Formation for Evangelism
Ordinary Sunday 3, 23 January, 2005
Robert Whalley, Chaplain, RMIT and La Trobe Universities
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus said, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." And I always
get a bit uneasy when I hear this proclamation of Jesus to his disciples,
commissioning them to be fishers for men and women, because I have this
irrational fear that I am going to end up on a street corner somewhere
wearing a white shirt and a sincere tie, handing out badly printed booklets
telling people to repent or die. So maybe the more strident evangelicals and
fundamentalists have been very successful in that they have made the rest of
us feel slightly uneasy about telling out the good news. They have
occasionally made me pause with the question, "what if their way is right?"
I've decided they are not. But I have to admit that they give us the
loudest, most visible images we see of introducing people to a relationship
with Jesus: that's what you see in the media. It's like the worst of big
business and mass entertainment: giving the pitch, getting the order,
finishing the sales call. Taking on the whole package with altar calls for
thousands and thousands, emotional prayers of confession and repentance, so
many mass conversions, souls saved for Jesus, winning the numbers game. Can
we do any better than that? The short answer is yes.
Yes, because we have a better outline for evangelism in three places. In our
Prayer Book, in the history and hope of the Church and in the lives of its
Saints, and in the intricate and intimate stories of God's grace that are
planted deep in each of our own God-given lives. These are the places where
we can take part in, and co-minister with the deep longing of God to be
present for, in love with, connected to, all people.
But we need to be sure of the outline and foundation of our faith as a
people, our journey together. And for that we look to the covenant of
Baptism where:
We "strive to live as a disciple of Christ, loving God with your whole
heart, and your neighbor as yourself, until life's end."
We pray to "know Christ's forgiving love and continue in the fellowship of
the church [and proclaim] by word and example, the good news of God in
Christ"
[And we] "live as a disciple of Christ, fight the good fight, finish the
race, keep the faith."
This is the gift of acceptance as God's children, God's flock, that is later
confirmed by the Bishop so that we may, "grow in grace; increase in wisdom,
and understanding; [And in] the spirit of discernment and inner strength,
the spirit of knowledge and true godliness."
That is the foundation and the structure, the basic design of the deeper
identity we receive in our baptism, and the reason we need to gather
regularly to receive the body and blood of Christ at the Eucharist; to grow
up into the heart of the journey, to be nurtured in his life so that we may
live like Jesus, may give sustenance and hope for this hungry world; to
people who are hungry for food and drink, for hope and meaning, for
community and relationship, with God and with one another.
But then the question is: how do we take that into daily life and live that
out? Do we still have to look to those people on the street corner offering
wholesale salvation as the best model of evangelism? I don't believe so, for
that is not the way of the God who is bigger than all creation and all
eternity, yet closer than the breath on the very edge of our lips in this
very moment. For the ways of God are deeper and more nuanced, subtler and
more personal, taking place over time and space. That is the way God works
in creating, redeeming and sustaining us, taking time and history seriously.
In the words of one theologian, "We are being transformed by being slowly
soaked in the Gospel": in cooking terms, it is a marinade rather than a
glaze: and all in God's good time. And I think that this process happens in
two particular processes called formation and information.
First in accepting that we already have a gift to give just as we are, as
people of the covenant, people on the journey, on the way. Thomas Merton
writes that people have to know that they have a heart, before they can give
it away. So we have to accept that God has already given us, formed in each
of us, a gift, from the very beginning, hidden somewhere in the heart of who
and how and what we are, that is a word, a place, an action that is both our
gift from God and our gift to God. Each of us has a unique, individual and
precious gift for the healing of the world. And so much of our ministry
comes from sharing, speaking out, that word. Finding that gift in the midst
of who we are is the work of our formation in learning to share the life of
Jesus.
As John Main writes:
To follow Jesus was not merely to have an intellectual understanding about
him but to experience his personal revelation and the dimension of spirit
his person opened for us – to experience this at the centre of our lives to
the point of union with him. Once a Christian has entered upon this
pilgrimage he or she becomes a vital force through which the personal
communication of Jesus is made. Each of us is summoned to participate in
this work of union.
So part of the formation of our ministry is making our gift from God into a
gift of our ministry. And it is important to note that this gift may not be
the most best or most important one we have: or the one we take most pride
in. As a teenager I was painfully shy and fearful; the world looked
untrustworthy, most people looked dangerous, and most actions seemed doomed
to failure. It took time for me to come to learn that people were, for the
most part, good and kind; that there was freedom to learn and grow; that
there would be places on the pathway where I could find the beginning of
trust and friendships and communities that could lead me to a faith that
more was possible. It took time. And all this extended adolescence came
together later to let me sit with people who are going through the pain of
early adulthood and say, with some authority, "I know, I've been there, God
is there too." This early liability in my life turned into a gift of God for
others in working as a university chaplaincy: it was a gift I didn't expect.
We all have them, surprising gifts, to receive and give as gifts for the
gathering harvest.
The American writer, Frederick Buechner, who spent some time as a school
chaplain in Massachusetts, says that our vocation is where "our deepest
gladness meets the world's greatest hunger." And I think that is where we
must go to find the particular good news we share when we fish for the
friends of Christ in the world. It is a matter of looking into our own
journeys to see where Christ might have hidden a seed of growth or grace for
others deep in the ground of our own lives. This is the work of formation,
and there is still more.
Sometimes we can expand that process by looking into the lives of others who
have gone on the way before. That is why we watch the Saints of the church,
to see if their lives may have a hint on how we might help others on the
way. If they might offer each of us a template, informed and perfected by
prayer and grace over history, showing God's healing love in another part of
the wide world we live in. So there are the two parts of the process:
looking into the heart of our own lives as well as looking into the wide
breadth and depth of the Christian community over time and space: both
formation and information.
In several weeks we will have a chance to journey together on this road in a
Lenten journey that will meet together for six Thursday nights, using One
Light, Many Journeys, a study guide produced by the same people who
produced the excellent program we used last year. This will be offered
ecumenically, both here and at St Francis Church on Lonsdale Street.
The series will explore the Christian life using the lives and light of six
twentieth century Christians – John Main, Thomas Merton, Mother Maria
Skobtsova, Dom Bede Griffiths, Monica Hodges and Dietrich Bonhoeffer – as
examples for outlining and understanding our own path. There is a page about
it in today's bulletin and I commend it to you. It is a wonderful
opportunity for us to grow in the faithful journey, both formative and
informative, as individuals and as a growing community in Christ Jesus.
And Jesus said, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people."
The Lord be with you.
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