Saturday 15th May 1993
Mission and Commission
An Address given at the Graduation Service at the Bibleway Tabernacle Algernon
Road, London SE13
To an outside observer there might seem to be little difference between what we
are participating in here and the ordinary graduation ceremony in a secular
university. But there is a vital difference. And the clue to understanding what
this difference is lies in one of the words which we heard Bishop White use a
few moments ago. The word was commissioning. In everything which will take place
here this evening there is a strong element of a commission being laid upon
those whose achievements we shall be duly recognizing presently
Let me invite you to look more closely at the word Commissioning. The very word
has at its heart those very same six letters which tell us what being a
Christian is all about . . . MISSION: being sent by God but in the name of all
his people present here this evening
Sent. But not just sent away. Far too often, I'm afraid, a great occasion like
this can be seen as nothing more than that - a dismissal, like a passing-out
parade or an end-of-college-time graduation ceremony: the end of a process,
without any sense of its being the beginning of another (and much more
important) one
But a Commissioning is not really at all like passing an exam or gaining a
qualification. In the last two cases you work very hard, you sit the
examination, the examiners decide whether you deserve to pass or not, and if so
you become entitled or qualified to put certain letters after your name and
practise certain skills
But whether in fact you decide to do either of these things is largely a matter
of your own choice. You can, if you wish, frame the graduation scroll on the
wall of your living room as a reminder to yourself and others of what you have
achieved - and what, if the truth were told, your family have probably helped
you to achieve, so the achievement is theirs as well as yours; or you can simply
put the scroll or certificate away in a drawer and forget all about it
Likewise you may choose to practise the skills you have learnt; or you may never
refer to them again and do something quite unrelated with your life
Either way you have been dismissed, sent away, with an honour which by your hard
work you have justly earned. It is your right to carry it; and it is equally
your right to do what you do with it afterwards
your own affair
But, for a Christian, a Commissioning such as today's is a very different matter
- for two quite separate though related reasons
It is different firstly because you are being given something which you have
neither earned nor deserved, and which, furthermore, is in no 1 sense yours to
do what you like with
For you are being entrusted with the truth about God as he revealed it to us in
times past by speaking to us through the prophets: the prophets whom he
commissioned like he has commissioned you today
For you are standing in line with that goodly fellowship of the prophets: people
like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos and John the Baptist; with the noble army of
martyrs Stephen, Paul, Agnes and Laurence; and with the glorious company of the
Apostles: Peter, James, Matthias and Thomas
Your response to finding yourself amongst their number can only be that of the
prophet Isaiah, who cried out "Woe is me, I am undone: for I am a man of
unclean lips" but who, when he had gone through the cleansing experience of
God's forgiving grace exclaimed, "Here am I: send me" But you have
been entrusted with even more than the prophets of old. For in these last times
"God has spoken to us through his Son Jesus Christ, whom he has appointed
heir of all things and through whom he made everything that is" This brings
us to the second vital difference between a Graduation Ceremony and a
Commissioning
Not only is this commission from God something which you and I have neither
earned nor deserved; it is something which has been entrusted to us in order
that we may convey it to others. Hence it follows that the person who does not
go out from his Commissioning by God with the intention of being a missionary
for God, who so to speak buries his commission like a graduation certificate, in
a chest of drawers, is one of a piece with that servant who hid his lord's money
in the Parable of the Talents. Such a worthless servant will without doubt in
the end be cast into outer darkness
The graduate may think to himself as he collects his Certificate "What a
clever boy (or girl) I've been". And he will have some good reason for
thinking so
But the commissioned missioner - for that is what such a commissioning as this
is all about, will have quite different thoughts in his mind, may be summarized
in two pithy phrases: "God, why me?" and "How on earth?"
God, why me?, we ask, because in a world where God chooses and we, his chosen
ones, say Amen to his choice, there often doesn't seem any very obvious reason
for God's choice lighting upon this person rather than that one
Indeed it often appears at first sight that the individuals whom God chooses
would be the last ones we would ourselves have selected
But have you noticed, I wonder, how often God's choices turn out in the end to
be the right ones?. Remember how Samuel the Prophet was saying to himself as he
beheld Jesse's oldest son, Eliab "Surely the Lord's anointed one stands
before him"; but the real choice David, was 2 still out in the fields
looking after his father's sheep; and nobody thought of him! He was too small:
he didn't count with them. Yet it was he whom God in his wisdom had chosen to be
King over his people at a critical stage of their history
And to the second question "How on earth? the answer is quite simple: You
cant' but God can" The mission on which God is sending out today is not one
which is going to depend in the last resort on what you can or can't do. It will
be fulfilled only through your willingness to go to those people to whom you are
sent by God
For God has already prepared the way for you, and has perhaps even made ready
the hearts and minds of those people to receive what you have to say. Perhaps he
will send you like Jonah to the Ninevites who, against all the odds, hearkened
to the preaching of Jonah. Or perhaps he will send you as he did Ezekiel, to the
people of Israel, many of whom stopped their ears and hardened their hearts -
for they are a rebellious people. But in either case you will have been engaged
upon God's mission to them, "whether they will hear or whether they will
forbear"
That answers the two questions "Why me? and "How on earth". There
is, however, a third and most important question "What do I say?" For
it is by no means obvious that the task of a missionary is to say the same thing
in the same way to everyone. The message of course is the same for all time: but
the way in which is proclaimed will be infinitely varied
Let me remind you of the words of Ecclesiastes here for they are wise:
"Because the Preacher was wise . . . he tried to write in an attractive
style and to set down truthful thoughts in a straightforward manner - the words
of wise men [are those] the shepherd uses for the good of his flocks." That
takes us back, I suggest, , not to the picture of the graduate with his
certificate but to the example of David, the chosen of God, minding his father's
flock with staff, sling and the stones in his bag; and it looks forward both to
the commission given to St Peter by Jesus: Feed my sheep, but also to the charge
given by St Paul to the Elders at Ephesus on the beach at Miletus harbour:
"Be on your guard for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy
Spirit has made you overseers, to feed the Church of God which he bought with
his own blood." Remember, always and everywhere, that the people whom God
has appointed you as missionaries whether it be your family at home, the people
with whom you work or are at college, or those who attend Church with you are
already God's people. They belong to him. Like sheep they expect to be fed and
led and protected.; but like sheep they will only follow the shepherd in whom
they have learnt to put their trust
Therefore one of the first things you need to set about in your mission is to
win the confidence of those to whom you will be sent
What sort of person most readily wins people's confidence? It is not, 3 I
suggest, always the person who shouts the loudest or talks most smoothly. The
art of preaching and teaching does not turn about either being loud-mouthed or a
slick salesman. Ordinary people are far too intelligent to be taken in by either
of these. They know that empty vessels make the most noise and that fine words
butter no parsnips to be deceived by missionaries who do no more than that
Let me give you a piece of advice which I have learnt during my ministry in
Lewisham over the past 25 years. It is this: Never underestimate people's
intelligence; never overestimate their knowledge
If you want people to feed on the good food of the Gospel of Christ, begin by
assuming that they are intelligent people who will respond positively to a good
case, well presented
At the same time don't suppose that they are in any sense well informed as to
what the Gospel you are offering them is really all about. Of course if it turns
out that they are well-informed, as will occasionally happen, so much the
better. But in my experience the ignorance of the present age is deeper and
wider than for many years past
Between you, the missionary, and the people to whom you are sent, then, there is
an enormous gulf, not of intelligence but of knowledge. Your task must be to
bridge that gulf in any way you can, remembering always that bridging a gulf
usually works best when it is a two-way process. The best bridges are built not
from one side of the gulf but from both and they meet in the middle
What sort of two-way process? Well it means that the wise missionary will spend
as much time listening to people has he will talking to them. For in the end it
is only by bridging the gap between shepherd and sheep that the latter can be
fed at all. It's no use the shepherd standing on one side of a deep crevasse and
shouting "Come and get it!" to the hungry sheep on the other side. He
must find some effective way to bridge the gap between them. Half the bridge, I
put it to you, needs to be built with the ear and not with the mouth
But sheep do not only need to be fed. They need to be protected as well. And it
is in this field that the personal behaviour of the missionary if of the utmost
importance
For you have been called, before anything else, to set an example to the people
whom God is going to send you
If your behaviour obviously falls far short of the standards you are demanding
of your followers, then there is not the slightest doubt about what will happen.
They will quickly draw their own conclusion that what you have been telling them
cannot matter as much as all that. The damage you will do is not confined to the
fact that they will think the less of you (though they may with justification do
that as well); the real damage will be in their quite mistaken conclusion:
"Oh well, it can't really matter" If the mission upon which you are
embarking were simply one of 4 "educating people for life in this
world" then our personal behaviour outside school, so to speak, would be
our own business, as so many teachers in the secular world today are never tired
of reminding us
Our commission is however something quite different. We are charged (and here I
quote from the Church of England Book of Common Prayer) to "seek for
Christ's sheep who are dispersed aboard, and for his children who are in the
midst of this naught world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever"
There's not much in those words about "Education for Life" or
"Learning to make one's way in the World", is there? For the truth of
the matter is that Christians like ourselves must have a quite different agenda
from the one which the world has set itself. We know that we are dealing with a
world in which everything and everybody belongs to God. What I do with my body
or mind is very far from being "my own business". On the contrary body
and mind alike belong to God. There is nothing you and I can do, or fail to do,
with our bodies and minds which will not in the end be seen as having
contributed either to our salvation or damnation
Our mission then is to leave our people in no doubt about our beliefs, both
theological and moral: and, since actions speak louder than words it will be the
way we behave ourselves, both in public and private, which will decide the way
in which our people behave themselves
I am not speaking about the occasional lapse into sin. If we truly and visibly
repent of our sins then our people will recognize them for what they are,
exceptions which prove the rule that our lives generally speaking are being
lived in the fear of God and to the praise and glory of his name
But it is when we are habitually rude, censorious, opinionated dishonest,
arrogant of boastful that the real damage is done. For what possible hope is
there of people pursuing honesty themselves if we, their missionaries, are
always boasting about the number of times we have got away with fare-dodging?
How can we expect people to treat each other decently if they see us treating
each other, and especially our immediate families with disrespect or contempt?
Being a missionary for Jesus Christ is no easy matter, as the apostles were
amongst the first to discover. Each one of us must find out for himself the
particular skills which God has allocated to him: skills which, as St Paul
reminds us, cover a diversity of gifts but the same Spirit who gives to each one
severally as he sees fit" But there is one rule which applies to all those
who seek to follow the steps of St Paul, St Peter, St Stephen and the many
others who form that great cloud of witnesses that compasses us about here today
And that rule was best stated by an elderly father speaking to his son on the
eve of his commissioning to be a missionary for Jesus Christ. He said: "My
boy. Above all things love your people. If you don't love them, you won't be
able to do anything with them; if you love them you will be able to do
practically anything with them!"