering in of the Kingdom of Heaven: Reaching up, reaching in, and reaching out. That pithy old adage that "outside these doors is the mission field" doesn't even take it far enough. There are deeply hurt people in the pews next to you. Many of the people who you go to church with have experienced all kinds of evil and abuse. Satan knows no quarter, and neither do we. It's not even only others that have been hurt and abused and need ministered to. You are hurt, you have suffered, and your beautiful soul, a creation of God, has blight because of sin. You, like everyone else, require some grace, some love, some justice and mercy. We haven't the luxury to draw a line between those who deserve grace, love, a "hand out", or a shoulder to cry on.
I know what I needed, in my own life, was the Gospel to create in me a profound paradigm shift that threw off of the seductive vice of hyper-nationalism, of apathy, of putting my responsibility on someone else. Because God won't ask me one day what I did with other's lives, He'll ask me what we did with mine. Said differently: "God won't ask you one day what you did with other's lives, He'll ask us what you did with yours". And that's not a threat in the least… it's an invitation to respond to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to let it infect every inch or our being so that we risk everything so that we might know Him more: That we risk our time so that we can disciple and be discipled, that we risk our lives to save lives, that we risk our treasure to gain treasure…
This is not an invitation to merely be reckless and decide that becoming an expert in the art of bungee-jumping is a great way to pass a mid-life crisis. It's an invitation to lose everything so that we might gain everything. His call has always been that way, but we need not digress to lofty words because surely, if we know anything, it is that he doesn't call us all to cross-cultural ministry in Africa, or Croatia, or the ghettos in Philadelphia. To be sure he calls many more than are responding to the call, but we aren't here to crunch numbers. We're a diverse group of people with different loves, passions, skills, and spiritual gifts. It would be peculiar if we all came to the same conclusions about politics, mission work, theology, or even reality. The way we were uniquely created gives us license to not only disagree but to experience God's call on our life in different ways.
Josh Sazdanoff left this church to pursue a calling to preach the gospel vocally and through his lifestyle to a certain crowd in SoCal. Abby left the church to minister and live with the street children of Kampala, Uganda. Stavo left the church to preach the good news to those who haven't heard in Croatia…. But just as important is Chris' answering the call of Christ to lead this flock. Just as important is the Tracy's answering the call to bring healing through Christ to the abused. Just as important is Peggy Bilsten's answering the call to not let the rape of women go unanswered for in our city through Streetlight. Just as important is Aaron's answering the call to lead the youth. Just as important is the church member who facilitates a Mending the Soul group for the healings of their brothers and sisters. We are all "missionaries". To be sure, we all can't get paid to do "full-time" ministry. But we all can live intentionally for the Kingdom. We cannot, and shall not, make a hierarchy based off of what is the coolest, or most risky, call of Christ. There are no "senders" and "goers". We all have a lot asked of us so we should live in a way that postures our heart to be used daily as emissaries of the gospel to a fallen world who needs to see Christ in us.
For we don't "do" ministry; our very lives are ministry.
So how do we here, in the pews of a comfortable church, create in us the paradigm shift necessary to view ourselves as missionaries for the Kingdom? How do we shift from the Lawyer to the Samaritan and "Go and Do Likewise?"
This, as I'm sure you've guessed isn't really the easy part. Being so diverse, it's hard to speak to what each of us should "do", but despite my repetition of that word throughout the sermon, "doing" in and of itself isn't really what gives us that paradigm shift to move towards living for the Kingdom. Remember, this costs us everything. It requires a number of things: your prayers, voice, time, courage, resources, and your open hands.
He wants your prayers:
· We can start by praying that famous prayer the founder of WorldVision, Bob Pierce, gave a long time ago "Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God"
· We must live in humble expectation for God to reveal his individual call in your life all the while prayerfully considering what small commitments we can do in preparation for the big opportunities that may come. Prayer gives us a proper heart position.
· James 5:16 says, and I love the King James here "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much". Our prayers matter. After going to Congo in 2007 and meeting a woman named Naama who was catatonic after a horrendous rape, the team prayed daily for her. In 2008 when I went back with them, Naama not only had healed, but was leading others in their healing. Prayer is effective. It's a big God we serve.
He wants your voice:
· We have been given much, my friends. Everyone in this room lives in what is commonly called a "democracy" meaning we all have, to some degree, especially those of us in a community of believers, a voice.
· As those radically transformed by the gospel we must speak truth into people's lives so that they might be free. But it also means speaking truth to power so that they can set people free. Our ability to advocate and petition on behalf of the forgotten and despised is one of the greatest privileges we have. To whom much is given, much is expected. For example, we may not all agree on how to best "deal" with "illegal immigration" but what we surely can't do is let those who aren't transformed by love command the discussion when the lives of human beings are held in the balance. Our voice is a reflection of our heart's posture. It matters.
· Martin Luther King Jr, who I affectionately call "the man" once said "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"
He wants your time:
· God wants our time because it's something that is most precious to us. He wants it because our actions and kingdom pursuits happen in "Time".
· Time is something we all think we don't have much of. But if we truly believe that ministry is not something we do but that our very lives are ministry, we can truly begin to prioritize our lives around Kingdom living, not saying "this is time for God, this is time for me". That is absolutely not to say that we spend every waking moment in a rush to do, do, do. That's the opposite of what I mean. I mean using our time as Henri Nouwen once talked about: "the ministry of presence". Being present with people IS ministry if we've got the Kingdom mindset.
He wants your courage:
· Sometimes to live for the Kingdom means that we ignore the State Department's travel warnings. Sometimes it may mean talking to someone we would never otherwise talk to. It may mean ostracizing ourselves amongst those who don't see the world as we do. A paradigm shift to the Kingdom takes courage…. And we've all got it. It just takes God and a decision to embrace it.
· It takes courage to "Go and do likewise", but he really didn't request that's what we do. He said it was essential. Courage doesn't necessarily imply bodily danger. It implies a willingness to trust God and to have faith that he is big enough for the task. It's not about us and He's a big God.
He wants your resources:
· This is much more than your money, this is your influence, skills, profession, networks, and education. Money is a given. But what probably has even more efficacy for the Kingdom of Heaven is the more intangible things. If you're a business man are you using your business to enlarge the Kingdom? Are you paying your workers fairly and using your voice to influence others to do so as well? If you're a lawyer are you using your considerable skills for those who otherwise wouldn't have access to law, the poor? If you've got a great education, what is your end goal? Wealth and security or freedom and life through surrender? Who do YOU know that can get involved in what God is doing in your neighborhood, community, city, country and world? Yes… money is but one of the many God-given resources we have at our disposal.
He wants your open hands:
· This is one of the most important:
· The ability and willingness to hold lightly our worldview, and all its inherent failures and half-truth, loosely, so that we will not be hindered in our passion for God's world.
· Our ideological pursuits have to measure up to the reality that they are subject to the truth of the Gospel and that a radical transformation of our hearts and minds is necessary.
We must ask ourselves, "Why wouldn't I use my voice to help the voiceless? What is hindering me in living radically for the kingdom of Heaven? Why do I hold tightly to my resources and to ideologies that are inconsistent with the gospel?"
He wants everything from you and I. Christ embodied the Kingdom, now He's sent us to continue in what He has started. He is with us when he says "God and do likewise"
