A Sermon for World Mission Sunday

Disclaimer: As a general rule, I don’t post manuscripts of my sermons. They are somewhat occasional in intent and focus, usually unpolished, oftentimes written well into the evening before they are to be delivered and briefly edited for coherence early the following morning. After that, they are more or less disposed of into the cloud, likely never to be seen again. However, I received more than one request for this one, so to facilitate that, I’m posting this one –  perhaps against my better judgment.

Additionally, it is not uncommon that I find errors, misstatements, even questionable logic built into the texts that I construct. The sermon is primarily a spoken text, and that being the case, such errors and inconsistencies are somewhat natural to occasional speech. Were the point of the text to be a published work for regular distribution and examination, I would edit it more thoroughly. But since the purpose of this is more for historical documentation, the text shared here is presented as such, failures and all. 

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Last time I preached to you, I talked to you about how Christ’s baptism was his initiation into his mission as Messiah. His own baptism was the beginning of his vocation. After his baptism, Jesus immediately went into the wilderness and began facing temptation on our behalf. I made the point that our baptism is no different. Our baptism – no matter when we were baptized – places a call on our own lives. Our baptism is the beginning of our vocation because our baptism is baptism into Christ. Paul wrote to the Church in Rome that our baptism joins us to Christ’s death. He then said that just as we are called to come and die by and with Jesus, so are called to share in his resurrection. Paul says that because Jesus was resurrected, we who were baptized into his life and death are called to follow him by walking in newness of life. This is our mission: to live as a Resurrection people. At Redeemer we express that in the phrase: Know Christ, Grow Together, and Go into the World. Know, Grow, and Go.

Today is World Mission Sunday. Today is the day that we remember our vocation, our call, our mission. Today we remember that we are not called to comfort or complacency. We remember what our collect says: that the Holy Spirit has been poured out on every race and nation. And with our collect we ask that God would continue that preaching of the Gospel across the whole world.

Now, our prayer book specifically has what is traditionally understood as “missionary work” in mind. When we talk about “missionary work,” we tend to think about going to places where people haven’t heard of Jesus and we send people on a “mission” to those places so that the Gospel can be preached there.

Before going too far in, I want to say two things: First of all, that work is important work. It is *essential* work. At Redeemer, we support a *number* of missionaries and have sent a number of our members out into the world as missionaries. Yesterday, a number of our members gathered together for a Missions and Outreach Retreat in order to share and strengthen one another and focus on ways that Redeemer can faithfully carry out our calling.

Second, however much it is important to remember that funding missionaries is an important calling and responsibility for the Church and its members, it is *also* important to remember that writing a check once a week or once a month is not the same thing as carrying out the mission of God. Remember, Paul did not just say “all the missionaries have been baptized into Christ and must put on Christ.” He said “as many as have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death.” If you’ve been baptized, you’re a missionary. You have a call on your life to serve God and live out the Gospel in some way. That way may take the form of laity, you may have a lay calling, a non-clergy calling – but “laity” is not code for “the people that right the checks.” Traditionally speaking, the laity are the *first* holy order – clergy are just people within the laity who have been identified *by the laity* for a very specific role. But the minister’s role is not the only role. If you’ve been baptized, then you may not realize it, but you’ve already received holy orders. When Peter calls the church a “royal priesthood” he is not just talking about the “priests” – he’s talking to all the people. Peter said:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

All of you are God’s chosen people, and God chose you for a reason. Today I want to talk to you about what that reason is. God has called all of you here together for a mission. Peter says that, “God chose you to proclaim his excellencies.” This is worship. And that is the heart of your mission.

In Duval County for a while, there was a saying in the district: “Begin with the end in mind.” The saying means, when you plan a lesson you begin that plan with a specific target or goal, and everything you do during the lesson is built around accomplishing that goal or hitting that target. “Begin with the end in mind” is about being intentional and thoughtful. If you teach science, you don’t just sit down and make a list of fun science lessons that you want to do with the students. You think about specific scientific principles and skills that you hope to develop in your students, and you design specific lessons and principles that will encourage the growth and development of that specific sort of knowledge. This is missional education. Education with goals and purpose. When the end is *not* in mind, sometimes you could come with fun lessons, or filler lessons, lessons designed to fill up the school year, to run out the clock, to make sure there is no empty space on the calendar. And when you do this, some learning *does* take place, but it’s casual and unorganized and unfocused. And that lack of organization and focus leads to less integration. And that lack of integration leads to wasted learning, wasted growth. When the teacher aimlessly floats through a subject or curriculum, students begin to *detect* that aimlessness and that floating. And it doesn’t take long for students to pick up on the fact that there *is* no aim, there *is* no purpose to their education.

And so today, when we talk about the mission that our baptism calls us to, I want to “begin with the end in mind.” I want you to see that the knowing, growing, and going that we are called to at Redeemer is not an arbitrary assembly of random “good” or “fun” things to be doing. We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, and as we go about our mission here, we need to know *why* we are knowing, growing, and going. When we commision a missionary to go off to another place and spread the gospel there, what *is it* that we hope to accomplish by doing that? When we gather together in a small group in our communities and read the Bible together or pray, *what is the point*? What is the *end* that we have in mind? When we join together on Sunday mornings, what exactly is it that we think we are trying to do?

Let me throw some options out there. What do you think we are trying to do today?

Pass on our moral teaching from one generation to the next.
Hear something positive in a world filled with negativity.
Be an encouraging community and support network for each other.
Create a space where people can possibly hear the gospel and be saved.
Learn what the Bible says.
None of the above.

Part of being a good test taker when you have a multiple choice question is to know that if there is more than one true answer, you choose the one that is *most* true. And part of the fun of being a teacher is making the questions as tricky as possible. While each of those choices are somewhat true, the truest answer is f.

I want to submit to you that the aim, the goal, the point, the focus, the logic, the rationale, the *end* of our mission is *the worship of God.* I think this is exactly what Peter means when he says that we are to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” When we are here together, yes, we do teach the Scriptures, we do encourage one another, we do preach the Gospel, we do support each other, but we don’t do any one of those things exclusively. All of these things together are integrated parts of a more singular focus: the worship of God.

And this is the point of “mission”: mission is about the spread of the worship of God throughout the world. You can see this in the Psalm we already recited together today:

We began verse 1 by asking for God to show himself to us. Why? We answered that in verse 2: that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among the nations. Okay so, we want God to show himself to us so that people will know him. That sounds like evangelism. We want God to save people. *That’s* the end, right? No. Verse three shows that the point of the conversion of the nations so that the nations will praise God:

3 Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!
4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Selah
5 Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!
6 The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us.
7 God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth fear him!

Begin with the end in mind: What is the mission of the Church? Worship. We are strategically working to spread the worship of God throughout the world. When we teach people about the Cross, it’s so that they can join in the praise of God. When we bring people to church with us, it’s so they can join us in worshipping God. When we care for the poor, it’s so they would know the love of God and return that love in praise. When we love our enemies, it’s so they can learn to praise God. When we read the Bible, it’s so we can better understand the marvelous works of God and sing his praise. When we visit the sick, it’s so that they would know the glory of the grace of God and find rest in the praise of his name. And when we come together here as the Body of Christ to worship, we do this – not first for ourselves – but ultimately to exalt God.

And if none of those things are true then we are idol worshippers. And since the *entire mission* is to spread and magnify the glory of God throughout the world, *to worship idols is to commit treason.*

This is the spirit of our Old Testament reading for today, too. In Isaiah we read one of the songs of the Suffering Servant, an Old Testament picture of Christ. The servant says, “give attention, you peoples from afar.” He tells the gentile nations that the purpose of Israel’s mission was that God would be glorified. In verse four he mourns that Israel has failed to carry out the mission that it was created for, but God answers that he will restore Israel and (verse 7):

I will make you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

And then the Servant says when all the nations see how God has restored Israel, the Kings and Princes of the world will bow down in worship.

This is the plan. This is the end, the goal. And we use the word “glory” a lot in the context of worship, but the ESV points out that another translation of verse 3 is “I will display my beauty.” This helps us understand a bit why we should care that God’s “glory” be spread throughout the world. When you say it that way, “glory,” it sounds abstract and theological and, if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably checked out.

But the word “beauty” sounds solid. You can think of a painting. A movie. A song. The joy of the sight of your newborn child. A man may think of his wife. You may think of poetry. In Ephesians, God says that we, the Church, are *his* poem, that he is writing into history. In each of these things we get a taste of the end, the point, the hope of our mission: that the world would be filled with the beauty of God. This is the joy of our salvation.

Peter said that we were chosen that we may proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous *light.* This is because, as the apostle John puts it, “God *is* light, and in him is no darkness.” After all, isn’t that how we began the service in our Psalm? We asked in verse one:

May God be gracious to us
and make his face to *shine* upon us, Selah

We are getting very close to what theologians call the “beatific vision.” In “beatific” we have the same root as “beatitudes,” which are the sayings Jesus has about the “blessed life.” *This* is the goal: *blessing,* *delight* – because in staring into the light of God we see the fullness of every lesser light that we encounter in the world. In the early Church, it should not surprise us that instead of baptism, the ritual we talk about with water was often known by another name: illumination: that is, filling with *light.* Our mission, as baptized disciples, is to fill the world with that light through the proclamation of the Gospel to all races and nations so that all people can know the peace which surpasses all understanding through gazing at the beauty of God revealed in the Cross of Christ and *especially* in his Resurrection. *This* is the end.