Christlike Mission

Christlike Mission

John 20: 21

Introduction

In May of this year, I was contacted by Vanessa Solis.  She is a college student and a member of our Hispanic mission church, La Casa del Alfarero (The Potter’s House).

Back in the fall semester, Vanessa applied to be a summer missionary to Venezuela with Go Now Missions (a ministry of the collegiate ministry of the Baptist General Convention of Texas—we used to call this BSU summer missions).  Vanessa was not selected back in the fall.  I’m sure she was disappointed, because she wanted to go to Venezuela.  In May, the BGCT contacted Vanessa to tell her that one of the students on the Venezuela team could not go.  They wanted to know if Vanessa still wanted to go.  She did want to go, but she had a problem.  She had only three weeks to raise $3,200 and fly to Venezuela.

When Vanessa and I discussed how to raise the money for her trip, I shared some advice I received from my friend, Mary Carpenter, who teaches missions at Howard Payne University.  Mary tells her students to send letters to their friends and family members to describe the mission trip and to ask for their prayers and financial support.  Mary gives this advice to all students, even if they already have the financial resources to pay for the trip without any help from others.  The reason you should ask people for support is because there are people in our churches who cannot travel to places like Venezuela but want to participate in missions.  If you don’t ask for money, you are robbing other people of the blessing of participating in missions.

So, I told our missions committee about Vanessa’s need.  Then, I told our church members who attend the Wednesday night prayer meeting.  Vanessa sent letters to friends and family members…And, the money came in.  God provided for her trip.  God used our church to share the Gospel with children in Venezuela.

This is one of the things I truly love about our church!  We have a long history of missions giving and missions participation.  And, that heart for missions continues up to today.  Let me give you three examples…

On Wednesday night, our youth group went on a mission trip to Lufkin.  Walker brought in adults to drive cars and divided the youth into five groups.  Each group was given $20 cash and the assignment to go out and minister to others in Jesus’ name.  The youth could do anything they thought of as a group. One group went to the choir room and raised a total of $111 and bought school supplies for a girl and boy and then found a boy and girl to give it to. Another group visited people in a nursing home.  Another group took flowers to people in the hospital. Another group bought a school uniform and underwear for a child. And one group bought items for a homeless lady and straightened up her camp site.

On Saturday morning, 74 people from our church met in the Family Life Center to package 10,000 meals to send to Ethiopia.  Currently there is a famine taking place in the Horn of Africa.  Every four weeks, 29,000 children in the Horn of Africa die of hunger or hunger related diseases.  So, some East Texas Baptist churches have formed an organization called Meals 4 Multitudes (http://www.facebook.com/Meals4Multitudes) to send 500,000 meals to be distributed by Ethiopian churches.  The meals actually taste pretty good.  We cooked some yesterday and tasted it.  We packaged dehydrated vitamins, vegetables and protein.  Once those packages arrive in Ethiopia, we will purchase rice and chick peas from Ethiopian farmers to add to our packages.  (This is the way they are accustomed to eating their meals, and purchasing rice and chick peas in Ethiopia stimulates the local economies.)

On September 22, one of our church members—Scott Foster—is going with a group of Lufkin folks to plant a church in a village in Peru.  Scott has been leading the worship over at Fairview Baptist Church.  The pastor at Fairview has been going to Peru for years and has developed a relationship with a Southern Baptist missionary there. Scott’s group will go into a small mountain village called Mena in the foothills of the Andes Mountains. The village is approximately 800 in population. There are no other churches at all in the village. There is no running water or electricity and the village is mainly made up of poor Peruvians who have migrated to this area from Lima. This region was long considered uninhabitable because of the tough terrain and lack of measurable rainfall. It should be a challenge, so please pray for the team and for the people of this area.  Our missions committee has agreed to help Scott with the cost of the mission trip.  But, Scott is also a small business owner.  So, this trip means he will have to shut down his business while he is away.  So, remember what I said about sharing the blessing of missions by allowing other people to participate?  God may be calling you to participate in Scott’s trip by supporting him financially.

Why do we take missions so seriously as a church?  Really, it comes down to one reality.  Jesus has called us to participate in missions.  We could even go one step farther and say Jesus EXPECTS all of us to be engaged in missions—local missions, missions across Texas and the United States, and missions around the world.

John 20: 21, "Again Jesus said, 'Peace be with you!  As the Father has sent me, I am sending you (NIV).'"

In some ways, I think this Scripture can be described as John’s version of the Great Commission.  We usually think of the Great Commission as Jesus’ last words to his disciples before he ascended into Heaven (Matthew 28: 19 – 20).  In the Gospel of John, we see Jesus giving his disciples their mission on the first Easter Sunday, immediately after his first resurrection appearance.  I don’t consider this a contradiction.  Instead, I think mission was so important to Jesus that he probably talked about it more than just once.

There may also be something else at work in this Scripture.  If we remember the context of Jesus’ words here, we remember that the disciples were hiding behind locked doors.  John tells us the disciples were afraid of the Jews.  After all, Jesus got into conflict with the Jewish leaders, and they began to plot against Jesus.  They found one of Jesus’ disciples who was willing to betray Jesus and hand him over to them.  The Jewish religious leaders then handed Jesus over to the Roman political leaders and accused Jesus of leading a rebellion against Rome.  So, the disciples were hiding…Because they didn’t want to be crucified.

The more I think about what was going on, the more I realize how much this truly applies to you and me.  All of the Christians were gathered in one room.  They had separated themselves from the rest of the world.  And, they probably had no intention of ever leaving that room.  That’s why Jesus had to send them.  They were satisfied to stay right there, enjoying Christian worship and relationships with other Christians.  So, Jesus came to them and said, get out of the church building and go out into the world.  Jesus is sending us just as much as he was sending his disciples.  We have to get out of the church building.

Peace Be with You

I like the way Jesus introduced himself to his disciples.  John tells us they had hidden out of fear.  The doors were locked, and no one knew where they were.  Then, all of a sudden Jesus walked into a locked room.  I think it is safe to assume that when they saw Jesus, they went from fear to terror.  So, Jesus first had to calm their fears.

This same kind of thing happens in New Testament stories of when angels appear.  The angel shows up unexpectedly.  The person who sees the angel is terrified.  So, the angel introduces himself by saying, “Do not be afraid…”  Jesus didn’t say, “Do not be afraid…”  Jesus said, “Peace to you…”

Only Jesus can give us Peace.  Angels cannot give us peace.  Presidents and governors and kings cannot give us peace.  Even our closest friends and family members cannot give us peace.  Peace only comes from Jesus.

Perhaps Jesus’ understanding of Peace came from his Jewish upbringing.  If so, then Jesus would have been thinking about the Hebrew word “shalom.”  One way to translate the word “shalom” is to use the English word “peace.”  However, “shalom” means more than that.  Shalom means a state of being whole or complete.  Peace is the result of being made complete.  In this sense, peace does not refer to the absence of conflict.  Peace is the presence of God which makes us whole.  Without the presence of God, we are incomplete and experience the conflicts and brokenness of life.  With the presence of God, we are complete and experience the resulting peace—a peace that passes all human understanding.

As the Father Has Sent Me

The presence of Jesus is an important part of what it means to be sent. 

John 8: 29, “The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him (NIV).”

Jesus is sending you and me in the same way Jesus was sent by his Father in Heaven.  If God did not leave Jesus alone on his mission, then Jesus will not leave us alone either.  In fact, Jesus promised us that after Jesus goes back to be with the Father in Heaven, God would send the Holy Spirit so that we would never be alone.  God sent Jesus to show us the mission we are supposed to accomplish.  God sent the Holy Spirit to be present with us and to be our source of Power to accomplish our mission.

One of our favorite verses in the Gospel of John describes the purpose for which God sent Jesus into the world.

John 3: 16 – 17, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (NIV).”

Jesus is eternal and preexistent.  There has never been a time when Jesus was not.  He was present with the Father before, during and after the creation (John 1: 1).  Therefore, in order for God to give his One and Only Son, he had to be sent from Heaven to earth.

The theological term for this is the Incarnation, which means “in the flesh.”  Jesus came to earth, because God sent him to be God “in the flesh.”  The life of Jesus reveals to us the Glory and character of God.

It is significant that John 3: 16 tells us that the Incarnation was motivated by God’s love for the world.  God loved the world so much that he sent Jesus to reveal the Glory and character of God.

Since Jesus says he is sending us “just as” the Father sent him, we should agree that our mission is a mission to the world.  We are not supposed to stay in the church.  We are not to spend all of our time around Christian friends.  Our mission is to be an Incarnational mission—to live out the love of God among people who do not know God.

I am just as guilty of this as anyone in church today.  As a pastor, I have discovered that I can spend an entire week surrounded by people who are all Christian people.  But that does not reflect the way Jesus spent his time.  Jesus came to share the message of God’s love and God’s Kingdom with sinners and non-Christians.

Perhaps it is time for us to sit down with some of our friends and have a talk.  “It’s not you.  It’s me.  I have discovered that my friends are too good.  It’s time for me to find some new friends.”  Or, perhaps it’s time we started paying more attention to the acquaintances God has placed in our lives—neighbors, classmates, people at work, etc.  If God has placed these people in our lives, then we are supposed to Incarnate the love and salvation God has shown us in Jesus.

I Am Sending You

This is not the first time Jesus has told us that God sent him.  In fact, sending is an important theme running throughout the Gospel of John.  John uses two different Greek words which we translate as “send” or “sent” or “sending.”  The Greek word apostello appears 28 times in John 1 – 20.  The Greek word pempo appears 32 times in John 1 – 20.  Therefore, we encounter some form of the English word “send” 60 times in the Gospel of John.  That is pretty significant.

In fact, I think we can make a case that the Gospel of John begins and ends with sending.  In John 1, we read that Jesus is the Light that leads all humanity.  Then, we read John 1: 6…

John 1: 6 – 9, “There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John.  He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.  He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.  The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world (NIV).”

Then, the sending theme ends with the Scripture we read this morning, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”  The Gospel doesn’t end with these words.  BUT, this is the last time the word “Send” appears in John.  This leads me to believe two things.

First, this is what all John’s talk about sending has been leading up to.  God sent John the Baptist to testify about the Light.  God sent Jesus to be our savior.  God sent the Holy Spirit to be our source of strength and power.  God is sending us.

Second, notice that Jesus said, “I am sending you.”  This sending is not a one time event.  Instead, it is continuous and ongoing.  Jesus sent the disciples.  Jesus sent the early Christians.  Jesus sent the Christians of the Nineteenth Century.  Jesus is still sending us today.

Conclusion

For the past several weeks, we have been talking about what it means to imitate Jesus.  In some ways, this is like physical exercise.  I can think of three reasons why people exercise.  Some people exercise, because their doctor told them to lose weight and get healthier.  Some people exercise, because they want to look good (or perhaps stop buying bigger clothes).  But, there are some people who exercise to prepare for something.  They prepare to run a marathon, or they prepare for their jobs—professional athletes, police officers and firemen.

Jesus is our model for humility; our model for service; our model for love; our model for endurance; and Jesus is our model for mission.  But, we do not imitate Jesus so that we can just look good.  It is so that we can enter into the world and tell others about God’s love and salvation.  Serving others is important, but it is incomplete if we never talk about Jesus and salvation.