My previous post on work brought up questions about our efforts to create small anticipatory pictures of the kingdom through helping the poor to get more money for themselves and their families. When Rebecca and I accepted this opportunity through Planting Faith it was this that we primarily considered, and it is this work that dominates much of our thoughts. But lately I’ve been thinking about a different and much less discussed part of the missionary call.
Rebecca and I have been studying the Pauline Epistles together, and we have been amazed by what these very first “missionary updates” have to say about the call to “go.” And while much of the theological meat comes in the middle of these brilliant letters, what has struck me recently mainly shows up in the greetings and the good-byes. I’m talking about the names. Paul’s letters ooze with personal references: Priscilla and Aquilla who risked their lives for him, Stachys, the dear friend, Apliatus and Apelles whose names indicate they were probably slaves, Rufus and his mother who had become a mother to the apostle, Fortunatus who refreshed his spirit, Epaphras the dear fellow servant, to name just a few.
Two points I’ve missed in the past: first, almost all of these names are Gentile names. These are non-Jewish converts to Christ. In the very earliest days of the church, the gospel called formerly racially defined Jews out into a world of mutual relationships with the “unclean Gentiles.” In fact although we can try to ignore it, a huge amount of the New Testament and particularly Paul specifically addresses a racial question: how do we, who once were enemies, now live as the new people of God defined primarily by our union with King Jesus the Christ?
Second, and infinitely more challenging for the western missionary, Paul, the most prolific author of the New Testament, the authoritative and almost borderline arrogant apostle to the Gentiles, clearly loves and depends on these Gentiles. These are not paternalistic one-sided relationships in which the “man of God” comes and helps the spiritually bereft Gentiles. No, these are his mothers and brothers in the faith, people whose death would cause sorrow upon sorrow, who supply his needs!
And so we get this crazy picture of members of this new, persecuted and poor movement traveling great distances through dangerous waters (remember Paul’s shipwrecks) and spending great sums of money all in order to be together, to share in what God has taught them in the faith, to support their brothers and sisters in their need, or to receive help in their own times of need. And suddenly it occurs to me that part of the missionary call is to make sure that we who are the body of Christ stay connected, that we remember our common Lord and King, that we learn about each other’s strengths and struggles. Maybe the phrase “missionary” can almost hide one of our most important callings: to really live as the unique people and family and body of God Himself simply by getting out and getting to know each other.
Whenever either Rebecca or I are about to come back to the States, our farmers say a very funny thing: “Tell those Christians there that we love them.” In the context of Paul, I think that I have begun to see how this, this sharing of needs and abilities, this brief intersection of Christians on the road with Christ from different tribes and tongues, this fellowship with “all the saints” that mirrors the saint filled party going on above, is part of the whole point. Maybe we are a little like Epaphras, and this blog is a way for us to tell you how the Paul and Barnabas’s of Kenya are doing, and of how they love us and are praying for us. And I think Jesus delights in all of it, as He looks down and sees His church learning just a little more about their brothers and sisters on different sides of His beautiful world.
Maybe also God knows that when the hands and eyes meet they learn a bit more about the head. But that will have to wait for Part 2(b) . . .
Peace,
Michael
Check out the brief call for thanksgiving over the farmer's recent sale just below!
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