Dear one,
Yesterday I booked flights to Malawi: first to Blantyre for a week, and then to Lilongwe for a second week. In both settings, I have offered to serve the local church by teaching and preaching— and in both settings, I will lead a retreat/ in-service for 25 pastors, Monday evening through Thursday noon. Always I am both humbled and sobered by the booking of these flights, irrespective my destination: Romania, Uganda, or Malawi.
As I have shared with you previously, I am convinced that providing these pastors with a 72-hour respite of encouragement, conversation, in-depth study, prayer, good food and rest, will reap great benefit. Encouraging one means encouraging many: “If you have done it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
This noted, and in no way minimizing the importance of serving others, this morning I was reminded of the launch of Jesus’ ministry:
“After the arrest of John [the Baptist], Jesus came into Galilee preaching the Gospel of God and saying, ‘The Kingdom of God has drawn near: repent and believe the Gospel’” (Mark 1:14-15).
That is, I was reminded that He came preaching repentance: the relationship between Creator and creature has gone horribly amuck. For me, of this truth no clearer example exists than that of the twentieth century: perhaps the most “enlightened” century of recorded human history—the astounding advances on most every front—and yet the bloodiest, most horrific of centuries. The proud schemes of the human heart and mind exhibited great darkness and horror on most every front.
So often in church history, and to the present, we struggle to hold in tension the “gospel of social justice” and the “gospel of repentance and salvation”; but as I thought of this tension, I realized that our brothers and sisters in Romania, Uganda, and Malawi grasp this tension more firmly than do we. Still in living memory, Romanian pastors recall the evils of Communism and its fascist counterparts; Ugandan pastors live with the evils of the LRA and the atrocities of “child soldiers”; and Malawian pastors known the evils of self-centered, political leaders who perpetuate cycles of famine, flood, and drought. These pastors know full well the evils of the human heart and mind, and they too need to be reminded: Jesus both lived what He proclaimed; proclaimed what He lived—and called His disciples to do the same.
May our words and deeds not contradict one another.
Hopefully,
Stan
2019: R-U-M "Word & Deed"