“Fruit of Missions?”
Scripture Reading: Matthew 25:34-40
Sermon Transcript for May 7, 2006
By Dr. Peter Mageto
Once again let me say how grateful we are to be among you and to worship among you. It is always good to be among Christians. I’ll tell you the truth, it is because of the Christian faith that we are in the United States of America. And at the same time we are grateful, especially to Bob and Joyce and the Missions Committee and all those involved in inviting us to come. We had initially thought that we were done and were getting ready to go back to Kenya. But as the Bible says, when duty calls we have to respond; so when this invitation came I said, “This is great God wants us to go and share with others before we get back to Africa.”
It is also wonderful to be able to share in words and be involved with the Mission Conference. The reason I say it is wonderful is because we are, ourselves, Irene and many Africans; we are the fruits of the missions. The fruits in the sense that the missionaries who came especially to Kenya in the 1940’s. And it is through them that Christianity was introduced in our country. And of course it is wonderful in the sense that some of us came to Christ and accepted the Lord, Jesus Christ, as our personal Savior, through missionaries who came to these institutions where we were in high schools. So when we get this kind of opportunity to worship and to share during your Mission Conference, it is a clear affirmation of what God is doing in the world and what God is bringing together no matter the backgrounds, whether social, economic, political, national. The love of Jesus Christ is wonderful. And I think it to be wonderful that we can be able to share, not only worship but to share almost like what you call a whole week focusing on missions.
This morning I would like to begin with this for many times you don’t find sermons of this nature. So if you listened to me yesterday and you did not see me do this yesterday, don’t worry about it because you should look up and see that I want the Lord to give me that inspiration that I could give. If you are in this congregation and you do not know anyone in jail, raise up your arm, if you do not know anyone who is in jail. I’m not asking if you know someone in jail. I’m asking if you don’t know anyone in jail. Thank you. Anyone in this congregation who does not know anyone who is naked? Thank you. Anyone in this congregation who does not know anyone who is hungry? Anyone in this congregation who does not know of a person who is sick? That seems to be, I guess now I should stop that.
It is, for some of us who come from a different setting, it is almost as if it is part of our lives. I was telling Bob this morning when we woke up, that when I grew up until I went to high school I never knew that there was something called “breakfast” because as a country we never had breakfast. So the day started like this: wake up, get ready, go to school. And then when I went to high school, because it was a boarding school that was the first time I was being told there was breakfast. What was that, you know? And of course, it is taken for granted. It is known to have breakfast, to have lunch, and to have dinner. It is known.
But when we come to the context in which we read the words of Matthew, it is one of those common passages that have been read to us now and then. We know the story. We are also aware of many international organizations that now use the gospel Matthew as part of their mission statement. They don’t like to say this is from Matthew 25, but they like to say this is our mission statement. And when you read it, it sounds as if it is from Matthew 25. And you are like; they should acknowledge that it is from the Scriptures. But seriously speaking, it connects a great impact when it is read among people called Christians—you and me!
So you listen to the story, to the Bible from where it comes, you are to ask yourself, “Where is the Lord Jesus coming from? Where is He beginning this story from?” The best way to do this is to go back to Matthew, Chapter 24 and read the whole chapter of 24 just to find the context of the three other parables that he has spoken about. And you find those three parables to be of great importance because they are reminding us of maybe the last days, what might be involved in what you might say in the grading system. It is like you are taking a test and someone else is going to grade you. So you find in Matthew, Chapter 24, the first parable that he says is the faithful. It is called the “Faithful and Unfaithful Servant”. That’s the first one. The second parable deals with a wise and a foolish virgins. The third parable concerns the talents. And then Matthew, Chapter 25, the section that we read, is the fourth almost saying after you have read those three, now watch out how they apply to this last one. And that’s not saying if you are seated there and you are waiting to hear what the Lord Jesus Christ is saying, the scripture read before you, you can say, “Guess what? When did I see you?” That’s the question that the audience excuses. They say, “I was hungry, I was naked, I was a stranger, I was in jail and you came and you gave something to me.” You might say, “When? When did you come? Can you remind me, when did you come? What were you wearing? What part of the day did you appear in? Did anyone accompany you?
And then Jesus turns around and He says, “No, just turn around and see who is sitting next to you.” I’m asking you, who is sitting next to you? Oh, some of us are shy. You know, there are no responses. Seriously speaking, the Lord says, “As long as you did it to one of these, you did it to me.” I suppose that the audience that time when Jesus told Matthew ended up saying “Maybe I haven’t started on these people” or “maybe I have done it well” and that’s the grading system. He says, “It is not only what you did but it is also what you did not do.” Okay. So it is not what we have done but it is also how much we have not done. That’s what the audience is being asked to do.
And so today as we focus on this text, the question that we have in the 21st century is this: Is this text worth reading in the 21st century of the Christian area at a time when prosecution was taking place? When Christians were under the rule that they could not testify or let others know of their own faith? If this text was written at a time when Christians were struggling to survive from the Roman rule, then seriously speaking for you and for me what is it that we struggle against in order to witness for this Gospel? Maybe nothing! You can gather and worship, you can read the scriptures; but we know of instances in the world, even today as we worship this morning, where Christians can not do that. They will be arrested, they will be detained, they will be killed, and they will suffer the consequences of their own faith.
But at the same time, the kind of mercies, the kind of numbers that Jesus lists here—for the food, drink, clothing—all the lists that Jesus mentions here, they are the common things of life. And they are things that Jesus Christ himself had been involved in. He had fed the hungry. He had gone to see the sick. He had raised others from their bondage and freed them. And for sure, what the Lord Jesus Christ brings to us this morning is to remind us that this passage is not calling us to humanitarian crises. It might be from a standpoint of our sinful nature, but this scripture is calling us to ward off our Christological relationship. It is the relationship where Jesus Christ has laid down His life so that you and me, we will be saved from our sinful nature. And in that relationship then we can be able to move to our neighbor, we can be able to move to the one who is hungry and then transform their lives. It is not so much the doors that we use that can transform the lives of people, it is so much the relationship we have with these people that will transform them.
But that relationship is not long to be between them and you; it is long to be between Jesus Christ and me and you. And so as we focus on our nations, we need to ask ourselves if we want to reach the world—and the world I don’t mean Asia, Africa, South America—I mean the world beginning from where you are sitting, beginning where we are. And, of course, when you open the bulletin you get this list—our denominational support, our local support, our national support, our global support. You look at that list and you say; “Glory be to God!” because we have given what you might call “our best”. But at the same time we could as one thing as we come to a close, and thank God this is the seventh Mission Conference, because for those who know, the number seven in the Bible is the number for meekness, it’s the number for affection. So if this is our seventh mission conference, we look back and thank God for what we have been able to do so far and at the same time look into the future and hope that we will be able to do more.
Missions is an obligation. It is part of your Christian faith. Remember in Genesis, Chapter 4, Verse 9 it is the story of the two brothers, the first two brothers of the world. It is Cain and Able. And the one question that God raised into Cain was this, “Where is your brother Able? What happened to him?” And you know the story. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” And so that’s the world in our midst. Thank God that we are called Christians. Thank God for people who say, “The world is my parish.” In other words, my faith is not going to be private faith. My faith is public faith. It is universal. And so I have to ask myself, “How am I involved in this?” It is not about judgment; it is not about saying this is the end of time. We are not trying to see who is going to be found in heaven and those going to be found in hell. No! It is about transformation and transformation only takes place in a relationship. Our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ will quicken in us the willingness to God’s faith in the mission of the church. Our relationship with our Lord Jesus will give you the strength and the courage and the willingness to say, “I have found a cause. I am going to give so that I may transform someone else’s life.
Friends, let me give you an example. When you look out there and you are looking for one gallon of milk, maybe $3.00, that $3.00 will feed one child for two good weeks in some places of the world. Or maybe you might say, “I’m not rich. I’m not invested in anything. It is only the rich who should give permissions.” Maybe I might deny myself to going to a movie this week and that $5 or $6 dollars I want to send to someone else maybe can keep that person healthy and well. Those are just some of the barriers that the Lord speaks to us in a humble way and reminds us of the basics in life.
As I said again for those who have heard me from yesterday, it still surprises me that one of the things you can not complain of in this country is clean water. You have clean water. Now where I come from we don’t have that. So to give you a good example, when I go to Chicago later today, I will drink water. I will take it and I will boil it first. You ask me, “Even in America you have to do that?” I say because that’s what I am use to. I have to boil my water, you know? And now this water is clean. Yeah, but that’s how my mind says it must be. But those are the basics. You think about it; we take things for granted.
So it is a mission’s conference but it is also an opportunity for you to see the world not from your eyes, but from the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ who says, “Follow me and I will show you how to transform the lives of people in the world.” If we can follow the footsteps of Jesus Christ, He will take us, of course, to very uncomfortable places. He will take us to very challenging situations. But we are following the footsteps of Jesus Christ. He is the one who is leading; we are following. And that’s why when it come today this kind of challenge of missions, if we will be brought to say we have invested $50,000 to missions, I think it would be wonderful if we would say we have invested $200,000 in missions. And it is possible in the sense that the people have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ they will not be out of the park to say, “We have nothing”. We have something and as long as we can breathe, as long as I can wake up in the morning and find myself still breathing and have a new life, I can still do something. And this is an opportunity of our obligations.
So I was hungry, the Lord says, I was naked, I was in jail, I was sick. When, in 2006, when in 2007, when maybe in 2020? What the Lord says is the vineyard is ready. The vineyard is open. You are the hands of the Lord. You are the heart of the Lord. You are the feet of Jesus Christ. This money is going to move from our hands to the world. We are the ones to provide for the world. And so as we give out the Lord gives us. We gather with God. We gather from the Lord, we give it. We are blessed with it; we want to bless others with it. In Matthew, Chapter 10, Verse 40 that is where Jesus Christ says, “Blessed are those who show mercy to you because if they do they have shown it to me and to the One who sends it.” What a wonderful opportunity to us to be in mission. We can not deny that we did not hear this. We can not deny that we have not been told of this. We can only respond and say, “God, we are available. In our small ways and in our big ways, Lord we are available.” Amen.
E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman