Sermons
“The Promise of Home”
The Promise of Home
Noel K. Anderson
First Presbyterian Church of Upland
Text: 2 Peter 3: 1-13 NRSV
Welcome to Advent 2021! Advent is more than Christmas; it is the season of anticipation and waiting—both of which are good things. There is a hard negative kind of waiting made of impatience, but there is a positive kind of waiting as well—that’s anticipation—something we wait for and watch for with positive expectation and joy.
It’s exciting for us all—but especially for kids—to look forward to Christmas day. Eagerness, excitement, anticipation, and joy—all fill the days from here till Christmas--and even the waiting is lovely.
What exactly is it we wait for? For what do our hearts long? Part of that answer is home. Home—a place where we truly belong and know it—the place where we know others and are known for who we are.
The Longing for Home
Our hearts hunger for a place to belong and be at peace
All of our hearts long for home. It doesn’t matter if you lived in a different house every year of your childhood; it doesn’t matter if you still live in the same house as you were born into; what matters is that we have a hunger for that place of peace, rest, and belonging—a dwelling place for the heart.
Home and the idea of home is sacred, even to people who deny all things sacred. If you doubt this, try making fun of someone’s hometown; it gets under the skin. You can insult the guy’s face, car, family, or dog—but if you insult his hometown, you hit another level.
I grew up in Riverside during the smoggy sixties. I love Riverside—there are gorgeous neighborhoods, lovely homes, peaceful streets lined with palm trees or orange groves—I don’t understand why people from Irvine or Westwood get such a kick out of badmouthing Riverside. It feels offensive, and I haven’t lived there since 1972.
Do you have a hometown you can name? A town where your heart came into being? If so, you know what I mean. Jesus had a hometown—Nazareth—and people made fun of it. He had another hometown—Jerusalem—and he wept for it because it failed to fulfill every definition of home for him. The city which welcomed him warmly on Palm Sunday crucified him by Friday. And yet, he expresses his love for Jerusalem, albeit with a broken, unrequited heart. Matthew 23: 37b-38:
“How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate.”
Jerusalem was a failed home for Jesus. It never gave him rest or made him feel that he belonged.
As much as we love and long for the promise of home, it can’t quite fulfill what our hearts long for.
Church work sometimes takes me back to Riverside. I look forward to going there. I drive the old streets where I walked and rode my Schwinn Stingray. I hunt places that stick in my mind as backdrops to other thoughts. Like the alleyway which runs behind the homes on Magnolia—I remember which homes had dogs that barked when I pedaled past, and I hear those dogs today.
But I struggle to remember other things because I was a child. I never drove there but rode in the way-back—the family Country Squire station wagon (yes, with the simulated wood panels on the sides). My heart is hungry to drive down Beechwood and pull into our driveway, get out, go inside, and have dinner in the dining room. But that’s not it. I’m looking for my mother and father—hungry to hear their voices and feel their company. But I can’t, and I can’t even go into my old house because it has been defiled by interlopers, lo, these past fifty years.
The home my heart longs for is no longer in Riverside. That Riverside doesn’t exist anymore, and the thing I hunger for is like a ghost. For me, the idea of home only haunts Riverside, and home must be someplace else.
When Pilate questioned Jesus, he asked Him about His home and where He truly belonged. Jesus said:
“My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” [John 18:36]
One way or another, we learn that the home we deeply long for is not here at all.
HOME: not “here” at all
Hunger points to a “there”
As fond as we may feel for our hometown or house, there is nothing in this world that can satisfy what our souls long for. The search for home is the search for utter fulfillment, and that fulfillment can only be found with Christ.
With every memorial service I’ve done through the years, this becomes clearer. One of the most popular texts comes from John 14:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
Here is the promise of home from Christ himself. The deep longing in the heart for home depends upon this promise. We long for a home that is not here—a home that is there with Christ, and that is the home that fulfills the promise of home.
C.S. Lewis famously articulated this in Surprised by Joy. Lewis defines joy as “an unsatisfied desire which itself is more desirable than any other satisfaction” [Surprised by Joy, p.18]. Lewis says at the heart of joy is not complete satisfaction but a deep longing. At our happiest—in the most perfectly satisfied state—we remain hungry for something that is above and beyond us. We long for a home that is over our heads and out of sight.
Again, C.S. Lewis:
“Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.”
And:
“All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still “about to be.”
Our joy is a longing for the promise of home—specifically, home with Christ that He is even now preparing for us. Our true home is eternal and with our loving Lord. We catch glimpses of that home here in peak moments—like a perfect Christmas, like a moment of harmony with nature, like love among family and friends during peacetime, and like the experience of beauty that cannot be put into words. We see glimpses and sample foretastes of that kingdom that is not of this world yet pointed to by this world.
The promise of home with Christ is our constant joy in this world.
When Jesus Returns
Like a thief, a Son of Man, and a Bridegroom
Our text from 2 Peter is all about the return of Christ and the establishment of our hearts’ deepest longing. The return of Christ is spoken of in pictures—like a thief in the night,” like the “Son of Man, on the clouds with power and glory,” and like a bridegroom, coming to collect his bride.
The thief in the night imagery tells us that it will happen unexpectedly and unpredictably. Those Christians obsessed with guessing when Jesus will return need to remember this. Unexpectedly means we are not going to know when. We just have to be watchful and ready.
The Son of Man arriving in power and glory makes it clear that Jesus is Lord, not just a prophet. He acts and moves with the full power and authority of Heaven to bring forth an irresistible victory against the powers of darkness—sin, death, Hell, and devils—and all powers will be finally and completely defeated. The reign of Jesus and the knowledge that He alone is King will be absolutely undeniable.
But the bridegroom imagery is the most compelling, for it tells us a love story. In ancient Judaism, the way weddings happened was roughly like this: the bridegroom-to-be cuts a deal with the father of the bride before pledging his troth—his truth and faith—at which point they are strongly engaged. The betrothal included the marriage service with the exchange of rings and sealing the deal with a cup of wine. They were legally married, though they didn’t yet live together.
During this preparation or engagement time—usually nine months to a year—the groom goes off and prepares a house for he and his bride to live in. She makes her wedding garments and prepares herself in every way for her husband.
Neither the bride nor the groom know when the wedding will take place. That is usually up to the father of the groom. If someone were to ask the groom, “When’s the wedding ceremony?” he would have answer, “Only my Father knows for sure!” Sound familiar?
When the time was right, the groom’s father would issue approval for the ceremony. The groom and his wedding party would leave his house and go to get his bride. The bride and her bridesmaids would not know the day or hour of his arrival, so they just stayed watchful and waited.
The groom’s wedding party collected the bride and brought her to her new home. The wedding vows are exchanged, wine is drunk, and then there is a great wedding feast. The chief honoree at the wedding feast is the groom, and guests recite songs, poems, or other tributes to his honor. The couple now live as husband and wife, happily ever after.
I know you picked it up while I described it, but the Church is the bride of Christ. We are betrothed—consecrated—to Him. He prepares a place for us and we await his return with anticipation and joy. When the time is right, the shofar will sound and we will be called forth to the wedding feast, where we will give all glory and honor to Christ.
“Soon” How now is soon?
God is above and beyond time and space
So here we are, waiting for Christ to return. We’ve been waiting nearly two thousand years, so what is meant by “soon” as in “He’s coming soon” because that was clearly the message. Many people raised in the faith have become discouraged by this because it seems either the second coming already happened or else Jesus was wrong. It’s obvious that the second coming hasn’t happened —come on, look at the world!—so Jesus must have been wrong. As if those are the only options.
This isn’t a modern issue. We hear it in Peter’s letter in the first century, and they had the same problem. Verse 4:
“Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!”
Some voices today are no different.
Let’s all remember that God is outside of time and space. God doesn’t need a watch because He looks at time and history the way we look at a timeline. For God, there is no past, present, or future because God holds it all as one. Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, which is Revelation’s central message, and it means that Christ is eternal, beyond and outside of time. As Peter says,
“…with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” [v.8]
Because:
“The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”
Catch that: God wants no one to perish and all to come to repentance. That’s our work—the mission of the Church in time, space, and history. The Father, who is outside of time, looks into time and says, “Not yet—we’re still working on it.”
In context, “soon” means “it’s as good as done.”
Anticipating Home
Our future hope is our present joy.
So we live this life in joy and hope of the promise of home. Like children awaiting Christmas day, we wait with eager longing for Christ’s fulfillment of all things. This is the beauty of Advent—it is a living analogy for our age—the age of the Church—as we joyfully count down the days toward the fulfillment of Christmas.
That hunger for home in our hearts will be fulfilled, but only by Christ, not Christmas itself.
There are healthy ways to watch and wait and not-so-healthy ways. We are told to be watchful and ready, but that doesn’t mean it’s our job to busy ourselves obsessively trying to calculate the day and hour of Christ’s return. That is not what readiness means—in fact, I consider all of that Second Coming-ism a fruitless waste of time and effort. What? Do you think there are bonus points for those whose guess comes closest? No, when Jesus returns suddenly and unexpectedly, let Him find us working our jobs—loving our neighbors, glorifying God, and calling the world to repentance. And we can and should do so with eager longing, for that is the substance of our earthly joy.
We wait and watch with eager longing as we stand on the promises of Christ. That is the substance of our Christian faith—standing on the promises and living by the promises of God.
We live these days alert and awake in eager longing and expectation of Christ’s return and the fulfillment of that promise, just like children waiting for Christmas.
We wait and watch like the bridal party—gladly and excitedly aware that our true home is being readied for us and soon to be revealed--our true, true home—the place of peace, safety, belonging, and perfect eternal love.
And like members of the groom’s party, we go forward announcing that He’s on His way—He’s coming soon—and we should all stay awake and be ready. The home we so hunger for is coming. Soon. †
Questions
- Talk about the sights, sounds, and smells that you most strongly associate with the word “home.”
- 2. What is your hometown, if you can name one? What is special about it?
- 3. C. S. Lewis says that joy is a “longing.” Do you agree or disagree?
- 4. Why is the ongoing longing for Christ’s return a good thing for the Church?
- 5. As God stands above and beyond time and space, how does that affect our understanding of the future?
- 6. What is a good attitude for Christians to have about the Second Coming?
- 7. “Standing on the Promises” suggests our faith is more about trusting God than any personal, spiritual efforts. Do you agree or disagree? Discuss.
“PRIMED: DEVOTIONAL"
PRIMED: DEVOTIONAL
Noel K. Anderson
First Presbyterian Church of Upland
Text: 1 JOHN 2: 15-17 NRSV
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; 16 for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever. †
Today, we come to the end of our “Why We’re Here” series detailing our First Pres core values which spell PRIMED—Prayerful, Relational, Intentional, Missional, Evangelical, and, today, Devotional. We’re going to look at what it means to be devotional with head, heart, and hands.
HEAD: Preserving Truth
The Preservation of the Truth & Defense of the Faith
According to the Presbyterian Book of Order, one of the Great Ends of the Church is “The Preservation of the Truth.” I’ve always loved this, and it has been a constant source of inspiration to me in my ministry. “The Preservation of the Truth”—it has such a noble ring to it. It goes along with phrases like “Defenders of the Faith,” historically, a title given to British monarchs, whose role, in part, was to keep Britain Christian—which turns out to be more challenging than it sounds.
To preserve or defend the truth suggests specific images: a soldier on a wall, a guard at a gate, a shepherd—or even a sheepdog—watching a flock. It’s no wonder that in the early 1200s, the then-Pope launched an order of preachers out the Dominicans—the “hounds of God” —on a crusade to “preserve the truth” against falsehood and heresy.
There is no better image of devotion than a dog, but whereas the Dominicans were seen as hunting dogs trained to sniff out heretics and faithfully deliver them to their masters, we can find a better image in dogs for their simply loyalty and love.
To be devoted means to be unflinchingly loyal. Devotion means loyalty.
Devoted minds are loyal to Christ in preserving the truth, but this has become deeply problematic in a world that doesn’t believe in truth—not absolutes, anyway—but has moving goalposts for morality and user-friendly “truths” adaptable to one’s feelings and preferences. What does it mean to “preserve the truth” if your truth is merely “your” truth—one truth among a world of other truths?
If we were to say, “Preserve your truth,” then we split up humanity into a chaos of personal preferences, where authentic community is not possible. This is the enemy of faith, not an expression of faith. If we are to pursue The Preservation of the Truth, there must be a truth at the core we agree to preserve.
Let’s be clear: faith is the antidote to chaos. By faith, we express our loyalty to the non-fungible Truth of God’s revelation of Jesus Christ. There are some things—and let’s be clear, very few things—for which we need to be rigid, inflexible, and unmoving. God is real, God is good, Christ is risen, Christ is Lord, Christ will return—these essential tenets of our faith deserve our total defense, service, and loyalty.
Our devotion to the truth of Christ is guaranteed to get us into some trouble as well because our world sees such conviction as narrow-mindedness and intolerance. But let’s say it: minds devoted to the truth will grow increasingly intolerant of falsehoods, as they should.
The devotional mind defends the faith, preserves the truth, and grows increasingly intolerant of falsehood without becoming prideful and arrogant. We must be humble as well as convicted, accepting that we are all students and still learning. We are not fanatics—we are free to question and doubt our convictions—but what never changes is our dogged—dog-like—loyalty to Christ.
HEART: Total Commitment
But feelings can also be misleading
With a word like “devotional,” our first idea may have been a matter of the heart. To be devoted is most often driven by deep feelings of love and longing. And yes, when our hearts are in it, we are “all in.”
Love is a heartfelt commitment, and the commitment is what makes it real.
Is it any wonder that the words love, and devotion are so often used together? “Love and devotion”—devotion looks like love. Your dog is endlessly devoted, so you call it “love.” Does your dog really love you? Now there’s always the one who is going to say, “That’s not love; he’s just looking for his next meal!” That person is not a dog lover; he is a dog feeder. Dog lovers know their dogs love them and that it has nothing to do with food, right?
Our dogs are devoted and would love us if we ran out of food completely. They would lay down their lives for us in danger—that’s love.
I also have two cats, and the verdict is still out in my mind. I may be wrong, but I think they would throw me under the bus for the first can of Little Friskies to come along, but I may be wrong.
In worship, we show our devotion to God, but our devotion is expressed in more than one way, which is why we have the so-called “worship wars.” In general, churches argue and disagree about music and worship style. One group wants more deep and heartfelt singing, basking in the Spirit with songs of praise—and that’s great stuff—if you don’t get it, you’re missing out.
The other side seeks constancy—regularity and preservation of old standards. For them, the experience of worship is immersing oneself—not in warm feelings—but in a deep richness of faith handed down through generations. Both sides feel love and devotion for God; it’s just different feelings, different sentiments.
We need both, and we need to beware of both because our feelings can mislead us.
The great bath of praise in the Holy Spirit can become all about me and my feelings. If I felt really good, then worship was great, but if things didn’t significantly move me, worship wasn’t that good. Do you see? It ceases to be about our devotion to God and all about how the event serves our nervous system.
The other kind goes off just as quickly. The preservation of hymnbooks, organ music, and choir robes is not the same thing as the preservation of the truth—but folks can fail to make that distinction.
This is the problem with our hearts—when they’re good, they’re really good, but when they’re self-serving, we lose all perspective on our core task, which is to honor and glorify God.
HANDS: Devotion Action
Get off your knees and get into the fray!
Getting back to loving our dogs. Some folks are mere “dog-feeders” instead of dog lovers, but that needs qualification. What kind of person loves their dogs but doesn’t feed them? An abuser. If you say you love your dogs so much but don’t feed them, you may as well hate them. So much for feelings.
It doesn’t really matter if the dog-feeder doesn’t go all gooey with emotion when Fido turns on full cute mode. What matters is that he loves the dogs enough to give them what they need: food, shelter, medical care, and an occasional flea bath. Is that not love?
Perhaps the most crucial kind of devotion we can show is the kind we practice after getting up off our knees. If your devotion to God ends once you’ve gotten into your car and driven off the parking lot, something’s wrong.
How different would the church’s witness to the world look if church were seen as the place to exercise all our vileness, sin, and anger? Imagine that: we come here to dump all our negativity and fear, but the moment we’re out of the parking lot and in the world, our devotion to God is in full effect. Be bad here; be good there! Doesn’t that seem like a better witness?
Devotion off one’s knees is what we call obedience. We show our best devotion to God by how we act in His world, and our behavior is our best devotion of all.
In Matthew 25, at the last judgment, the sentimentalists cry out:
‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ [Matthew 25: 44b-45]
Obedience is the highest spirituality. Not high idealism, not mystical, magical feelings—but devotion in action. We honor Christ and glorify God when we follow through with what Christ wants us to do.
Jesus was walking among the dog-lovers—the dog-lovers and dog-feeders—and he says to them:
“Follow me, and I will make you lovers and feeders of human beings!”
If we love one another, we must be feeders and carers—providers of food, shelter, medical care, and—as needed—the occasional flea bath.
The Key: GRATITUDE
Gratitude is the beginning and the end of all devotion
One element, one virtue, stands at the center of devotion—in fact, it may stand at the heart of everything we call our PRIMED values--and that is gratitude.
When we pray, in weekly worship or daily devotions, we must begin by thanking God for all he has done and does. After we’ve prayed for everything else—confessed our sins, prayed for others—we finish by thanking God for hearing us and for his answers in advance. Gratitude is the beginning and the end of devotion.
It’s more than that: gratitude is the reason for our service. We don’t serve The Lord in order to make up for our shortcomings or as a strategy to win His favor—make it into Heaven, etc.—but we serve out of gratitude for what He has already done for us through Christ. Salvation isn’t something we’re earning; it is what God has already provided, so all our lives are a lived response to grace—not some kind of attempt to secure God’s grace.
Because we are grateful to God, we come to feel gratitude for all things in our life. We see all things as a blessing and nothing as a curse. Since God has secured life eternal for us, this life is not a threat, and death is not an end but a passage.
Our gratitude for God’s grace comes to reflect on everything else in our lives. Gratitude for anything ends up in giving thanks to God. My love for my wife quickly becomes thanks to God for bringing us together. I thank God for my dogs because I love them, but more so because I love the Lord who made them and put us together. By the way, I’m still learning how to pray for cats. Give me some more time on that.
Gratitude is forever. Gratitude is eternal. Did you ever think of that? Do you think we will ever cease to be grateful to God for eternal life and eternal salvation? Do you imagine we will ever get to the point where we feel like it’s all settled and even? No, as God is infinitely good, we will grow infinitely grateful. We will know the feeling of thankfulness after a trillion years in Heaven.
Finally, gratitude is happiness. I can make no meaningful separation of them in my mind. To be thankful is to find contentment, and to feel happy about anything is to have gratitude working in our depths. Gratitude is the root structure of joy and the true heart of our devotion.
Are you feeling sad? Seek gratitude. In pain? Suffering? Seek gratitude. See someone else sad? In pain? Suffering? Let us be thankful for the opportunity to show our devotion to God by helping. Let us give the poor of the world something to be grateful for in God’s name and to His glory. †
Questions
- Devotion of the mind includes the preservation of the truth. How can one’s defense of the faith become a larger problem?
- Should Christians resolve to be intolerant of falsehoods?
- How can heartfelt devotion go wrong?
- Why is heartfelt passion critical to Christian devotion?
- How do you best feed your heart to grow in its devotion to God?
- What is another word for devotion off of one’s knees?
- Why is devotion-in-action superior to devoted thoughts or feelings?
- “Gratitude is the beginning and the end of all devotion.” Discuss.
- How does gratitude—for anything—end up leading to thanking God?
“PRIMED: MISSIONAL"
PRIMED: MISSIONAL
Noel K. Anderson
First Presbyterian Church of Upland
Text: Matthew 28: 18-20 NRSV
18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore 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 that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
A MISSIONAL MINDSET
This World is too Worldly
The word missional was coined nearly 30 years ago to describe that the Church does not exist for itself and its comforts. The Church exists as the primary means by which God’s will is communicated and activated in the world. It isn’t just about “getting people in;” it’s equally about getting Christ’s will and presence out into the world. How we think about being missional matters because it determines what the Church needs to be doing.
Part of it is understanding the proper relationship between the Church and the world. Some see the role of the Church as to keep Christ’s followers pure and unsullied by the world. They get this idea from many Old Testament texts that called Israel to be set apart from the world. In the New Testament, we have verses like Romans 12:2a:
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds….
This way of seeing the Church’s role is very un-missional, and it sees the Church as a haven from the wicked world. By staying away from the world, we can make ourselves pure and acceptable to God. This was the motive behind many monastic movements—keeping out of the world helped you stay pure and holy. It’s also part of puritanism, and we see its effects in Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch communities which set themselves apart completely.
The world is an evil place, so stay out of it—is the central attitude. We see this in some extremist evangelical churches as well. If you are a good Christian, you’ll only listen to Christian music, have only Christian friends, and only do business with Christian businesses. If you get the picture, this is only a couple of steps in from being Amish.
At the other extreme are the uber-liberal churches, who are so completely this-worldly that their theology doesn’t seem to affect their lives at all. The old word for this was “Churchianity.” They may be good Presbyterians, or Episcopalians, or Unitarians, or Catholics—but they fulfill the entirety of their Christian obligations by attending Church once a week. Otherwise, their lives are unaffected by genuine faith because, to them, the world isn’t evil at all, it’s good, and we should enjoy being part of it.
The Reformed faith, coming down from John Calvin and others, stands somewhere in the middle. It holds that we are here in an evil world for God’s purposes. We are sent as Christ’s disciples not to hide out from the wicked world but to change the world from within the world. That doesn’t just mean pulling people out of the evil world and into the Church—which is a large part of evangelicalism. Nor does it mean simply accepting the world as it is and refusing to call it evil. We are in the world, but the world is not in us.
The text from Matthew gives us some keywords:
•GO therefore,
•DISCIPLE-MAKING “disciple-ize” all nations,
•BAPTIZING them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit,
•TEACHING them to observe all that I have commanded you.
This isn’t the same as “soul-saving”—which we cannot do, only God—but we have our work cut out for us all the same. The problem with the idea of soul-saving is that it presumes to be something we can do. You and I cannot save souls, neither can the Church—any church. Furthermore, nowhere in the New Testament are we told to “save souls.” Jesus doesn’t say it, nor does Paul. The only verse about soul-saving is found in James 5 and refers to the work returning wandering Christians back into the fold, but that is not the same thing as suggesting that our evangelism saves people from Hell.
A MISSIONAL PASSION
Locating one’s missional heart
We don’t save souls, but we are on a mission to deliver good news. We are on a mission, but the word mission never appears in Scripture. Aside from the words we’ve mentioned—go, disciple-ize, baptize, and teach—The words we get are proclaim, gospel, and sent.
The word “gospel” is euaggelion, which looks like evangelism, but means “good news.” Romans originally used it as a military term because the “evangelist” was the messenger who went town-to-town to proclaim the triumph of Caesar over the Gauls, Ptolemies, Thracians, etc. The evangelist announced the good news to the towns and villages of the Roman empire.
By the way, this is what angels are as well. Consider what an angel is—a messenger of God—and the word angel comes from the same root as evangelism. Even in English, we see it:
EvANGELism
Our mission is to bear the good tidings to the world. We don’t think of it this way, but our job is to be angels—deliverers of God’s good news.
We split hairs, but at heart, mission and evangelism are one and the same. We are on a mission to deliver the good tidings that God has won the war against death through Jesus Christ. What we proclaim is the utter triumph of God. Get that—our proclamation is not of an ongoing battle whose future remains in doubt. Our preaching is not of a triumph yet-to-come but not yet in effect. Our good news is that God’s action in Christ has totally vanquished the power of death—and that means human sin and impurity are no longer a threat. The response is a life of following Christ and seeking to grow into His image, His future.
The third word, apostle, means sent—an apostle is one who is sent on a mission. To the extent that we are all on a mission in this life, we are all missionaries and all apostles, for we have been sent to announce the good news of Jesus. The original Apostles were those sent out for the first time, and they left their homes and went to foreign countries to proclaim the good news. We call them missionaries, but each one of us—even the one who never leaves their hometown—is sent out with the good news, even if it is only to the corner store, the nearby school, or the neighborhood picnic.
As God sent angels to deliver good news, so He sends us. So let’s be angels in every way we can.
PASSION PREP
Identifying our brokenness, neediness, and love
The problem with being angels all the time is that we are fallen by nature. We mean well, but, as the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Ever since the fall in Eden, we have been separated from perfect or pure motives. Our every good intention mixes with our self-interest—there’s no escaping it.
Following Jesus—especially if you fear Hell—is the way to preserve yourself from the eternal fires. So are you following Jesus for Jesus’ sake, or are you just naturally saving your own skin? It’s a problem. We want to think that we follow Jesus because we sincerely love him and feel deep gratitude for his amazing grace, but how are we to know? Couldn’t it just be a strategy to avoid our soul’s destruction? Sure!
Our heart-work in mission begins by identifying three things about ourselves: our brokenness, neediness, and love.
IDENTIFY YOUR BROKENNESS
We are human, all fallen and full of brokenness, and that’s a given. How brokenness plays into our missional motivation—our desire to serve—is something every follower of Jesus should ask.
Some of the most motivated Christians may be making up for past sins—many—too many people enter the professional ministry to compensate for past sins psychologically. Some become missionaries to prove that they’re good people because they feel worthless and unworthy deep down. Some may go into ministry because they want to be respected and couldn’t find another way to get that respect.
It might sound a bit dark, but it’s reality. Every follower of Jesus must account for their dark side and see how it plays into their missional motivation. “What about you, Pastor Noel?” Do I have a dark side? Yes, though it may not sound like a dark side to some people. I am a people pleaser. I want everyone to be happy and everyone to be content. I need people to approve of my leadership and feel willing to do whatever I need to please everyone and make it all work. That is my dark side and my Achilles’ heel.
As a seminarian, I went through a battery of psychological tests in preparation for ordination. Presbyterians tend to be very thorough about such things, for which I am very grateful. My counselor laid it out to me: “People pleasers have the highest, fastest burn out rate in ministry. You, Noel Anderson, must face and slay that dragon if you want to be a pastor for more than five years. What can I say? I had to deal with it, and did, and do. I live with it. I ran into people who liked me in churches I served as long as they could manipulate my desire to please. When they hit a wall, they considered me unfit because they could no longer control me. That’s the price of facing your dark side—for me, the need to please everyone—but I slew that dragon long before coming to Upland, in case you wondered.
You also have a dark side—something to compensate for as you seek to be an angel. What is it with you?
• Making up for hidden sins elsewhere in your life? (Mafia donates millions to the RC church)
• Feel unworthy of God’s love and grace, so you feel the need to work your way into his good graces?
• Trying to climb the spiritual, social ladder?
• Sitting pretty—enough money, enough security and happiness—and you want to be left alone.
IDENTIFY YOUR NEEDINESS
Motivations—though mixed—matter, and until you can identify your own needs in serving others, you’re much less effective than you could be.
•What need in yourself are you satisfying by serving God? By being good? By doing mission?
We’ve talked about some already—the need to feel respected, worthy, or atonement for sin, etc.
Some people become compulsive helpers of others because they can’t help themselves. There’s one in every family and several in every congregation. Others may develop what’s called a Messiah Complex, which is a form of superiority. These get great satisfaction from helping down—“I (up here) am here to help you (down there).” It subtly reminds people who is better.
How might you identify your needs in mission—your neediness or needinesses? It’s essential to do so—if you can name it and know it, you’ll improve your mission significantly.
IDENTIFY YOUR LOVE
What are you doing for love? For the love of Christ? How much do you care for the sinners—the unworthy, the broken, the fallen, and the oppressed. For the love of Christ, we seek to see every human being with a heavenly perspective, which means even the vilest and ugly personality is a creature of God whom Christ loves more than we can imagine. If we love Christ, we seek to make that perspective our own.
If you love people—genuinely love them—what would you do for them? The answer is almost anything. If they were poor, you’d share your money with them; sick, you’d attend to them, depressed and defeated, you’d be there to cheer them up. That’s the right motivation for doing mission and evangelism. If we genuinely love, then we will act it out. If we love, we have a witness; if we do good but do not love, we are hypocrites, and as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, “we gain nothing.”
A MISSIONAL PROJECT
Everyone at First Pres has a mission
So we must stay focused regarding our missions. As we talked about last week, to be intentional is to have a target, and we do. The greatest challenge to proclaiming the good news of Christ in America is that after two hundred years of evangelization, much of the American culture has stopped listening. They’ve clapped their hands over their ears and think they already know all there is to know about what Christians think and believe. Even so, there are many ears still open and yet to be reached.
Here it is: there is no more crucial local mission for First Presbyterian Church of Upland than our children’s and youth ministries. We have—locally! Right near us!--young, fresh ears and hearts open to hearing about God’s saving love in Jesus Christ. In a few years, culture may close those ears, but we have a mission to plant something excellent and outstanding in every heart, mind, and soul before that can happen.
You should know that youth and children’s ministries have changed drastically in the past twenty years, and it takes excellent thought and heart to meet the present challenge. I thank God for putting his calling upon Matt and Erika to lead these critical missions.
Children’s and youth used to be all about nurturing—raising kids in the family. You remember how it was—-they all sat together with their parents in worship, and the whole family took the same ideas home. This still happens, but it is no longer the norm. Today, we have to specialize in programming by age group. Some people complain: “Oh! Those parents just drop off their kids on Wednesday nights and then go out to eat or something.” The reactions come from expecting the old paradigm—parents coming with their children—alongside them—but this has not been the norm anymore—it hasn’t been for a while.
We are happy for parents to drop off their children and eat, shop, nap, or do whatever else they need to do. We don’t mind because our mission is to those children. We have them for two hours, and we are going to plant the gospel—the good news of God’s love in Christ—within every child’s heart. We will build a spiritual foundation whether the parents want it for themselves or not.
This is why we’ve had a Preschool for 43 years—why we’ve constantly fed this vision—because we are planting the good news deep in their hearts.
Same with youth. Youth ministry used to be a gathering of family kids—the youth of parents who were active in the church. No more. Today, roughly half the kids involved in our youth group come from families with no connection to First Pres. I think that’s wonderful—we are reaching beyond ourselves out to the larger community, and that is missional.
One of our programming teams—the Serve Team—focuses on missions as well. This is not to say that the Serve Team does all the mission work because everything we do is mission, right?
Still, they have sought to hold a smart focus for our outside projects. Locally, we have SOVA, Bridges to Home, and Habitat for Humanity. Internationally, we’ve held focused on three excellent projects: one in Peru, one in Marera, Kenya, and one in India.
The projects I get most excited about are the ones that emerge from the pews—the ideas and projects that seep up from the congregation’s heart and sense of need. This is how the Holy Spirit works in our midst.
It is part of the DNA of First Presbyterian Church of Upland. Yes, we have skeletons in our closet—like all churches over 140 years old—but we also have some treasures. Here’s something you’ll find interesting: [Clip from Rochester, MN].
The best ideas come from you, from what God puts on your hearts and makes us resonate together.
A MISSIONAL FOCUS
Everything we do is missional
Doing missions—being missional—is not the work of the Serve Team alone, but the entire congregation. It is a value here at First Pres because we regard as good anything that gets us looking beyond ourselves into the community. We are here to be sent out, and we are blessed to be a blessing.
Our mission is to proclaim the insanely wonderful news that God loves humanity and has proven this through Jesus Christ. You are sent from this place to be the presence of Christ in whatever setting you live in day to day. †
Questions
- 1.What are some problems with using “soul saving” language?
- 2.Why are the words missional and evangelical synonymous?
- 3.In what way are all Christians “Apostles”what ?
- 4.In what way does our brokenness affect our outreach?
- 5.What needs do you bring to the mission of the gospel?
- 6.How does love affect the way we do mission work? What are the alternatives?
- 7.When we serve others in mission, what do we expect back from them?
- 8.What does “earning the right to be heard” mean?
- 9.What is the best language to make love known?