Readable Sermons
admin October 11th, 2011
Here we will publish sermons that were not recorded properly or that are better being read.
Sermons will be available for 2 weeks on the website.
Rod Robson: 9/10/2011 – Speaking about the Mission of God
When I was 23 I graduated with a law degree and ego to match just in time to catch the deep recession of the early nineties, the sharemarket and property crashes had knocked the stuffing out of the commercial community. Aspiring commercial lawyers like myself were all of a sudden 10 a penny and I was unemployed. After nine months of fill in jobs I finally started my career at the head office of the Department of Social Welfare.
It was another world full of colorful eccentrics and thinly disguised make work schemes, the war stories were fantastic. One of my colleagues had started a few years before me when he showed up his boss was not there, he looked for him but could not find him. Not only that, there was not a lawyer or legal support person in the building – they had all mysteriously gone. It was a Left Behind kind of experience for him. So he just sat down and waited. Later in the day the legal team showed up, they had all been off playing basketball together, which was something that did quite regularly.
Those days were fast going – I think that we had 3 significant restructurings and numerous smaller rejiggerings in my first 5 years, a couple of thousand people left the organization in that time some with massive redundancy cheques. The joke that was doing the rounds was what is the definition of an optimistic public servant? The answer was that they bring their lunch to work.
Many of my colleagues were in the latter stages of their careers having only ever worked for the department. One guy that I worked with called Alan had been there since 1958.
In the old Gliding On flavored public sector world that was passing 35 years of service to one organization was seen as a virtue – Alan had been regarded as loyal and was an expert in the work of the department and in how it ran. He knew who did what to who, how and why. Frequent changes of job and God forbid career were seen as signs of instability – what was wrong with you? Alan was the classic post war organization man – bright, able and loyal. He was the go to man in social welfare policy.
By contrast, in the new world if you stayed too long in one place your skills were regarded as specific to that context, and institutional knowledge is not highly regarded. Alan was caught in a bind as the world changed around him, it was too late for him to go out and get lots of varied experience. Fortunately, some of the new leaders recognized his unique abilities and a role was made for him.
Theologians call a time of change or transition like this a liminal time. The door is closing behind and a new door is opening up ahead – the shape of things to come is starting to become clear but it is still uncertain. I have heard it described as like being in a corridor – a good metaphor for transition.
I think that our whole culture is in a liminal phase not just the structure of our working lives, and has been since the 1960s. The rise of television, mass communications, air travel, information technology and especially the internet, the globalization of manufacturing and finance, has changed everything. Our core modernist world view used to value loyalty, duty, certainty, institutions, science, and the belief that everything was getting better. The new post modern world is much fuzzier, more individualistic, less trusting, and agnostic about whether the future will be better and brighter than the past. Things are very different now.
The church as part of our world is not immune from this trend. The church has declined in its influence just as every other institution from the Lions Club to rugby clubs have also declined. There is a very good discussion of these themes that I have touched on in Brian McLaren’s book ‘A new kind of Christian’, if you want to go further with it. He explores what christian faith might look like in a post modern world – its fascinating.
The other change that we find ourselves enmeshed in is that we live in post quake, at least we hope that its post quake, Christchurch. We are in the early stages of a new reality and its not very clear what shape the city will ultimately take. Its the ancient Chinese curse again – may you live in interesting times.
Over the next while we are going to be talking about whether we will throw in our lot with Oxford Terrace Baptist and create a new central city baptist church together. The discussion paper is out there and there are a couple of gatherings scheduled for this week coming to talk about it, and there will be more.
If our two churches come together, this process will be challenging and disruptive. It won’t be easy for anyone so why do it? Well, our answer has been that you would not do this in order to look after our existing people better, there are easier ways to do that with fewer risks.
This is what we said in the paper:
Our view is that the rationale for change must be about external mission, and our responsibility to engage in the work God is doing in our city and in our world. So the key question that we have focused on, is what could we do and be together, that we could not do and be as separate churches? How might the purposes of God be served by a new central Baptist church? If the answer to that question is a compelling vision of a vibrant central city church community engaging holistically in God’s call, then we should proceed down the path to a shared future, if not we shouldn’t.
Today I want to unpack some more about this mission thing, if you are around christian circles you hear the word a lot. Its often used in connection with discussion of evangelism, fair enough, and in fact that’s what we will be talking a bit about next week with a panel. But its broader than that.
When you are in a time of transition I think that is when you go back to first principles. For a church in a liminal time, what does God say in his word about who we are and what we should be doing as a church? Whatever else might change in the world around us, those core biblical principles don’t. What is our true reason for being as a people of God? The answer is not so much a set of principles as a story, and its a story not much about us and a lot about God.
It has been two thousand years since Jesus Christ walked on planet earth. Through all those years the church has lived out, and told, and interpreted, the story of God in each generation, carrying it forward. And while Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, the revelation of God in human history began long before anyone had heard of Christianity, and long before the Old Testament writers put pen to paper.
At many times and in a variety of ways God has made God-self known so that all creation might worship it’s creator and find it’s ultimate purpose. God’s mission is not static but continues to move towards it’s goal which is the full realization of all that God intended – a state of perfection where God is glorified in and through all that God has made; it is the salvation of the whole world. Its the picture of the new heaven and the new earth that is given at the end of the book of Revelation. We need to understand that right from the beginning of human history God had a mission and goal in mind. God is outreaching and inclusive by nature. God’s mission flows from God’s nature as loving creator.
God has no beginning; God has always existed, but the relationship between God and humankind did have a beginning. The Bible provides us with the unfolding story of God in human history. It records the experiences of individuals and communities who recognized what God had done among them. In it’s pages, God’s attributes are progressively revealed and so it seems that an awareness of what God is like expanded over time. Throughout the scriptures there is a respectful record of the ways of God in the world, told from the viewpoint of a particular people group – the Israelites. However, there is no suggestion in the scriptures that God confined himself to working to just that people group, indeed the evidence is that he did not.
God is worshiped as the one true God, the very definition of love, the source of all life, who spoke all life into existence, and celebrated the goodness of what had been made – see in particular Genesis 1. One theme that echoes throughout the folds of history is God’s persistence in taking the initiative to form relationships with people, to connect with them, providing them with the means and resources that would enable them to live in keeping with the divine intention. Mission was God’s idea. He is missional by nature and the initiative for all mission comes from him.
Christians recognize that the high point in God’s story happened when Jesus Christ, who is God, made His home within the world he created, in the words of John 1 in the Message Bible he moved into the neighborhood. Motivated by love, God came to us where we were, so that we can be with Him throughout all eternity. Jesus is the fullest revelation of God the world has ever known, in Colossians he is described as the icon or image of God. His life story shows God’s missionary heart when we remember that He moved toward us, He was part of the culture, but He challenged the way things were, disputing with the powers and principalities of his day. He was a missionary before the Church even existed, he is the incarnation of God and God’s missional intent.
Sadly, Jesus was frequently misunderstood and many people regarded Him as a troublemaker. The good news about God’s mission can be very threatening to some. Nevertheless, God’s story is still being written in human lives and across human history. God the creator still loves creation, God the pain bearer still stands in solidarity with those who suffer, God the life-giver still transforms and redeems and resurrects – the God who is Father, Son and Spirit.
God, who is Trinity, enjoys a state of being that is characterized by love. God is love, beloved and loving. God is a community of three persons yet one being, and God’s mission flows out of God’s existence in Trinity. It reflects God’s desire to share all of God’s self with all of God’s creation. It also reflects God’s desire that creation become all that it might be under God’s reign. All human history, every person and people group, every social structure and institution has played a part in the great story of God, whether that is acknowledged or not, whether that has been for good or not. God’s overarching story claims primacy over all other ways of understanding life, and all our other ideas and stories fit within it. Actually part of the good news is that everyone is invited to find their place within God’s story, and to be involved in what God is doing in the world.
The Church is an important part of the mission of God in the world today, but God’s mission is not limited to the Church. God is at work outside the boundaries of the church. The Church is the place where God’s mission agenda is acknowledged and, at its best, the Church makes plans and organizes itself around God’s mission to save. In this way the Church can serve as a catalyst for the work of God. So as members of God’s Church, it is our job to discern what God is doing in our communities and to be adaptable enough to respond by getting involved, or at least get out of the way so we are not obstructive.
The Mission of Jesus Christ precedes and creates the church by the Spirit, initially at Pentecost and in an ongoing way since then. The movement is from God to the world, mission does not start with us. Rowan Williams put it this way
Its not the Church of God who has a mission in the world, but the God of Mission who has a church in the world.
However, the Church has frequently been a hindrance to the gospel. It has often forgotten that the need for redemption and transformation exists on both sides of the church doors. There have been times when we, the Church, have told God’s story in narrow, and therefore misleading, ways. Mission has frequently been expressed as something the Church does, particularly overseas amongst brown people in hot places. But God’s mission is not something that only happens in other places away from our homes – actually it never was. That is because the need for redemption exists in all cultures, including our own, which can be difficult to identify from close range. And sometimes Christians have developed an over-inflated sense of our own importance, as if God could do nothing good without us. It is just not so. We all need redeeming, and the work of personal transformation is a work of the Spirit. We are all individually and collectively God’s missional projects.
Similarly, the idea of salvation has been frequently expressed as the conversion of individual souls and the means of avoiding a distasteful afterlife. This narrow view can become a means of avoiding engagement with matters of social justice and personal suffering and effectively denies what it means to be a fully human person. By contrast the life of Christ demonstrates that God’s mission actually invades all spheres of life. The mission of God has room for every person, every family, every workplace, every community, every culture, every nation. The mission of God is to create a missionary people from every nation, people group and culture – again the picture is in Revelation 7 of people from all over worshiping Jesus together.
The Church can be a catalyst for transformation in the world. This happens through the ongoing transformation of individuals through discipleship so that they become agents of grace and restoration wherever they are, but it also happens when the Church itself looks to the needs of the world in which it exists, and responds in a way that mirrors God’s heart for the redemption of the whole world. A few years ago I was working as a part time solicitor helping charities get registered with the new Charities Commission. I was staggered by the number of charities that were started or maintained by Christian people. I was really encouraged – we punch far above our weight.
The Church gathers for worship, and for the discipleship of it’s members, always focusing on God’s missional purpose for all creation. Church is kind of like a lifesaving club; a group made up of different kinds of people who have a shared focus. We need to be organized to be able to fulfill our reason for being, together we will achieve more than we could do individually because our different talents and abilities complement one another. A church should offer training and support, and we will share good and bad times together, but at the end of the day it’s all about lifesaving, that’s the reason that we come together.
The Church is all about God’s mission – that is its reason for being. So we will engage in social activism and will seek justice for the oppressed – that’s what churches do, because God is out in front and that is what God is doing. The Church will express care for the whole person because God’s salvation, is about more than just a soul, it is about all of life. Music, the creative arts, architecture and good scholarship will be expressed in and through the Church, reflecting the fact that God’s mission is voiced in many and varied ways.
There is no place outside the reach of God’s Spirit. So we should not be surprised to find that we are called to move further and deeper in to culture. A gospel that takes the reconciliation of the whole world seriously makes room for engagement with words, images, arts and science – as well as personal conversion and social justice. This movement means going to listen and learn, and not just proclaiming what we have come to know, and in doing so we will see Christ in others.
Christians are not inherently better than other people, churches are not trouble free places, but in the Church we are aware of The Story, which gives our lives meaning and direction. God tells us we are part of something bigger than ourselves, something healing and creative that will bring good to all.
There is an alternate story being offered today. The other story suggests that all you get in one lifetime so you better do everything you can to get as much as you can to enrich yourself because it’s all over when you die. It is the story that seems to have been taken on board by the vast majority of New Zealanders. God’s story can set people free from this enslaving myth.
So what does all this mean for us in our time of change? Unlike my friend Alan and my former colleagues, we can reinvent ourselves and change direction if the times demand it, we are not stuck. God is active within our faith community and outside of it – its in his nature to be so. Our task is to reflect on our missional calling as his people, to discern what he is doing around us, and to get in behind it and involve ourselves in his redemptive work. That is our task for the next while, to discern together what the Spirit is saying to us. So please take the time to prayerfully sit with our little paper and come along and share your insights and questions with the rest of us, and lets listen to each other so that we can hear the Spirit in our midst.
