A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sixth Sunday after Pentecost 4 July 2021, by Peter Youngblood . The scripture reading that day was Mark 6: 1 – 13.
The account of the sending out of the disciples in Mark 6 is our earliest example of Christian mission. The 12 are the first evangelists, spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ. But these verses also show us what it was like to be an early Christian missionary, and it does not sound easy. Jesus orders the 12 to take no food, no money, and no extra clothing. They were told to visit strange villages and households, and to ask local families to take them in and feed them. If this sounds daunting, that’s because it is hard to imagine ourselves doing something like that today. Wandering about in strange neighborhoods, knocking on strangers’ doors, is not something most people are willing and able to do.
In fact, I can think of only one group of people that still does kind of evangelism that we find in these passages. You sometimes see them in Hong Kong, riding around on the MTR. Like the 12, they travel in pairs, usually two young men or—less commonly—two young women. They are smartly, but conservatively dressed, and they will always be wearing a name badge. And next to their name on that badge will be “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.” I am, of course, speaking of Mormon missionaries.
As some of you probably know, young Mormons are encouraged to delay their college and careers, and to go on two-year missions to a strange city or foreign country. While they do take money with them, their work is entirely self-financed; they must raise the money for the trip themselves. Some even start saving money for it while they are in high school. Most of their mission work involves going door-to-door or talking with strangers in the street. This is something that I would find very hard to do. Even though I certainly don’t share Mormon beliefs, I have to admire these young people’s commitment to their faith, and to their evangelistic mission.
Mormons do something that most other Christians simply won’t do—or can’t do. And this failing isn’t entirely our own fault—knocking on stranger’s doors is not something that socially acceptable; you’re more likely to get the police called on you than to be invited into someone’s home. And I think most people today have a negative impression of this kind of evangelism. They believe that becoming or being Christian should be a personal choice, and that religion should be something private, not public. To put it simply, they believe Christians should keep their beliefs to themselves. Mormons and other groups, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, are really the exception to the rule. And they must bravely face suspicion and mockery that comes from breaking social norms.
But many of the reasons why we cannot do what these disciples did are practical. The world, the Church, and evangelism have all changed. We have different responsibilities and interests than the 12 did. Our society (including our churches) does not give us the space freedom for that kind of evangelism anymore. Most of us cannot even spare two weeks to go wandering around strange countries, let alone two years. The lifestyle of ancient Christian pilgrims is simply not practical for the vast majority of Christians today.
So how can we perform mission in the modern Church? What lessons can we take from Mark 6, verses 7 through 11? I think there are quite a few, actually.
The first, most obvious point, is that evangelism is something directed outside of a particular religious community. The 12 were sent out by Jesus. They had no permanent home or church. In those early days, the church was wherever they were, in whichever household they were being hosted. In contrast, Christians living in modern, developed societies—live ourselves—have the privilege of preaching the Gospel in air-conditioned churches and even livestreaming on the internet. But is what we do here, every Sunday, really evangelism? I don’t think so. With the exception of an occasional “mission moment”, most of what we do here, in worship, is for our own spiritual and moral health. Sunday worship and our fellowships together strengthen the bonds of our particular church community, reminding us what it means to be Christian. That is certainly important for spreading the Gospel, but it is not the same as spreading the Gospel. It is not the same as extending our community outward, growing the Church as a whole.
Evangelism must go beyond the walls of our churches, and sometimes that will shake the very foundations of these churches themselves. God’s call to mission challenges our old ways of being in a community, and following this call can strain our social relationships. Mission separates us from our friends, family, and community, sometimes painfully. Evangelists are often rejected by their home church, just as Jesus Christ was rejected by his community in Nazareth. They may receive no financial or moral support for their calling. And, as we also see with Jesus, an evangelist may receive little to no support from their family. But on this point the Gospel is quite clear: the Christian community will not grow unless we are willing to leave our places of comfort behind. It will not grow unless we are willing take risks, to work even without the support of our families and communities. And yes, sometimes to make the big “C” Church grow, we have to work without the help of the little “c” churches we come from.
But when Christians do leave the security of their churches, they should remember a 2nd point made clear in Mark 6: Evangelism is a job, it is not a vacation. I remember growing up that many churches in my community, including my own, would often take “mission trips.” People would pay to join a group that would travel to somewhere in Africa, South America, or Southeast Asia, spending a week or two helping to build something in some small village.
Now, one problem with that kind of evangelism is that most of these trips are just that—they are trips, that is, they are really vacations where you do a little bit of actual work, and the rest of the time is for sightseeing and R and R. If fact, there were—and maybe still are—companies that would market these trips as vacation packages to churches, promising both faith and adventure.
Another big problem with vacation missions is that they do not help people all that much. One or two weeks is not enough time to perform an adequate service. You cannot build a good well or church sanctuary in a just a few days. And even if the expectation is that other church groups would come and help finish a project, there is usually very little coordination between different teams. And so many of these poor communities are left with shoddy or unfinished work. In many cases, it would have been better if churches just paid professionals to do the job.
One last problem with this kind of evangelism is that it is often disconnected from the Word of God. Frequently a mission trip fails to clearly establish the moral and spiritual significance of the work that is done. Ironically, many evangelical church communities will go on mission trips where they don’t actually do much preaching of the Gospel.
For Jesus’ disciples, and for early Christians, mission was not a vacation. They had stay in first household that accepted them. They could not upgrade to a better place if it became available. It could not even be a personal spiritual journey. While I am sure what they did certainly enriched them spiritually, their primary mission was one of service. It was about the salvation and well-being of others. And it was a full-time job.
It was also a risky, dangerous job. And this brings me to a third point. Why did the disciples have to be so poorly provisioned? Why could they not take food or extra clothing? Shouldn’t they have taken at least some snacks for the road, or a spare pair of sandals? In Matthew and Luke’s version of the rules, they are not even allowed to take a staff with which fend off wild animals or bandits.
It is tempting to interpret these passages as a call for modesty and poverty, as if Jesus is saying that his disciples should live simply, like beggars. But I don’t think that’s it at all. What I think is that these rules are about faith. Mark Chapters 5 and 6, which we have been reading these past few weeks, are all about faith. The miracles that we witness in Capernaum were only possible because of faith. Through faith the hemorrhaging women was healed. Through faith the daughter of Jairus was brought back to life. But in Nazareth there is a lack of faith. Jesus is doubted and rejected by his own people. Because of this, he can do no great works of power.
And, in the same way, the success of the 12’s mission rests on their faith. They are to take no bag, no food, no water, no money, nor extra clothing, because they are to trust that God will provide for their needs. Going against these rules, and taking with them more than they absolutely needed, would have shown a lack of faith. And without faith, they had no power.
But even knowing about faith, the mission of the 12 still sounds dangerous. And sure, faith can be risky, but that does not mean it is irrational. The 12 disciples are not left helpless. God does provide. God provides in the form of those households that do take people in. The ancient Near East had strong tradition of hospitality, so the disciples and other early Christian pilgrims could have been fairly confident that they would find a place to stay, at least for few nights.
And this brings me to the fourth, final point that we can draw from Mark’s description of evangelism. And that is that Christian mission is a partnership. Mission is not just about the missionaries. For evangelism to be successful, their must be a receptive party. There must be a person, a household, or community that hosts an evangelist, and responds to what they have to say.
And the partnership must be mutual. The rules that Jesus sets for his disciples are to make them humble and vulnerable. They have to need food and shelter from others, so that their hosts would have something to provide to them. The households needed something to provide in return for the gift of the Holy Spirit that came with the disciples. Without this sense of reciprocity, this ethic of exchange, the relationship between evangelists and the evangelized would be unfair. The evangelists would have had all the power.
This pattern of evangelism that we find in Mark continued in first and second centuries, when humble pilgrims traveled from household to household. This is how the Early Church was built by wandering Christians and the ones that received them.
But today I think we have lost this idea that evangelism is a partnership. One reason for this is because the evangelism relationship has flipped. In the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, households had to invite Christians into their homes. Today, Christian churches are the households, and this creates an unequal relationship which makes Christians feel superior, and the sense of relationship is lost. Too many Christian churches and charities just give, give, and give without actually trying to build a relationship with those who receive their charity. To me, that is condescending, because it is basically saying that those who receive our love have nothing of their own to contribute.
Christian love is built on the idea that we must be prepared to give without receiving anything in return. But love is also built on community, and all must be given a chance to contribute to the community. There is nothing wrong with expecting something from others. The Didache, one of the earliest Christian texts, provides rules for hosting Christian pilgrims. In accordance with ancient Near Eastern and Roman rules of hospitality, pilgrims were able to stay in a community, free of charge and without expectation, for two or three days. But if they chose remain longer? Well, that meant they were now part of that community, and that they needed to contribute to it through their own labor.
Like ancient Christian pilgrims, Christians today have to be humble and discard our sense of independence and self-sufficiency. As a community, we have to need something from the people we serve. Without this sense of partnership, our relationships and our community are unbalanced.
The twelve disciples, like all other new, first century Christians, lived in a very different world than we do. Despite the fact that most of us are much richer, much better fed, and live much longer, on average, than an ancient Judean, these disciples seem to have been much freer than us in many ways. They could take risks we could not. But in spite of these differences, they still have something to teach us about sharing the good news of God’s love with others.
They teach us that we must share the Gospel outward, beyond the walls of the church. They also teach us that evangelism is a job, and a hard one at that. It is a job not for our own personal benefit, but for the well-being of others. Sharing the Gospel is also an act of faith. We trust that despite it’s evangelisms and risks, God will provide for us. And lastly, evangelism is about relationships. It is only through the partnership of the evangelizer with the evangelized, that the church can be built.
And to bring this all to some kind of conclusion, what these four points reveal is that Christian mission, is not really up to just one individual. It isn’t up to just whether a person is persuasive enough to convince someone to get baptized, how good a person is at building a well, or how much money they can give to a refugee family. Ultimately, the success of evangelism comes from God, and we know that God does provide. God provides when we trust in the power of God’s love, which works through the power of faith. Our faith in God’s love comes through our faith in the power of partnership, in the power of community. It is through trust in ourselves, and in others, that our missions as Christians can be successful.
Amen.
# posted by Kowloon Union Church : Sunday, July 04, 2021
