Sermon by Rev. Cristina Scherer at the service on Sunday, June 23, 2024, as part of the Mission Festival
"Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come!" Amen!
Dear brothers and sisters, the main task of the church is to be missionary: going, proclaiming, baptising, preaching, helping, serving, loving... these are the Gospel commandments that Jesus Christ gave to his followers. But what does this mean for us today?
The church today is challenged not to deny the Gospel, but to accept it, to make it present in people's lives, to interpret its message realistically, to be a diaconal church, a helper, a promoter of the basic conditions for a dignified life, justice, and peace.
It is the task of the church to proclaim God's love and to reflect on it with a relevant theological perspective, with answers to many contemporary questions. It is also one of the tasks of the church to oppose the countless forms of violence, oppression and repression, to denounce evil and injustice, to support the weak, the needy, the helpless and the marginalised, to stand by everyone without distinction.
Whew! What a task! I know this is all very utopian, but if we do not use our pulpits to talk about dreams and utopias, we will not be faithful to the Gospel lived and proclaimed by Jesus Christ. Utopias move us, make us walk, encourage us, and give us stability. In the midst of so many utopias, some dreams come true along the way.
Churches all over the world are currently facing many challenges. There are many networks that connect us with each other, that make us socialise and discuss issues that are essential to so many realities. And in this flood of information, the church must be the one that still sees others, that looks them in the eye, that touches them on the shoulder, that smiles with those who rejoice, that sits on the banks of so many rivers and paths and weeps with those who weep.
Being church means encouraging people to build bridges and connect paths in the midst of ruins, to reconnect people with God, the God who is present and relevant in this world, the God who walks with us, who motivates us to share, to be free, who sits with us at the table and shares bread and fish, who promises us: "I will be with you wherever you go".
This is how God has shown himself in the history of his people, through his Son Jesus Christ, who was willing to walk with people. And in the midst of this journey, he fulfilled his mission, as the text from the Gospel of Luke 8:1-3 tells us:
Women following Jesus
Soon afterward he went on through one town and village after another, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who ministered to them out of their own resources.
What does this text teach us?
- Jesus is on the move, setting out: it is not possible to be church and do mission if we do not take risks, if we do not go out to meet people, be together with people in dialogue, challenging, preaching, being hospitable, acting as salt and light, being a loving, encouraging, and motivating presence. From the very beginning, Christians were called "those who are on the way". (cf. Acts 9:2). A lot can happen on the way, where God reveals himself and walks with us, so we can trust and testify: "I don't know where God is leading me, but I know that he is leading me."
- There is diversity to be celebrated along the way: men and women, children, young people, the elderly and the wise, people who are healed or still ill, people with wealth and others with little means, people with different gifts. This great diversity and human plurality should be celebrated, welcomed, integrated into the church's way of being, because we are not just a church for some, but with all and for all.
- Jesus and the people who accompanied him had a concrete goal: to proclaim the kingdom of God. What a wonderful and concrete mission of the Church among us today, which we sometimes forget. This is still our task: to proclaim the Kingdom of God among us with words, gestures, deeds, concrete support for various projects in so many places, with the sharing of what we have using various resources, with creativity, lightness, joy, peace, justice and reconciliation. In this way, we can believe and confess that goodness and love are stronger than the evil forces of this world. We want to be a church that motivates people to build bridges.
Dear congregation, this year we are celebrating the 175th anniversary of the ELM/Missionswerk in Hermannsburg. How much has been lived, how much has been preached, how much joy has been shared, how much suffering has been shared, how many doubts have been dispelled, how many people have been supported by the mission that has emerged here among us and continues to be shared with the world?
As a missionary organisation, we are pleased to be able to serve together with 19 partner churches in many countries and are engaged in a missionary dialogue with them along the way. Through our work and resources we experience what it means to be Church worldwide. In light of this beautiful history, we can celebrate and also recognise our strengths and weaknesses!
We are part of a church that accepts itself as it is, that has its own identity, history, traditions, processes, successes and losses. A church that accepts itself, throws itself on its path, moves, walks with people, celebrates, lives, proclaims, listens, speaks, strengthens, helps, that does not want to be stagnate, but acts in faith and love.
Yes, as a church we are sometimes tempted to give up, but why don't we? Because we believe in the one who fills us with hope, because he has risen from the dead, because we are not like those whom Paul calls "hopeless" (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:13), because we have hope, and this hope sustains us, nourishes us, lifts us off the ground and sets us in motion.
To do this, the church needs the right attitude: it must walk, go out, move, stand up; it cannot simply stand there with its arms folded, sitting and waiting. It must be active, have arms and legs, a pulse and a heart. As a poem says: Today we are the hands, the feet, and the mouth of Christ!
Dear congregation, mission requires effort; mission requires courage; mission requires boldness; mission requires movement. Just as the wind blows and works where it wants, so the Spirit of God wants to move us... Mission requires practical and concrete responses to the pains of the world; mission requires hands to build bridges, to support those who suffer in the face of countless unjust deaths, to comfort those who remain and continue on the path of life...
This is the mission of the church: there will be times when we will support people to rebuild bridges, when hands will be extended, when shelters will be created and lives will be saved. There will be times when we as a church will also feed the hungry; we will share clothes; we will knead bread; we will create safe spaces for people suffering from various forms of violence, oppression, marginalisation and segregation including those already here among us. This is what we were created for, to love, to serve, to support, to help our fellow human beings.
Our mission on this path is not easy: a living and current example of this is the priest Júlio Lancellotti, from Sao Paulo,Brazil, whose work is related to accompanying the homeless. He experiences the incarnation of the Gospel in word and deed and by taking on this spiritual, social and diaconal work. His life is constantly under threat and his work is criticised by the elites and the extreme right in the country.
Júlio Lancellotti says:"I don't fight to win.I know that I will lose. I am fighting to be faithful to the end." He also knows that he has no chance of winning this fight, that his perspective is failure. Another example comes from Jullyene Lins, a Brazilian defender of women, children and minorities. Speaking about the cause she is fighting for, she said: "I am very afraid of dying, of being murdered. But while I am afraid, at the same time I also have the strength to fight.
Sisters and brothers, let us have more courage to be a missionary church that sets out on its journey - not to win every time, but out of the immense joy of remaining faithful to the preaching and proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Let us have more courage to be faithful to the gospel. May we have the courage to celebrate encounters with people and strengthen them in faith, hope and love.
May we not be afraid to ask, because we will not always win. May we know how to accept our human limitations and weaknesses... We can't do everything, we don't know everything, but along the way, in the process, life is made and remade.... May we serve without fear, "fear is not in love, but perfect love casts out fear", (cf. 1 John 4:18).
What makes us still believe in the missionary mission of the Church today, in the midst of so many crooked paths, destroyed bridges, broken lives, empty activities or churches?
For me, it is the firm and strong conviction that, whatever happens, our faith does not fade; our hope is strengthened precisely where we are weak, fragile, human, where hope reappears and proves to be strong and invincible, like the power of the resurrection on Easter morning, where it was echoed by the cries of the women: He lives, he lives!
In the south of Brazil, the church is proving to be missionary when it uses its diaconia service to help clean up muddy houses, rebuild what the force of the water has destroyed, motivate people to donate clothes and food to protect themselves from the cold and satisfy the hunger of more than 2 million people affected in just one state. And in so many other places in the world, people are also suffering from climatic, political, social, structural, and humanitarian crises... and we are called there as a church to set out, as Jesus did, from village to village, from person to person.
Hope rises despite the pharaohs, sing the women of Brazil. This means that even if many bridges have been broken by the forces of nature or by the hatred of men, they must be rebuilt by many hands, with much commitment, dedication, labour, affection. These bridges will enable the reconnection of lives, places, hearts, minds and relationships.
We are beings of living hope, but we are also beings of overflowing joy, for "the joy of the Lord is our strength" (cf. Nehemiah 8:10). The joy it expresses in us when we experience compassion and empathy, when we fold our hands in prayer and action, when we serve out of faith and love. May God enable us to always find a way to be a balm, encouragement, healing and refreshment in the midst of so much pain. Pain and death will not have the last word in this world!
In the certainty that God is with us on the way and will not leave us alone, let us continue on the path without forgetting that we are called to build bridges and proclaim hope in the midst of discouraging situations. The one who carries us is the one who walks with us in living hope, because he invites us to bear witness to his life, death and resurrection through words and deeds. He says to us: I will be with you and I am with you always, wherever you go, take my hand and go!
Let us not be a stumbling block in the middle of the road, but a bridge that connects, that reconnects people, that makes life easier, that unites lives, projects and dreams...
I often hear the question here: Does it still make sense to be a missionary church?
Yes, certainly, which is why we rejoice in the history of 175 years of mission here in the world and ask for God's blessing for the time ahead. I am very grateful that I can be part of this history and participate in this exchange programme here among you. I would also like to say that my calling is also the result of the ELM mission, because I was confirmed by a pastor, Wolfgang Fromm, who worked in Brazil and studied here at the mission seminary. At that time and with the experiences I had in the church, my calling was awakened. That's why we can always trust God to strengthen us for new and good paths we can take, together with churches we can dream of and projects we can sustain here and in the world.
Let us be inspired by the disciples of Jesus who, through simple and practical gestures of welcome, live the faith, share goods and gifts and celebrate the lightness of life through joy, goodness, hope and peace!
God is with us on our diverse missionary journey and always will be, Amen!
Prayer:
Let us remain walkers.
We are not entirely
at home in this world.
When we go on pilgrimage,
it is not just us.
He goes with us. He is with us.
We are travelling
with you, God,
through darkness and wetness,
through fog and
often without a path,
and often without a destination.
We are travellers.
We are walkers.
We have not yet
fully arrived.
So God
walks with us and teaches us
to walk and to seek.
(by Dorothee Sölle)
