(info on missionaries thanks to Augsburg
Fortress, Sundays and Seasons)
Yesterday was the commemoration day of
three Lutheran missionaries.
Around 1700,
Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg went to the southeast coast of India, to be a
missionary to the Tamils of Tranquebar.
Mission work was opposed by the Danish authorities in the area and by
local Hindus. After 10 months of preaching – first Christian converts were
baptized - on a charge of ‘converting the natives’ Zeigenbalg was
imprisoned. His mission work continues
to this day through the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Around 1800, John Heyer
– pastor, Sunday school builder, and professor at Gettysburg Seminary- became the
first American Lutheran sent out as a missionary. He went to the Andhra region
of India.
Around 1900, Ludwig
Nommensen went as a missionary to the Batak people of Sumatra. The Batak first heard about Christianity
through Nommensen – at first there was some conflict, but, later a number of
tribal chiefs converted. He translated
the Bible into Batak while honouring the native culture.
Move ahead another 100
years and we find ourselves in a time when mission work is not carried out in
the same way. Sure there are
missionaries that go to other places in the world; Brian Rude, a missionary
that Resurrected supported for a long time, is still working with people in El
Salvador. It was and is different – the
gospel had already been taken to the people of El Salvador long before Brian
arrived. Due to guerilla war the country
was in crisis. Missionaries went to build an orphanage and school for displaced
children. Years later Brian remained and worked with young men precariously
close to prison and in the gang culture.
Brian was called a missionary. How much preaching did he do?
The dictionary offers two definitions
for missionary:
1. One who is sent on a mission,
especially one sent to do religious or charitable work in a territory or
foreign country.
2. One who attempts to persuade or
convert others to a particular program, doctrine, or set of principles; a
propagandist.
Mission work around the world in our
time is not like that of the 17, 18, and 1900s.
For mainline Christians, the second part of the definition is not
attempted; mission work is no longer
about taking Christianity to isolated places on the planet, to people who have
not heard the word of God. Mission work
is frowned upon when Christianity is the medium to import European
sensibilities, culture, doctrine, and civility --- assuming that the imported
is better than whatever is encountered.
So what does that mean for those of us
with Good News to share in our world today? How does one go about being a
missionary?
The sermon today came about because of
reading a blip commenting that Medieval art presented a parallel between the
Zarephath widow gathering and carrying wooden sticks with which to prepare the
last meal before she and her son died; and Jesus carrying the wooden cross to
his own death.
So many centuries before Jesus, a
widow woman, a foreigner, in a foreign land (now Lebanon), a non-Hebrew,
non-Israelite, outside the Temple and religious laws, not an adherent to the
faith of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob --- a heathen, a native, uncivilized, “the
other” --- one who needs to hear the Good News, be preached to, have
missionaries arrive on her door…. This preconception is all wrong! Elijah is sent to this woman to whom God had
already spoken. She had already encountered God.
The widow of Zarephath really had
nothing to loss. She had resigned herself to having a final meal with her son
before they died of starvation. “Giving
all that she had to live on,” – her last meal—was her daring to have hope that
this hospitality was for good, not ill.
There was more hope in feeding and welcoming the stranger than there was
in not sharing. Her action is a powerful
witness to what occurs in the spirit of one who is talked to by God. Medieval artists saw her giving “all that she
had to live on,” as being Christ in the world centuries before Jesus had died.
The poor widow who comes to the
treasury in Jesus day is noted to have placed two small coins in the box. She
slips in and out, without fanfare, for the most part without notice, to put in
“everything she had, all she had to live on.”
It is not about the money, it is about the life-style the woman lives –
and how it contrasts so completely with a particular group of religious people
of the time.
Well maybe it is about money. So often I am asked, “how much should I
give?” “I need to keep some to live on, right?” And other such phrases, people
trying to determine that sweet spot where guilt around having wealth, property,
and abundance – disappears and one can live happily-ever-after, enjoying their
accumulated resources to the fullest. If
one is asking the question, one is contributing out of abundance --- not living
life from giving all one has to live on.
Modern day mission work. I wonder if the answer to what the sharing of
the Good News is to look like in the world today, is found in how the message
is delivered? In the 60s Marshal McLuhan
coined the phrase, “Medium is the message.” What is the appropriate medium? The
medium is offered to our attention this morning through the actions of the
widows.
The medium is offering hospitality,
welcoming the stranger, and quietly giving all that we have to live on. And
then perhaps, just as the Medieval painters connected the widows actions to
Christ- perhaps our actions will appear Christ-like to the artists of our day.
There was time when the missionary I
spoke of, Brian Rude, was harassed, beaten, in danger, and was smuggled out El
Salvador via the Canadian Embassy. He
was home, in Canada, safe and sound and the wider church had him speak across
the country – this is when I met him while attending seminary. It wasn’t long, however, before he felt so
strongly connected to the people that he returned to El Salvador – and this
time on his own, not through the church mission’s program, but, as a concerned
global citizen whose heart had been changed as he encountered God through the
people with whom he worked.
What struck me most about Brian is
that he had become an El Salvadorian.
Physically his skin had darkened through work under the hot sun; he
sported a moustache –not cool in Canada at the time; he spoke English as if
Spanish had been his mother tongue; he thought in Spanish; his theology was
liberation theology of the global south … he became one of them --- the
community did not become Brian. Brian
became a part of what God was doing in the world, so much so, that he didn’t
even realize he lived as one giving all one has to live on.
One of the things I like the most in
our hymn book is the prayer at the time of communion; once fed by the Jesus the
bread of life, after encountering God in the meal; we pray that we are given
the courage live a new way – we pray that we might give ourselves away as bread
for the hungry. This phrase is exactly
what Jesus was talking about with the widow.
You are invited to be a
missionary this week- not by proselytizing on a street corner, or pushing your
beliefs on someone else - rather, you
are invited to give yourself away as bread for the hungry. Do this through the mediums of offering
hospitality and welcoming the stranger.
Spend so much time, talent, and energy seeking out such opportunity and
providing the bread to situations – that you give no thought to whether you
have given enough – because in the action and in being bread, Christ will live
in your hearts through faith and shine through your whole life.
Praying
together our mission prayer:
GOD you are on a mission and we want to be part of it.
YOU continually pour out your Holy Spirit and provide
people who spread Good News.
We want to be Good News bearers. We begin by surrendering
to YOUR Spirit.
Within us provoke YOUR change- empower service.
We see that YOU are on a mission.
YOU have a purpose!
Thanks be to YOU we are asked to be part of YOUR unifying
love for all.
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