Matthew 28 Ablaze
Easter 7,Matthew 28, May 8, 2005
“Things My Mother Wanted Me to Do”
Ablaze kick-off
Sharing the Good News of Jesus is at the heart of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20a.) These were among the last words Jesus spoke before He ascended to heaven. As Lutherans, God has given us a great understanding of His Word as related to the means of grace. We believe that conversion takes place through the power of the Holy Spirit, using God’s Word and the Sacraments. God has called each of us to mission involvement through our own conversion as His redeemed, forgiven people. We now have the privilege of sharing the Good News of Jesus with others.
LCMS World Mission Purpose Statement - Praying to the Lord of the Harvest, LCMS World Mission, in collaboration with its North American and worldwide partners, will share the Good News of Jesus with 100 million un-reached or uncommitted people by the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017.
The vision of igniting a worldwide Lutheran mission movement to share the Gospel with 100 million people is expressed by the word, Ablaze! LCMS World Mission’s goal is to ignite a movement that will change the culture of our Lutheran church bodies to be one in which every member is fully engaged in personal mission involvement through the Seven Mission Responses: Go, Pray, Learn, Give, Tell, Send and Celebrate. While this is the expressed vision of LCMS World Mission, it is the organization’s intention to give this vision away, because it is God’s desire that all people be saved, and He has called all His children to participate in the task!
Today, we will begin an evangelism emphasis that will continue for the next several weeks. Each week, one or more of our evangelism leaders will speak to us about how evangelism can and should be a part of each of our lives. They will do this by explaining and expanding upon the seven mission responses connected to the Ablaze mission focus. Today, I will begin by giving an overview of what they will be sharing with us. Being Mother’s Day, I want to give that overview from the perspective of what my mother, our mother’s taught us to do. After all, our mother’s have taught us to Go, Pray, Learn, Give, Tell, Send, and Celebrate.
The first emphasis is Go. Normally when I think of mother and the word Go I think of the times me and my brother and sister were messing around…and driving mother crazy. To this she would often say, Go, get out of here, leave me alone so I can think. But there were softer, gentler times when she used the word as well. I was afraid of dating, so my mother gently urged me on by saying, “a turtle never gets any where unless he sticks his head out of his shell.” To this I said, “If the turtle sticks his head out he might get it cut off.” But eventually I took her advice, and slowly but surely moved forward. As Christians we must stick our heads out and move forward, going to the people around us who do not know Jesus Christ as their Savior. We must invite them to worship with us, Invite them to Bible Study and Sunday School. We can consider becoming pastors and teachers, missionaries or even by doing part time missionary work. We can do this in small ways or in big ways, whatever way we can. In Baptism God has called us all to serve Him. Jesus came to serve, not to be served. Go, is the call of the Great Commission.
The second response is to Pray. Our mothers taught us to pray. When we were small they taught us, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” They taught us to give thanks for the food we eat. They taught us the precious words of “The Lord’s Prayer.” Prayer is the most important element of missionary work. With our prayers we participate in God’s great work of reaching the lost with the message of the Gospel. Jesus himself said, “Pray to the Lord of the harvest, to send out workers into His harvest field. Prayer is something we all can do.
The third response is Learn. It is at our mother’s side that we learn about life. It is our mother’s that teach us about the one who gives us eternal life. Our mothers helped us with our school work and our memory work, all the while, guiding us, leading us and teaching us. From them we learned that learning is a life long process. Learning is an important part of mission work. We need to learn about the people that God cares about, where they live, and what they need, how they talk, and what is important to them. In this way we can share the gospel in ways that they understand. Faith comes from hearing the Word of God.
The fourth response is Give. We have learned from our mothers what giving is all about. They have given there time, and talent and their love to us. They supported us with encouragement and with their money. So we continue to Give to God’s great mission with our time, talent, encouragement, love and yes…even with our money.
The fifth response is Tell. On Easter Sunday, our resurrected Lord told the women at the tomb, “Go tell my brothers.” There is good telling and bad telling. Our mother’s taught us the difference. When our brothers or sisters did something we thought they shouldn’t, what were the first words out of our mouth… “Mom, guess what Johnny did.” Of course there is a right time for this, but we often did it more often than we should. To which mom would respond, “I don’t’ want to hear it. After all our mothers often knew what was going on before any words were spoken. But there is a good telling. How many time were we told, “Go tell your brothers and sisters to come in for supper”, Go tell your Dad He has an important phone call”, go tell the neighbors I need some help.” A big part of our mission work is telling. We have been commissioned by our Lord to tell our nation about the gospel of hope. We tell our family members, our friends, our classmates and our co-workers about the Lord. Our faith is not a private matter, it is to be shared, it is something to be told. So we go and tell.
The sixth response is Send. Our mother’s send us off with their blessing. They send us to school, they send us to work and sometime they send us off to different parts of the country or world, not always willingly, because they want us around. But they send us off, non-the-less. We have to learn to make our way in the world, making our own homes, having our own families. As part of the mission of the church we also send our loved ones out. Right now, Greg Koepsell is in the process of being sent. First he was sent to Indiana to attend Seminary, now He is being sent to Minnesota. He has been called and sent to be away from the home and family that He loves. He is sent with a purpose, to proclaim the good news of our Savior Jesus Christ. At this very moment hundreds of missionaries and their families are sharing the gospel in circumstances that are extremely different and even dangerous. They need our prayers and financial support. This is an important part of our sending them.
The last mission response is Celebrate. Our mother’s taught us about this also. They have celebrated what God has done in our lives by celebrating our birthdays, our baptisms, our confirmations, our graduations, our weddings. Celebration is a big part of our lives. We look forward to them. They are times when we gather with family and friend to remember God’s blessings in our lives. So a big part of our mission activity should be a celebration of what God has done. We celebrate that Jesus has conquered sin, death, and the Devil by His suffering, death and resurrection. We celebrate that Jesus Christ lives and reigns as the King of Kings. We celebrate that the blessings won for us have been to us through God’s Word and the Sacraments. We celebrate that we are God’s children and heirs to heaven. When we celebrate we celebrate with Christians around the world. We are not alone. We celebrate that we have been given a wonderful job to do. At the end of our mission emphasis we will celebrate here by hosting a friendship Sunday, where all of us will have the opportunity to bring our neighbors and friends to church with us.
2,000 years ago Jesus Christ picked up His cross and took on the power of Satan and the power of sin and death. Three days later he rose victoriously. He lives, and as He lives – we shall also live. His victory is our victory. This same living Lord Jesus has no said, “Go! Go and make disciples. Preach the Gospel to every creature. We must go because Jesus Christ has told us to Go, Pray, Learn, Give, Tell, Send, and Celebrate. Amen.