24 Words - Mission

This is the thirteenth (I know I'm way behind) of 24 blog 'thoughts' throughout June (and July) as part of a challenge to honour my sister Anna Murray who died on 20th October 2019. You can read my reflections on my sister here and watch a film I made about her here. If you want to donate to Pancreatic Cancer UK you can do so here. These posts will be short 'thoughts' rather than detailed blog posts.  So far we have looked at the words rest, steadfast, hope, mercy, lament, providence, grieve, lockdown, prognosis, covenant, preaching, wilderness and tonight we are going to look at mission.  This blog has been kindly written by my good friend Duncan Cuthill, CEO of Edinburgh City Mission.

The word ‘mission’ is used in different ways to mean different things by different people. I’ve always had a positive view of the word, ever since I became a Christian.

Our experiences of taking initial steps to follow Jesus vary, but for me, I had a very specific moment when I came to know the Lord.  It was in my home at 11:25pm on 14^th April 1985, after a mission event that I had attended at what was then called Carrubbers Close Mission on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. At a mission event, in a mission hall… so I’ve always felt drawn not just to the word ‘mission’ but to mission itself, as my relationship with God came into being as a result of Christians who went before me who had a passion for mission. Humanly speaking, my faith is the fruit of their labour. 

The speaker that night was called Nicky Cruz, a Puerto Rican evangelist who was well-known at the time. There were three things which impacted me through his preaching: revelation, testimony and response. Nicky shared a verse from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “That if you confess with your lips that ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved.” And he told his own story. Nicky was cursed by his parents as a child, they put him on a one-way plane journey to New York as a teenager, he joined, and soon led, a street-gang called the Mau-Maus; but then there was a remarkable moment in Nicky’s life when an evangelist called David Wilkerson shared his faith in Christ with Nicky: Nicky broke down in tears as he responded to the good news of God’s love in Jesus.

Revelation, testimony and response.  For a long time, I thought these were the three key elements of mission because, in my experience, this combination of God speaking through His word with clarity and assurance, and Nicky being a living ‘object lesson’ – I learned that night at Carrubbers that a disenfranchised, violent gang-leader like Nicky could be forgiven and have his life turned around - showed me that God was willing to accept people like me, despite everything that made me worry that He wouldn’t.  And if God was able to give people like Nicky a new start, why not me?  So I felt an urge to respond at the end of the meeting.  But I hesitated.  It wasn’t until I got home a couple of hours later that I responded with a prayer of faith, a confession with my lips that ‘Jesus is Lord.’ But more than my short, sincere, teenage prayer, I knew that God had initiated something in my life and that the course of my life had changed, because He’d changed my heart.

The word ‘mission’ is derived from the Latin word missio, which means ‘to be sent.’

Jesus was the greatest missionary, sent by God into the world as the ultimate expression of God’s love, that we might live through him (1 John 4: 9).  And Jesus sends us, in turn: “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent me, I also send you.”  (John 20:21). If we take this seriously, the questions that each of need to ask God are: “Who? Where? How?”

We are of infinite value to God.  I cannot fully express the depth of love that God has for us: that Jesus left His Father’s side to “dwell amongst us”, to live life with his friends and family, to bring peace and healing, instruction and justice; eventually he was betrayed, falsely accused and then nailed to a cross to suffer and die on our behalf, before rising again, conquering the power of death. This account is a message, this message is a gift, this gift displays God’s grace and is more valuable than anything that the world has to offer us: all heaven rejoices when we receive the gift of God’s grace, which sets us free.    

Over the years, my understanding of mission has developed.  I still believe that three elements are essential: sharing God’s self-revelation found in the story-line of the Bible - which finds its fullest expression in Jesus; telling Bible characters’ stories, and our own, of how our loving heavenly Father draws us into a relationship with Himself; and the need for a response, to say “Yes” to God when He calls us to look to Jesus, receive him by faith and follow him. But my view of mission has grown and continues to grow, in other areas: the central need to pursue God Himself; the joy and attraction of worship; the key role of the Holy Spirit; the necessity and power of prayer; a longing for the coming of the kingdom as God’s will is done in our families, churches and communities; God’s favour towards the sick, the poor and the disenfranchised, which is most clearly seen in the life of Jesus; the call for Christians to love one another across the whole church; the value of generosity; and the strength of mission being done with others, loving our communities together: running courses, providing for those who are in crisis, and enjoying meals together.

When Jesus declared the kingdom and preached good news, He embodied the good news. He prayed, acted and spoke, demonstrating and teaching the compassion and love of God, warning the powerful and welcoming those who would humble themselves and receive him into their lives. His mission is our mission.