Dear Friends,
Last week I opened the topic of our citizenship as people of God’s Kingdom. Today I continue these thoughts.
Wesleyan Missionary Graveyard in Sierra Leone
Missions has change a lot in the past hundred plus years. There was a time when missionaries boarded ships to head to distant lands knowing they would probably never return to the land of their birth. The symbol of this commitment was what they choose to pack their stuff in. Not a suit case or steamer trunk but a coffin. The pioneers walked away from the privilege and position of their home countries to unite with peoples across the oceans. This is the kind of commitment Paul is speaking of the profound mystery of Christ and the church (read last week’s Milk Can).
Today it is rare for a missionary to die “on field.” Terms and length of commitments have gotten shorter and shorter. Missionaries enjoy phone calls, e-mail, and even the ability to Skype with family. Today one can be a missionary without ever leaving and cleaving to a new people. While this has opened missionary work to many who would never have gone, it can dilute the true depth of Christ’s call onto the life of everyone who calls themselves a Christian. As the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in his book The Cost of Discipleship, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
One does not have to go to foreign lands to follow Christ. For many, a generation ago, the call to leave and cleave meant joining those in the Civil Rights Movement. They marched alongside their African American neighbors and boarded Freedom Buses to lay down their lives to battle injustice.
Today many are being called to identify with and carry the burden of the immigrant in our own nation. Simultaneously giving up and using their position, power and prestige to care for their neighbor. More on the work of our own denomination can be found here: http://www.wesleyan.org/1045/faq-on-immigrants-and-immigration-questions-and-answers
Bonhoeffer would also say being a Christian is about “. . . courageously and actively doing God’s will.” Many times I have prayed those words at the end of The Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” What if God intends to answer that prayer through you and I? What is God’s will courageously and actively calling you to?
Blessings,
Pastor Stephen