The Third Mark of Mission: Responding to a World in Need with Love

The mission of the Church is the mission of Christ. Full stop. We, the Church, are entrusted with continuing the work that Jesus began. We don’t just worship Jesus – we are called to follow him and to share in the work he began in Galilee two thousand years ago, to bring peace on earth and good will to all. Lord, make us instruments of thy peace…

Ultimately that work is about loving God and loving neighbor. The five marks of that mission are as follows:

1.    To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom.

2.    To teach, baptize and nurture new believers.

3.    To respond to human need by loving service.

4.    To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation

5.    To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

Today we reflect on the third mark and our shared vocation to respond to human need by loving service. There is a LOT happening in today’s Gospel reading. Among other things, Jesus is teaching us to pray, a prayer familiar to all of us. But that sermon will have to wait for another day. I want to focus in on that “knock at midnight.”

Jesus said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, `Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.' And he answers from within, `Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

On September 14, 1958, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon on this text. He told the gathered community:

It is also midnight in our world today. And we are experiencing a darkness so deep that we can hardly see which way to turn. It’s midnight. 

As he unpacked that, he noted that it was midnight in the social order, with the war in Vietnam. And midnight in so many people’s personal lives, experiencing despair and the dark night of the soul. And midnight in the moral life.

Did I mention, he preached that in 1958. But it seems like it could be ripped from the day’s headlines. It feels like midnight in our world as well. In Gaza and in Ukraine and so many other places. In the hard work it is to manage our own psyches and in a world where it feels like we’ve lost our way morally and ethically. It’s still midnight. Bob Dylan has a song with this refrain: “it’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” Well, it’s there.

But the knock comes at midnight from a world in need is looking for bread. The Church cannot roll over and go back to sleep, pulling the covers over our collective head. We have been called to continue with the work of Jesus. We are called to respond to a world in need by loving service.

I think the hardest part of this work is that the world’s needs seem so great and we seem so small. There is a saying that comes from the Talmud that is worth remembering in this context. It goes like this:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

If that is what you take away from this sermon today on the third mark of mission, it will be enough. We can argue whether or not it’s harder to be the Church today than it was when Jesus called those first-century Palestinian Jews to follow him, or whether it was harder to be the Church in 1958 when it felt like midnight in America, or today. But I think the fact of the matter is that it’s never been easy to be a follower of Jesus. And the darker it feels, the more clear it is what we must do – which is not to curse the darkness but to get out of bed at midnight, open the door, and light a candle to do the work we can do. To do justly, now. To love mercy, now. To walk humbly, now. To respond to the needs of this world.

As a nation we have been much better at sending young people to war than we have in welcoming them home and taking care of our Veterans. So the knock at midnight might be to serve a meal to Veterans, which is always about more than the food and about the table, the conversations, the kindness offered. We will always have folks in our midst who cannot afford to clean their clothes, which is what Laundry Love is about. We are collecting backpacks for kids because we respect the dignity of every human being and because Jesus loved the little children of the world – all of them. No exceptions.

We do what we can, and this congregation gets that. I truly am proud of all that you do in the neighborhood for the least among us, which reminds us all that life is precarious. I am grateful to be an interim in a place that is focused on ministry beyond these walls and I pray that will continue, with God’s help. I trust that it will because even when your priest left here fifteen months ago, you didn’t miss a beat in continuing this work. Always with God’s help, of course.

But probably the most important thing I learned in the dozen years I worked for a bishop is that there are things we can do better collectively – which calls us beyond our parochial silos. There are things we can do better as a diocese and as a global church, where we can leverage our influence and our resources.

We need both, in my experience, to live out this third mark of mission. We can’t do nothing locally and say we paid our apportionment to the diocese and they’re on it. But neither can we simply say we will take care of Bristol and Warren and that will be enough. It’s a both/and. Same with us. Not everyone is able to do everything nor should we. The Mission Committee can set priorities and recruit volunteers and we, as a congregation, cannot do it all. But we can do something.

It's tempting when it feels like midnight to curse the darkness. But the faithful let our little lights shine and illumine a path. We get up out of bed to show love to our neighbor. To do justice now, to love mercy now, to walk humbly with God now.

Those small acts ripple out and God can do infinitely more with them than we can ask or imagine. Not only do we do this because we see our neighbor in need but we do it because we honestly believe that when we care for the least of these we are caring for Jesus himself. It’s where we find God in the world, in the faces of all who suffer.

We have got to find a way, I think, through the political polarization of our day that also makes it feel like midnight to remember these five marks of mission and especially this third mark. That is not easy. But we cannot let our fear of the darkness keep us from doing what God calls on us to do. It seems to me that one of the key issues right now is about immigrants and refugees. Most of us can agree on the broad contours, I think, regardless of our political differences. There should be a fair process, a process not tainted by racism, toward legal ways that we invite people to become part of this land of hope and dreams. Because that lady holding that torch in New York Harbor declares to the world that this is a core value for us.

We need to claim that, not only as an American value but as the core of Jewish and Christian theology. Really, it may be hard to do but it’s simple to know what we are to do: Love God. Love neighbor. All of them. No exceptions.