A Church to the World
A Church TO the World
January 19, 2020 by Rev. L. John Gable
We have been talking about the Church’s role and responsibility, as the recipients and successors of Jesus’ ministry, in relation to the world in which we live. Last week, in a message titled “A Church FOR the world”, we affirmed that the Church’s first and foremost responsibility is the proclamation of the Gospel of salvation, the sharing of the Good News of God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ. While there are many other groups and organizations and movements doing wonderful works of service, caring and compassion in the world, this responsibility has been uniquely given to us and us alone. If we don’t share the Good News of God’s love in Jesus Christ, no one else will. In this regard, we have been called and empowered to be a Church FOR the world because the God we worship and serve is FOR the world.
Out of this conviction we are then encouraged to pray FOR the world, collectively and individually, as an expression of our love, and more importantly, of God’s love. How can we truly say that we love the world if we are not willing or committed to praying for the world? But, even in that, I trust we would also agree that prayer alone, while the essential starting point in our response to the needs of the world around us, is insufficient on its own; prayer is the action we take which motivates and prompts us to further action, our doing which precedes our doing something to help address the needs we have been awakened to as we have prayed. This too is consistent with the way Jesus Himself presented the Good News. Not only did He speak of it, He also demonstrated it.
Recall the passage from Isaiah He quoted as He began His public ministry. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has a anointed Me to bring good news to the poor; to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Those sound like action words to me! Jesus was doing something more than simply telling people about a far off, some day, Kingdom of God, rather He came to announce that coming Kingdom and to make it a reality, “on earth as it is in heaven”. And He then proceeded to do so, by preaching and teaching “yes”, but also by touching and healing and blessing. While Jesus’ ministry was born of and sustained by His own prayer life it was also demonstrated in good works of healing and wholeness, of restoration and reconciliation, and we, in His name, are called to the same today as the Church TO the world.
Jesus instructs us to be “the salt of the earth and the light of the world.” Both are high commendations indeed as both are essential to life itself; yet each also works in ways very different than the other. Salt works in ways largely invisible and hidden; it mostly works in private, hardly noticeable, undetectable ways; while light works in a very public way. A light hidden under a bushel basket is as worthless as is salt which has lost its taste. So the light of Christ is intended to shine in us and through us for all to see; that not for our own glory but for the glory of our Father in Heaven.
The Church, as the company of the followers of Jesus, is called to have a “salt and light” effect on the world in ways both hidden and public. And where does that happen? Not in here, but out there. What we do in here readies and equips us for the work we are called to do out there in Jesus’ name. Richard Halverson, Presbyterian pastor and former Chaplain to the Senate, wrote: “The measure of the effectiveness of a local church is not when the sanctuary is full on Sunday morning and the programs are in full operation. The measure of the effectiveness of the church is what’s happening when the sanctuary is empty, the parking lot is empty, the programs are not in operation, and people are scattered all over the metropolitan area, penetrating all of the organizations and institutions of that area, because where they are Christ is- in them.” We are called to be salt, out of the shaker and into the world, a light for Christ shining in to the darkened places around and within us.
We were reminded last week that we cannot remain uncaring, unconcerned, unloving toward those for whom we are genuinely praying. It is prayer that opens our ears, our eyes, our hearts to the needs of those around us and that awareness then prompts us to some level of engagement.
For example, we hear about a need in the community, perhaps the issue of hunger and food insecurity, and our hearts are pricked in some way because the statistic is alarming. We think, surely that can’t be true? There can’t be that many families who are hungry in our community. But then, the more we think about it we realize we just might happen to know someone or at least have seen some people in this neighborhood, on these streets, who could be hungry or food insecure, and suddenly that bit of information is no longer just a headline in a news story, but it becomes a personal concern. We wonder, why is it that in the wealthiest country in the world so many people, and not just any people but people we know or could know, are going hungry? How can it be right that my pantries are full and my neighbors’ are empty, not somewhere across the globe, but right here in our own community? There is something fundamentally wrong, unfair, inequitable, unjust about that. So we begin to ask ourselves, what can I do about that, and perhaps even more importantly still, what does my faith tell me to do about that? So perhaps we write a check or bring in a bag of canned goods for the Mid-North Food Pantry. We make a casserole for the newly widowed across the street or for the family who has recently become unemployed. Why? Because we are nice, kind people? Perhaps, and that is reason enough to do the right thing, but for us, as followers of Jesus, we have a higher and deeper motivation: we realize that these acts of kindness and concern are also part of what it means to be “salt and light”, sharers and bearers of the Good News. Caring for our neighbors’ physical needs goes hand in hand with caring for their spiritual needs. Remember, Jesus fed the 5000 as well as taught them. He didn’t just say, “I know you are hungry but listen as I tell you about a someday Kingdom where all will be right.”
That gnawing sense that something is not right in the world, or in our community, is why we offer many of the services we offer, and always have. We offer a tutoring program for the kids at School 48 because that school, right across the street, has been a failing school for as long as we can remember, and we realize that there is something just not right about that. So, we offer to help those kids because we know the importance of a good education to the quality of life and we wouldn’t want our kids to go to a failing school so why should it be alright for them to?
We start a health clinic because we know that our neighbors don’t have access to adequate health care and there is something fundamentally unfair, unjust, not right about that. If we want good health care for ourselves then it only seems right and fair that we would also want, and be willing to work to provide, good health care for our neighbors, as well.
I offer these, and there are a myriad of other examples I could give, as ways in which the Church here and around the globe, has responded to the needs of their neighbors, not in any way as an abandonment of the Gospel but as a direct response to the call of the Gospel. Scripture consistently instructs us to care for the needs of the poor, the outcast, the stranger, the disenfranchised, the needy among us. Pray for them, yes; but then we are called in to action. In his book, Hope and Suffering, Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes, “This God did not just talk – He acted. He showed Himself to be a doing God. Perhaps we might add another point about God – He takes sides. He is not a neutral God. He took the side of the slaves, the oppressed, the victims. He is still the same even today; He sides with the poor, the hungry, the oppressed and the victims of injustice.”
Now some would argue that the Church should just stick to preaching the Gospel and leave these kinds of social issues to others, but that would be an inaccurate reading and a misapplication of the Scriptures we hold to be God’s Word to us. It would be inconsistent with the model for ministry, for caring for people, that Jesus gave us. This is not the Church getting out of its lane; rather this is exactly the lane the Church has been called to be in if our desire is “a saved soul in a saved body in a saved community” as our Presbyterian Board of Home Missions stated it so clearly in 1923.
It is exactly this kind of “living out” of the Gospel to which Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King dedicated his life. Listen to the words of Dr. King, written in 1963 in one of his “Letters from a Birmingham Jail”. He writes, “Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men and women willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the force of social stagnation. We must use time creatively in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”
Friends, these acts of caring, of kindness, of concern for the needs of our neighbors are not inconsistent with the call of the Gospel, rather they are part and parcel to it. They arise out of our God-given calling to present “the whole Gospel to the whole person in the whole world.” They are yet another expression of the awareness that there is something not right in the world, spiritually we call it sin, socially we call it inequity, inequality, injustice, and there is something we have been given to do about each of these because God has called us to be His witnesses, His change agents and Kingdom representatives, His “salt and light” in the world.
I’ll close with this perhaps familiar story called The Parable of the Life-saving Station which illustrates the role and responsibility of the Church TO the world. “On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a small group of people who were concerned for the safety of those at sea so they established a crude little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves, they went out day or night tirelessly searching for the lost.
Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding areas, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew.
Some of the new members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea, (so) they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in an enlarged building.” And the little lifesaving station continued to grow and more and more lives were saved.
If you are familiar with the parable you know it continues, but I’m going to pause there. This is a wonderful illustration of what the Church is called to do and be when it is true to its mission: a lighthouse shining the light of Christ into a darkened world; a life-saving station offering the life-giving, life-transforming Good News of God’s saving grace; a refuge for victims of the inevitable storms of life and a first-responder to those in need. Each of these represents how the Church is called to present the whole Gospel, to the whole person, to the whole world.
But as the Parable of the Lifesaving Station continues it also offers a cautionary note to the Church if in any way we abandon our God-given mission, spiritually or socially, and about that we will talk more next week.