Anyone who engages in the art of preaching may have had the occasional feeling that they are preaching to the choir / worship group but perhaps they will also have experiecned this too: something I said in a sermon, suddenly came alive in the delivery and has been bugging me ever since I said it. Last week I was preaching on Ephesians 4:1-16 and particularly Paul'/s (?) injunction to the churches to live in Unity. I was reflecting on this alongside Jesus' prayer for unity in John's Gospel:
I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,
that all of them may be one, Father,
just as you are in me and I am in you.
May they also be in us
Why?
So that the world may believe that you have sent me.
And suddenly it hit me with a new clarity, that this is as much our mandate for mission as teh end fo Matthew's gospel or Luke 4: the quality of the church's life together is our strategy for evangelism. Get the unity wrong at it won’t matter if we have wonderful sermons, or engaging programmes that attract people to church, or even if are distancing ourselves from attractional models of mission and moving to more incarnational approaches.
I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,
that all of them may be one, Father,
just as you are in me and I am in you.
May they also be in us
Why?
So that the world may believe that you have sent me.
And suddenly it hit me with a new clarity, that this is as much our mandate for mission as teh end fo Matthew's gospel or Luke 4: the quality of the church's life together is our strategy for evangelism. Get the unity wrong at it won’t matter if we have wonderful sermons, or engaging programmes that attract people to church, or even if are distancing ourselves from attractional models of mission and moving to more incarnational approaches.
Jesus tells us that our unity will be our witness to the world.
Why?
Because he knows that the world around him is broken and divided, he knows that everyone in someway is trying to out do each other, he knows we’re all getting wounded in the fight, physically, emotionally, spiritually, we’ve all been damaged and
disconnected from the bigger picture
Jesus knows all that and so he prays for us to be at one
With another and with God
Because that’s what leads us into wholeness
And because that’s what will speak most powerfully to a broken world
Perhaps there is no greater proclamation of God’s love for the world than for the church to live lives that are truly reconciled to one another and to God.
Why?
Because he knows that the world around him is broken and divided, he knows that everyone in someway is trying to out do each other, he knows we’re all getting wounded in the fight, physically, emotionally, spiritually, we’ve all been damaged and
disconnected from the bigger picture
Jesus knows all that and so he prays for us to be at one
With another and with God
Because that’s what leads us into wholeness
And because that’s what will speak most powerfully to a broken world
Perhaps there is no greater proclamation of God’s love for the world than for the church to live lives that are truly reconciled to one another and to God.
But that doesn't seem to feature in the literature I read on mission:
reading the wrong books,
am I just wrong,
or do we need to rethink our patterns of mission.
1 comment:
Totally! The biggest criticism levelled at Christians is that of hypocrisy. People who profess a faith in a loving God, yet treat each other so badly. I expect that causes more damage within the Church, and to the witness of the Church than anything else. If we're living in a relationship of love and unity with a relational God, then our natural longing must be to live in love and unity with one another. Not uniformity, but a community in which the individuals respect the diversity of the body of Christ. Not only is that kind of community attractive to those outside it, but it also breeds a desire to go out and share it, and openly welcome those who would seek to add to it. If you invite friends for dinner, but the house is completely bogging because you never clean, what kind of hospitality is that? The same applies to the Church. The family needs to be somewhere that you want to bring people, that they would enjoy and feel welcome.
And that’s got me thinking... (sorry this is turning into an essay!) ‘x were added to their number...’. Now I don’t know about the translation issues, but I was thinking about the imagery of people being ‘added’. They weren’t incorporated, or absorbed or assimilated into a community of conformity. We should expect each new person who joins the dance to add something new. Everyone’s experience and abilities are different, and that’s exciting! They’re given gifts from God which are, in turn, gifts to the body.
I’m not sure what point I’m trying to make in all this ramble. I just know I want to see it happen!
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