We are also delighted to have our international guests who put a personal face on mission across the globe. You tell the story so beautifully with your presence.  Please take our warmest greetings and deep gratitude back to the women where you work. Thank them for being our partners and for their dedication to improving the lives of women, children and youth. 

Now I want you to get your bibles, if you have them with you, because you might want to use them later, and a hymn that is printed on a piece of paper on your tables. Please stand as you are able and sing with me a Quaker song so old that it no longer needs a copyright, “How Can I Keep from Singing?”

One person important to my faith journey is a Hindu woman from Columbia, SC named Arunima. In 1992, she played a key role in helping to found an interfaith organization in South Carolina, Partners in Dialogue. Partners brings together representatives of ten different faith communities, some of which have sprung up in South Carolina, as in other parts of the country, in response to immigration, particularly from Asia.

Although half the steering committee of Partners is women, Arunima convinced many of us that we needed a women’s interfaith group separate from but affiliated with Partners. So, we as women began to meet monthly to share our stories in a more relaxed setting.

Unitarian, Bahai, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist women would sit with those of us from the Christian tradition, including mainline Protestants, Catholics and evangelicals and share experiences, concerns, songs, sacred texts, prayers, and stories of our faith. Our commitment together is that we don’t try to resolve our differences.  We simply share them. As I have indicated before, some of these women from other faith traditions, especially Arunima and those from her Hindu community, prayed for our daughter Rachel, when she was sick and ministered to me during those years in wonderful life-affirming ways.  These women have been at times the embodiment of Christ’s compassion for me, and I came to know more about my religious beliefs because I got a glimpse of theirs.

Arunima once observed that, during our times of sharing, some of the Christian women were shy and somewhat apologetic about their faith. “You Christians are eager to confess and analyze the problems that Christians often cause in our city, state or country,” she said, “but you are much less prone to share the depth of your faith conviction.” If I put Arunima’s words in the vernacular, I would say her message is this: Your witness is so anemic, wimpish and guilt-ridden, why would anyone sign up to be on your team?

But, of course, Arunima was much more gracious. Why? she asked. Why do you seem to be so apologetic?

Some of the Christian women were not surprised by her comments. Some responded that being from the majority religion, especially the so-called southern Bible Belt of the United States, they were eager to be polite and careful, listening and learning from their sisters from other religions, rather than dominating them, as so often happens. Most of the models we experience for sharing testimonies of faith, they said, are aggressive, triumphalistic monologues, not invitational dialogues. We need to learn new, dialogical models, they said.

Forging interfaith relations with integrity is not easy whether we find ourselves in the majority or minority position. I had not been one of the shy ones, but I think, I hope, I was polite and careful. In any case, I found myself pondering Arunima’s admonition about Christians speaking more convincingly of our faith, this sermon from a devout Hindu woman probing the nature of Christian witness. For me Arunima’s insight offered an opportunity to reflect more fully on the task of Christian mission and evangelism.

Dana Roberts, a Professor of International Mission at Boston University School of Theology, discusses the relationship of mission and evangelism in a booklet produced by the General Board of Global Ministries, Evangelism as the Heart of Mission. I find her analysis quite useful and will quote her at some length. She says,

I have found from years of teaching that entering seminarians can fall into two camps: one group, which might identify itself as conservative evangelicals, believes that mission and evangelism are the same thing, and that evangelism is defined as proclamation of the Good News, with the goal of calling individuals into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.  Any form of mission that is not overtly evangelistic in nature is deemed illegitimate or second class. The other group, which might identify itself as pluralists, has little need for evangelism as defined by the evangelicals. They believe that the goal of mission, such as it exists, is to facilitate beneficial social change in the here and now.  Evangelism to the pluralists is an embarrassing remnant of western cultural imperialism and negativity toward nonwestern cultures and religions…

As a good United Methodist, Roberts goes on to say that,

The Methodist solution to the dilemma thus described is to talk about the holistic nature of mission and evangelism and how John Wesley was concerned for the physical well-being of coal miners as well as their souls…

I wish to employ the metaphor of the human body to talk about the relationship between evangelism and mission – a relationship that underscores their unity….when John Wesley had his experience at Aldersgate in 1738,…his heart…was “strangely warmed.”  When we love something or someone passionately, we talk of the yearnings of the heart. When in deep pain, we say that our hearts are broken. We know from medical science that the heart is a muscle that pumps our blood through our body. Heart attacks are a leading cause of death for western adults. We can live on one lung or one kidney; we can function without our eyes or ears or limbs. But when the human heart stops, we die.

The relationship of evangelism to mission is like the relationship of the heart to the body.  Mission is the body. It walks and moves in different contexts. Sometimes the hands are busy and sometimes the feet. Sometimes the eyes are ineffective because the night is so dark that they are useless, and the hands are needed to feel the way. At other times the hands are full and the way must be made by sight alone. But always the heart beats, sending the blood through the body, nourishing the other organs and keeping the body alive. Evangelism is the heart, both as the pump that circulates the life force and as the seat of the emotions. Without the emotional fervor of the heart, the love affair with the gospel, mission dies. To separate the heart from the body is to kill the body. To take evangelism out of mission is to cut the heart out of it.

I do not believe that evangelism can be separated from mission, but neither do I believe they should be conflated. To merge the two concepts so that evangelism and mission are the same thing has historically led some evangelicals to drop emphasis on the reign of God so that anything beyond verbal proclamation is not mission…

If the heart of mission is evangelism, the sharing of the message of the Good News, then what is the body?... With the heart pumping away, the life force travels around the body and enlivens it. The work of the heart builds up the body. Yet the body does not live for itself, merely for the sake of living.  The body lives to continue Jesus’ own mission of announcing and demonstrating the reign of God. Mission, the body, is thus what connects the Good News to the kingdom of God.

Another missiologist, Darrell L. Guder, says that “mission [is] the triune God’s desire to bring about the healing of the nations.”  

Not only is this symbiotic relationship between mission and evangelism very Wesleyan, as stated so beautifully by Dr. Roberts, it also is very biblical. When looking for texts to support evangelism, we often turn to Matthew 28: 19-20, a passage that the King James Version labels “The Great Commission.” The New Revised Standard Version calls these verses “The Commissioning of the Disciples.” You know this text well.

Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

We just sang a hymn, an old-fashioned Quaker song that I like so much, “How Can I keep from Singing,”

The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart, a fountain ever springing!
Since love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

What a line! “Since love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?” From having spent more than a year immersed with you as Directors, with staff, and with leaders of United Methodist Women all over the country, I know that your lives “sing,” that this organization “sings,” that you embody the belief that “love is Lord of heaven and earth.”  I know the inner strength, confidence, and joy evident in your faces, the love displayed in your action, and both the urgency and patience of your prayers.

If my friend, Arunima, however, walked into meetings of the Women’s Division or into gatherings of local, district, and conference United Methodist Women all over the country, would she at times find us anemic, wimpish, guilt-ridden and apologetic about our faith? Or, alternatively, would she immediately and always recognize the passion associated with hearts full of love, committed to the Gospel?  We can express our passion in quiet and humble ways or in bold and noisy ways, but we can’t contain it! We can’t suppress the “song!” How can I keep from singing?

I suspect Arunima would find a mixed bag across our organization. Many units of United Methodist Women radiate Christ’s love in vibrant work for spiritual growth as well as engagement in God’s mission. But some don’t, just as some United Methodist Churches don’t. If we are to be faithful to our understanding that evangelism is at the heart of mission, we need urgently to spread our message of women engaged in God’s mission in more convincing ways that work for the 21st century.  This is part of what I learned in the Division’s August Symposium on Envisioning the Future, and I hope you as Directors did, too. We took stock of our organization, our church, our social and political context, and we realized anew that, like the denomination in which we work, we are not as strong and vibrant as we once were.  We also discovered that we have creative determination and possibilities for making ourselves more vigorous and robust for tackling the challenges we face, for witnessing to God’s mission in ways that fit us for the future while honoring the past.  I look forward to following up on what we discovered in the Symposium as we undertake the process of Long Range Planning.

But for now, let me turn back to the book of Matthew.  Most scholars believe that the author of Matthew drew upon the earlier book of Mark as one key source, but unlike Mark, the organization of Matthew is explicit. Five parts fit in between a birth narrative that serves as an introduction and a Passion narrative for a conclusion.  Chapter 28, the last chapter, begins with the women at the tomb and ends in a flourish with Christ’s commandment to make disciples.

The key to Matthew’s world, this gospel’s portrayal of Jesus, is a call to a radical obedience, a higher righteousness, linked to the assurance that God is present with those who take this step in a new, definitive way. Righteousness, as Matthew uses the concept, means living in a way compatible with God’s will, or simply rightness of life before God.  It is not a series of things to do to qualify for God’s blessing; it is the kind of righteousness proclaimed in the Torah, the Hebrew scripture, a way of life that is the essence of the Kingdom. Moreover, in the book of Matthew, Jesus not only calls for a higher righteousness, he models it himself. 

In the fifth section of Matthew, which covers chapters 19-25, the theme is the final judgment. For example, chapter 22 gives us the greatest commandment. Chapter 24 and the first part of 25 counsel watchfulness for when Jesus will return. Another very famous set of verses follows, often called “The Judgment of the Nations,” in verses 31-46 of this chapter. Herein, as you know, lies a profoundly important definition of God’s mission, the first part of which I will read from the New Revised Standard Version:

‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Jesus doesn’t really mince any words in this passage, does he? Eugene Peterson translates the remainder of verses like this,

Then he will turn to the ‘goats,’ the ones on his left, and say, ‘get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why?

Because –            

I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.’

Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?

He will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me – you failed to do it to me.

Then those ‘goats’ will be herded to their eternal doom, but the ‘sheep’ to their eternal reward.

What’s not to understand here? What in this picture is not clear? Can Jesus be more lucid?  This passage from Matthew makes very clear that the coming of the end will involve a judgment on the basis of actual deeds of mercy rather than of declarations of faith.  Again the theme of Matthew is that the test of discipleship is doing God’s will, not one’s own, as Jesus demonstrates in the dramatic conclusion to the gospel.

In American religious and popular culture, contemplating the end times is a hot topic and big business. The overwhelmingly popular novel by Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins, Left Behind, is now available in a 10th anniversary limited edition. You know the story; perhaps you’ve read it. The promotional blurb for the book says, “Driverless cars careen out of control. Terrified people watch their loved ones vanish. Some say it's an alien invasion, but Rayford Steele knows that his wife's warning has come true—Christ has raptured believers and he's been left behind!”

This is one vision of the end of times, but I don’t buy it.  I don’t find it very convincing or very biblical.  Rather, I think the picture painted by Matthew 25: 31-46, a very different picture than that portrayed in the “rapture” novels, suggests that when God comes to judge us, based on the condition of our world right now, we better expect God to be pretty mad. In the largess of our over-consumption, our drive to accumulate, our wastefulness and our determination to pollute the whole of creation, we should not be worried about being left behind.  We should be worried about how we have betrayed God’s mission, about ending up like the goats described in Matthew 25.

Hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast, especially Katrina, graphically exposed the extreme decay of our inner cities. New Orleans is not the only urban area riddled by poverty, racism, and violence, but when a natural calamity like a hurricane collided with New Orleans’ long-standing human-made disaster, the flood washed away our ability as a nation to deny these harsh realities.

This particular face of extreme brutality, the poverty, racism and sexual violence unmasked and compounded by the hurricanes, is something we in United Methodist Women have been addressing for a long time. This time, once again United Methodist Women rose to the challenge, as you heard so eloquently Friday night and will hear more about tomorrow.  In the season of endless hurricanes, national mission institutions that our predecessors founded and that we continue to support served as first responders as well as long-term care centers for hurricane victims. United Methodist Women’s units gathered UMCOR kits and many other forms of assistance.

In recognition of our longstanding work of being at the forefront of providing mercy, charity and justice to the hungry, homeless, abused and those who suffer the brutality of racism, we have received yet another gift from sisters in Asia who believe in and want to support our mission work, particularly in the wake of these hurricanes. As you know, early in September, we received a gift of $5,000 from the Korean Women’s Society of Christian Service. In presenting the gift, President Eun Young Choi said, "We as women in Korea have seen what is happening in your country, especially in New Orleans, and we are deeply hurt. We know that the United States is a rich country with a lot of resources, but we want to share a little token with your women for their work." Then Friday, we received another gift, this time from women who themselves live in the midst of deeply embedded poverty. We received $350 from Chita Millan, the President of the East Asia Area of the World Federation of Methodist and Uniting Church Women to support the work of the Women’s Division, again, especially in the aftermath of these hurricanes. What remarkable generosity! What love! What sisterhood! What wonderful responsiveness to the Gospel portrayed so graphically in Matthew 25. If women across Asia, many of whom are poor themselves, can gather this kind of gift, what kind of money could we collect for our on-going programs if we did so with greater determination? “Since love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?”

Like some of you and like many United Methodist Women across the country, I grew up in close acquaintance with the working poor. I have long admired and marveled at the ingenuity of those who have very little money or material resources. I have traveled extensively in parts of the world where poverty is deeply entrenched. Whenever friends, students, or church folk remark out of ignorance about the inability of poor people to forge a better life, I like to respond with stories about the remarkable and creative survival strategies poor people use to keep from getting crushed under the kinds of challenges that many of us more accustomed to the middle class cannot imagine. If we all, like most United Methodist Women do, bother to get acquainted with the poor and the obstacles they face, we learn a lot.

Nineteenth century novelist Herman Melville once said, “Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, the well-warmed and the well-fed.

Despite my deep respect for poor people and their survival skills, I have no regard for poverty. It stinks, literally and figuratively. Eventually, it also sucks the life out of many people, literally and figuratively. Poverty promotes conflict and chaos as demonstrated so graphically in the New Orleans Superdome. First on the list to succumb, usually, are children and women. Many who watched the destitution, mayhem and violence unfold in the aftermath of the hurricanes, found themselves shocked by what they saw, just as our sisters in Korea did. Many in this country have been in denial about poverty for decades, no matter whether Democrats or Republicans were in the Whitehouse.

Mother Theresa is reputed to have said some years ago that she thought the poverty in America was really the worst she had ever seen, even worse than Calcutta where she lived and worked. She was pointing not to the absolute material deprivation of the poor in our country but to the spiritual poverty here, not only among those of us who have money but also among the poor and the homeless, those we force into isolation, rejection and shame.

From the perspective of the gospel of Jesus Christ, our isolation, shame, ignorance and denial of the poor won’t do.  Such isolation and denial fall far short of Jesus’ clear teachings on money and wealth, a topic he addresses more than any other in the Gospels. Jesuit theologian John Haughey says that “We read the Gospel as if we had no money, and we spend our money as if we know nothing of the Gospel.” Yet, according to Matthew 25, no aspect of our individual and corporate lives is more determinative of our ultimate well-being.

In his classic book on The World’s Religions, Huston Smith makes an interesting observation.  He characterizes Jesus language as simple, concentrated, clear, extravagant, and invitational. Jesus’ teachings work with our imagination and our hearts more than our reason or our will. Smith states that,

if we are not astonished with Jesus’ stories and prescriptions for our lives, it is because we have heard Jesus’ teachings so often that their edges have been worn smooth, dulling their subversiveness.  If we could recover their original impact, we too would be startled. Their beauty would not cover the fact that they are ‘hard sayings’ for presenting a scheme of values so counter to the usual as to rock us like an earthquake…The great Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev said that a wind of freedom blows through these teachings that frightens the world and makes us want to deflect them by postponement – not yet, not yet! H.G. Wells was evidently right: Either there was something mad about this man, or our hearts are still too small for his message.

Are our hearts too small for this message? Do we look for the face of Christ in the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless, the naked, those in prison? In the women, children, and youth who bear the brunt of poverty?

I’m not asking if we feel guilty or sorry or regretful when we see poor people. I’m not asking if we think they are responsible for their own conditions or if some systemic deprivation created these circumstances. I’m asking if we see Jesus when we look at them. If not, then perhaps our hearts are too small. Perhaps we don’t yet fully experience the bounteous grace and love of Jesus Christ. Matthew 25 says that when we hear the cries of the oppressed, the cries of the poor, we hear the voice of God. I believe that for more than 136 years, United Methodist Women have heard these cries, this particular voice of God calling us.   

When we look at the depth and extent of poverty, it looks huge. During worship this morning in honor of the Children’s Sabbath, you heard a litany of alarming statistics  about children in poverty. We could list many more distressing circumstances and numbers about the extent and impact of poverty across the world and across our country. When we contemplate the vastness of the problems and the relative smallness of our efforts, when we meditate on all the lives that get crushed by poverty and the conflicts it causes, we can get overwhelmed.

But in Matthew 25, Jesus is not inviting us to get overwhelmed. He wants us to do something about these conditions! Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus preaches about an abundant life, about love and hope. The world created by God has enough for everyone! There’s no real scarcity when people share and live lives of service, as United Methodist Women have known all along.  Very practical solutions exist to the problems of poverty. We know these solutions. Various credible institutions have been telling us for years how to rid the world of poverty.  The problem, in fact, is not poverty.  The problem is our unwillingness as a society to address it!  We as United Methodist Women have a wonderful history of mission that tackles these problems with acts of both mercy and justice, but this is no time to rest on our laurels.

Sometimes I worry that we in the Women’s Division and United Methodist Women are not as pro-active, creative and persistent as we need to be either in telling our story of women in mission or in carrying out our purposes. We need to make sure that there is no lack of spirited determination or eager enthusiasm, whether in addressing the needs of women, children and youth or in our resolve to be evangels of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Let’s look again at those famous verses in Matthew 25 and 28. Seen as a whole, the book of Matthew demonstrates the intimate, inseparable link between mission and evangelism -- the heart that beats so passionately within the body eager to be about God’s work, as Dana Roberts states it.

We can not get to the Great Commission in Matthew 28, without the radical obedience required in Matthew 25, a way of life that is the essence of the Kingdom. Furthermore, on the other hand, if we neglect Matthew 28 in favor of living out Matthew 25, we risk becoming passionless social workers and activists whose lives no longer “sing” with the joy and confidence of a life in Christ.  “Since love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?”

How, then, do we ensure that we and our organization continues to live lives that “sing?” How do we proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ? What is an effective way to make disciples? A crucial phrase in these verses of Matthew 28 lies almost at the very end.  After admonishing us to make disciples and baptize, the text says, and teach them “to obey everything I have commanded you.” As we’ve already seen, Matthew 25 is pretty clear about what Jesus teaches, what Jesus commands.

We as United Methodist Women know that our message of salvation in Jesus Christ is far more persuasive when our concrete actions every day demonstrate Jesus’ very clear and convincing commandments, like those in Matthew 25, those commandments that rock us like an earthquake. This is a kind of practical theology of mission and evangelism, a combination of personal and social holiness that John Wesley embraced and promoted.

In a world too often full of hatred and greed, we have the foolishness to say with the full passion of our hearts and the energetic engagement of our whole bodies: In Jesus Christ, there is abundant life for all! In a world of very tough problems and terribly deep wounds, we dare to be signs of healing and reconciliation, to announce in very concrete and realistic ways God’s mission to reclaim, restore, and redeem the life of all creation to its divine intention.

In a world where fear often reigns, we announce with joy and confidence that nothing can separate us from the love of God. “The Lord is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life— of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalms 27)

Or do we? Do we really believe in a Gospel of abundant life for all? Is the passion of our hearts and our love for the Gospel worked out daily in our lives as United Methodist Women? Or, are we at risk in some parts of our organization of offering an anemic, apologetic version of this the greatest story ever told? Are we offering the children of the world - those who insistently confront us with their deprivation and our privilege – are we offering them joyful service and eager insistence on changing the world, or are we offering a begrudging, wishy-washy witness combined with denial and isolation in church and society? Do we see the face of Christ in the faces of the poor? Do we see our own salvation as profoundly and intimately tied to their fate? Are our hearts too small for Christ’s earthquake-like message? Are we ready and eager to spread this Good News?

At this time last year, in my first address to the Women’s Division, I told you that I wake up every morning giving thanks to God for United Methodist Women. I want to let you know that, a year later, and 14 months after having embarked on this great journey as your chief executive, I still wake up every morning giving thanks to God for United Methodist Women and the Women’s Division.  Furthermore, I am evermore grateful for your work begun already to envision a new future for us all as we respond to God’s call and the challenges that face us in the 21st century. We have a lot of work to do as women faithful to God’s call in mission, and I am as eager as ever to get on with it.

But make no mistake about it: the reign of God, the kingdom of God, has already begun in you. To look out and see you is to come close to the face of God. You are the hands, the heart, the eyes, and the ears of God at work in the world. Let’s move forward with greater commitment than ever before, as Dana Roberts puts it, to be hearts full of passion and bodies eager every day to carry out God’s mission.

Since love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?