Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon 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,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”  He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.  But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. – Luke 4:14-30 (NRSV) 

What happened in this gospel story? Jesus stands up to read the passage for the day and then proceeds to proclaim a brief word on that passage. However, the hometown crowd didn’t care much for what Jesus, a young man they watched grow up, had to say about it. It was a message of justice, hope, and healing for the people who were not of their town or politics or religion or race. After some time away, Jesus returned home just like the Jubilee year instructed, and he announced that the Jubilee year had begun. This was supposed to be a celebratory declaration! Good news for the poor, liberty for the enslaved and oppressed, healing for the sick – the year of the Lord’s favor. “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Here we go!  

And so, the Jubilee became central to Jesus’ identity and mission – to sound and to bring the good news through his words and through his deeds. When the Jubilee Year was prescribed in Leviticus 25 and when it was alluded to later in the prophets, it was truly good news for the people and their children, for it brought a promise of a new start, of freedom.  

In the tribal culture in which the ancient world operated, whenever someone fell into abject poverty, they had no welfare system, no unemployment office, no social security benefits, no insurance, no banks to loan money. Therefore, people would sell themselves into slavery just to be able to stay alive. It was a normal part of the culture, yet right there in Leviticus, we see a more graceful way, a merciful and redeeming way of caring for those than the rest of the world would treat them. (You see, Leviticus isn’t just a boring book of codes about what to do and what not to do!)  

The people of God were called to exude that more gracious and merciful identity and action all the time. As the promise to Abram said, they were blessed to be a blessing; and as the prophets said later, they were to be “a light to the Gentiles.” Through the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, God revealed a special concern for immigrants, widows, and orphans. Though the rest of the world would see these as the weakest and mistreat them, it should not be so among God’s covenant people!  

And then there would be even more grace in the restart promised every 50 years, when everyone was given a reset. It was a time for all to return home, to set free those who were in bondage, to cancel debts, to give the land some rest, and to return the land back to the family to whom it originally belonged. Do you see this constant reference to “returning”? It reminds me of a certain parable about a return home. 

I’m talking about the story in which Jesus tells of the father with two sons in Luke 15. It illustrates well these elements of the tribal culture and the Jubilee promise offered in contrast with it – a younger son wastes the freedom and resources entrusted to him and an elder son fails to realize the freedom he already has. And yet even having failed to truly live into the freedom so generously given to them, there remains a party to welcome them home – both of them. Both of them are invited to the party, just like the Jubilee year had prescribed. The younger son, as you might remember, had gone to a far-off land and ran out of resources. He had to hire himself out, to put himself in bondage, to an oppressing overlord. He finds himself at rock bottom. When he was at rock bottom, he remembers the grace at home. So he decides merely to ask for forgiveness and to become a slave for his father instead, which would’ve been grace enough.  

But he gets more than that. He returns home and gets the freedom of Jubilee. His sonship had been returned back to him – the father put a ring on his finger and a robe on him to convey this. And then, the father has shoes put back on his feet. The shoes on his feet show that his freedom is returned. We ought not to miss the fact that this was a risky move by the father, but it was a move that speaks to the Jubilee and its restoration. Sometimes I wonder what happened on those next days after the younger son comes back. Will the elder swallow his pride and relinquish his unforgiveness and join the Jubilee, too? How will the younger son adjust to these new shoes? How will he respond to this grace that he really didn’t expect?  

And what about us? The church? What might a return look like for us? It seems clear that we need a moment in which we truly “come to our senses” and start making plans for a return. 

Much of the church is teetering on the line of relevancy in the modern world. What we’ve often done is to think that the only way to survive is to talk about worship style or language, to have better events that will entertain more people, or to have the best facilities that are state-of-the-art – that these are what will “attract” young people. But they only matter in a secondary sense. These peripherals only matter insofar as they contribute to a church who understands and lives into its identity and its strengths for mission and ministry. If a church can’t do that, no matter how technically perfect our worship might be, in God’s view, we’re fighting over pig slop. If we’re not truly making a difference in the lives of people and the community, then we’re just a popular group that will one day be forgotten. No matter how flawless our blueprints or formidable these walls are, in the kingdom view, if they’re not for the sort of mission Jesus’ life was all about, then they are built on sand and will fall when any serious wave hits.  

Then there’s my denominational family, The United Methodist Church, which faces many challenging realities. The UMC in the United States has faced declining numbers every year since the merger in 1968 took place. What might a return for our tradition look like? If we’re on the brink of drastic change, how can we make the most of it?  

Do you know what made Methodism flourish and grow into a sustainable movement? As much as I love a hearty potluck meal, that wasn’t it. And fundraising didn’t make Methodism take off. Instead, there were two central activities that made Methodism truly become a movement with the promise of fruitfulness:

1. They got together in small groups and asked one another a set of questions that centered on this overarching question: “How is it with your soul?” In that setting they would search the Scriptures together, they would pray, and they would ask difficult questions to prompt one another toward growing in holiness, in God’s grace. Kevin Watson writes at length about this in The Class Meeting, speaking of how this was the way in which the early Methodists were “watching over one another in love.” 
2. They cared for their hurting neighbors and reached out to those that the rest of the comfortable world preferred to forget – they preached and gave good news for the poor. They made a difference in their world through mission – they visited prisoners, they visited the sick and fought for the cause of healthcare at a systematic level, especially for the most vulnerable of their society. They did things like tutoring children who were struggling in school, they feed the hungry, and they preached “the glad tidings of salvation” to the common folks, who when they saw they were actually cared for in body realized: “You know what? Maybe these Methodists have something to say that is worth listening to.”  

Furthermore, they did these things not haphazardly or aimlessly or in some sort of generic sense, but they were methodical about all this – that’s why they were called Methodists. They went all the way back to their roots, the roots of Christianity, all the way back to Jesus’ mission.  

But the movement transformed into an institution. Over time, the membrane of the living organism calcified into an impenetrable wall that is now on the brink of fracturing. Many of us have ceased to be part of a movement, and when facing decline, we’ve hired ourselves out. We have become in bondage and enslaved to other empires, realities, and ideals – and they’re not all tangible things – the comfort zones of similarity, the security of nationalism, the allure and sweetness and satisfaction of consumerism – the things that are “just for us” or help us pay the bills. Keep in mind that this was the mentality of the younger son when he departed – looking out for himself and his wishes and to make sure he had enough money to enjoy whatever he wanted.  

Might we come to our senses about the pig food we’ve grown content to feed upon and wake up to the promise of the feast and fruitfulness of our foremothers and forefathers? For there we just might find the sort of Jubilee that inspired Charles Wesley to write: 

Ye who have sold for nought your heritage above 
shall have it back unbought, the gift of Jesus’ love: 
The year of Jubilee is come! The year of Jubilee is come! 

Return, ye ransomed sinners, home. 

The gospel trumpet hear, the news of heavenly grace; 
and saved from earth, appear before your Savior’s face: 
The year of Jubilee is come! The year of Jubilee is come! 
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home. 

The year of Jubilee is come! The year of Jubilee is come! 

Return, ye ransomed sinners, home! 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

When I was in middle school, I developed a deep desire to go anywhere in Africa.  At the time I had no idea why.  I just knew I wanted to go there someday.  As I entered high school and then college, this desire only increased, until I finally heard of a United Methodist mission team traveling to Zimbabwe for three weeks.  I quickly checked a map, verified that Zimbabwe was in fact in Africa, and began the process of begging my parents to go.  They finally relented a few years later when I was over the age of 18 and were no longer legally allowed to stop me.   

From the time I stepped off the plane in July 1998, I was smitten.  My love for Zimbabwe was cemented that first day and has only grown each year since.  I lived there for many years at a Children’s Home, and I still go back each year to visit people who are now as close as my biological family.  They are a part of who I am.  My life is richer and fuller because I was able to see a new piece of who Jesus is by experiencing another culture. 

Now I serve as Mission’s Director at Chapelwood UMC in Houston, TX.  We are still wading through the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and trying to figure out how we can assist other states and islands that were devastated by the hurricanes and storms that followed.  With so many disasters occurring around the U.S. this past year, it is natural to ask, “Why should we help people in a different part of the world when there are so many in need throughout our own country?”  As with many issues, the answer is not always either/or, but requires a both/and mentality.  Either/or signifies a limited capacity and in turn can limit God’s ability to work fully in our lives as individuals, families, and churches.   

Similar to when we are told to put on our own oxygen mask in an airplane before we help others, we do need to make sure that our own well-being and that of our family and community are met first so that we have a stable base from which to serve.  When I was in the middle of weathering Hurricane Harvey, I had no capacity outside of trying to do my job and figuring out how to move around a city where most of the streets were still blocked with water.  But – before long the streets and businesses opened back up, and most people were able to find a safe place to stay even if it will be a long time before they can achieve a new “normal.”   

We have churches, organizations, and government programs all working together to provide immediate assistance, and they will stick around for the next few years to make sure the city is back up and running. Unlike many other parts of the world, the structures we have in place throughout the U.S. make it much easier to respond quickly in disaster situations. In many cases, our resources far surpass the services available in other areas around the world.

Yet after we have experienced devastating disasters, our desire and ability to practice generosity to those outside our small bubble may fade even though the needs of our family around the world has not decreased.  We need to remember especially during these times why it is so important to continue serving and building relationships with our brothers and sisters around the world.  

We serve because God calls us through his Word to participate in his mission of reaching out and loving people from every nation and culture.  We have the opportunity to form genuine relationships as a means of building up and unifying God’s kingdom, to learn from each other, and to see new ways that Jesus is at work. We grow in our faith when we observe how God has moved in the lives of people in so many different and difficult circumstances.  The faith that I saw exhibited by my Zimbabwean family throughout the years shaped and changed how I responded when going through traumatic events, including Hurricane Harvey.  

My experience is unique to me, but God has a unique experience ready for each of us who are willing to listen and respond in faith daily.  Go where God asks you to go and do what he asks you to do, whether it is as a missionary in your own community, or in a place that starts out entirely foreign to you.  The main reason I believe that we are to serve both at home and around the world is because when so many have looked into the eyes of Jesus and sat still enough to listen, that is what he told them to do.    

So find out which partnerships your church has formed in different parts of the world and how you can participate in growing these relationships.  Research an organization in your town that welcomes refugees and international students and invite someone to dinner.  Check out the work supported through World Methodist Evangelism or other connectional mission organizations.  Choose a country that God has set on your heart and educate yourself and your family so that you can actively pray for individuals and situations in a place you may never physically be able to visit.   

Or go.   

Whatever you feel led to do, you are guaranteed to discover a richer and fuller love for Jesus and the life he has given you. 

I am writing from an air mattress at my coworkers’ house late at night. I just ate some fabulous fajitas around a table filled with laughter and shared stories after watching the sun set slowly from someone else’s backyard.  

I drove home from work last Thursday night jovially saying goodnight to everyone, knowing we would probably be “hunkered down” for the next few days to ride out Hurricane Harvey and his aftermath. It felt a little exciting at first, like anticipating a snow day when I was younger and growing up in West Virginia. But over the next days, which has now turned into a week, the excitement drained away with every tornado warning, every flood warning, every flash of tragedy that unfolded from the news reports and social media.  

I am back in the place of being the recipient of others’ generosity and overwhelming support. This is a familiar place for me, after living many years in Zimbabwe as a missionary and knowing that both my programs and personal finances depended on the kindness of others. When I could no longer renew my work visa and had to leave Zimbabwe, I somehow ended up at Chapelwood UMC, a large church community in Houston, Texas, as a Missions Director.  

All of a sudden, the tables were turned and I was now in charge, along with my committee, of dispensing funds to hopeful missionaries and programs around the world who were just as eager as I had once been to be good stewards of what they were given. When disasters happened around the world and closer to home, Chapelwood generously donated funds and manpower in whatever way was most needed.  

Over the last three years working here in Houston, I have been privileged to have other staff and members become my family. My family has also grown to include people from Haiti and Kenya and other parts of Texas. My family now includes people from Estonia and Louisiana and Costa Rica. When our family in Haiti was suffering from Hurricane Matthew, we were there. When flooding devastated Louisiana, we were there. When Kenya experienced famine from drought we were there.  

Now we are the ones who are in devastation. We look out our windows and see swimming pools where parking lots should be and boats where cars used to drive.  

And the emails and phone calls and social media posts pour in: from Stanley in Kenya, from Meeli in Estonia, Pastor Carlos in Weslaco, Texas and Paul in Haiti. And all over the U.S. they assure us: We are praying for you. We are sending support. We are coming.  

I had to evacuate my home this morning, to join the tens of thousands of others who are now displaced. But we will be okay again one day soon because of your prayers and your presence and your gifts, service, and witness.  

And because of the beautiful, compassionate, resilient people of Houston who have rallied around each other. We represent every tribe, tongue and nation here in Houston. Although we are in the midst of deep waters this week, we have also experienced a hint of heaven. 

A friend kindly directed my attention to a recent blog post over at Christianity Today, “Seven Evangelism Environments Artists Create: How the church can leverage the arts for evangelism,” by Dr. Byron Spradlin. I give a hearty ‘amen’ to what I take is Spradlin’s main thrust, which we find in the final line: “If you are a church or mission leader, invite the artists you know to help you take a fresh look at the way you think about, plan for, and implement evangelism.”  

The bulk of the post is aimed at offering some frameworks for how artists can aid the mission of evangelism by designing environments, creating community through shared artistic endeavor, helping to express the gospel, and so forth. All of this is offered with the modest disclaimer that these are just preliminary suggestions for getting started:

These seven environments mentioned above are simply a start in stating how artistic expression specialists (artists) bring powerful and beautiful resource to the Lord’s assignment of evangelism. In fact, when it comes to evangelism, the Church cannot do without them in the mix.

This is good. The church can’t do without artists.  

However, I do have some quibbles, though I’m reluctant to pillory a post whose main point I affirm. (Lord knows, I’m not eager for some smart aleck to nitpick all my blog posts.) In lieu of a very direct response, I want to offer two things to keep in mind as we try to thoughtfully integrate the arts into the church’s mission. 

1. The arts are already and always involved in the church’s mission.

Throughout the post, Spradlin relies on a common distinction between the message of the gospel and the mode of its expression. He rightly points out that without being able to “feel” and “imagine” the truth of the message, the news will not seem good. This is right, but could still mislead the reader into seeing the truth of the gospel as something distinct from its mode of expression.

What the study of theology and the arts reveals, however, is that our understanding of the truth is always mediated through aesthetic categories. Metaphor, the interconnection of two networks of meaning, fundamentally shapes all thinking. Encountering and explaining are inextricable. Imaginative intuition and artistic sensibility are necessary for accessing the objective truths of the gospel. Divine communication is already artistically shaped, because God himself uses artistic expression. Through parables, metaphorical language, and the medium of story, the Bible assumes that the arts matter. It is impossible to access the propositional truths of theology without relying on creative expression. Punching it a bit: God has already bound up the task of theology with the power of poetry.

With this in mind, we should approach the arts not first as powerful vehicles that amplify our expression and encounter with the truth, but as a necessary element in all theological knowing. A ministry that sees the arts as intrinsic, rather than instrumental, will already be two steps ahead in fruitfully integrating the arts in ministry.  

Perhaps this all still seems nitpicky, but many Christians hold to a reductively sharp distinction between content and expression. I once heard a famous mega-pastor exclaim that the “only thing that makes music Christian is the lyrics.” By this I assumed he meant that worship could work in all manner of musical modes, so long as it kept the same message. But this overlooks, of course, that the mode of expression mediates our understanding of the message. Transpose almost any song from a major to minor key (or vice versa) and the meaning shifts dramatically. (YouTube offers many, many examples.)

2. Artists are not special (or, at least, not in the sense we sometimes think).

Even among those who value the arts, there can be a temptation to put them in a “gilded ghetto”: a separate space of distanced admiration. The same happens with artists. They can be construed as specially gifted, yet also alien. More than one working artist I know has felt this simultaneous admiration-with-distance. Theseus’s lines in Midsummer Night’s Dream comes to mind:

  Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold—

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven. (5.1)

For Theseus (though probably not Shakespeare) the poet, like the lover and the madman, is a frenzied genius who mysteriously sees more than reason can comprehend. Many people in the pews will likely hold a similar view.

Much of this is come by honestly. Plato seemed to distrust the artist as an irrational-yet-inspired creator, (cf. Ion). Likewise, Kant separated aesthetic judgment from the rationality. These ideas still haunt the Western mind, even among those who have never cracked the pages of Kant or Plato.

An important step for integrating Christian artists more fully into the life of the church is to honor their talents as meaningfully connected to the larger concerns of the church. Artistic making is often closely bound up with careful reflection on big ideas and cultural context. Spradlin goes a long way to suggesting how artists can be integrated. His generalizations are broadly true, but might also be misread to propagate the idea of artists as a special class of people touched by the muses with a mysterious gift:

Artists are hardwired to be curious about culture expressions and intrigued by and interested in culture’s ways. Through their curiosity—and a wonderful product of it: looking at familiar realities in fresh ways—they always create situations and places where relationships are formed.

Again, my goal is not to correct Spradlin’s notions, but to nuance their reception. Artists come in all shapes and sizes. Artists are people, no more trustworthy or untrustworthy in their powers than any other group. (Even here, there’s a danger in grouping artists together. A broad view of the arts accounts for the ad-man and the ballerina; the game designer and the book binder.) Those who wish to shepherd artists should plan to pastor the whole person, including the expression of their craft.

If this seems intimidating, it is worth noting that pastors are artists too. They shape sermons, and they also shape souls. As Hans Urs von Balthasar points out, the most beautiful work of art is the life of the saint.

***

Philip Tallon (PhD, St. Andrews) is an Assistant Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University. He is the author of The Poetics of Evil (Oxford, 2012), and The Absolute Basics of the Christian Faith (Seedbed, 2016).

A common mistake that undermines our integrity and impinges on the integrity of the other is to equate evangelism with conversion; but they are not the same. Authentic evangelism is not conversion. The Faith Sharing New Testament gives us an excellent definition of conversion: Christian conversion is “the change that God works in us as we respond to God’s grace in repentance and faith.”1 

God is responsible for conversion. When it comes to evangelism, we are only responsible for making the gospel known. This is a liberating concept. We are not responsible for making converts. We may desire conversion to happen, we may pray fervently as we discussed during our last session, but it is not within our power to make it happen.

It is better to stop worrying about the results of our evangelizing and instead worry about whether we have truly made the gospel known in our relationships with others. The results are in God’s hands. Releasing the responsibility for conversion also enables us to see that evangelism is never something we do to people. It is something we do with the gospel. We make the gospel known.

If we think of the evangelistic task as making the gospel known, the way in which we make it known is significant. When integrity is an essential value, we make the gospel known in a way that reflects the completeness of our lives. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we share the good news of Jesus Christ through our words, through our deeds, and through the signs that the Holy Spirit makes evident in our midst. And as the metaphor of embrace illustrates, we wait and watch in respectful humility and work with expectant hope.

Our sermon today is preached by Dr. Matt Hook, Senior Pastor of Dexter UMC in Dexter, Michigan.

https://vimeo.com/220245689

This sermon, Living the Mission in Worship, from Rev. Tara Beth Leach starts at minute marker 42:10.