A fierce proponent of ecumenism, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson was among a core group of Christian leaders who, in 2001, sought to bring together all families of Christian expression in the US for the purpose of fellowship, unity, and witness. Their efforts launched the creation of Christian Churches Together (CCT), a gathering of all of the major Christian groups - Evangelical, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Pentecostals, historic Protestant, and Racial and Ethnic churches. He has served two terms as chair of the CCT steering committee since his initial election in 2002. Today, CCT represents over one-hundred-million Christians in our country. He is also a member of the steering committee of the Global Christian Forum, a new worldwide ecumenical initiative gathering a diverse body of Christian churches and interchurch organizations to explore and address common challenges. Click here to read more about the Rev. Granberg-Michaelson.
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Presented by Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson
2008 Honorary Doctor of Divinity Degree Recipient
I remember sitting in the family room of our home looking at a map of the world on the wall. I was about 15. The map had lines drawn on it, beginning in Chicago, and pins indicating various stops, marking a route that was zig-zagging around the world—through Taiwan, India, Ceylon, Abu Dabi, Africa, and onward. It was chronicling the journey of my grandparents, who were traveling around the world in 120 days.
It was no typical sightseeing tour. Rather, they were visiting missionaries. My grandfather, Carl A. Gundersen, a Norwegian immigrant who started a modest construction business, was chairman of the board for TEAM missions (The Evangelical Alliance Mission). As a committed evangelical layman, he had a heart of missions, and as board chair, he decided he and his wife should go and personally visit many of the TEAM missionaries who were serving in remote areas throughout the world, to offer to them support and spiritual encouragement, as well as to learn of their challenges and opportunities.
My grandmother wrote letters, constituting a diary of their experience, using a small typewriter she carried with her. About every week an epistle would arrive—one of several carbon copies sent to family members and friends. We would read her account and then look at the map to see where they were. I have never forgotten that map, or those letters.
Mission is about being sent. If you want a definition, hear this: “Mission is the intentional crossing of boundaries in Word and deed to share the love of God known in Jesus Christ.” You in the Moravian tradition understand this, since you began as a mission movement; it’s in your denominational DNA.
It’s early in the ministry of Jesus when he first sends out his disciples, in the words we heard from Luke. He’s in Galilee, and has only recently called the Twelve. But this pattern, which forms the heart of the church’s life, has begun already: calling, gathering, centering, and sending. And it moves fast. Jesus has formed them into a community, taught them the sermon on the mount, shared in ministry that heals and cures more dramatically than can be imagined, but then sends them out. They haven’t even learned the Lord’s Prayer, much less experienced the Transfiguration, and made the fateful journey into Jerusalem. That’s because being called as a disciple means being sent forth into mission, and this happens early in one’s faith journey. The calling, gathering, centering, and sending cycle of discipleship keeps recycling through the lives of those who follow Jesus as a pattern that shapes and molds the community of faith.
When Jesus sent out the disciples on this first mission, his instruction was to “proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.” Mission always calls the followers of Jesus to join God’s work in the world. The disciples go out to other villages with the assurance that God was at work there, just as God was in Jesus, their master. There was a new way to live, where enemies were loved, where outcasts were embraced, where forgiveness destroyed ancient social and religious barriers, and where illness and demonic possession were healed through the active power of God. Physical healing was the tangible sign of an emerging kingdom that opened life to God’s intentions for humanity.
Mission is the faithful response of those who follow Jesus to join God’s work in the world. The early church knew and lived out of this missional identity. In an alien culture its very life was a testimony to what God’s power could do. People were transformed through the power demonstrated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and called into the community that lived as his body. They gathered, they were centered spiritually in their new identity, and they were sent. To Antioch, to Ephesus, to Rome, to the utter most parts of the earth.
A new social reality was being created, overcoming the racial, cultural, gender, and economic divisions of that society. The church, those called by God, was intentionally, and continually, crossing boundaries in Word and deed to share the love of God known in Jesus Christ. Mission defined the church’s identity.
It is this missional identity that the church must recover today to anchor its life, define its witness, and seek its future.
The disciples are sent out on their missional journey leaving behind those securities that made them comfortable—staff, bag, bread, money, even an extra tunic. There is, I think, a radical dependence upon God that is being required, without the normal props that insure us against risk. Further, there is a striking vulnerability to the hospitality of those whom they encounter, and among whom they proclaim the good news, and discover the kingdom of God. They were to be at the mercy of those who might welcome them.
The disciples returned so anxious to share how they had seen God at work, and Jesus gathered them together. The cycle is reversed. Instead of being gathered in order to be sent, they now are gathered by Jesus because they have been sent. Their fellowship revolves around their mission, rather than around each other.
Years ago, my wife Karin and I were part of Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., founded and led by Gordon Cosby. Church of the Saviour is a high commitment congregation organized around “mission groups.” Every member belongs to one, and these groups are defined by their outward, missional call. That might be working on Jubilee Housing, or hospitality at the Potter’s House, or a health and healing ministry with low income people, or any number of missional callings. The group also provided the accountability and support for one’s inward spiritual journey with Christ. What always struck me was how fellowship—koinonia—was created not for its own sake, but in response to mission.
It is through the church that God is making his appeal to the world. When a congregation reclaims its missional identity, it recognizes that its very life is shaped to be an agent of God’s change in the world, and become a revolutionary force for good.
My systematic theology professor at Western Seminary in Holland, Michigan was Dr. John Hesselink. I remember a story he told. John played football for Pella High School in Iowa, and was a line man, a guard. One particular game he faced an opposing guard 20 lbs heavier, and John was being badly beaten. The battle in the trenches was particularly discouraging, as the opposing line seemed to dominate. Going back to the huddle after another poor play, John remembers thinking—or maybe saying—“Couldn’t we just stay here for a while?”
Sometimes the church huddle feels too comfortable to leave. We become the “holy huddle.”
I noticed the football stadium while driving here this morning—I guess the college’s nickname for your football team is the Greyhounds. Well, when you watch them play, let me ask you a question. Do you focus on how well they huddle? Do you judge them by how efficient their huddle is, or comment on who talks there, and what the huddle formation is like?
The huddle is important; it’s where each player understands the assignment and role he is to play as part of the team. But what matters is what each player does when they break the huddle and play the game.
Our focus, it seems to me, is so much on what happens within our congregations. We slice and dice all the numbers about who’s coming in and who’s going out of our churches. But friends, hear this: the church isn’t the final destination for God’s grace and love. The world is.
So many of our congregations, it seems to me, are still guided by the paradigm of “come and see.” Just come into the congregation. Show up. Sit in our pews, come to our classes, bring a dish to our potlucks. See what a good time of fellowship we have. And that is all true, and good.
But in our time, we need to be guided by a different paradigm: “go and be.” The church is gathered in order to be sent. The word we who are baptized most need to hear is “go.” Go in order to “be” Christ’s presence in the world. Go to be the bearer of good news, and the healer of broken places.
Don’t come and see the church. Go and be the church.
We are gathered to be sent.
And that, finally, is the true joy of discipleship. We are invited to participate in what God is already doing in this world. That is always risky. We have to decide what to leave behind, and where to open our lives again and anew to others as we becoming living witnesses to God’s reign in this world.
But then we witness, and even become the vessels, for God’s transforming power to be at work in people’s lives, in their communities, and in the world. We follow Christ in mission, in a lost and broken world so loved by God. And then we are brought together by Jesus to celebrate his presence in our midst, and share our joy in being called, gathered, centered, and sent to join God’s mission in the world.
Why? Because, like the disciples, we hear Jesus focusing ourselves on where we are being sent. It’s about this kingdom, this power, this presence and reign of God that is breaking into our world…it’s about those 75 million Americans, increasing in number every year, who are unchurched and spiritually homeless…it’s about those multitudes in our midst possessed by the modern demons of our society…it’s about one out of five children in this richest society who are hungry and malnourished…it’s about the world, and all of its church-forsaken places, that is so loved by God.
On this commencement day, I trust you will remember the missional DNA of your Moravian tradition. You have been gathered here in order to be sent, to join the work of God in the world, transforming lives through Jesus Christ, healing and rebuilding their communities through the power of God’s Spirit, and proclaiming this Good News of God’s Kingdom.
To God be the glory.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Wesley Granberg-Michaelson |
