Sermon: Mission for Non-Missionaries

The following is my sermon mock up (the written version-it often changes as I practice) for Nov 3 and 24 services at my church Mauldin United Methodist.  The video of the entire service can be found at http://www.mauldinmethodist.com/go/downloads

There is a Casting Crowns song that I think has a very poignant statement that is unfortunately very true.  The song is “If we are the Body” and the statement is the chorus line:

But if we are the body

Why aren't His arms reaching?

Why aren't His hands healing?

Why aren't His words teaching?

And if we are the body

Why aren't His feet going?

Why is His love not showing them there is a way?

In my short 46 years I have witnessed many situations that cause me to ask very similar questions.

Juan Carlos was a young boy when his father beat him senseless and thinking he had killed him he dumped the body on a trash pile for the area. 

Ekateirna was 17 when the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991.  Full of hope her family paid a lot of money to send her to the USA for a chance at an education.  Instead she was tricked by the Russian mob, beaten and raped, then transported to France to be sold into prostitution slavery.

Afiya which in Swahili means wellness and health was not even 10 when a simple disease that we barely consider bad enough to stay home from work depleted her body with no simple over the counter medicines to help.  Her parents started the day’s journey to the nearest medical facility carrying her only to see her die before they could reach it.

Gyasi was only 8 when he was captured in his village and forced to choose between his life and his mothers.  He was brainwashed, drugged and taught hate and violence as a single mindset in his life then served the rest of his short life as a child soldier.

Tim is a single father of a young boy and girl that lost his job during the economic downturn.  He can either live on the streets with both of his children or agree to let his daughter and young son go to a homeless shelter where he will not be allowed to stay as a grown man.

Jamie likes school because she gets a meal everyday she is at school.  They don’t have much food at home and she always hates the weekends and holidays because that means she does not get a whole meal for herself.

It seems the needs are too big.  We wonder what I can do.  The large picture overwhelms us in mission work all too often.  In fact when we do participate, we notice that it never really seems to end.  We help one person only to find ten more have taken their place.  How do we really help people and show our faith at work at the same time. 

I believe the answer lies in looking at how we prepare to do most things in life.  When we were young and started to play basketball they did not teach us how to shoot a 3 pointer to start with.

No we learned to play by starting with the basic building blocks like dribbling, passing, understanding what a foul is, what out of bounds means.

When you joined the United Methodist church you said you would faithfully participate with your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service and your witness.  So we have all agreed to be involved in missions.  We have a church that provides many opportunities to do so.  But it is important for us to revisit those basic building blocks.  To make sure we have our fundamentals down.

Before we get too far into the discussion, I want to make sure we are clear about why it is important to each of us as Christians to be involved in missions.  Think of your faith as a muscle in the body of Christ.  Like our own bodies’ muscles if we don’t use them they atrophy.  So we exercise the muscles by getting out of bed, walking around performing tasks and other activities that use the muscles.  Mission work is the activity that exercises our faith muscles.  When we put ourselves in positions to show Christ’s love to others to do things for them, we use and challenge our faith in such a way that it becomes stronger.

Now that we know why we need to do missions lets reach into scripture to look for those building blocks.  There are a lot of great mission scriptures but I want to examine two closely related scriptures starting with Mark 12:28-31 “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating.  Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer he asked him, ‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’  ‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. ‘The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these.”

This scripture is a key element in understanding the basics of showing your faith through your actions.  There are several Old Testament correlations to this scripture that are most likely cross referenced in your Bible.  However the one I think that is really at the heart of the matter is not normally mentioned.

For that we go back to the very beginning.  Genesis 1:26-27  “Then  God said, ‘Let us  make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

I truly believe if we grasp these verses we will understand the building blocks of everything Jesus said to us and how our lives should be missional.  To do this we need to talk about three main points that come from this verse.

1.     If we are created in the image of God, then what we do to ourselves we do to God.

Everything we do is part of this statement.  We cannot hide from our God; he knows every hair on our head.   So why do we do so many things we know He would not want us doing.  Before we can help others we need to understand our own sins and work on them.  Consider this the “don’t mention the splinter in someone’s eye and ignore the log in your own eye” point.

We are not perfect nor will we be.  But the things in our lives become part of who we are.  More importantly others often see what is really important in our lives by our actions and often our lack of action or presence.  They see what we do and don’t do as the real us and not what we spend all our time talking about. 

Sticking with our conditioning analogy, are the things we do with our time helping us to become spiritually stronger or do they leave us feeling spiritually burnt out? Do we leave church and immediately return to things that are unchurch like?  Do we show up at the end of something and take all the credit or do we work to make those things happen despite the sacrifices we have to make to do them. 

It is not just what others seeing us do, but what we spend our time on.  Do we spend quality time in prayer on a regular basis?  Do we read our Bibles and participate in Sunday School discussions?  Do we stay up late Saturday night watching the Florida State/Miami game and not wake up in time for Church?  Do we sleep in during Methodist Men’s breakfast?  Did we skip circle because there was a TV program we did not want to miss?

2.    Those we surround ourselves are in the image of God.

I want to make a confession that some of you may have heard in the past.  I used to believe that I could be a good Christian on my own, spending time in nature and experiencing the wonders of His creation.  One of the reasons I think God put missions on my heart was to show me that as an introvert it was ok to occasionally have that time to myself and recharge, but that I needed other Christians to be around.  There were a couple of reasons for this.  The most obvious is that one person working alone will not accomplish nearly as much as a group.  Ask any member of the Peru team that carried concrete bags or sand bags about how much they could do alone as opposed to the group we had.  Many hands make light work but also it takes people to help fund the trip, people to pray for the trip, people to help the families who stayed behind.  The next reason was a little more subtle and I don’t think I recognized it until a couple of years ago.  My friends influence me positively and surrounding myself with Christian friends that I can regularly spend time with has influenced my work as a Christian. 

Some of you are wondering if I remember that Jesus spent his time with people who were considered sinners.  Jesus did spend a lot more of his time with prostitutes, tax collectors, adulterers and many others who were considered to be the worst types of people.  The key is that after meeting Jesus they not only changed their lives for the better, they went told others as well.

Spending time with those who are need or people who may not be considered Godly is important as we try to help change their lives.  But we also need to consider those in our lives who are helping to change and shape our life.  Do you see God in them?  Do they see God in you?  If those you turn to for support and encouragement are not treating you as person created in the image of God then you need to make sure you are changing their life and not the other way around.

3.    If we are all in the image of God then what we do to others we do to God.

The first two points were about preparing ourselves for this one.  When I talk to someone I meet I should treat it like I am talking to God.  My actions towards those I meet are actions I do to God.

Stop and think about that for a second.  If we really lived our lives like everyone is in the image of God and what we do to them we do to God, everything we do would become missional.  We would really treat others like we would want to be treated.  Think just about who you will come into contact with today.  If you go out to eat lunch you will come into contact with someone who will take your order at the counter or wait staff.  If you think of them as being in the image of God does that change how you talk to them?

Now think of this in terms of a global world.  We would treat everyone despite their race, nationality, religion, gender, occupation, economic standing as if they were an image of God standing in front of us.  I believe if this happened there would be no problems we could not conquer. 

What would our decisions as individuals and as a church look like then?  Would our church budget have only 4% tithe to Outreach missions or would we really work towards a 10% tithe of the budget?  Would we set all-time records for Operation Christmas Shoe boxes?  Would our back pack food program be so overflowing we helped other schools?  Would our mission teams be able to get money from the church budget?

What we are doing is having a positive impact.

Juan Carlos is an active young man in a loving home provided by Scripture Union of Peru that our Church helped build.

Ekateirna was rescued with over 1000 other women and young boys when our government put aside their differences with our former enemies and mounted a joint operation with Russian forces.

In Afiya’s village a medical clinic was built, clean water well dug and a pre-school started by several Methodist churches including Mauldin UMC.

Gyasi was not saved but his best friend was and now works with Peace Direct.

Many fathers get to stay with their families and spend time in churches like ours as part of the GAIHN program.

Our Back Pack food program helps feed 30 children at our local elementary school.

We are a mission oriented church.  But we do not do all that we could.  We could accomplish so much more if missions became our first priority.  If we acted like everything we do we were doing to God.

I want to leave you with one final thought.  God did not forget he created us in His image.  In fact He sent His Son in our image to show us how to treat others and to die on the cross for our sins.  God did that for us, what are we doing for Him or more importantly what are we doing to Him?