We're on a Mission from God!

Luke 4: 16-22

Do you know who the Blues Brothers are? The Blues Brothers were a band created by John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd in the 1970s, which went on to make a block busting movie in the early 80s. The movie centred around a mission that had been given them - to pay some outstanding tax, owed by a Convent which had brought them up as boys. The Convent was run by a terrifying Mother Superior...a nun who the Blues Brothers called 'the Penguin'.

The Blues Brothers decided that the only way they knew how to raise that kind of money for the Penguin was to bring together their old 'rhythm and blues review' band - and put on a concert. In the process they manage to get blown up, extort money out of another band, break up the families of their old band members, terrify a restaurant full of wealthy diners, and get chased across the county by the entire Chicago police force and most of the American Army. But it doesn't matter. They are certain that they will fulfill their task because, as they keep reminding themselves..."We're on a mission from God"!

Of course, what the movie-makers were doing was parodying history. The claim that 'we're on a mission from God' has been a dangerous, often evil justification for all sorts of horrors. The Muslim armies that swept across the Middle East and North Africa in the 8 and 900s thought they were on a mission from God. The Crusaders who marched down from Western Europe to 're-conquer' Jerusalem thought they were on a mission from God. So did Al Quaida, when they blew up the Twin Towers. So did the Taliban soldiers who battled for the capital of Afghanistan last week.

So, does that mean that God doesn't set mission targets? Should we ignore anyone who says that God has sent them on a mission. Well, no. That would be rather like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just because some people have perverted religion for selfish ends doesn't mean that religion itself is wrong. Only the people who have made it wrong are wrong. Religion - any religion - can only be judged fairly by the teaching of its founder.

In today's Gospel, we heard Jesus declaring his mission. It wasn't a mission to conquer anyone. It wasn't a mission to take up arms against anyone. No...listen again to the mission that Jesus believed that he had been given by God; a mission that he read straight out of the Scriptures, from the 61st chapter of Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.

This, then, is Jesus mission. Its a mission of mercy...a mission to the poor, and the imprisoned and the blind and the oppressed. Its a mission which is rooted in God's passionate love for his children - a love which flowed out through Jesus and touched the lives of the marginalised of the world. In this simple quotation, Jesus states his absolute priority for the poor. He re-emphasises the message of his birth - the birth in a stable, attended by shepherds; the message that God is for the poor and the marginalised...and by extension, against the rich and the powerful.

Of course this is not just an earthly, political vision. It's not only a declaration of love for the poor and the sick and the blind of Jewish society. It's also a spiritual vision. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus' absolute priority for the poor is re-emphasised in the so called 'Sermon on the Plain' - in chapter 6. "Blessed are you who are poor", he says, "for yours is the Kingdom of God". But in Matthew's gospel, this same message is given a different 'spin'. Like a diamond, with many faces, Matthew helps us to see the spiritual as well as the political message. In Matthew, chapter 5, during the "Sermon on the Mount" we hear Jesus say, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God".

Taking these two 'spins' - these two interpretations of Jesus' words, written down decades after he spoke them, we see that Jesus left his followers with two very clear senses of his mission priorities: First, they were to show God's love to the poor and the sick and the blind and the oppressed. But they were also to be people who reached out to the poor in spirit...to those who didn't yet know the richness of a life lived with God, those who were oppressed by the cares of this world, and blinded by the vacant promises of wealth and consumerism, or held captive by the arid promises of war and violence.

So, Jesus calls his followers to an essentially two-pronged mission. Change the world, but also change hearts. Call people to live justly - but also call people to live with God.

Perhaps that is why so many well meaning attempts at changing the world over the centuries have ultimately failed. I sat down to read the Communist Manifesto last year.  I was interested to see what it was that had inspired people like Stalin and Chairman Mao to create such turmoil and upheaval in Russia and China. I found it a fascinating document. So much of it makes absolute sense...and so much of what it condemns is still very much in evidence in our world. The rich are still getting richer...just look at what has happened in the banking world. And the poor are still getting poorer...just look at the awful horror or Haiti - made so much worse by the poverty and corruption of that nation. Whilst banks are awarding themselves wages of billion dollars - the Government of Haiti is crippled by a loan of just $890 million. Unable to feed its people or repair its infrastucture, or educate its children - for the sake of a loan of less than 100th of what bankers are paying themselves this year.

Marx and Engels, authors of the Communist Manifesto, were right in so many respects. They correctly identified the issue - that the wealth of the world is held in the hands of too few greedy people. But whilst their diagnosis of the disease was right, their prescription for the cure was not. They believed that justice for the poor could only be won if the poor themselves took it from the rich. They argued for the proletariat to rise up and over-thrown the bourgeois. They argued that goods should be shared equally among all people.

Many people have claimed that Communism would have been supported by Jesus. Jesus, they say, had a deep, abiding hatred of the bourgeois and the powerful. "He would", they say, "have been on the side of the poor - and would have wanted the poor to be blessed."  And in many ways they would be right. But remember Jesus' two-pronged mission statement - a mission that was political and spiritual. Jesus knew that real change for the poor would only come when there was a change in the heart of the rich. For the rich to help the poor, the rich had first to become poor in spirit...conscious of their need for God. Indeed, for the poor to help the poor - for people to love their neighbours as themselves - they first need a spiritual awakening...a waking up to the knock of God on the door of their heart.

"Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you and you with me." (Revelation 3:20)

That's why Jesus commission to his disciples included a spiritual as well as political imperative. At the end of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus' final commission to his disciples is, once again, two-pronged. First, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them...". There is the spiritual commission. Go and make disciples. Disciples are people who follow their master. Disciples, in Christian terms, are people who know their need of God. Those who are baptised are those who have repented, or who are learning to repent...to turn away from human ways of doing things, and turning towards God.  They are the poor in spirit, who are promised the Kingdom of God.

 Then, the second part of the commission: "...teach them to obey everything I have commanded you". Jesus' commands are the clear, unambiguous teachings. Love God, Love Neighbour. Feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned. Or in today's quotation from Isaiah: "bring good news to the poor...proclaim release to the captives...recovery of sight to the blind...and let the oppressed go free".

So - mission statements are interesting things. But unless they have that combination of the political and the spiritual, they are doomed to failure - as the communist parties of the world have discovered.

Last week, as you know, I published a draft five year plan...which we will be working on together next week. One of our choir members who shall remain nameless, Bill!, said to me after the service "Didn't Stalin publish a five year plan?". I know he was joking...his tongue was firmly in his cheek. But of course he was right.

But I rather hope that there will be a fundamental difference between Stalin's five year plan and ours. Stalin set out to positively squash religion. Karl Marx had taught that religion was a kind of opium for the people, which kept them subservient and drugged by the bourguois.  So Stalin was determined to stamp out the spiritual dimension from Russian society entirely. His new Russia would be founded on science, and justice for the poor. There was no place for the spiritual in Stalin's plan. There was no vision of God at the heart of Stalin's plan and, as we know, "without a vision the people perish". (Proverbs 29:18)

Our plan, however, will have a spiritual core. Before we even think about the things we want to do together over the next five years, we are asking ourselves questions about the kind of people we want to be. My suggestion is that we want to be people who pray, learn and serve...but you may have other ideas; ideas I want to hear at next week's conference.

But in the meantime, I want to leave you with a challenge. Before we can truly say what we want to do together - it is helpful to think about who we want to be as individuals. My challenge to you, this week, as you prepare for the Conference is to think about what your own mission statement would say. Take a sheet of paper, and sit quietly for a while - thinking about your life. Where have you been? Where are you going? What would you want people to say of you after you have gone?

That's a great question isn't it. There's an modern proverb I like...which I try to remind myself of from time to time. It goes something like "when looking back over their life, there was never a man who said 'I wish I had spent more time at work!'"  What would you want to be able to say of your life when you look back over it?

What is your mission statement? What are the words that sum up who you are, and who you want to be? Do you want to be a person who is known for their charity, or for their greed. Do you want people to comment on your external beauty, or your inner beauty? Do you want to be a better parent, or grandparent? Do you want to give more time to prayer, or to serving others? Or do you want to spend more time in front of the TV? It's your choice. You have, as St Augustine taught us, the free will to do what you want with your life. But what are you going to do with it? What is your mission statement?

Perhaps if we each take a little time this week to think about that question - we might all come to next week's conference with a clearer sense of what kind of church we want to be...and of what "mission from God" we are being given.

Amen.