Reflections...

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 30th September 2007 by Rev. Kwok Nai Wang. The scripture readings that day were Genesis 12:1-9 and John 5:19-29.


For the past 4 Sundays we have explored the Identity and the nature of the Church. This morning, let us examine the Purpose of the Church: The Sole Purpose of the Church is to carry out the Mission of God.

Contemporary theologians suggested that the Church does not only have a mission: It is Mission. Mission is the sole reason for the existence of the Church. Just as a fire does not exist unless burning takes place; likewise the Church. A Church, God’s Church, is at best exist in name only unless it is mission-centred.

When I started to serve as a minister in a local church in a slum area in Hong Kong in the mid-1960s, there was a fierce debate about the Mission of the Church in Hong Kong. The mainline churches suggested that the Mission of the Church in Hong Kong should concentrate to deal with the physical needs of the people. Hence to build schools, clinics, social centres, etc. should be their priority. The conservative churches disagreed. They insist that preaching of the Gospel to non-believers should come first. In looking back, this reflected the immaturity of the churches in Hong Kong.

I never thought this was an important and meaningful debate. In fact, I was busy enough to be interested in such a debate. However, for some reason, I was attacked by our fundamental brothers and sisters. They branded me as a radical because of what I wanted to do in the local church. I had decided to turn it into a neighbourhood church, concentrating to equip the congregation to serve the neighbourhood and beyond. Moreover, since at the time, I also served concurrently as a part-time lecturer of New Testament in Chung Chi Theological Seminary associated with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a place accused by many Christians as a breeding ground for New Theology. In looking back they were courteous enough of not labeling me as a heretic. Later, in the 1970s I became a rather popular speaker in local churches. But all they asked me to speak on was Social Concern; rather than my specialty, which was the New Testament.

I always believe the debate about what is the Mission of the Church is rather futile. It is because this may be the wrong question to ask. In a way, the Church does not and should not have its own mission or its own agenda, so to speak. The Church belongs to God and not to us. The Church is God’s Church. It never is our church. Therefore, the Church should be concerned exclusively about God’s Mission.

There is a vast difference between the Church has its own mission and the Church only participates in God’s Mission. First of all, when the Church is too preoccupied with doing its own mission or to be precise, doing its own thing, it can easily fall into the pit of endless argument and disagreement. Only when everybody’s attention is on God: when we turn to God, can we avoid conflicts.

Then there is the question of attitude. Many of you have heard the story about three stonecutters in a church construction site. When asked what they doing, the first one answered “I was cutting stones”; the second answered that he was cutting stones for use in the building of a building. The third one replied proudly, “I am building a house of God”.

Similarly, when members of a church turn their full attention to God and seek to carry out God’s mission in the world, the quality of work and its meaning for members are very enriching.

What then is God’s Mission or the Missio Dei? Frankly I do not fully know the answer. But there must be a few clues we can obtain from the Bible.

The faith which our foreparents passed onto us is that God is the God who acts. Furthermore God works through His chosen to reveal himself and His will to people.

This is one of Isaiah’s oracles: “Seek out Yahweh while he is still to be found, call to him while he is still near. Let the wicked abandon their way and the evil ones their thoughts. Let them turn back to Yahweh who will take pity on them, to our God, for he is rich in forgiveness. For my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways, declares Yahweh.” (Is. 55:6-8)

Another by Jeremiah: “Look, the days are coming. Yahweh declares, when I shall make a new covenant with the House of Israel (and the House of Judah), but not like the covenant I made with their ancestors the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt, a covenant which they broke, even though I was their Master. Yahweh declares. No, this is the covenant I shall make with the House of Israel when those days have come. Yahweh declares. Within them I shall plant my Law, writing it on their hearts. Then I shall be their God and they will be my people. There will be no further need for everyone to teach neighbour or bother, saying, “Learn to know Yahweh!” No, they will all know me, from the least to the greatest. Yahweh declares, since I shall forgive their guilt and never more call their sin to mind.” (Jer 31:31-34, NJB)

Yet another by Micah: “You have already been told what is right and what Yahweh wants of you. Only this, to do what is right, to love loyalty and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8 NJB)

As the Letter to the Hebrews asserted, “At many moments in the past and by many means, God spoke (or revealed) to our ancestors through the prophets, but in our time, the final days, God has spoken to us in the person of his Son…” (1:1-2, NJB). So finally, God decided to become flesh and reveal himself through Jesus Christ.

The Church came to realize that all God’s revelations and actions have salvation overtone. As the noted German theologian Gerhard von Rad once declared, the whole human history is Heilsgeschichte or Salvation History.

Indeed one of the pillars of the history of Israel is the Exodus Event. God delivered them out of Egypt, while they lived as slaves. This event formed the core of the creeds of Judaism (c.f. Deut 6:21-25; 26:5-9 and Joshua 24:2-13); historical psalms (such as 78, 105, etc.); and temple prayers (Nehemiah 9:5-31). This is how the Ten Commandments or the Ten Words began, “I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you lived as slaves.” (Ex 20:1). For Christianity, this is the introduction of the Ten Commandments. But for Judaism, this is the very first and the most important commandment whereby the other nine commandments rest.

In the Exodus Event, the Israelites came to understand that God’s will was always to deliver people from chaos to order; from meaninglessness to meaning; from darkness to light; from despair to hope; from death to life…

Order is what the first creation story is all about. For the Old Testament faith, God’s creation is not creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing; but rather, from chaos to order; or from distortion to wholeness. The very first verse of the Bible reads, “when God began creating heaven and earth, the earth being then a formless void, with darkness over the deep…” (Gen 1:1, NJB). Then God put it in order, stage by stage (or day by day). In every stage God saw that it was good – which literally means it was in perfect order. As Paul later observed, “for God is a God not of disorder, but of peace.” (Cor. 14:33). Peace (eirene) can mean in perfect conditions or in good order.

The General Epistle of Peter put it in this way: “God does not want anyone to be destroyed or lost, but wants all to be brought to repentance or turn away from their sins, i.e. alienations with God, with all God’s creation” (II Peter 3:7).

The world to-day is in disorder. God intended human beings to be in relationship with God Himself, with Nature and with each other. Now all of us, nobody excepted, experience all kinds of disrelationship. We are alienated from our environment through abuse. We are alienated from one another as a result of fierce competition for self-gain. Sometimes we are even alienated from ourselves, because we simply could not accept ourselves for not doing as well as we had hoped. But most important of all, we are totally alienated from God our Creator. We have lost our dignity which God intends for us.

As people of faith do we dare to affirm God is still at work?

We must honestly admit that we do not have all the answers. But if we still have faith in God, we must believe that yes, God is very much alive and is still at work. What we experience now, as in all of human history ever since Adam and Eve, is the perennial struggle between God’s order and human disorder.

If we believe God is still at work, than how do we participate in God’s saving activities in this world?

First, we have to start from the very fundamental, i.e. we humbly seek God’s will and God’s guidance, through serious spiritual exercises of meditation, contemplation and prayer.

Second, we must be sensitive and aware what is going on in the world, in Asia, in China and in Hong Kong as well as people we associate with. The more we know what’s going on, the more we will care. So we need to spend time to reflect on what is going on on a regular basis. Karl Barth, the most influential theologian of the last century advised his students to hold the Bible on one hand and newspapers on the other (in the 1930s, T.V. was not common).

While we have to constantly ask the big question: How is God at work to-day in this world, we must not ignore to do whatever is necessary to help our brothers and sisters who are in need. In other words, we must think big, but at the time act small. The small things we can and must do often times are the simple acts of charity. Indeed this is what Jesus taught us to do in his teaching of the Last Judgment, “In truth, I tell you, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine. You did it to me.” (Mt 25:40). To give food to the hungry, to give water to the thirsty, to welcome strangers, to give clothes to those lacking clothes, to visit the sick and the prisoners. These are the simple acts of charity or love. Jesus expected us to do. I am sure everyone of us can do all these things.

Besides doing the simple acts of love, we must go one step further and ask the question why? Why do these people suffer? For example, in Hong Kong we have to ask, with Hong Kong’s seeming affluence (the GDP per capita for last year has risen back to the 1997 figure, i.e. HK$ 200,000) Why more than one in ten citizens still live in abject poverty? When we ask the question “why” enough times, we will be forced to speak up. Speaking up is an important measure towards social change or social transformation. It will force the decision makers to think thrice before they act. It will also bring many people into awareness of the problem. I coin this process, the process of conscientization, i.e. to arouse the conscience of concerned people.

After the collapse of the totalitarian governments one by one in Eastern Europe, from Rumania’s Caesescu to East Germany’s Honnaker in the fall of 1989, a group of Christian leaders in Hong Kong invited a Polish theologian to help the Christians in Hong Kong to reflect on the situation in E. Europe and China. Halina Bortnaska explained to us why this sudden change in E. Europe. She related to us despite the extremely harsh and tight conditions in E. Europe, many artists, pastors, academics, labour union and student leaders did whatever they could to help people think and ask the question why? Her observation was that these concerned people believed that doing something is always better than doing nothing. In a way, the fall of the Communist regimes in E. Europe was not the uprising of their people in three months; but rather the work of the millions who in 40 years have each done their very small part in resisting the oppression of their ruthless leaders.

God does not expect all of us to do great things. But He demands us to be persistent. As God never gives up on anyone of us, how can we give up so easily on the people and the world God creates and loves so much?

Let us pray.

O Lord our God, we give you thanks for ever working in this world and in our midst. Grant us the same mind and spirit so as to participate in your saving acts. Guide and strengthen us with your Holy Spirit. Through Jesus Christ our Lord we ask. Amen.