Mission Impossible
This past week Kate, the girls, and I went down to Charleston, SC to participate in the opening of the Global Impact Celebration at St. Michael’s Church. It is a week long celebration of mission both domestically here in the U.S. and beyond. Our very own Bishop Andrew Williams was also the opening preacher of the week due to our diocese’s focus on the Reawakening of New England. And Dandelion Ministries was invited to kick things off by doing what we do. We led the families of St. Michael’s in the creative project of making friendship bracelets with the word “LOVE” on them for a friend and missionary to take back to the women she ministers to stuck in the sex slave trade in Bangkok. And the next day after Bishop Drew preached we gave a presentation of all the ways the Lord is using Dandelion to spread the grace of Jesus Christ in New England and beyond. It was a great weekend.
And it seemed perfectly aligned with the Gospel lectionary reading last week, which was Mark 1:14-20 when Jesus calls the first disciples. As we prepared our presentation and as I thought about Jesus calling his disciples, it reminded me of Tom Cruise, of course. Say what you will about Tom Cruise, the man makes excellent movies. Tom found his cash cow with the Mission Impossible series. He’s done 7 of the movies thus far with the 8th due out next year, and I can’t wait! I love these movies.
There’s a famous scene that happens in every film, echoing the late 60s and early 70s tv series, where Tom’s character, Ethan Hunt, is given the details of the next mission. It is always delivered in some clever way through a telephone booth or a record player or whatever, and the voice says, “Good morning Mr. Hunt, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is…” Usually it is to stop World War 3…some insane mission that seems truly impossible, which if they fail to pull off will result in cataclysmic disaster. No wonder a megalomaniac like Tom Cruise likes making these movies. You get to save the world!...or at least pretend to save the world. Anyway, the message for Mr. Hunt always does the same thing…it gives Ethan his mission. It tells him the problem and the mission to fix the problem, and then the movie shows us how he and his team go about accomplishing the mission.
SO, when we think of Jesus’ mission in the world and the calling of his disciples (that means you because you’re reading this), like Ethan Hunt, we first need to hear what the mission is – what’s the problem and what’s the mission to fix it? That’s what we will look at in this post. First, we will hear what Jesus’ mission/God’s mission is in this world. Then we will hear how God has chosen to accomplish this mission and what he does to insure it happens.
What is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s mission in the world? I mention all of the persons of the Trinity because that is what we see in Scripture, and all three persons in the Trinity are united in this mission. And that mission is not unlike the usual Mission Impossible movie, it is nothing short of saving the world. The difference is that Tom Cruise cannot do it, nor can any of us…it is truly an impossible mission for us humans – we cannot save ourselves because we are in fact the problem.
The problem is that we are sinful – we have rebelled against God and his order of things by rejecting him and wanting to become gods ourselves. We are all megalomaniacs in that way, it’s not just Tom Cruise. We all think we know what is best, and we think we should be in control, we should be the masters of our domain and not this God who made all things. This is the nature of our sin: doubting God’s goodness and wanting to run the show ourselves. Our sin is the problem, and Jesus, the Son, gives us the solution - the forgiveness of sins. We see the Trinity united in this mission together at Jesus’ baptism where he willingly steps into the role of being our substitute and advocate by submitting to the baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Being the only and begotten Son of God, he did not need to be baptized to be forgiven of any sins because he was without sin. He told John the Baptist that he must be baptized because his mission was to come and take all of our sin upon himself…to become sin, as Paul says…thus saving us from it. During God the Son’s baptism we see God the Spirit affirm this by descending upon him in the form of a dove, and we hear God the Father affirm this by saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Jesus came to deal with our sin once and for all on the cross – paying the price for our rebellion and making a way for us to be back in right relationship with our Creator God, back in our proper place as his creation, fully dependent on Him. Another way of saying this is that Jesus’ mission is to make saints out of sinners – to make us his disciples. Jesus says as much, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
The Baptism of Christ by Andrea Del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci, 1475
But he goes about it in a strange way. After Jesus rises from the dead, appears a few different times to his disciples, but then ascends. He leaves. You would think after finishing everything on the cross and rising form the dead he would make his power known to the whole world in a very obvious and public way. That’s how I would do it anyway. But how has God chosen to accomplish his mission in the world of setting people free from their sin? We see it in our passage from Mark 1 – he calls us to be his messengers. He wants us to tell everyone. Paul affirms this in Romans 10:
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ (Rom. 10:13-17, emphasis mine).
There is a common thing about Simon, Andrew, James and John and that is none of them were looking for Jesus. They were just going about their business of fishing when Jesus came looking for them – He came to where they were and called them to follow him. Jesus is the one who makes this happen not us. We see some of what C.S. Lewis meant when he described Aslan in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe – when the children found out Aslan was a lion they asked is he safe? And Mr. Beaver replied, “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” We see God’s wildness in the fact that he chooses to use us to accomplish his mission in the world. He uses us to be his messengers – we are these frail, compromised, inconsistent sinners that have rejected him, and yet he comes and calls us and sends us out to share his good news of forgiveness of sins with the world.
It seems crazy, but it makes sense if you think of any advertising you’ve ever seen – the testimony is the most powerful thing. When you go to buy something on Amazon, if you’re like me then before you buy you probably read the reviews – hearing how well it worked for someone else is a powerful force. That’s what God does with us too – he sends those who know his goodness, his grace and forgiveness in their place of pain and need. He sends us who know his love to share it with others – to testify to who He is and what he has done. That’s what all of Scripture is too – written testimony of those who have witnessed what God has done for them, how He has kept his promises. Professor and author, Michael Horton said, “Ambassadors don’t get to choose the message. They are given the message by the one they represent…they simply carry what has been given to them.” The power is not in us, but it is in the message we carry – it is in His Word, and we always point to him.
This leads into our last point: how does he insure this happens? If it were simply left up to us, the result would always be the same. We might be really great salespeople, and we might convince some folks, but what will ultimately happen if you go and try to fulfill the mission of Jesus in your own strength? You will burnout. The size of the task will crush you. Kate has given me permission to share her story of her freshman year in college. She was an extremely well-meaning Christian new to the very secular environment of her large inner-city university, and she believed that it was up to her to save everyone on her freshman hall for Jesus. Unfortunately, the particular chapter of her Christian fellowship at her school fed this belief. The pressure nearly killed her. She burned out, it led to physical and emotional breakdown she was completely exhausted – of course she didn’t realize she was doing this at the time. She needed Jesus to come and save her from trying to save everyone else - feel free to ask her about it sometime, it’s a powerful story.
As with everything else in the Christian life – the mission depends on HIM. “I will make you become fishers of men and women” (Mark 1:17). He gives us a promise about how He will accomplish his mission through us – HE will make us into fishers of people. He hangs the responsibility of the mission upon himself because he knows there is no way we could do any of it without his power and grace – we wouldn’t last. But he reminds us that it is his job in the first place – he will give us all that we need – he wants us fully dependent on him to do what he has given us to do. It is the surrounding context of the Great Commission we read before. Jesus says
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20, emphasis mine).
It is a matter of faith, trusting in him, trusting in his promise that he’ll use us. We go because HE is the one sending us, and HE has all authority in heaven and earth and HE is with us always to the end of the age. This is the key theme to understanding what it means to walk in God’s mission – remember that it is truly an impossible mission for us. Our proper place as a disciple is full dependence on HIM. He is the one that seeks us out and calls us, he is the one who gives us the message to share, and he promises that he is the one that will make us into fishers of men and women. All of it hangs on HIM. Jesus always reassures us with his word and reminds us of this truth. Consider Luke 18:27, Jesus says, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” Isaiah 55:11: “My Word will not return to me void.” John 15:5: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” And through the Apostle Paul “He who calls you is faithful, he will surely do it.” Jesus is telling us “This is my mission, I am the Savior God, I am the one who is sending you, and I will never leave you alone…I will fulfill it through you…trust me and follow me.” Amen.
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