Mission

Give It Your All

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Give It Your All” Mark 10:17-31

Our mission focus during the season of Lent turns to One Great Hour of Sharing. This ecumenical offering was first observed in 1946. In the wake of World War II, the world was hungry and displaced. War had devastated farmland and disrupted supply chains. Hunger had been used as a weapon of war with German occupied lands from Holland to Russia experiencing mass starvation. There were fifty-five million refugees in Europe alone. In response to the global humanitarian crisis, the first One Great Hour of Sharing offering was received in 1946 with a goal of raising $1 million in the one hour, from 11AM until noon, when most American churches gathered for worship.

In 1949, a national radio broadcast on the Saturday evening before Easter promoted One Great Hour of Sharing.  A host of famous people appeared on the program, including President Harry Truman and actors Gregory Peck and Ida Lupino. In his radio address, Truman tugged at the nation’s heartstrings saying, “There are thousands of children in foreign lands today who have no memory of their parents, no knowledge of the meaning of the words ‘home and family,’ and who have forgotten what it feels like to have enough to eat. There are hopeless thousands who wander among the shattered towns seeking a place to rest, seeking security and a chance to begin their lives anew. There are many who pray to God only in secret, fearing persecution if they profess their beliefs openly. It is hard for us to comprehend grief and distress such as this, because we in America are so much more fortunate.” This church participated in that 1949 offering. Members were invited to listen to their radios from 8-9PM on Holy Saturday and come to church to celebrate Easter and make a contribution the following morning.

Seventy-five years later, One Great Hour of Sharing is still going strong. The offering that we collect on Easter will benefit three programs of the denomination—Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, the Presbyterian Hunger Program, and Self-Development of People, initiatives that make a difference in the lives of vulnerable neighbors in the United States and around the world. Nowadays, we don’t have the President, or the likes of Gregory Peck, encouraging us to give. Instead, we have fish banks that the children, and those of us who feel a little childlike, will fill in the coming weeks to remember our at-risk global neighbors throughout the Lenten season.

In our lesson from Mark’s gospel, Jesus encouraged a “rich man” to consider parting with his affluence to help his hurting neighbors.  We can imagine it. Breathless after his run, kneeling in the dust of the road at Jesus’ feet, the rich man wanted to know what he must do to inherit eternal life.  I bet he was relieved to hear Jesus recite the instructions of the Torah – no murder, adultery, stealing, lying, or defrauding.  Be sure to honor your parents.  This man had been observing all those commandments from his youth, and he must have done so with great earnestness and integrity, because Jesus loved him for it.

There was only one thing lacking.  Although the man was expert in keeping the Torah, he seemed to have fallen short in tzedakah or almsgiving, one of the most essential principles of Jewish piety.  Our Jewish ancestors believed that, ultimately, everything belongs to God.  While God could have created a world where everyone had exactly the same distribution of God’s bounty, God chose not to do so.  Instead, some, like the rich man, were given much, while others had little.  This uneven distribution of resources was how God invited faithful people to join their purpose to God’s purpose. They could live lovingly and generously so that God’s goodness could abound for all.  Faced with Jesus’ invitation to sell what he owned for the blessing of his impoverished neighbors, the rich man balked.  He turned his back on a life with Jesus and went away grieving.

I don’t know if many of us would consider ourselves rich, certainly not rich enough to be labeled by our neighbors “the rich man” or “the rich woman.”  But when we see ourselves through the eyes of the world, we are truly blessed.  The average daily wage for New York state is about $202.  Compare that to the average global daily wage of $7.56.  We earn twenty-seven times what our global neighbors earn. Those who live in the five poorest nations—Burundi, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Mozambique—survive on less than $1 a day. We earn two-hundred times what the world’s poorest neighbors are able to earn. We are rich!

 Each day we make choices about how we are going to spend our relative affluence.  I’ll share some examples from the Department of Labor’s latest report on consumer expenditures.  The average gross household income in our country for 2022 was $72,961.  We dedicated about 33% of that household income to shelter—paying the mortgage or rent, utilities, home improvements, and furnishings.  We spent about 17% of our household income on transportation—car payments, maintenance, fuel, and insurance. Those seem like pretty essential expenditures to me. We are blessed to have homes and cars.  Aren’t we?

We also choose to spend our household income on some less essential things. Our average household expense for eating meals out was $3,639. That was followed closely by our average annual household expense for entertainment—$3,429 for things like music, movies, apps, games, vacations, and sporting events. We like to look sharp while we are being entertained and eating out because the average household spent $1,970 on clothes, which far outpaced what we spent on reading $117.  How fortunate we are to not only cover our basic expenses but to enrich our lives with vacations, special meals, new clothes, and good books.

We work hard to earn what we have. We may spend long years striving in tough jobs to give our families the sort of home life that we wish them to have.  But I wonder if our spending patterns, especially for discretionary income, might shift if we thought of our relative wealth in the same way that Jesus invited the rich man to think of his money.  Our relative affluence is a generous gift from God to bless our lives and to bless the lives of our impoverished neighbors. I wonder if our spending patterns might alter if we thought it was just as important to care for the well-being of our needy neighbor as it is to honor our fathers and mothers and to keep all those other commandments.  I wonder what our household expenditures might look like if Jesus were writing the checks. 

I think that Jesus would approve of the way our One Great Hour of Sharing Offering was used last year to help those who aren’t quite as blessed as we are. Presbyterian Disaster Assistance provided $3.1 million in grants to twenty-seven communities in the US and thirty-five countries around the world. We helped people like Bernadette, whose home began to crumble beneath her very feet when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Aleppo, Syria a year ago. With help from PDA, her home was stabilized and rehabilitated. Bernadette says, “We offer our thanks to all who have given so generously. Our prayers likewise go out to all who stand by us and receive the Offering to ease our economic burdens and encourage us to stay in our country and continue witnessing to our Christian faith.”

That isn’t the only way our gifts made a difference. Through the Presbyterian Hunger Program, 525,000 pounds of seeds and seedlings were distributed to farmers around the globe. 875 chickens went to households in Guatemala and Colombia to provide an ongoing resource for eggs and meat. 105 women became self-employed in Malawi as they developed a bakery to serve rural communities. One Great Hour of Sharing doesn’t ask us to sell all we have and give the money to the poor, but it does invite us to consider how our thoughtful gifts can make a world-changing difference for our local and global neighbors.

In the last image that Mark’s gospel grants us of the “rich man,” he was shocked. Reeling from what Jesus had asked of him, he turned his back and walked away. We don’t know what happened after that. But I like to imagine that the rich man spent some time thinking about what he possessed, and he began to wonder if what he owned really owned him. He began to notice his neighbors more, especially the ones who suffered, who didn’t have enough food, who couldn’t afford to pay a daughter’s dowry, whose disability forced them to beg, whose hearts trembled every time the tax collector knocked at their door. As the rich man opened his heart to those in need, he saw that Jesus was right. He could help. He opened his hands, he loosened his purse strings, and everyone got blessed.

Resources:

Bureau of Labor and Statistics. “Consumer Expenditures—2022,” USDL-23-1943, September 8, 2023. Accessed online at https://www.bls.gov/cex

Claudio Carvalhaes, “Commentary on Mark 10:17-31” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 18, 2024. Accessed online at Commentary on Mark 10:17-31 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

Pat Cole. “Presbyterians celebrate 70 years of One Great Hour of Sharing” in Presbyterian News Service, March 6, 2019. Accessed online at https://www.presbyterianmission.org/story/presbyterians-celebrate-70-years-of-one-great-hour-of-sharing/

Jack Flynn. “Average Global Income [2023]: What Is the Median Income Worldwide?” in Zippia, April 13, 2023. Accessed online at https://ww.zippia.com.

Gloria Guzman and Melissa Kolar. “Income in the U.S.: 2022.” US Census Bureau, Sept. 12, 2023.

Raquel Lettsome. “Commentary on Mark 10:17-31” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 14, 2016. Accessed online at Commentary on Mark 10:17-31  – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

–. “Living on the Brink of Disaster” in Presbyterian News Service, February 13, 2024. Accessed online at https://www.presbyterianmission.org/weekly-offerings/2024/02/13/oghs-presbyterian-disaster-assistance/

Harry Truman. “Radio Address as Part of Interdenominational Program, ‘One Great Hour’” in the National Archives: Harry S. Truman Library Museum, March 26, 1949. Accessed online at https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/62/radio-address-part-interdenominational-program-one-great-hour

Mark 10:17-31

17As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 19You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” 20He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” 21Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 22When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

23Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 26They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” 27Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

28Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” 29Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, 30who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

By Heinrich Hofmann – Purchased by John D Rockefeller Jr, now residing at Riverside Church, New York, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14265296

Blessing and Woe

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Blessing and Woe” Luke 6:17-26

They weren’t sure what to do with a female minister, so it was decided that I could make some pastoral calls.  My first visit was to the oldest couple in the village of El Estor.  “Just how old are they?” I wanted to know.  My interpreter shrugged.  She looked at her hands as if considering counting the years, but gave up.  “Old” she said, “At least 100.  Maybe more.”

Their home was tiny, a 10- by 15-foot wooden frame.  Dried cornstalks had been woven into mats for the exterior walls.  The roof was a thatch of palm fronds, grass, and more corn stalks.  Blue sky shone through in spots.  There was no door, no glass for windows, no electricity, no bathroom, no kitchen.  The only furnishings were two plastic mesh hammocks, where my hosts clearly spent their nights, and two plastic chairs, the cheap patio kind, where they clearly spent their days.  A round plastic wall clock with a long-dead battery proclaimed that it was always 11:15.  A few long-outdated calendars with bright pictures of kittens and flowers adorned the walls.

My hosts were white haired and wizened.  When they smiled, which was pretty much all the time, I could see they had about three teeth between the two of them.  I thought my visit was going to be bleak, but they regaled me with an hour’s-worth of stories about how God had blessed them with children and grandchildren, a home of their own, and long life.  When I offered to pray with them as I prepared to leave, they asked if they could pray for me.

My next stop was a fifteen-minute walk away, down a rutted dirt road.  Pigs and hens rooted and scratched in the yard.  Children in various states of cleanliness and clothedness spied from the edge of the wood.  A naked toddler squatted to relieve herself in the dust.  This house had a kitchen.  In the middle of the single room, an earthen platform smoldered with the remains of the morning cookfire.  Overhead, a big hole in the thatch allowed smoke to escape. 

My host, a stick-thin man of indeterminate age, could barely walk, due to neuropathy in his feet from uncontrolled diabetes.  His vision was failing, so he came up close to greet me and peer into my face.  He had been widowed about a year ago and in that macho culture was still trying to figure out how to be mother and father to his children.  I expected to hear the lamentation of mourning and the heavy burdens of failing health and single parenting, but that isn’t what I heard.  I learned what was special about each of his children.  I discovered how generous and kind his equally impoverished neighbors were.  I heard about the promised miracle of healing with the help of medication that the pastor had procured.  He felt blessed.

In our reading from Luke’s gospel, Jesus challenges us to see the blessedness of those who are poor, hungry, weeping, and persecuted.  Jesus paired those four blessings with four woes, four matching statements of prophetic judgment, that targeted the rich, the satisfied, the laughing, and those who are the object of public admiration.  Jesus’s words are hard for us to hear because, let’s face it, compared to places like El Estor, Guatemala, even the poorest people among us are comfortable and well-fed.  We have plenty to laugh about.  We receive our “atta’ boys” and accolades.  We can congratulate ourselves on our accomplishments and thank God for life’s sweetness.

Jesus’s uncomfortable statements of blessing and woe were just as disturbing for his first audience as they are for us.  In Jesus’s day, suffering and affliction were often seen as a sign of God’s punishment.  To be poor, hungry, mourning, and persecuted suggested that something had gone terribly wrong in your relationship with God.  Remember when Jesus healed the blind man outside the Temple (John 9)?  The disciples wanted to know who had sinned to cause that blindness in the first place—the man or his parents.  Likewise, material wealth was seen as a sign of divine favor.  That’s why it was so scandalous of Jesus to praise the miniscule offering that a poor widow brought to the Temple, just a couple of small copper coins (Matt. 12:41-44).  Those people in the crowd who came to Jesus for healing, they were the most marginal, vulnerable neighbors in the Galilee.  The disciples, who were right there watching Jesus at work, might have thought a lot of things about that crowd, but they would not have called them blessed as Jesus did.

When New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan teaches about Luke’s beatitudes, he likes to point out who the “poor” are.  Jesus used the Greek word ptoxoi.  The ptoxoi are those who are reduced to begging because they have no other resources.  The ptoxoi are the lepers, the lame, the childless widows who must either sell themselves or beg.  In Crossan’s words, the ptoxoi are “the utterly reviled and expendable of the human family, the wretched of the earth.”

In today’s parlance, the ptoxoi are persecuted Rohingya refugees, who languish in the no-mans-land of camps, hoping for a home.  The ptoxoi are the starving people of drought-stricken Somalia, with the bloated bellies, ashy skin, and dull hair of malnutrition.  The ptoxoi are unaccompanied child migrants, maimed, molested, and enslaved by traffickers.  The ptoxoi are the people of El Estor.  The ptoxoi are blessed because they see things as they truly are.  The abject, destitute poor know they are utterly reliant upon God.  To be the blessed of God is to accept the stark reality that in the end we have absolutely nothing but God.  This is the hard truth, whether we come from El Estor, Guatemala or Saranac Lake, New York.

The trouble with our affluence, the trouble with our plenty, the trouble with our non-stop laughter, the trouble with our playing for the court of public opinion is that we can lose all perspective.  Instead of acknowledging our utter dependence upon God, we trust in our bank accounts, our stockpile of possessions, and all that good press we get. Woe to us when we believe money or things can solve all our problems.  Woe to us when we laugh while the world wails.  Woe to us when we find ourselves saying and doing unconscionable things to please the court of public opinion.

Back in Guatemala, I worshipped that evening with my new friends in their cinderblock church.  It was floored with a slab of unfinished concrete and topped with corrugated tin.  There were no stained-glass windows, just open holes where the wind blew through.  In place of pews, we sat on simple benches.  The walls were painted a bright, watery, turquoise blue.  A primitive mural of Noah, his ark, the dove, and the rainbow spanned the chancel.  There was no pipe organ, no choir.  Instead, a small praise band, powered by a noisy generator, played hymns at ear-ringing volume on well-weathered instruments.  Worshippers sang along with a wholehearted joy that I have never seen in any American Presbyterian church—and they did that whether they could or couldn’t carry a tune.

Next to me in worship, a young mother in flipflops, threadbare jeans, and a brightly embroidered huipil sang her heart out.  The little boy bouncing on her hip, flirted with me, batting his big brown eyes and then shyly hiding his face in his mother’s neck.  When I was invited forward to lead the church in prayer, every head bowed in humility and every voice echoed my words with the utter conviction that God was listening and Jesus was right there among us.  Those people were dirt poor, but as they lived and worshipped with such fervent, heartfelt faith, I saw they were blessed in ways that my affluent congregation at the time, back in Wilmington, Delaware, probably couldn’t imagine.

After worship, my supervising pastor, the mission team, and I were invited to share a celebratory meal.  The table was decked with more food than most of our hosts saw in a month: whole fish cooked on a charcoal fire, freshly made corn tortillas, a scrawny chicken stewed with savory spices, a salad of shredded lettuce, tomatoes, and onions dressed with lemon juice, sticky-sweet mangoes split with a machete; cups of syrupy sweet home-made lemonade.  Our translator told us not to eat it, cautioning that the food would make us sick.  Most of my fellow travelers looked panicked and just pushed the food around their plates.

After dinner, we visited with our hosts and asked how we could grow the partnership between the El Estor Church and our home church in Delaware.  We were ready to write a big check.  But our new friends surprised us.  “Come be with us,” they said.  “Move to El Estor for a little while.  Be our neighbor.  Worship with us.  Know us.”  It was a surprising invitation.  We needed time to think about it.  We said our goodnights and wandered back to our inn.

We talked about it a lot.  We imagined what it would be like to live there, to rough it without reliable electricity, without internet, without hot showers, without Starbucks.  We wondered which one of us would be the best to stay—a teenager taking a gap year before college, a pastor to minister to the spiritual needs, a nurse to tend their everyday illnesses?  In the end, it felt impossible.  We were too important, too responsible, too committed.  Their request, it was too hard, too much to ask.  No one stayed.

Woe to us.

Resources:

Gay L. Byron. “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 4:21-30” in Feasting on the Word, Year C. vol. 1.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Peter Eaton. “Homiletical Perspective on Luke 4:21-30” in Feasting on the Word, Year C. vol. 1.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Howard K. Gregory. “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 4:21-30” in Feasting on the Word, Year C. vol. 1.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Luke 6:17-26

17 After coming down with them, He stood on a level place with a large crowd of His disciples and a great number of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon. 18 They came to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases; and those tormented by unclean spirits were made well. 19 The whole crowd was trying to touch Him, because power was coming out from Him and healing them all.

20 Then looking up at His disciples, He said:

You who are poor are blessed,
because the kingdom of God is yours.
21 You who are now hungry are blessed,
because you will be filled.
You who now weep are blessed,
because you will laugh.
22 You are blessed when people hate you,
when they exclude you, insult you,
and slander your name as evil
because of the Son of Man.

23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! Take note—your reward is great in heaven, for this is the way their ancestors used to treat the prophets.

24 But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are now full,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are now laughing,
for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you
when all people speak well of you,
for this is the way their ancestors
used to treat the false prophets.

Monumento Emblematico, El Estor, Guatemala

“Entering the Mission Field”

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Entering the Mission Field Luke 4:14-21

Before coming to Saranac Lake, I served as an Associate Pastor in Morton Grove, IL.  Each Sunday following the service, my colleague Pastor Michael would stand at the back of the sanctuary and greet worshippers as they ventured forth.  Above the door to the Narthex of the Morton Grove Church, a banner is hung.  It says, “You are entering the mission field.”  Exiting beneath that banner was a weekly reminder that the life of faith doesn’t stop when we leave the sanctuary behind on Sunday mornings.  In fact, our work is just beginning as we go forth with love for God and neighbor to pursue our mission as Christians.

I expect that Jesus is especially fond of that banner.  Luke’s gospel tells us that as Jesus traveled the Galilean countryside, he visited his hometown Nazareth.  There, he returned to the rhythms of his growing years, worshipping in the local synagogue on the sabbath day.  In an act of respect for his growing reputation, Jesus was invited to read and teach from the Torah.  He chose to read from the Prophet Isaiah and then sat down to interpret and teach.  We didn’t get to listen in on Jesus’ whole sermon, but Luke preserved the heart of his message.  Jesus believed that Isaiah’s prophecy had been fulfilled in him.  He was the long-awaited Messiah, who was bringing good news to the poor, sight for the blind, release for captives, and freedom for folks who lived amid oppression.

Bible scholars like to suggest that Jesus specially chose these words from Isaiah as a sort of personal mission statement.  Afterall, that reading from the prophet captures the values and intentions that Jesus would make a priority in his mission.  Jesus reminded his vulnerable neighbors that God loved them and was with them—that’s good news for the poor.  He restored sight to the local blindman in Bethsaida and shocked the Temple by healing a blind beggar, who had sought alms at the side door.  Jesus set free the Gerasene demoniac, long captivated by a legion of dark spirits.  Jesus reminded his neighbors that, although they resided in the tetrarchy of Herod and were a vassal state of the Roman Empire, they belonged to a Holy Kingdom that always prevailed.

Jesus held onto that vision and purpose that he announced in Nazareth, even when it got costly.  He held to his purpose despite hostile questions from the Pharisees and open criticism from the scribes.  He stayed the course, despite coming into the crosshairs of the religious powers of the Temple and the political power of Herod.  He stuck to his mission, even in the judgment hall of Pilate.  In fact, Jesus’ mission was greeted with criticism and opposition from the start.  If I had read a few more verses, we would have heard how those Nazareth neighbors got so angry at Jesus that they drove him out of town with the intention to throw him down from a high place.  You might even say that Jesus narrowly escaped a lynching.  How is that for commitment to purpose?

This church has a mission statement.  Early in my tenure here, I resolved to read it for you each Sunday as a reminder of who we are and the holy purpose that God calls us to serve.  Some of you know it by heart.  “God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer calls the First Presbyterian Church of Saranac Lake to love and serve one another and the world around us with joy and thanksgiving.  We are a congregation that prays and supports each other and seeks to forgive and be forgiven.  We aim to share the Good News and to do God’s mission with love and compassion, both near and far.”

It’s a clarifying statement of our identity, values, and vocation.  We developed and adopted this mission as we emerged from a time of deep division and spiritual crisis.  Over the years, it has served us well by reminding us each week of the centrality not only of the Triune God but also of love, compassion, forgiveness, prayer, and care for vulnerable people.  That vision for mission has allowed us to welcome new purposes over the years.  It has inspired us to care for those tiny, vulnerable infants of the Mzuzu Crisis Care Nursery.  It has engaged us in supporting Malawi’s widows with microloans, the Clint McCoy Feeding Station, and the sewing project.  It has prompted us to feed hungry neighbors with the produce of our Jubilee Garden, our monthly food offering, 2-cents-a-meal, and the Souper Bowl of Caring.  All this outreach and more may be an expression of our mission, but we trust that it is also God’s mission, an expression of our love for Jesus, and a hopeful anticipation of his coming Kingdom.

Of course, we aren’t the only institution with a mission statement.  Here is the statement for the Marion Medical Mission: “Marion Medical Mission seeks to share the love of Christ with the extreme poor in Africa by providing all in need with a sustainable source of clean, safe drinking water.”  The mission of the Women of Grace Widows Fund is to “alleviate the extreme poverty of Malawi’s widows with food, shelter, and safety and to empower self-sufficiency and independence.”  Even the Souper Bowl of Caring has a mission: their mission is to “unite all communities to tackle hunger.”  Faithful organizations and people make it a practice to ground their service to God in a pithy statement that guides their purpose and brings them closer to Jesus.

What is your mission?  Do you have a pithy statement of faithful purpose that guides your life and directs your actions?  I invite us to allow Jesus’ mission statement to inspire us to think about developing our own personal statements.  To get us started, I’ll suggest three principles that should guide and shape our individual purposes.

The first principle is that your mission must give glory to God.  Anyone can have a mission that enlarges their bank account, pads their resume, or adds to their personal power or prestige, but as people of faith we seek first the Kingdom of God.  That means that our actions and outcomes are meant to praise and honor God.  For example, when Marion Medical Mission partners with African villages to install shallow wells, they bless and seal each well with an inscription in both English and the local language. That inscription reads: “To the glory of God.”  That well, which will bless the community for generations to come, is a perpetual reminder of the Holy One who satisfies our deepest thirst.

The second principle for your mission statement is that it must follow in the way of Jesus, in keeping with those actions and values that Jesus claimed as his own when he read the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah, long ago in the Nazareth synagogue.  Does it bring good news to poor and vulnerable neighbors?  Does it offer help and healing?  Does it free us and others from our captivity – to poverty, addiction, shame, sin, anger, unforgiveness?  In pursuing our mission, would Jesus say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant?

There is a final principle for our mission statements.  We must be guided by the ethic of agape.  Agape is the choice to love others, regardless of kinship, affiliation, or interest.  Agape seeks the best for others, even when we don’t know them, even if we dislike or fear them.  This is the love that the Apostle Paul encouraged his friends in Corinth to pursue: love that is patient, kind, forbearing, accepting, and forgiving.  It’s the sort of love that Jesus practiced, allowing him to bear with those dense disciples, care for those on the margins of society, and forgive his executioners.

What is your mission?  I invite us to take some time this week to listen, pray, reflect, and begin to develop our personal mission statements, statements that give glory to God, follow Jesus, and make the world a more loving place.  You don’t have to proclaim your mission from the pulpit like Jesus did, but you might like to share it with me, or with your beloved ones, or with a friend in the faith.  If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.  A mission statement envisioned and articulated is a promise of action that can make this world a more loving, just, and holy place.  I look forward to hearing your mission-minded musings.

This church may not have the words, “You are entering the mission field” hanging above the sanctuary exit, but we can trust as we go forth this morning, whether we are worshipping here in church or we are worshipping online, that the mission field awaits.  There’s work to be done.  What’s your mission?

Resources:

Carol Lakey Hess. “Theological Perspective on Luke 4:14-21” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Ernest Hess. “Homiletical Perspective on Luke 4:14-21” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Linda McKinnis Bridges. “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 4:14-21” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Elisabeth Johnson. “Commentary on Luke 4:14-21” in Preaching This Week, Jan. 23, 2022.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.org.

Luke 4:14-21

14Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 16When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Image source: Marion Medical Mission https://www.mmmwater.org/