Acts 1:8
When I first sat with my parents in
a darkened church, watching slides of strangely dressed people in far-away
lands, while the visiting missionary told of his adventures in preaching the
Gospel, most Southern Baptists would have been united in agreement with the
sentiment expressed in the title of my sermon.
They would have agreed that "Missions is a good idea." This morning I can't assume that everyone
hearing me would agree. In fact, there
are increasing numbers of people who would say, "Missions is a bad
idea!"
These critics of missions would
declare missions to be a bad idea for one of several reasons.
1.
They might say missions is a bad idea because missions devastates the
lives of peoples who have previously been unspoiled by the excesses of Western culture.
This past week, for example,
speakers at the World Council of Churches' meeting in Brazil urged Western
missionaries to stop their aggressive evangelism techniques because they were
destroying indigenous cultures. As a
case in point, the speakers accused missionaries of destroying the native
population of Hawaii.
(a)
These critics charge missionaries with being insensitive to the culture
of indigenous or native people.
At
one time such criticism may have had validity.
Early missionaries were sometimes apostles of Western culture as much as
they were ambassadors of Christianity.
Missionary training is radically
different now.
(b)
The criticism fails to distinguish between those elements of a culture
which are harmless and those elements of a culture which very much need to be
challenged.
Missionaries need make no apology
for challenging gender-based infanticide.
Missionaries need make no apology
for their counter-parts in 19th
century who challenged the Hindu
practice of forcing widows to throw themselves on the funeral pyres of their
husbands.
Missionaries need make no apology
for Amy Carmichael's tireless work of rescuing hundreds of boys and girls from
being sold into prostitution in India, even though the practice was centuries
old.
(c)
The criticism fails to recognize that missionaries have sometimes risked
their lives to defend and the peoples they served.
Sometimes
the merchants and traders in a region resisted the coming of the missionaries
because they knew the missionaries would oppose their exploitation of the
native peoples.
In
South America the friars opposed the enslavement of the Indians at the hands of
the Spanish government. Some paid for
this opposition with their lives.
Famed
David Livingstone, who was as much an explorer as a missionary, did become an
apostle of both Christianity and commerce.
But he did so because he believed they alone would end slave-trade in
Africa.
(d)
The criticism fails to understand that some peoples warmly welcomed the
gospel as a message they had longed for.
James
Michener's depiction of missionaries in his novel Hawaii is
misleading. The Hawaiians so eagerly
welcomed the gospel that Hawaii was the first field in the history of modern
missions from which the missionaries voluntarily withdrew to leave the work in
the hands of the indigenous people.
(e)
This criticism fails to recognize the transforming power inherent in the
Christian gospel.
Because
Western culture is the most thoroughly "christianized" of any culture
in history, it is easy to begin to equate Christianity with that culture.
Because
Christianity as so long been a dominate force in our culture it is easy to
forget that it hasn't always been so.
The earliest missionaries found barbarity
and cruelty in much of what we think of as Christian Europe.
Scotland has been the source of some
of the greatest hymn-writers, theologians, and missionaries. Prior to the coming of Christianity the
Celtic peoples of Scotland were so fierce and blood-thirsty that Emperor
Hadrian had a wall built across Britain in an effort to keep out the marauding
Scots.
Much of what is good in Western
culture--compassion for the poor, humane treatment of prisoners, freedom of
religion--is rooted in its exposure to the transforming power Christianity.
2.
They might say missions is a bad idea because they have embraced a
revisionist portrait of Jesus Christ.
In
recent years Christmas and Easter have seen national magazines and newspapers
publish stories about the "new" understanding of Jesus. While they differ in details all conclude
that Jesus is not the incarnate Son of God who died to save sinners and rose
again on the third day as orthodox Christianity has always claimed. They insist that he was nothing more than
perhaps a teacher, a magician, or a rebel--like many others in the first
century.
If you come to believe that Jesus is
not the unique Son of God, that he did not really rise from the dead, then you
might soon decide that missions is a waste of time and effort.
You
should know that the character of this type of scholarship is suspect. It begins with the assumption that anything
supernatural in the New Testament must be automatically rejected because, they
insist, all miracles are mere myths.
Because they begin by rejecting the
raw data about Jesus in the New Testament, their conclusions are highly
speculative. For example, since they
consider the resurrection to have been impossible, one group of these scholars
suggests this scenario for how the disciples became convinced that Jesus had
risen from the dead. The summary is
found in Newsweek for April 4, 1994.
"Jesus
lived on in the hearts of followers....but he did not physically rise from the
dead. Taken down from the cross, his
body was probably buried in a shallow grave--and may have been eaten by
dogs."
Their teacher's body having
disappeared, the disciples concocted the story of the resurrection.
Nothing
suggests that those who present this revisionist picture of Jesus are more
scholarly than those who hold to the traditional view of Jesus. In fact, some of their conclusions suggest
that they have merely rejected the New Testament Jesus for one who is more
"politically correct", a new Jesus who is tamer and less abrasive
than the old Jesus.
Hal Taussig, one of the scholars who
has been most active in drawing the picture of the new Jesus explained his
reasons for turning away the Jesus our missionaries have preached for so
long. "The traditional view of
Jesus in not what American society needs."
Never mind if the New Testament picture of Jesus is true or not, it
isn't what a group of scholars believe Americans need right now.
This new Jesus does not believe in absolute truth, the superiority of
one religion over another, the division of humankind into the "saved"
and the "unsaved". Once the
myth of the New Testament is stripped away the work of this new Jesus does not
suggest that God has invaded our world to accomplish our redemption.
No wonder few feel compelled to
support missions programs to preach this Jesus--if this is who Jesus is. The "new" Jesus lacks the power to
make a meaningful impact on the real world.
The
media has a perfect right to report on the activities of those who are
proposing a new understanding of Jesus; but the complete story would include
accounts of how the historical reliability of the New Testament has been
demonstrated again and again.
It would point out the
anti-supernatural bias of the scholars.
It would remind readers that the
findings of the Jesus Seminar and other radical groups by no means represents
the totality of New Testament scholarship.
3.
They might say that missions is a bad idea because it focuses our
attention away from needs closer to home.
Studies of generational differences
in our churches suggest that Baby Boomers are often opposed to giving to
foreign missions because they believe the needs closer to home should take
priority.
[In
the years since I first preached this sermon, a newer, younger generation has
begun to raise its voice in the church.
These “gen-x” pastors seem to have returned, temporarily at least, to a
wholehearted support of international missions; they want a larger proportion
of denominational budgets dedicated to outreach beyond our national
borders. It will be interesting to see
if this trend continues.]
Their hearts are often right but
their perceptions are wrong. They are
often willing to get involved in soup kitchens and homeless shelters. That's commendable but they need a broader
vision.
Let's turn back to Acts 1:8 to see
how it reminds us that Missions is the right thing to do, a good idea.
1. Missions, as proposed by Jesus, is the right
thing to do because it keeps our vision clear for the here and there.
Acts
1:8 has sometimes been seen as outline of the book.
Once
the church began ministering in Judea, it did not stop ministering in
Jerusalem; when it began ministering in
Samaria, it did not stop ministering in Judea or Jerusalem; when it moved on to minister in "the
farthest reaches of the world," it
continued to minister in Samaria, Judea, Jerusalem.
The
missionary church ministers in its own local and beyond its boundaries. Jesus wanted the church to minister here and
there.
The
critics who believe it must be one or the other do not understand the intention
of Jesus.
2. Missions, as proposed by Jesus, is the right
thing to do because it helps us maintain a realistic view of the world.
A
few days after Jesus offered this challenge Peter would stand before the
assembled masses on the Day of Pentecost and call people to repentance.
Repentance is not a popular concept
because it implies the presence of sin. Some have tried to picture primitive
people as innocent, free from the vices which mark most of humankind.
World Magazine told the story of an anthropologist who wrote a
National Geographic special about a tribe in the Brazilian rain forest. The program claimed the tribe was so free
from selfishness and greed that their language had no word for "mine". Back in Brazil, after the special was aired,
the writer was challenged by a linguist who claimed "mine" was one of
the first words children in the tribe learned.
To prove his point the linguist took the writer to meet a tribal
chieftain. The chief confirmed the
linguist's claim that the idealist view of the tribe's selflessness was greatly
overstated.
Ultimately
it doesn't matter if primitive tribes share the same vices as Westerners. Sin is a condition of estrangement from
God. That demonstrates itself in many
ways.
The gospel presents a realistic view
of the world--"all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
3. Missions is the right thing to do because it
proposes the most effective solution to humanity's greatest problem.
--The orthodox Jews who stood before
Peter on the Day of Pentecost, the sophisticated Athenians who stood before
Paul on Mars' Hill, and the prisoners who heard John on Patmos all shared the
same problem--sin. They all needed
forgiveness.
The gospel of the missionaries
promises that forgiveness.
CONCLUSION
Missions is the right thing to
do.
It is right to pray for missions.
It is right to give to missions.
It is right to go as missionaries.
We can understand how those who
don't know Christ might claim missions is the wrong thing to do.
But it is incongruous for Christians
who ultimately owe their knowledge of salvation to the efforts of some
missionary to claim that missions is the wrong thing to do.
Remember,
if you have not trusted Christ you are as much in need of the missionary
message as any person who has never heard of Christ.
[This blog includes
other materials on missions.
“Protestants and Missions” and “Missions in the 20th
Century,” both posted in May 2013. They
are lecture notes for a brief course on church history I taught to a men’s
discipleship group that year. By no
means are they exhaustive. If you want
to discover more about the history of the church’s missionary activity, I would
suggest you consult the works of Ruth Tucker or Mark Noll.
On a more personal note, for years I
dutifully promoted missions every year when my denomination had the ingathering
for the Lottie Moon offering for international missions.
While I still believe in missions, I admit to
growing misgivings during those three and a half decades. While I still respect and appreciate the
sacrifices our missionaries make, I believe the “hero-worship” some WMU leaders
promote is a mistake. I have met
missionaries; some are unquestionably devoted to the cause, some are as flawed
and egotistical as any stateside pastor.
We don’t need to dwell on that but we do need to be realistic when we
deal with the subject; the young people coming up in our churches have built-in
hype detectors; if we attempt to deceive them at this point, we could lose
their future support.
Those promoting missions should realize people
sitting in the pews know much more about the world than my parents and I did
when we sat watching those slides. I heard
a speaker say a certain area in the world had “no gospel witness.” Frankly, the
claim didn’t ring true. A few minutes
on the Internet revealed there were several evangelical churches in the region;
the speaker meant there were no Baptist churches there.
Denominational leaders cannot control how the
cause of international missions is promoted in our local churches. They can, however, make sure those local
leaders and pastors have the best materials available. They can stress the importance of being
accurate and gracious in presenting the needs of a region. They can encourage those local leaders to be
careful about the language they use in referring to “unchurched” peoples. I have sometimes winced when I’ve heard the
indigenous peoples of an area referred to in terms suggesting a culturally
arrogant superiority.
Okay, enough complaining. I am an evangelical and part of that identity
is a belief in evangelism and missions.
Missions is a good idea. Because
the church is made up of redeemed, yet flawed, men and women it is flawed. A flawed church cannot do missions
flawlessly. Yet, I firmly believe the
world is better because of the work of sometimes-flawed missionaries. I hope the same can be said about the work of
flawed pastors.]
