The Propelling Word
Sermon
An Idle Tale Becomes Good News
Messages On Lent And Easter Themes
On Christmas Eve of 1784, about sixty Methodist preachers met in a little church in Baltimore, Maryland, to organize the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. Theirs was a momentous and historic gathering, but they completed their work within ten days. Their real task, they knew, was waiting for them outside the walls of that church building, in the settled communities and on the frontiers of a new nation. When the meeting was over, those preachers, most of them under thirty years of age, leaped on their horses and rode off to their various appointments to take the gospel of Christ to people everywhere they could find them. It was almost as if they were being propelled by a power outside themselves.
But they were not the first to be propelled across the earth in the name of Christ. They stood rather in a long line that reaches all the way back to first century Palestine. The Risen Lord said to those first disciples of his, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations," and the Gospel of Mark says, "They went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere" (Mark 16:20).
Geographical boundaries were ignored by these men: "They proclaimed the good news everywhere" -- and also to everyone. They had not detected any social or racial restrictions in the command of their Risen Lord. Indeed, they were commanded to take the gospel to "all nations." For a people whose religious life had involved separation from others for the sake of acceptability to God, this was not an easy command to understand or accept. But before many years had gone by, one of the proudest of their number was writing to people who lived in the capital city of the Roman Empire, "I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish -- hence my eagerness to proclaim the gospel to you also who are in Rome" (Romans 1:14-15). The word "go" was propelling with such force that social and racial distinctions were being obliterated.
How do you explain this propulsion? How could there be such power in a two-letter word?
A Word From Their Risen Lord
There could not have been such power, at least for these men, if the word had come from some other person. Just anyone could not have had that kind of power over them. When they were told to "go," they went because they recognized the authority of the One who had spoken to them.
Why do we so frequently ask, "Who said this?" when we are evaluating something we have heard. We ask it because its reliability depends so heavily upon its source. And when we are trying to decide whether or not to do something we have been told to do, why are we so interested in knowing who told us to do it? Because the authority of the command depends so wholly upon the one who gave it. No person can afford to recognize just any authority. One has to decide whose voice will be authoritative in his or her life.
The disciples had done that, though many around them thought they had made a stupid choice. There were others they could have chosen to obey: the emperor, kings, governors, religious officials, local authorities. But they chose instead to take their orders from a Galilean carpenter turned itinerant preacher, teacher, and healer, who was executed on a cross like a common criminal. What poor judgment they had, many of their contemporaries thought.
Centuries earlier when Moses was trying to rescue his people from their slavery in Egypt, he asked the Pharaoh, in the name of the Lord, to let the people go. But Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord, that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go" (Exodus 5:1-2).
Even many who had seen Jesus would have said, as Pharaoh did, "I do not know the Lord." His word held no authority for them. But it did for this handful of people who had come to think of him as their Lord, their Master, their Savior. During the months they had journeyed with him, they had seen such tender compassion, such untarnished love, such sane judgment, that his word had become their command. If he said "Go," they would go, and nothing would stop them!
He still has that kind of authority today in the lives of those who have come to know his gracious love and his saving power.
A Word That Pointed To A Needy World
Notice that this is a word that, if obeyed, changes the focus of one's life, away from one's self toward others.
Once when the Apostle Paul had been "forbidden by the Holy Spirit" to proclaim the gospel in one place after another, he came to the city of Troas on the western edge of Asia. Tarrying there, he had a vision one night in which "there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, 'Come over and help us' " (Acts 16:6-10).
Jesus said, "Go," and a perishing people pled, "Come over and help us." It is true that these evangelists were not welcomed everywhere. In fact, they and their message were frequently spurned. But again and again, as Jesus' word resounded in their hearts and minds, they heard other words uttered by a needy people, saying, "Come over and help us."
Jesus had talked about fields being "already white for the harvest" (John 4:35), and now those fields glistened before their eyes. But it was not a lovely sight to behold. Instead, for those who had come to know Christ, it was a sight that pained and disturbed and moved to action.
Yet not everyone saw the world as these commissioned men saw it. Some saw it simply as a likely place to gain a fortune or to have a merry time. Some saw the possibilities it provided for exploitation and the attaining of power. Its pain and heartache and tragedy and sorrow were of no consequence to them. But all was different for those who had come to know the spirit of the Living Christ.
The truth lay bare before them. They looked upon the same world that others saw, but they saw it in its need and desperation. They saw a world astray, in need of a Guide; hurt and in need of a Healer; hungry and in need of the Bread of Life; thirsty and in need of the Water that satisfies; perishing and in need of a Savior.
We could compare that world with the world in which we live and perhaps find some grounds for boasting, but still we would have to admit that ours, too, is an unredeemed world. Its desires are too selfish, its scale of values too warped, its conduct too unworthy. There is so much that is wrong in our world. Many, it is true, keep going along as if they have all they need, but from the depths of the hearts of vast numbers of people the plea still comes, "Come over and help us." Christ still says, "Go," and those who recognize the authority of his voice, if they listen, hear a multitude crying out, "Come."
A Word That Matched An Inward Impulse
Then, because of an impulse within that corresponds to the command and the plea from without, they publish their message and seek to fulfill their task.
When Jesus commissioned those first disciples, he was not ordering them to do something they did not want to do. Rather, he was appointing them to the task to which their hearts already impelled them. They had good news to tell, and it didn't take much urging to get them to tell it.
In 1773 John Wesley sent George Shadford to work with the young Methodist movement in America. His letter to him, just prior to his embarkation, was a brief but challenging one. He said:
"The time is arrived for you to embark for America. You must go down to Bristol, where you will meet with Thomas Rankin, Captain Webb, and his wife. I let you loose, George, on the great continent of America. Publish your message in the open face of the sun, and do all the good you can."1
"I let you loose, George, on the great continent of America." That's what Jesus was saying to his disciples that day. He was not forcing them into a task; he was letting them loose with their message. They had a story to tell and a song to sing; he was saying, "Tell your story and sing your song!"
We wonder if they would not have done it anyway. The Apostle Paul once said, "If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel" (1 Corinthians 9:16). I think that was an obligation he felt in the depths of his being. That was true of the others as well. They had found a Friend too precious to hide, a Savior too wonderful not to share. They would have been "utterly miserable" if they had not told the good news. They either had to go, or they had to forget about the Man who had brought so much into their lives.
I like this story about the Protestant reformer Katherine Zell. When she was charged with getting out of her place in sharing the gospel -- coming too near to preaching! -- she said she knew she could never be a member of the clergy, but she said, "I am like the dear Mary Magdalene, who with no thought of being an apostle, came to tell the disciples that she had encountered the risen Lord."2
That's what one person after another did, beginning with those first disciples and continuing as others, too, all over the Roman world, "encountered the risen Lord." They came to tell others the good news.
Early on, when Peter and John were ordered by Jerusalem religious authorities to "speak no more to anyone" in the name of Jesus, they replied, "Whether it is right in God's sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:13-22).
A cartoonist pictures a minister leaning on his pulpit and saying to his congregation: "The question is: How do we win the world to Christ ... with a minimum of fuss and bother?"3
Can you imagine those first disciples asking such a question as that? No! The command of their Lord held too much authority for them for that. He had too dear a place in their hearts for that.
Woodrow Wilson spent some of the choicest years of his life at Princeton University, first as a student, then as a professor, and finally as the president of the University. He had some difficult experiences there, yet for him Princeton was the "promised land" to which he yearned to return in the last years of his life. Biographer Arthur Walworth says that when he was lying at the gate of death, he said to one of his Princeton friends: "If they cut me open afterward, they'll find engraved on my heart -- PRINCETON."4
CHRIST was the name engraved on the hearts of these first disciples who were propelled all across the Roman Empire with the good news of God's redeeming love displayed so surely and completely in Jesus Christ. They went wherever they went in his dear name.
When they looked around, they saw a world that desperately needed to hear the good news they had to tell, and their own experience of Christ and their love for him impelled them to go and tell others.
So may it be with us, too, for the word is still "GO"!
____________
1. The Works of John Wesley (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House; edition of 1872 authorized by the Wesleyan Conference Office, London), Vol. XII, p. 457.
2. Ruth Tucker, "Colorizing Church History," in Christianity Today, July 20, 1992, p. 21.
3. Cartoon by Doug Hall, in Leadership, Spring 1993, p. 24 (copyright 1993 by Doug Hall).
4. Arthur Walworth, Woodrow Wilson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1958, 1965), Book One, p. 160.
But they were not the first to be propelled across the earth in the name of Christ. They stood rather in a long line that reaches all the way back to first century Palestine. The Risen Lord said to those first disciples of his, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations," and the Gospel of Mark says, "They went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere" (Mark 16:20).
Geographical boundaries were ignored by these men: "They proclaimed the good news everywhere" -- and also to everyone. They had not detected any social or racial restrictions in the command of their Risen Lord. Indeed, they were commanded to take the gospel to "all nations." For a people whose religious life had involved separation from others for the sake of acceptability to God, this was not an easy command to understand or accept. But before many years had gone by, one of the proudest of their number was writing to people who lived in the capital city of the Roman Empire, "I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish -- hence my eagerness to proclaim the gospel to you also who are in Rome" (Romans 1:14-15). The word "go" was propelling with such force that social and racial distinctions were being obliterated.
How do you explain this propulsion? How could there be such power in a two-letter word?
A Word From Their Risen Lord
There could not have been such power, at least for these men, if the word had come from some other person. Just anyone could not have had that kind of power over them. When they were told to "go," they went because they recognized the authority of the One who had spoken to them.
Why do we so frequently ask, "Who said this?" when we are evaluating something we have heard. We ask it because its reliability depends so heavily upon its source. And when we are trying to decide whether or not to do something we have been told to do, why are we so interested in knowing who told us to do it? Because the authority of the command depends so wholly upon the one who gave it. No person can afford to recognize just any authority. One has to decide whose voice will be authoritative in his or her life.
The disciples had done that, though many around them thought they had made a stupid choice. There were others they could have chosen to obey: the emperor, kings, governors, religious officials, local authorities. But they chose instead to take their orders from a Galilean carpenter turned itinerant preacher, teacher, and healer, who was executed on a cross like a common criminal. What poor judgment they had, many of their contemporaries thought.
Centuries earlier when Moses was trying to rescue his people from their slavery in Egypt, he asked the Pharaoh, in the name of the Lord, to let the people go. But Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord, that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go" (Exodus 5:1-2).
Even many who had seen Jesus would have said, as Pharaoh did, "I do not know the Lord." His word held no authority for them. But it did for this handful of people who had come to think of him as their Lord, their Master, their Savior. During the months they had journeyed with him, they had seen such tender compassion, such untarnished love, such sane judgment, that his word had become their command. If he said "Go," they would go, and nothing would stop them!
He still has that kind of authority today in the lives of those who have come to know his gracious love and his saving power.
A Word That Pointed To A Needy World
Notice that this is a word that, if obeyed, changes the focus of one's life, away from one's self toward others.
Once when the Apostle Paul had been "forbidden by the Holy Spirit" to proclaim the gospel in one place after another, he came to the city of Troas on the western edge of Asia. Tarrying there, he had a vision one night in which "there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, 'Come over and help us' " (Acts 16:6-10).
Jesus said, "Go," and a perishing people pled, "Come over and help us." It is true that these evangelists were not welcomed everywhere. In fact, they and their message were frequently spurned. But again and again, as Jesus' word resounded in their hearts and minds, they heard other words uttered by a needy people, saying, "Come over and help us."
Jesus had talked about fields being "already white for the harvest" (John 4:35), and now those fields glistened before their eyes. But it was not a lovely sight to behold. Instead, for those who had come to know Christ, it was a sight that pained and disturbed and moved to action.
Yet not everyone saw the world as these commissioned men saw it. Some saw it simply as a likely place to gain a fortune or to have a merry time. Some saw the possibilities it provided for exploitation and the attaining of power. Its pain and heartache and tragedy and sorrow were of no consequence to them. But all was different for those who had come to know the spirit of the Living Christ.
The truth lay bare before them. They looked upon the same world that others saw, but they saw it in its need and desperation. They saw a world astray, in need of a Guide; hurt and in need of a Healer; hungry and in need of the Bread of Life; thirsty and in need of the Water that satisfies; perishing and in need of a Savior.
We could compare that world with the world in which we live and perhaps find some grounds for boasting, but still we would have to admit that ours, too, is an unredeemed world. Its desires are too selfish, its scale of values too warped, its conduct too unworthy. There is so much that is wrong in our world. Many, it is true, keep going along as if they have all they need, but from the depths of the hearts of vast numbers of people the plea still comes, "Come over and help us." Christ still says, "Go," and those who recognize the authority of his voice, if they listen, hear a multitude crying out, "Come."
A Word That Matched An Inward Impulse
Then, because of an impulse within that corresponds to the command and the plea from without, they publish their message and seek to fulfill their task.
When Jesus commissioned those first disciples, he was not ordering them to do something they did not want to do. Rather, he was appointing them to the task to which their hearts already impelled them. They had good news to tell, and it didn't take much urging to get them to tell it.
In 1773 John Wesley sent George Shadford to work with the young Methodist movement in America. His letter to him, just prior to his embarkation, was a brief but challenging one. He said:
"The time is arrived for you to embark for America. You must go down to Bristol, where you will meet with Thomas Rankin, Captain Webb, and his wife. I let you loose, George, on the great continent of America. Publish your message in the open face of the sun, and do all the good you can."1
"I let you loose, George, on the great continent of America." That's what Jesus was saying to his disciples that day. He was not forcing them into a task; he was letting them loose with their message. They had a story to tell and a song to sing; he was saying, "Tell your story and sing your song!"
We wonder if they would not have done it anyway. The Apostle Paul once said, "If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel" (1 Corinthians 9:16). I think that was an obligation he felt in the depths of his being. That was true of the others as well. They had found a Friend too precious to hide, a Savior too wonderful not to share. They would have been "utterly miserable" if they had not told the good news. They either had to go, or they had to forget about the Man who had brought so much into their lives.
I like this story about the Protestant reformer Katherine Zell. When she was charged with getting out of her place in sharing the gospel -- coming too near to preaching! -- she said she knew she could never be a member of the clergy, but she said, "I am like the dear Mary Magdalene, who with no thought of being an apostle, came to tell the disciples that she had encountered the risen Lord."2
That's what one person after another did, beginning with those first disciples and continuing as others, too, all over the Roman world, "encountered the risen Lord." They came to tell others the good news.
Early on, when Peter and John were ordered by Jerusalem religious authorities to "speak no more to anyone" in the name of Jesus, they replied, "Whether it is right in God's sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:13-22).
A cartoonist pictures a minister leaning on his pulpit and saying to his congregation: "The question is: How do we win the world to Christ ... with a minimum of fuss and bother?"3
Can you imagine those first disciples asking such a question as that? No! The command of their Lord held too much authority for them for that. He had too dear a place in their hearts for that.
Woodrow Wilson spent some of the choicest years of his life at Princeton University, first as a student, then as a professor, and finally as the president of the University. He had some difficult experiences there, yet for him Princeton was the "promised land" to which he yearned to return in the last years of his life. Biographer Arthur Walworth says that when he was lying at the gate of death, he said to one of his Princeton friends: "If they cut me open afterward, they'll find engraved on my heart -- PRINCETON."4
CHRIST was the name engraved on the hearts of these first disciples who were propelled all across the Roman Empire with the good news of God's redeeming love displayed so surely and completely in Jesus Christ. They went wherever they went in his dear name.
When they looked around, they saw a world that desperately needed to hear the good news they had to tell, and their own experience of Christ and their love for him impelled them to go and tell others.
So may it be with us, too, for the word is still "GO"!
____________
1. The Works of John Wesley (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House; edition of 1872 authorized by the Wesleyan Conference Office, London), Vol. XII, p. 457.
2. Ruth Tucker, "Colorizing Church History," in Christianity Today, July 20, 1992, p. 21.
3. Cartoon by Doug Hall, in Leadership, Spring 1993, p. 24 (copyright 1993 by Doug Hall).
4. Arthur Walworth, Woodrow Wilson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1958, 1965), Book One, p. 160.
