Our Mandate for Mission

We’re planning a parish mission in August and have set aside the last Wednesday of every month for concerted prayer for the mission.  Here is the talk I gave last night before the prayer time began.  Anyone wanting to think deeply about mission should read Chris Wright’s book “The Mission of God.”

OUR MANDATE FOR MISSION

Evangelical Christians like ourselves like proof-texts.  If someone suggest that we should be doing something in Christ’s name, we like them to show us a text that backs up their assertion.  If someone tells us that our doctrine is wrong, that our thinking needs correcting, we will insist that they show us from the Bible; preferably with a specific text or two. 

Looking for proof-texts isn’t always wrong.  But it does have its dangers.  After all, there are a lot of texts in the Bible.  Many of these are in the form of commands.  For example, Jesus once said, Sell all you have, give the proceeds to the poor and come and follow me.  Down through the centuries that text has been used to insist that Christians live a life of poverty.  But most Christians have resisted that interpretation. 

What text would you appeal to if someone questioned our desire to hold a parish mission?  If someone, indeed, questioned the whole idea of mission?  We live, do we not, in a multi-cultural society.  We must learn to tolerate, to respect other religions, other faiths.  Mission is about trying to convert people.  And that’s rude.  It’s insulting.

I suppose the text that many of us would turn to would be Mt.28:18-19:

Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

That seems clear enough.  We are to go and make disciples of all nations.  And yet I want to suggest that even this is inadequate.  Inadequate in the sense that it is too limiting to take one or two texts and claim these as our mandate for mission.  Why should we exalt this one command over and above other Biblical commands.  The liberal critic might ask us to turn back a few pages to Mt.25 and the parable of the Sheep and the Goats.  Are we just as concerned to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, and visit the lonely as we are to win the world for Jesus? 

So I want to begin these evenings of concerted prayer for mission by asserting, affirming, and assuring you our mandate for mission is not based on a few isolated texts of Scripture.  Far from it.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that the whole of the Bible is about mission. 

Let me read to you the words of the risen Lord Jesus to his disciples (Lk.24:23):

⁴⁵Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. ⁴⁶He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

Note carefully what Luke says Jesus is doing.  He is opening the minds of the disciples to understand the Scriptures, that is, the Old Testament.  Jesus says, “This is what is written.”  What is written?  That the Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.  Then what?  And repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name.  Who to?  To all nations. 

The Lord Jesus is saying that the Old Testament is about mission.  So too the New Testament.  Why are the Gospels called Gospels?  Because they testify to the good news about Jesus.  And the epistles—written in the white heat of missionary church spreading throughout the Roman empire. 

The Bible is a book about mission.  For the simple reason that our God is missional God. 

I came across this quotation from Charles Tabor, who thinks and writes about mission:

The very existence of the Bible is incontrovertible evidence of the God who refused to forsake his rebellious creation, who refused to give up, who was and is determined to redeem and restore fallen creation to his original design for it…The very existence of such a collection of writings testifies to a God who breaks through to human beings, who disclosed himself to them, who will not leave them unilluminated in their darkness…who takes the initiative in re-establishing broken relationships with them.

I had never thought of that before: that the very existence of the Bible is incontrovertible evidence of the God who reaches out to us in order to restore a fallen, rebellious humanity. 

Thus the Bible tells us that there is a God, a creator God, a holy, loving, just, gracious, merciful God.  Tells us this, not simply for our information, but so that we will respond to him with worship and with lives that reflect his own character. 

The Bible tells us that though we were made in the image of this God by have rebelled against him and as a consequence the world is in a mess, and so are we. 

Furthermore, the Bible tells us that there is nothing we can do about it.  However, this God has initiated a rescue plan.  He chose a people for himself, the people of Israel, through whom he intends eventually to bring blessing to all nations and ultimately to renew the whole creation.

The Bible tells us we meet this God in Jesus.  It tells us that in Jesus the promised climax is guaranteed.  The Bible tells us that by faith in Jesus we can become the people of God. 

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Jesus.  (Eph.2:13)

By his grace, God invites us to join his mission. 

One final quote:

it is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world but that God has a church for his mission in the world.  Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission—God’s mission. 

The whole of the Bible testifies to this.