Sunday, April 13, 2008
Matthew 28:16-20
Minister of Discipleship
[this sermon was inspired by the book of the same title by Joyce E. Sohl written as one of the United Methodist Women’s study materials for this year]
It was 9 years ago this coming week that I had the blessing of being able to travel to the Holy Land with a group from Oklahoma City. One of the great places to visit in Jerusalem is the Garden Tomb. The power of this sight comes from the fact that this is one of the traditional locations of the tomb, which held Jesus for a few days before he was raised from the dead. You can visit the empty tomb and see what may have been the very spot where the angels sat and told the first disciples that Jesus was no longer there. You can walk through the beautiful gardens and imagine the moment when Mary Magdalene came upon Jesus as he called her name and made her the first Christian missionary charged with telling the story.
One of the things they have done to make this a very special place is to build individual locations throughout the garden where groups can congregate and celebrate the Lord’s Supper. What an incredibly moving experience it was to come together to remember this important part of God’s story – which was now a part of our story. As we sat and prepared ourselves for this holy time, something happened that would make those moments even more holy for me. Coming from somewhere else in the garden I began to hear a familiar song, a tune I had known since childhood….but something wasn’t quite the same. Then I realized what it was, I was hearing the tune “We’ve A Story To Tell to the Nations” but it was being sung in Japanese!!
I was so moved as I continued to listen to them singing with such joy and enthusiasm. Here I was in the place where Christians have remembered the story of Jesus Christ for 2,000 years sitting with a group from the United States while listening to the story being proclaimed by people who had once been considered our “enemies” in a time of world war. On that day we were not enemies, we were all one body in Jesus Christ. I realized in that moment that someone somewhere in the past had taken seriously the Great Commission and had gone to Japan to tell God’s story and had sung this song…
Let’s sing that song together as we celebrate that all the nations of the world are One in God….
We’ve A story to tell to the nations, that shall
turn their hearts to the right
A story of truth and mercy, a story of peace and
light, a story of peace and light.
For the darkness shall turn to dawning, and the
dawning to noonday bright,
And Christ’s great kingdom shall come on earth, the
kingdom of love and light. [UMH #569]
Women have been a part of the telling of God’s story since that first Easter morning in the garden when Jesus told Mary to go and remind the others of all that Jesus had said and done. And, Methodist Women have followed in that tradition most faithfully over the years. In fact, 30 years before the song we just sang was even written the first Women’s Foreign Missionary Society was formed in 1869 in Boston, MA, at the Tremont Methodist Episcopal Church. Not long after the formation of this first missionary society two women, Isabella Thoburn and Clair Swain, left for India as the society’s first missionaries. Can you imagine what it must have been like for these two single women heading halfway across the world to tell the story of God’s love? The next time you are afraid to share God’s story with someone at your work or at school or in your neighborhood or even in your own family, remember the courage it must have taken in the mid-nineteenth century to travel to a foreign land to tell the story!!
How were they able to do this? What gave them the ability to head off on such a mission? I believe it was because they loved the story so much they just had to share it with others. These women had heard the story told so many times; they had seen the story lived out in their community of faith; they had felt the story changing their own lives and they were just filled, bursting to tell the story again and again.
I can remember while growing up how the people in my church felt that way. We supported a missionary couple in Africa and whenever they would come back to the states for a visit they would come to visit at our church and we would always sing a special song as we prepared to hear their latest tales. To this very day, I cannot hear that song without joining in with great gusto because I know it is a true story…that God comes into our lives to satisfy the longings as nothing else can do. As we sing this song together see if it doesn’t uplift you and encourage you to go out and tell the story……
I love to tell the story of unseen things above,
of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love.
I love to tell the story, because I know ‘tis true;
It satisfies my longings as nothing else can do.
I love to tell the story,
‘Twill by my theme in glory,
To tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love.
[UMH #156]
In his book, How United Methodists Share Their Faith, Rodney Wilmoth has a chapter entitled “Shout and Sing for Joy!” In this chapter he says, “People are searching for meaning and purpose in life. Christianity is more than a set of abstract principles based on first-century thinking. It is a message of ultimate importance addressing the deeper issues of life. Because we have experienced God’s redemptive love and grace, we have this burning desire to share that reality with others. This is what the Great Commission in the closing verses of Matthew is all about. Christ calls us to go out into the world and witness to the powerful truth of the Gospel…It may be that some folks have not seen God because they are looking in all the wrong places. We would do well to remember that God comes to us in unlikely ways and places. Let us bear witness to a living God. We witness the fact that lives have been changed and new beginnings have been made possible. The bondage of fear, emptiness and brokenness have given way to courage, meaning and wholeness. New life in Christ is not an achievement; it is a gift.” [pg 92, 94]
This should be why we love to tell the story! If we truly believe that God’s loving presence in Jesus Christ can change lives and bring healing and wholeness, then why would we want to keep that a secret we share only with each other on Sunday mornings? This is why Methodist women throughout the centuries have made it their central mission to share God’s story and participate in bringing God’s healing into the midst of people’s lives.
It didn’t take long before these early Methodist women began to look around and realize that God’s story needed to touch the lives of people not only in “heathen countries” [using their vernacular of the time] far away, but also the lives of many people in their own communities who were living in pain and poverty. There were so many people, as Wilmoth put it, who were “looking in all the wrong places” for love and life.
And so, it was in large part Methodist women who helped bring about the social justice movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries. They went into the slums and the bars and places where women and children were being exploited and abused to rescue these people who were dying both literally and spiritually. Fanny Crosby was one of those Methodist women who worked with the poor and oppressed in New York City. Although she was blind from infancy, she didn’t let that stop her from sharing the story of God’s love. Along with her missionary work she wrote over 8,500 hymns [even more than Charles Wesley!]. One of those hymns became an important song of encouragement for missionary workers in the cities charging them to go out and “rescue the perishing” telling the story that Jesus was merciful and Jesus could save them …. Let’s sing Crosby’s song together as we consider who needs to be “rescued” today in our communities…..
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, snatch
them in pity from sin and the grave;
Weep o’er the erring ones, lift up the fallen, Tell
them of Jesus, the mighty to save.
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying;
Being about the work of helping to bring God’s healing presence to a hurting world can be a daunting task! We must remember that everyone we meet has a story. It may not be exactly the same as our story, but it is important because it is their life story. And, one of the most important things we do when we go out into the world is to listen to those stories so we can learn where that person’s story connects with the Great Story we love to tell. You see, God’s story is ALWAYS the story of those we meet, we just need the eyes to see it and the heart to sense it.
I believe one of the main reasons we love “The Story” so much is because we have discovered this for ourselves. We have learned that our story really does connect with God’s story. When we have found ourselves in difficult times, there has been a word of comfort or encouragement to be found in God’s story. In those times when we have needed guidance, we could turn and study the choices others have made as a part of God’s story and we found direction and discernment. Sometimes God challenges us to move outside our comfort zone as many others have done in the story. And, yes, there are even those times when God’s story is a reminder to us that we need to review how we are living our lives and perhaps repent, turning back toward God. And so, the greatest gift we can offer to others is the chance for them to see the connection – the place where God’s healing, loving, forgiving presence can influence the next chapter of their life story just as it has done for us.
We must also remember that we never go about the work of “telling the story” alone. God is our guide and our strength. Frances Ridley Havergal realized the challenge of a life of missions work many years ago. But, she also understood the connection between each person’s story and God’s story. So, she wrote a simple, beautiful prayer asking for God’s help for all those who go out to live the Great Commission. She first called it “A Worker’s Prayer.” Later when it became a hymn the title was changed to “Lord, Speak to Me.” This will be our hymn of commitment today. And, rather than having to look down at the hymnal, we will continue to look up as a way to remember that we can always look up for strength, look up for guidance and direction, look up for courage. We must always look up toward the One whose song we have been singing today. A song about an old, old story that never goes out of date!
Lord, speak to me, that I may speak in living echoes
of thy tone;
As thou hast sought, so let me seek thine erring
children lost and lone.
O strengthen me, that while I stand firm on the
rock, and strong in thee,
I may stretch out a loving hand to wrestlers with
the troubled sea.
O fill me with thy fullness, Lord, until my very
heart o’erflow
In kindling thought and glowing word, thy love to tell, they praise to show. [UMH #463]