Beginning from Jerusalem

I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and I grew up in the church. 

Though we left Cincinnati when I was just seven years old, I have some memories of that church that stand out my mind. One of those memories is captured here in this photograph.  That’s me leaning against the wall.  My sister is standing next to me, probably about sixteen in that picture.  Grandma’s on the opposite side of the photograph.  And in the center the photograph is a man who visited our church and stayed with us in our house for several days.  His name was Samuel and he was from Rhodesia… what is today Zimbabwe.

His visit opened a new world for me. Africa! Visions of mud huts with thatched roofs.! Lions being hunted by spear-throwing men with painted bodies!  It didn't matter that my new Rhodesian minister friend spoke four languages, was educated at Cambridge, and lived in a city nearly as large as my own. He was from Africa! And though I was too young to really understand his ministry there, he tried to explain to me why Christians in churches like mine, would send prayers and money far across the seas so that children might be taught to read and write, and farmers taught to use modern fertilizers, and all the people taught the stories of God and Jesus that I was learning in own my Sunday School class. Even at that young age, I began to understand the call we as Christians hear from God to share the story of God beyond our own community of faith.

That understanding grew some more just a few weeks ago, as I traveled with a team of ten to Slidell, Louisiana, to work with UMCOR and help rebuild the gulf coast. One of the projects was rebuilding the community soup kitchen run by Mount of Olives African Methodist Episcopal Church. It was a very interesting project. The old soup kitchen was destroyed and the local rotary club took on the project of rebuilding a new kitchen and dining hall and UMCOR partnered with rotary and the church to provide volunteer laborers. The soup kitchen is subsidized by the Federal government. So we had Church, government, and civic organizations all working together to make sure that people had food to eat. And of course our motivation was to share not only the food that sustains a body, but the food that sustains our spirits as well. For we worked in the name of Jesus Christ through whom the world has learned of God’s unending love.

Of course, I have other memories of mission work for my time here in Prescott. Some of these faces should look familiar. I’m not sure how many trips you have taken to Caborca, but I certainly remember the ones I went on. I remember building the walls of the fellowship hall, put in on the roof, pouring the patio, running the wiring, installing the play equipment…

And of course, as were about this good Christian work we had plenty of fun, too. Some of us spend more time in the pool at the motel than working at the church. 

Whether the work of mission is happening in far away Africa, or in Louisiana, or south of the border in Caborca, it is work that is building on the words that Jesus that we read today. Jesus said that the story of his life, death, and resurrection was to be proclaimed to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem. He said to the disciples, “You are witnesses of these things.

Mission is witness.  Mission is witness to the story of God and real in Jesus Christ and made real in us today. This is what we are about…  Telling the story of Jesus Christ, telling the story of God’s love, offering Jesus Christ to the world.

It is through this simple but imperative act, the testimony of God’s people, that the Church grows. We may witness to our neighbor, we may witness to our children, and we may witnessed to strangers… We may not call it witnessing, but that’s what we are doing. Evangelism, worship, fellowship, caring, charity, teaching, preaching, praying, serving…the Christian life is about witnessing to the power of God made real in Jesus Christ. And when we are witnessing, we are in mission and we’re helping the church to grow, beginning in Jerusalem.

You know the commercials about our neighbors to the north: “What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas?” God’s call to mission, God’s call to witness, proclaims just the opposite… What begins in Jerusalem does not stay in Jerusalem, but moves throughout the world as mission happens, as missionaries like you and me tell the story of what God has done in our lives. Mission is witness.  Mission is telling the story… sometimes with words and sometimes with deeds, but always with the love of God at work in our hearts.

The most famous of the early missionaries was Saint Paul. God got his attention on the Damascus road and Paul began to witness. One night Paul had a vision and he saw a man from Macedonia calling out to him, “Come here and help us.” Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles and who was traveling with Paul, says that after Paul’s vision, “we immediately crossed over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news.”

Saint Paul got around. He shared the story, he witnessed to Jesus Christ, throughout the Mediterranean world. He went wherever the spirit sent him. Indeed, he first became a believer in a foreign land, not too far from Jerusalem. But he would go even farther to tell the story of Jesus Christ. He would go eventually to Rome, from where Christianity would spread to the farthest corners of the world… even to faraway Alaska.

Arizona has been my home for 22 years. It is my Jerusalem. It is where I have learned to tell the story of God and Jesus Christ. It was my joy to tell the story in Phoenix and Sedona and Mesa, especially to tell the story and to help you tell the story here in Prescott for seven wonderful years. But I guess God has given me a restless heart, for in recent years a longing has grown within me to tell the story in a new way. I haven’t quite had a vision of a Macedonian calling me, as Paul did, but certainly I’ve sensed that God was calling me to a ministry very different from what I’ve been doing. You see, I know that by the definition of mission that I just shared, I’ve always been a missionary. But I’ve been a missionary in Jerusalem and God is calling me to take a journey and tell the story in a new place, within a new context.

I confess it’s a little bit frightening. I’m not really worried about the cold or the long winter nights and the long summer days. I worry more about understanding a culture that is a bit different from what we’ve known here. There will be similar things and there will be new things, though the details of what lies beyond the bend are little bit sketchy.

Karen and I go to do ministry in Alaska pretty much sight unseen. Though we have traveled there on a cruise once not too long ago, I expect that living there and working there will be a bit different than being a tourist there. Perhaps in a few years I'll be able to return and tell you what I’ve discovered and what I learned and how I’ve been blessed and how I’ve been able to tell the story of God in Christ.

These two churches are a part of the Alaska Missionary Conference.  A missionary Conference is a geographical area that is unable to be self-sustaining and is dependent upon the larger church for ongoing support. The apportionments our churches pay every year to the denomination help keep the AMC running.

There are currently 29 churches, served by 27 pastors, in an area twice the size of Texas, but with a population just a little bit bigger than Tucson. The population density of Yavapai County, is about 21 persons/square mile. The Kenai Burrough, where Seward and Moose Pass are located, by comparison has a density of 3 persons/ square mile, and the entire state of Alaska has a density of just over 1 person/square mile. That’s even less crowded than a Methodist Church on the Sunday after Easter!

Alaska is a huge place! And the state has some very unique problems. The population is unsettled, with a lot of coming and going… people are rootless, searching for something firm to hold onto, especially in the midst of the hardships of life that happen no matter where you live. There are issues surrounding the indigenous populations… disease, alcoholism, depression and suicide. There is a big influx of population from the Pacific Rim… and of the 29 UM churches, a half-dozen are ethnic… Samoan, Filipino, Korean… Employment is a big issue, as is the difficulty of living in extreme rural settings… the Methodist church has been at wok in Alaska for over a hundred years… and they assure me that there is still plenty of work for me to do there.

I covet your prayers as we begin this new adventure. And I want to remind you that you will be in my prayers as well… this congregation is special to me and always will be. I think you all taught me more than anyone else how to be in mission. I saw your witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ made real in the desire to build a community outreach… in the desire to share our blessings with the people of Caborca… my leaving Arizona to become a missionary in Alaska is at least in part the result of seeing you be missionaries in this place. I don’t know how many of you remember, but several years ago this congregation sent support to a missionary in Willow, Alaska. That little Methodist Church had a dream of opening a community center across the Bering Sea in Russia. The Willow congregation continues to be in ministry there today and lives are changed because they tell the story of how much God loves us… they proclaim repentance and forgiveness as they tell their corner of the world about Jesus Christ and the wonders of God’s love. It’s a story that began in Jerusalem, but it didn’t stay there. It went to Rome with Paul, and from there it went out to all the world to places like Prescott, Arizona and a church begun by a missionary over 130 years ago. So church, continue to be missionaries, through your telling of the story, and your support of others who tell the story in far off lands. Be witnesses to the wonders of God in Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sermon delived by Rev. Peter Perry on May 13, 2007.