Matthew 28:16-20; Acts 2:1-21
There are moments you remember all your life. There are moments you wait for and dream of all your life. This is one of those moments. These lines from a song in the movie “Yentl,” could be spoken about lots of moments in life. The moment you start school or the moment you graduate. The moment you fall in love for the first time. The moment you get your driver’s license. The moment of a marriage proposal and the moment you say “I do.” The moment you hold your child or your grandchild for the first time. Life is full of such moments.
The life of the disciples of Jesus was full of that kind of moment, as well. The moment Jesus called them away from their work to follow him. The moment they witnessed the first miracle. The moment Jesus cast out a demon or caused a paralyzed man to get up and walk. The moment Jesus walked on water. The moment Jesus fed 5,000 plus people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish. And there were also moments that the disciples wished they would NOT remember all their lives. The moment when James and John asked to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus when he came in-to his kingdom. The moment when Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. The moment Simon Peter betrayed Jesus for the third time. The moment that Jesus breathed his last breath on the cross.
But the moments that truly had the most impact on the disciples had to have been the moments after Jesus had been raised from the dead. The moment the women first saw the risen Christ in the garden near the tomb. The moment that Jesus stood in the room in front of the apostles. These moments before Jesus ascended into heaven were crucial in determining the fate of the Christian movement.
One of those decisive events took place when Jesus gave what is known as the Great Commission to his disciples. They had gone to Galilee to meet Jesus, as he had instructed them through the testimony of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary on Easter morning. When they saw Jesus, they worshiped him, but they doubted. I wonder what it was that they doubted. Was it that Jesus would show up? Was it that Jesus was actually alive? But in any case, Jesus came and told them, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” That was an enormous task and an incredible responsibility. Jesus knew that. That’s why he went on to say, “Remember: I will be with you always.”
The apostles carried out this mission to the best of their ability. They went out into the world, as far as India and Africa and Europe. They spread the gospel of Jesus Christ everywhere they went. And the Christian church grew and grew as more and more people came to believe. They were able to accomplish this, not in their own strength or based on their own resources, but because Jesus was with them through the Holy Spirit.
That brings us to the second moment I want to look at: the day of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The disciples had been told by Jesus to go to Jerusalem and wait for the Spirit to come to them, and so they spent the days after he ascended in prayer. On the day of Pentecost, a Jewish festival, they had gathered together in one place to pray and all of a sudden the Spirit came to them in wind and fire. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, talking about what God had done for them.
This is important. The reason the Spirit enabled the disciples to speak in other languages is that there were Jews from all over the Mediterranean world in Jerusalem for the festival. They were able to hear and understand what the disciples said because they were speaking in their own languages. The gospel of Jesus again was being spread to the world, as these pilgrims would hear and carry the message back home with them.
As United Methodists, we share the same mission as the early disciples of Jesus. In our Book of Discipline, Part IV, Section 1, on the church, it states, “The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” This sounds a lot like the Great Commission. We are supposed to be making disciples. That means a couple of things. It means leading people to faith in Jesus and it means nurturing believers in their faith. We are to reach out and bring in new folks, but we are also to teach and lead all church members to grow in their faith. The way that we live out our mission is, according to the Discipline, “by proclaiming the good news of God’s grace and by exemplifying Jesus’s command to love God and neighbor … Whenever United Methodism has had a clear sense of mission, God has used our Church to save persons, heal relationships, transform social structures, and spread scriptural holiness, thereby changing the world. In order to be truly alive, we embrace Jesus’s mandate to love God and to love our neighbor and to make disciples …”
Methodism was founded on the understanding that we are to both go out into the world and transform it through our actions and bring the world into the church through preaching and teaching about Jesus Christ. We are, in fact, to see the world as our parish. It isn’t just about our little church; it is about our community, our state, our nation, and our world.
John Wesley was a priest in the Church of England. He served as a parish priest. But after he experienced something of a spiritual awakening, his preaching became so radical and controversial that he was banned from the pulpit in the Anglican church. He was a priest with no parish. And so he began to practice ministry in a way that would redefine for him the word “parish.” He had no church of his own, but he still felt called to spread the good news of Jesus Christ, particularly to the poor and working classes. And so, in a radical move, Wesley began preaching out in the fields, in the city squares, and outside the coal mines to anyone who would listen. When he was criticized for this method of ministry, Wesley wrote in his journal on June 11, 1739, “I look upon all the world as my parish … [it is my] duty to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation. This is the work which I know God has called me to; and sure I am that his blessing attends it.”
John Wesley and the Methodists were not only concerned with preaching and drawing people into them to be a part of the Methodist movement; they were equally concerned with going out to where the people were to meet their needs. Methodists taught Sunday School, advocated for workers’ rights, offered medical clinics and cared for orphans. As Methodism grew and expanded into the United States, during the 18th and 19th centuries, Methodists built hospitals and universities and nursing homes. They led the way in many movements of social justice. And they addressed the issues of poverty, child labor, alcoholism, and the rights of people of color and of women.
As our church has been working on a vision for the future, I suggest that what we need is a Wesleyan vision. A vision that both seeks to draw people into the church and sends us out into the community.
We have been involved in a three-year process of discernment as I have participated in the Creating a Culture of Renewal program and worked with a Vision Team, which included two members who were not church members, Laura Trow, our town welfare officer, and Lela Emery. Even while we worked at creating a Vision that would stretch us towards a Jesus-sized dream for our church, we were living out the vision. We brought people into the church through sponsoring a Girl Scout spaghetti dinner; several community conversations with the Town Manager; hosting the candidates’ forum; and hosting the Festival of Trees, something that we plan to do again this year. We also are reaching out into the community more through sponsoring children to go to summer day camp and working with several other leaders and agencies in town.
Our Vision for the church is: We are creating a network in which we are an essential resource in meeting the needs of the community. We are and will continue building relationships with the town welfare officer, town manager, police chief, fire chief, school counselor, other clergy, and other agencies. We want to be as clear as we can be about specific needs in our community, what resources various individuals or groups can provide, and how we can address needs in an organized fashion.
The vision was born out of my sense that the church was simply on the sidelines during COVID. Clergy were not able to even visit their own parishioners in the hospital. And we were not a part of the town task force that met to discuss how to meet the challenges of the pandemic. I believe that the church should have a seat at the table when communities are dealing with crisis situations, as well as the ongoing needs of the people who reside in them. And our church is working towards not only taking a seat at the table, but creating a table that does not yet exist in Sunapee.
As we continue to develop and live into our vision, I believe that we are firmly in the core of our Methodist tradition and history. We are seeking to live out the Great Commission of Jesus Christ and to live as if the world were our parish. We not only seek to bring people to Jesus Christ and into the church, but we are going out of the church into our community to transform it one person at a time. This is truly a Wesleyan vision.
