Preached 10/4/09

World Communion

Preached by Dr. Paul R. Smith

West Side Presbyterian Church

Contact: office@wspc.org

OUR LITTLE CORNER OF THE GLOBE!

[John 10:11-16]

Prayer for Illumination – Father, in the remainder of this worship hour, as we consider your word now, I pray that your Holy Spirit would move powerfully among us. I need the anointing of your Spirit if I am to communicate the truth that you desire for us to know and to understand. So I pray that you would speak through me. Cleanse my own heart that I might be a vessel fit for your service. Cleanse the heart of each person here also, as we have come into your presence today partly for that purpose – that these vessels might be cleansed and receive your word and be filled by that word and by your Spirit. Nourish our spirits here in worship and at your Table, through Christ Jesus our Lord, AMEN.

Message

I suppose it goes without saying that world views are a matter of perspective – the vantage point from which we view the world around us. I can remember rather vividly a number of times in my life when my world view was forcibly expanded by a new perspective. One of the first came when I was about 5 years old and my parents announced that we would be moving from our home in Belvidere, South Dakota (pop. 250) to another town 14 miles away (!!) – a town by the name of Kadoka (a Sioux Indian word that means “hole in the wall!”) which, with a population of 539 was over twice as large as the only community I had ever known! I hadn’t really thought much about the fact that there were other towns in the world, let alone that there might be other people living in them and doing things that didn’t include me.

I was hopeful that the culture there might not be entirely alien. (Though I don’t suppose at age five I would have expressed it exactly that way.) Nevertheless, I looked forward to seeing the lot where we would be building a new home in this new community. Perhaps it would provide something akin to the security of our old yard with trees and hedges with which I had become familiar, flower beds and gardens, amidst which we could build a house which no doubt would look pretty much like the one we were currently living in and I could be at home once again in this new and otherwise alien community. But my shock knew no boundaries when at last we stopped the car in the middle of nowhere along a dirt road which bordered the new town and my folks pointed across a barbed wire fence at a grassy field in which several Hereford cows were grazing and said proudly, “This is the spot where we are going to build our new home!”

I looked at them incredulously! This wasn’t a yard, it was an open field! How could we even get to the front door through that barbed wire fence? I didn’t even see a gate! And what about those enormous cows? To a five-year old they certainly looked enormous. I wouldn’t be able to go outside to play without fear of being stepped on, assuming I even wanted to play in a field of prairie grass that was taller than I, punctuated periodically with decidedly unfriendly looking patches of cactus – to say nothing of the “land mines” that cows tend to plant here and there! Why did my world have to change anyway? It was perfectly fine just the way it was!

As you can imagine, however, within a few years I had adjusted to this alien culture and pretty much made it my own. It wasn’t so too bad. In fact, living in such a big town [!] had enlarged my horizons significantly, and given me a taste for an expanding world. One of my favorite pastimes on those hot, endless summer afternoons was to climb up to a perch near the top of a gigantic cottonwood tree that would provide significant perspective. It was probably the highest point in western South Dakota outside of the Black Hills! From my perch up there in that enormous tree I could dream of travel to far-off places . . . like Eagle’s Nest Butte, which I could see on the horizon, blue and mystical, 50 miles away! Nearly the other side of the world!

But nothing I imagined could match our periodic excursions to the exotic, urban world of Rapid City, South Dakota, on the edge of the Black Hills nearly 100 adventure-filled miles away! Here they actually had paved streets, and parks with trees growing and soft, green grass (prairie grass is rarely green and never soft). And they had a real, live skyscraper in Rapid City – the nine-story Alex Johnson Hotel! I would stand on the sidewalk and just gaze at that towering building, reaching up into the heavens. It’s still the tallest building in Rapid City by the way, and it has hosted at least a half dozen presidents. In any case, my inner child of the past awakens every time I visit that city and look at that magnificent hotel. That exotic place represented somehow this incredible universe, reaching up into the sky, and my awe and wonder at a world so much larger and so much more diverse than the little circle of my own family and my own immediate neighborhood. So much depends upon our perspective, doesn’t it?

But if the discovery of a vast world which lay beyond my horizon was a shock, the truly shattering discovery, which hit me a few years later on a trip across the country to visit Washington DC where I was born, was that there were actually people living in the world who were carrying on their lives entirely unaware of what was happening in mine! Do you remember that moment in your own life when you realized there were those who didn’t even know you were here, amazingly enough – and furthermore, they didn’t really care? This was almost more than I could comprehend. It demanded a shift in my world view of cosmic proportions – a Copernican revolution if you will, which unceremoniously dethroned me from the center of the universe and left me somewhere out on the fringe! I could deal with, and even enjoy, a world which continued to expand out from a center in which I was comfortably ensconced. But a universe in which I was no longer the hub (indeed, a Copernican revolution!), a cosmos which operated without consulting me, a world which didn’t really know or care whether I was there at all was almost more than I could fathom.

All of us, I think, find such a world so unsettling, when we stop and think about it, that we sub-consciously withdraw into a more manageable world, a more secure world in which we may once again become the center of all things. Of course we know the rest of the world is out there, but, well, it’s just not as important as the world we inhabit. And, for those of us who allow God into our world at all, we are at least assured that He is most interested in what we are doing.

Of course it turns out that God is indeed terribly interested in what we personally are doing. He is quite willing to turn His attention directly upon us. He knows us all by name. He knows what we are thinking and what we are doing. He knows what we are concerned about and what our needs are. He is willing to listen to what we have to say, and to become involved in our lives in very personal ways. He assures us of His care and His interest in even the smallest details of our lives. In short, God, the One who created the universe, is willing to be a parent to us and to take it upon himself to see, as a good parent will, that we are provided for every day and that we are loved and protected. God does this for us.

“I AM,” (the words by which God identified himself to Moses: I am – the source of all things) “I am the good shepherd;” Jesus explained to His earliest followers, using a similar image they would understand as intimate and focused upon them; “I know my sheep and my sheep know me – [just like a good parent] just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep.” I am sure that those who heard Jesus say that were very reassured. It was just as they had suspected all along. They were the central object of His concern – they could have told you that. They were the central object of His attention, and they were pleased that He recognized it and was reassuring them that this was the case.

But then came a shocking revelation, an enlargement of their world view:

[By the way, he said] I have other sheep that are not of this [fold]. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.

Wait a minute! What do you mean, “other sheep”? Who else could there be? Your people are all right here! You’re talking to the sons of Abraham, the man with whom God entered into a special covenant, promising His eternal blessing. That was to us! We are your people and we are the sheep of your pasture. Psalm 100 tells us that. Who else could possibly occupy your time and your attention? I mean, we’re here. Everything worth noting in the world is happening right here at the center of the universe, remember? How could anything significant be happening anywhere else?

You see, not at all unlike us, I think the children of Abraham never really listened to the whole counsel of God. They heard and they welcomed the first part of God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you . . .” We love that. It sounded good to them. It was great to have God’s attention focused upon them and to have His promises directed at them. “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse,” that sounded better yet, and it was not surprising at all. That promise confirmed for them that they were secure right there at the center of God’s universe.

What they missed I think was the climax of that discussion and promise which was, that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” He said it again and again – “I love all the people but I am working here through you.” God had a world view that they did not yet share. God had other things in mind besides blessing them and indulging what we would call today their ethnocentrism – or ours either, for that matter. He had a whole world that He loved, a whole world to take care of, a whole world full of people whom He loved as dearly as He loved them, whose names He knew just as He knew theirs, and whose future He cared about every bit as intensely as He cared about theirs. It was not a world centered on the Jews. It was a world in which He had generously invited them to share the center with Him. There is the Copernican revolution. Indeed, He was willing to invite all who would become believers to come to the center and to share it with Him.

But I think God’s people in the Old Testament never really got it. And the challenge for us is whether we really get it as well. They simply absorbed all the attention like a child “showing-off” for company, blissfully unaware that the universe did not actually revolve around them. I am reminded of Job’s sardonic remark to the people who purported to tell him what it was that God was thinking and doing in the world – Ahhh, Job responded, “No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you.” Yes, they were the people. They spoke for God. They were the object of His affection. They were the focus of His care. You want to know something, you come to them. They had received His revelation. They were the flock for whom the Good Shepherd would lay down His life! It reminds me a lot of evangelical Christians today! – No doubt we are the people on whom God has focused His attention.

Then came this stunning statement, “I have other sheep which are not of this fold.” They know my voice too, and I love them too, and I am laying my life down for them also. They don’t look like you. They don’t sound like you, but they are my sheep as well. And one day I will call all my flocks together, and the differences which loom so large before you now are going to disappear, because together you are going to find yourselves in a flock following one shepherd.

Perhaps it is inevitable that we all feel “we are the people.” I don’t know if you know this, but a lot of the foreign names for various ethnic groups in the world simply mean “the people” – we are “the people.” Who else would God care about? Who else is important? God must be particularly preoccupied with what we are doing. I’ll bet virtually every person in this room would be shocked if Jesus were visiting West Seattle one Sunday and chose someplace besides West Side to worship! . . . He wouldn’t do that! Come on, is He going to spend the day with the Baptists? And we all know Jesus wasn’t Catholic, right?

Isn’t it amazing that we North American Protestants (stop and think about this) hardly take into consideration 60 million Roman Catholics in this country or the hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics around the world! Yet God is doing amazing and wonderful things in the Roman Catholic church? And third-world charismatics too are experiencing great growth, the power of God’s Spirit at work among them. God is working among His people whether they are charismatic or independent, whether they are liturgical or orthodox or contemporary; whatever they are and wherever they are, God is at work among His people!

We can hardly see beyond our own block, but let me share with you some of the things that God is doing around the world. We need a little perspective. So I want you to climb up in that cottonwood tree with me and see if we can see the world. Do you know that . . .

* 115,000 people become Christians every single day in our world – 115,000 new believers every day of every year!

* 5,600 new churches are opening every week in the world. That is amazing!

* More than 28,000 become believers every day in the People’s Republic of China – 28,000 a day! In 1950, when China closed to foreign missionaries, there were about one million believers in all of China. Today, conservative estimates suggest there are probably well over 75 million. Some say twice that many, maybe 150 million. Chinese missionaries are leaving that place and going to places like Tibet to share the gospel! That is wonderful.

* 20,000 people become believers every day in Africa; that continent was 3% Christian in 1900 and is nearly 60% Christian today. I think Ron Rice told me it has grown from about 10 million Christians in 1900 to 360 million today. God is at work in Africa.

* In 1900, Korea had no Protestant church; in fact it was deemed “impossible to penetrate” in 1900. Today Korea is 35% Christian. Imagine it! This is an Asian country with Oriental religious and philosophic backgrounds which is 35% Christian! Imagine that! There are 7,000 churches in Seoul, Korea alone, most of them, by the way, Presbyterian – the result of an energetic Presbyterian mission at the beginning of that century. There are two or three times as many Presbyterians in Korea as there are in America.

* In Islamic Indonesia, the percentage of Christians is so high the government refuses to print the statistics. The best estimates are somewhere around 15% of the total population of an overwhelmingly Islamic republic!

* More Muslims in Iran (in that scary place) have come to Christ since 1980 than in the previous 1000 years combined. Isn’t that amazing? Before Khomeini’s revolution in 1979 there were about 2,000 Iranian believers in the entire country. After years of intensified persecution, with the attempt to exterminate those 2,000 Iranian believers, there are now around 15,000 Iranian believers! Tough place to be a Christian, but they are continuing to grow.

* Or this remarkable statistic: After 70 years of oppression in the Soviet Union, Christians nevertheless numbered about 100 million. That’s five times the number of the Communist Party at the height of its popularity. (And you thought the Communists were taking over the world!). There were five times as many Christians all along! [Most statistics fr. Catch the Vision 2000, p. 16, updated online]

Is God doing something in the world outside of our little corner of the globe? You better believe He is!

Let’s put this in historical perspective – I know that numbers can sometimes get away from us. In A.D. 100 (shortly after the time of Christ and about the time of the book of Acts and the birth of the church) the ratio of believers to non-believers, Christians to non-Christians, was 360 non-Christians for every one Christian. Today that ratio is approximately 9 non-Christians to every one believer – from 360 to 1, down to 9 to 1. Is God doing something in our world? You know we live in a very secular part of the world and they would like to make us believe that God is irrelevant. He is transforming the world while we are not looking. There are certainly millions, billions of people who don’t know Christ, but look at what God is doing in calling people to Himself. God’s Spirit is continuing to work all around that globe.

And when those churches are formed and planted in various places around the world, they have been growing like wildfire. We, entrenched as we are, can hardly imagine what God is doing through churches in other places, reaching across language and racial and cultural barriers, but there are amazing things happening here. There are Honduran Christians from Central America serving as missionaries to Muslims in North Africa – Central American believers going to North Africa to share the good news with Muslims! There are Chinese believers settling among unreached peoples in Tibet. Native American Navajos are sending missionaries to Lapland of all places! And thousands of Indian evangelists have been raised up to target the 2,000 unreached ethnic groups within the nation of India.

In fact, let me tell you something that is happening in a remote, land-locked, hilly and heavily forested area of Northeast India known as Mizoram (mē’- zo-rahm) today. Just over one hundred years ago, in 1894, two Scottish Presbyterian missionaries arrived in Mizoram to share the gospel with an animistic tribal people of Mongolian descent who had no written language and who had never heard of the Gospel. There was one Mizo convert to Christianity during their first four years in that remote land. Then a couple of Welsh Presbyterian missionaries joined them and a few more people came to Christ. Within 50 years – one generation – the entire Mizo nation (now nearly 1 million people) had been converted to Christianity and today the Mizos rank #2 in literacy in all of India with a literacy rate of roughly 90%. (Remember, this was 0% when the missionaries arrived, as they did not have a written language! The missionaries repaired that and started them on the way to literacy.) Not only that, but they are currently supporting over 1500 missionaries to the surrounding tribal peoples there in India, and nearly 200 Mizo missionaries have left India to plant the seeds of the gospel in other countries around the world! I mean, is God’s Spirit at work in the back country of India? More so, it seems, than here in the Pacific Northwest, at the center of the universe! And we thought “we were the people!”

We are, of course. In fact we need to have a little perspective on that too, because we are one of the “other” flocks Jesus was talking about. When you read from John 10, you usually identify yourself with the flock He is talking to. But we are not the flock He was talking to. We are one of the flocks He was talking about. The thing to remember is that He has flocks all over the world! Most of them, it seems, healthier than our own! Once a year we celebrate World Communion. On this day every Christian congregation around the world is invited to the Lord’s table.

In the past, I think, probably most Western Christians looked at this day as a celebration of the accomplishment in world missions. But it is so much more than this. We ourselves, of course, are a mission church here in America. The movement did not begin with us in the West. Christianity began in the Middle East, from there to Asia, into Africa, and then into Europe; and finally from Europe to the primitive shores of America. Like so many mission churches before us and after us, we joined in a movement of God’s Spirit which was so much larger than what was happening in “our little corner of the globe.” (By the way, I’m quite aware that globes don’t have corners. But it is an appropriate expression of how provincial our view of the world often is.)

World Communion Sunday it seems to me is an opportunity to step back and gain a little perspective on what God is doing in our world, to climb up in that cottonwood tree and look around. It is a day which should do at least two things for us. Number one, it should help us to grow up and get beyond the self-absorption so typical of the naïve child who really believes he is the center of the universe. God is doing astonishing things out there that we haven’t seen or even thought about, and that we haven’t been celebrating and that we ought to be celebrating; and World Communion gives us opportunity to do that, which is why I shared those statistics about the church with you this morning.

At the same time it should encourage us that we are a part of something much larger than ourselves, and we ought not to be discouraged. It is time you and I became World Christians, with a world vision. We need to pay attention and learn what is going on in our world. We need to celebrate what is happening in other denominations and in other churches and in other nations where the people are really responsive to the leading of God’s Spirit. We need to learn from Christians around the world who are willing to pay a tremendous price to follow Jesus Christ – a far greater price than most of us are paying. We need to deepen our understanding of God’s call to “make disciples of all nations.” What does that mean? What are the implications for us? We need to learn what our responsibility is for world missions. We need to be praying for our brothers and sisters around the world in a systematic way. We need to be living and giving as if it really mattered whether or not people in every area of the globe come to know that Jesus loves them.

In a few moments we will be gathering at the Lord’s table. Jesus wanted this to be an expression of our unity in Him, an expression of our solidarity with Christians around the globe. “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?” Paul asked in his first letter to the Corinthians. “And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”

As I come to the table with you this morning, I am going to have a particular image in my mind, a vivid image on this World Communion Sunday. We are familiar with what happens here, but a while back Carreen and I were able to share communion with some of our missionaries when we were traveling through Asia. We sat one Sunday morning on a slivered wooden bench in an open-walled, ram-shackle church, with just a little corrugated tin roof and some poles in the corners, constructed for a tiny community of squatters in a poverty-stricken barrio outside Manila in the Philippines. We were served for communion that Sunday white crackers on plastic plates, and in little paper Dixie cups a bit of very thin grape Kool-aid, while chickens scoured the dirt beneath our feet for any crumbs that might drop. They had come to share communion as well. And I was overwhelmed by the Spirit of Christ in that place.

This is world communion! If your eyes are open to the world you will see many more than just this particular family gathered today at the Lord’s table today. This is His world! We are at the center but only insofar as we are with Jesus who is the center. We are a part of something much bigger than ourselves. Let us worship Him as we come to His table and thank Him for all He is accomplishing – some of it even through us!

Closing prayer – Father, we come to your Table now and we pray that you would nourish our spirits and enlarge our vision that we might know that we have been called to the privilege of participating with you in something you set out to do from the moment of creation. A lot of other things seem important to us – making a living, having stuff, enjoying ourselves. Those are side effects of the wonderful world you have created, but they certainly are not the heart; they are not the center of the universe. The center is that we can know life, we can know joy, we can know your love, we can be embraced by your love, we can share that love with others, and in the end we can know more than we ever imagined. So here at your Table renew our commitment to walk with you, to be your disciples, and to make disciples of all nations, for we pray it in the name of Jesus Christ who shared that commission with us, AMEN.