"Your
mission, should you choose to accept it ..." And so
began many episodes of the original television series
which Tom Cruise later turned into blockbuster
movies.
Mission
remains a key term in Christian circles. Yet, despite
the enormous popularity of The Purpose Driven
Life, I remain unconvinced that God created us to
evangelize. He certainly instructs us to "Go and make
disciples" but one hardly imagines Adam and Eve being
created for the purpose of winning the world.
But
before we wriggle off the "mission" hook, it helps to
consider the character of God. Theologians speak of
missio dei(the mission of God) and the
propensity of God to "send." He sends out and
reaches out endlessly ... not because of guilt or fear
of failure, but because of love. His love compels Him.
Love compelled
Him to spare Adam and Eve. "Where are you?" (Gen 3.9)
was not an angry demand but a pleading
enquiry.
Love
prompted Him to send His Son, to reach out and touch the
outcasts and the forsaken "with
compassion" (Mk 1.41).
Love
guided Him to send His Holy Spirit to His children as a
Comforter and Guide (Jn
14.26).
Indeed,
the love of God and the mission of God are
inseparable. Everything about God reaches out. Quite
possibly "missiology" is the foundation for all
theology. Jesus empties Himself to reach us. The Holy
Spirit is sent to minister to us. The Church is
commissioned to be the hands and feet of God in the
world.
Our
failure to grapple with these realities, reflects a
basic failure in our understanding of God.
Love
makes us leave comfort and pay a cost. It motivates
us to give rather than take, to risk rather than resist,
to reach out rather than withdraw, to
abandon ourselves rather than live for
ourselves.
Mature
love compels us to live for
others.
Those
others can be found in the foster-care system, women's
shelters, long-term motel accommodations, downtown
ghettos and gutters. We find them in AIDS-ravaged
villages, poverty-stricken townships, refugee camps, and
jails. They live in garbage dumps, in cardboard boxes,
in shacks, shanties, and squalor.
How
can we expand our own personal kingdoms with
barely a thought for the distressed and destitute,
the sick and the abandoned, the homeless and the
abused?
If
mature faith means embracing the heart of God more and
more as our own heart, then missio dei
will become missio humanitatis. This
compelling mission derives not from our created purpose
but our transformational experience of His love.
We
might wonder about the revolution that would occur
within us and within our communities, if His heart
became
ours!