We often read Luke 1:10-12 as doing mission as the church as the meek lambs who are bringing the gospel to those who will invite us into their lives. What we do not seem to like is in verse 10-12 where the “lambs” Jesus sends appear to become the wolves. While we are to witness the kingdom of God in our town and neighbors largely to prepare the way of the Lord, what happens when those to whom we are witnessing reject the message and reject the kingdom of God? Or, have we already rejected this message and are thus impotent to deliver it as we have been sent?
Mission begins not through preaching first, but by healing the sick. Mission begins with healing. Those who are sick must be healed in order to receive the Kingdom of God. Once healing happens it is not at our behest to control the situation but to let the Spirit of God transform us and those we are given the gift to heal. By taking the role of lambs among wolves, we heal. But what if the people in the town do not receive us that we may first heal the sick?
Jesus asked his disciples to protest to the point of being offensive in a declaration of judgment not on those who would not believe, but on the political structures that would not accommodate the kingdom of God. The gospel is that which asks us to preach it gently among those who have not received it, but also asks us to protest when people do not receive it. It asks us not to protest individuals who are not receptive to specific doctrines or who choose not to invest themselves in a specific tradition, but to protest those political structures that refuse to receive the revelation of their imperfection, their limitedness, and their role as that which is to reveal the Lordship of God as the source of good and the source of life and love.
This is not something we want to do. If we are pacifists we tend to resist protest. If we are serving the church to maintain its walls and administrate the community as social bureaucrats, we resist protesting those who refuse to receive the Kingdom. If we are committed to any of the political structures that distribute goods, organize people, regulate discourse, set boundaries on behavior, etc. we resist proclaiming that they are all subject to God’s blessing, and God’s judgment. But to protest, we must first witness its reality and its existence as something that is always near. How many in our churches are willing to protest and offend in order that not only the love of God, but the judgment of God may be revealed?
The hard truth is that we often jump to protest before we are willing to heal the sick and be transformed by that relationship. We protest when our hard fought church structures and social structures within our churches and our communities are in danger of changing. We act as if we are complete people who have a firm grasp of it all. This is a lie. No human is ever “complete” either from a biological, psychological, social angle or especially from a theological angle. Humans delude themselves into thinking they are complete and safe especially in a culture that reinforces individualism and personal merit often at the expense of social and communal commitments and health. This is the source of our corporate idolatry.
The question is how many of not just our towns, but our churches resist and reject the healing that they themselves ought to bring to those who are in need of it. Have the churches pushed their fundamental missionary responsibility off on the secular structures of the world? What is the consequence for this and how can those within the church who perceive this as a problem protest the rejection of the Kingdom of God?
The goal of mission is first to receive an “habitual presence” of others in order for God to reveal what healing they need and how you may be called to heal them. Without habitual presence of others, mission is impossible. But to receive the habitual presence of others, you must be willing to engage a fundamental change in yourself and in your community. Second, only from a continually cultivated habitual presence of others may your ministry take root. How willing are we, as the Body of Christ to receive others this way? What are we willing to sacrifice in order that we may engage this depth of transformation in order that we may love God through our neighbor? Or has the church ignored the protests of those who brought the message of the kingdom so long ago that only judgment is what we shall reap in our current condition of complacency?
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