BLOG 4/10/18. “IF YOU CAN’T RELATE YOUR LIFE TO THE GREAT COMMISSION, THEN YOUR LIFE IS IRRELEVANT TO HISTORY”
Doesn’t that sound like an outrageously extreme proposition? It’s worth chewing on. It comes, as I recall, in something similar to this form from Robert Colemen, who was professor of missions at Asbury Theological Seminary, and a wonderful and edifying scholar in that field of missiology. Many will find this almost impossible to relate to. We have subverted the whole of our Christ-given enterprise by defining the church as institution, and by creating that category of church professionals—including both the teachers and the missionaries—and so absolving the rest of God’s people from the responsibility to obey Jesus’ design for all his people.
The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) is given to the whole of the community of Christ’s followers. It does not consist of some special vocation to go to some exotic other place as a professional—though, indeed, there are those who have such a calling to cross cultural boundaries as has been displayed from the very beginning (such as the apostle Paul). I want to insist here that your mission field, and mine, is where we operate 24/7, from home to workplace and all in between. It is to live out the Beatitudes among all kinds of people: polite and impolite, pleasant and difficult, curious and indifferent, ethnic cultures, irreligious and those contemptuous of religion … you name it. It is in such unexpected places that we are to be the Body of Christ, to be “the sweet aroma of Christ.”
It is in such seemingly unsuspected places that we are to wear the gospel of peace on our feet. It is in such surprising places that we are relate our lives to the Great Commission, and so case our lives to be relevant to history. It is in the realities that we are to grow into maturity in Christ, and bear much fruit. It is not some other person’s calling—it is ours, all of ours. Maybe it is a good time to copy here the oft-quoted comment from C. S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory, and so I will …
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
Welcome to the vast company of those expediting the mission of God in the world, to the faithful disciple-makers who are incarnating the love of Christ in the cubicles, schools, back streets, stressful daily occupations, … and becoming witnesses to the great hope that God has inaugurated in Jesus Christ. It is to such that he will say: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
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