Forty-two years ago in New York City, on the third weekend in September 1958, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was promoting his first book, Stride Toward Freedom. As a result of Dr. King's leadership during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, he had become a national figure.
While In New York, Dr. King made a personal appearance at a book signing at Blumstein's department store in Harlem. Books were not sold in Blumstein's, which was then the only department store in Harlem. So the store set up a desk in the shoe department and put Dr. King there to sign copies of his book. As he did so, a woman wearing a blue raincoat, large earrings, and sequined glasses stepped out of the milling crowd of some 50 people. She walked up to the desk and asked: "Is this Martin Luther King?"
Dr. King answered, "Yes, it is." The woman yanked a razor-sharp letter opener out from underneath her raincoat and plunged it deep into Dr. King's chest. She was subdued as she spat out obscenities about Dr. King and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
As Dr. King was taken to the emergency room of Harlem Hospital, the letter opener was still lodged in his chest. The handle protruded a few inches below and to the left of the knot in his tie. Surgery to remove the blade was delayed because of the precarious position in which it had lodged in Dr. King's chest. It had grazed the aorta, and X-rays showed it to be lodged between the heart and the lung. But the delay was particularly dangerous since doctors later said that, if Dr. King had made a sudden move-such as a sneeze, for example-the blade could have punctured his aorta and killed him.
A team of surgeons performed the delicate surgery to remove the blade. They had to remove two of Dr. King's ribs and portions of his breastbone to extract the letter opener. Six days later, the doctors announced that he was out of danger. And on October 3, 1958, Dr. King left the hospital—"immediately impatient," he said, to get back to work.
He would live just a little less than a decade thereafter. But when Dr. King left the hospital, he took with him a mark of his ordeal. It was a mark that would remain with him for the rest of his all-too-brief life. And it was a mark that would define both his identity and his mission and ministry.
The stitches he received had served their healing purpose of sealing the wound. But when the stitches were removed, they left a scar. It was a scar, said to be in the shape of a cross, right over Dr. King's heart.
For the rest of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr., bore on his own body the sign and seal of Him who died. It was the sign that marked his mission, purpose, and commitment in life and that, in a very real sense, sealed his fate.
On this special commissioning evening—the evening that both marks and seals the mission commitment of today's missionaries—I want to suggest that you as missionaries will also go forth bearing the sign and the seal of Him who died.
The notion of bearing the seal of Him who died was magnificently articulated by George William Kitchin and by Michael Robert Newbolt in their words to the great hymn, "Lift High the Cross." The second of its four stanzas makes this statement: "Each newborn servant of the Crucified bears on the brow the seal of Him who died." Then, following the refrain, the third stanza expresses this plea: "O Lord, once lifted on the glorious tree, as thou hast promised, draw the world to thee."
The promise to which the hymn refers was made by Jesus on several occasions in the Gospel according to John. In John 3:14, Jesus compared his own mission and identity with an incident from the wilderness ordeal of the people of Israel en route to the promised land. Their lives were being threatened by poisonous snakes, and Moses, under instruction from God, provided the means of life-saving protection. "And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness," Jesus said, "so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."
Later on, when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem for the last Passover of his earthly life, the Pharisees took note of the shouts of triumph and cries of "hosanna" from the excited and expectant crowds. And the Pharisees said to one another: "Look, the world has gone after him!" (John 12:19b)
After the triumphal entry, in speaking to the crowd of Passover pilgrims, Jesus echoed those words of the Pharisees with a slightly different twist. Jesus said, in John 12:32: "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."
The listening crowd did not understand those words of Jesus, nor did his own disciples. But later on, at the Last Supper, on the eve of his crucifixion, after offering a prayer for his disciples, Jesus also prayed to God on behalf of those "who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one….The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17: 20-23)
Earlier, in clarifying his prayer, he explained: "I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one...As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world." (John 17: 15-18)
Taken together, these passages of Scripture indicate the mark, the seal, and the role of the missionary calling and service. The mission role and task is the same now as then. It is to lift up the cross of Christ so that God in Christ Jesus may complete and fulfill the drawing of all people together, that all may be one.
We do the lifting, and God in Christ does the drawing. But the drawing cannot take place without the lifting.
As the chorus of the hymn bears witness, your task in missionary service—indeed the task of all members of the church in mission—is to "Lift High the Cross" so that the promise of God in Christ Jesus may be fulfilled and all the world may be drawn into oneness—by God's doing and in God's own time. Under the shadow of the cross, the whole world becomes a "drawing room." The whole world becomes the arena for God in Christ Jesus to draw all people, all things, unto God.
Last June, speaking at the commencement ceremony of Washington University in St. Louis, NAACP Board Chairman Julian Bond offered an example based upon shrinking the whole world population into a single village of just 100 people. I would like us to think of these statistics as representative of a "drawing room" of 100 people. Based on the current population ratio, of those 100 people, 52 would be female and 48, male; 70 would be non-White and 30, White; 70 would be non-Christian and 30, Christian. Six of the 100 people would own fully 59 percent of all of the world's wealth, and all six would be from the United States.
Of the 100 people, 80 would live in substandard housing, and 70 would be unable to read and write. Half of the people in the room would be suffering from malnutrition. And only one person in the drawing room would have a college education.
This is the "drawing room" context for global mission&—the context in which you must "Lift High the Cross" in missionary service.
In a world that both recognizes and approves of barriers and divisions among and between people and nations—divisions based upon superiority and inferiority, racial privilege and racial discrimination, wealth and poverty—those who "Lift High the Cross" must see the world clearly and realistically, as it is in the drawing-room parable. And those who "Lift High the Cross" must also think, feel, and act as though the promises of Jesus were already an accomplished fact, as though the promised drawing of all people to Christ had already been realized. You must see each and every person as someone for whom Christ Jesus died and whom he has promised to draw unto himself.
Those who claim the name of Jesus for special privilege, special status, special favor, and special protection bear more the mark of Cain than the seal of Him who died. The same holds true for those who "Lift High the Cross" as a club of submission rather than as a magnet of reconciliation.
Newspaper columnist Cal Thomas, one of the founders with Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority in the 1980s and long a spokesperson for the so-called Christian Right, has undergone considerable soul-searching of late and now questions his earlier allegiances. In his recent book, Blinded by Might—in which he admits that "Jesus emptied himself of power that was rightfully his. We try to fill ourselves with power that belongs to the world..."—he affirms that "God in his infinite wisdom knows what is happening and has everything under control. In fact, we have seen the end of the story, and we know that eventually [God] wins. So why don't we start acting as if we were on the winning side?"
For nearly a decade, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., struggled and served, obeyed and witnessed, submitted and sacrificed, marked by the sign of the cross just above his heart and bearing the seal of Him who died. He did so right up to the moment when he himself died by an assassin's bullet.
On the night before his death, Dr. King bore grateful witness to having been allowed his life of struggle and sacrifice rather than having his life snuffed out 10 years earlier. He was glad that he had not sneezed while waiting for surgery, and he recounted the painful yet glorious times of witness he had been allowed in the struggle for civil rights.
He affirmed his sure and confident faith that the mark of the cross which he bore assured him that he was on the winning side. "I just want to do God's will," he said. "I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
Such is the confident assurance of those who bear the seal of Him who died. So shall it also be the confidence of those who take on the sign, bear the seal, and commit themselves to "Lift High the Cross," while giving "praise to the Crucified for victory!" This article was abridged from the sermon given by Dr. Nugent, General Secretary of the General Board of Global Ministries, at the Service of Commissioning and Recognition held in the chapel of the Interchurch Center in New York on the evening of October 10, 2000.
Text and photographs copyright 2001 by New World Outlook: The Mission Magazine of The United Methodist Church. Used by Permission. Visit New World Outlook Online at http://gbgm-umc.org/nwo/.
For reprint permission, contact New World Outlook by E-mail at nwo@gbgm-umc.org.
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