*dun, dun, dun dun, dun, dun, dun dun, dun, dun, dun dun duuunnnn*
Alright, if that didn't make any sense to you go back and read it again while singing to yourself the Mission: Impossible theme song.
Theeeere you go. Alright. Cultural hook completed.
As you may have noticed, this is actually my second post for the day. The first one was basically for all of my loved ones who really just want to keep tabs on me and see what life is like for me here in DC, which I'm more than happy to do. I love to keep in touch this way.
This post, however, is for the people who are also interested in what I'm thinking about because I'm in seminary and that's a big part of what I do with my time. I think about faith and truth and the church and the world and what we're all supposed to be doing with our lives, and then I try to go out and do it and bring some people along with me. Also, I just need a space to work out all of what gets thrown at me in a week. So here we go.
The cheesy M:I hook is one I got in class today when we talked about this subject. It worked, though, and I'm also just kind of a big fan of cheesy things, so here it is again. Of course, he could actually play the song for us, but I do what I can.
The reason I used it, though, and the reason my professor used it, is to start off thinking about the word mission. What's the difference between a "mission-minded" church and a "missional" church?
A mission-minded church is a great thing. It's a group of people who dedicate their time, their money, and their efforts do doing missions. They do great things.
Yet, "mission" in a "mission-minded" church is still just that: something they do. The idea of a "missional" church is that mission is recognized as something they are; it's an inextricable part of their identity.
And what identity, what mission is that? Christ's, of course. Our identity as Christians is tied up with the identity of Christ. Christ's mission is our mission. So, as I asked before: what mission is that?
If you look at the gospel of Luke, there's a lot of buildup to Jesus' ministry. We get a lot about his birth and his childhood and the proclamations of his coming from John the Baptist. Then Jesus gets baptized, the Holy Spirit descends on him, and he goes off for forty days into the wilderness. When he comes back, he's ready to roll. He starts preaching and teaching. But it's not until he gets back to his hometown in chapter 4 that he really gets going, revealing who he is and why he's come.
He stands up to read in the temple, as usual. Someone hands him a scroll. He opens it and reads from Isaiah:
"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,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour."
And then he sits down. Everyone's staring at him. And he says "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
It has been fulfilled. This is who I am. This is what I'm doing.
And then he does it.
Jesus' self-proclaimed mission has two main parts, and we know that it's legitimate because it's from the Spirit of the Lord. This is what God wants. His mission is to proclaim the good news and to bring about the good news, the good news of God's present and coming kingdom, of God's reconciliation with the world. And that's what he goes out and does. Along the way, he makes disciples; he creates a community of people who are charged with this same mission. And to seal the deal, to finish the beginning of the bringing about of this kingdom, Christ sacrifices himself. I could (and might) write a whole other blog post about how maybe in holding up Christ's death and resurrection as the be-all, end-all of Christianity we've lost an important part of who Christ was and therefore who we are. In the meantime, you can check out my good friend Andy's blog post about it here.
So that's it. That's our mission. To proclaim the kingdom of God and to bring it about. To bring in more people who are working side by side with us, who believe in this with us. And this is not just what we do; it's who we are. We live in the already-present but not-yet-fulfilled kingdom of God, and we are called by virtue of our identity as Christians to continue to bring about this vision for the world.
I didn't say the Lord's Prayer much growing up. I was Southern Baptist and they're more about praying as the Spirit leads, which is great. We miss out, though, on the skin-tinglingly communal aspect of praying a prayer that is prayed around the world by millions of people and has been prayed by billions more for 2,000 years. I loved being a part of a church that said the Lord's Prayer often when I left the SBC. I always kind of shivered at the one line, though: "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Maybe it's my past, maybe it's something else, but that always conjured images of scurrying servants for me. It brought back the giant, angry, old God.
I don't think that's it, though. Thinking about God's kingdom as a vision for a healthy, whole, reconciled creation, as something that I am intrinsically a part of because I am Christian but even simply (or wondrously) because I am human--that changes it. When I say the Lord's Prayer now, that's one of my favorite lines. Thy kingdom come! And I want to be a part of it! That's my mission, and I have chosen to accept it.
EDIT: I meant to include this video in my original post. Here you go:
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