"Jesus’ Mission Statement"

Preached by John DeBevoise
At Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church
 On January 14, 2001

(The lectionary is giving us different scenes of the early life of Jesus, the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry.  Jesus has been out in the wilderness preparing himself, wrestling with temptation, getting ready for his ministry.  And now, he comes back in.  This is a beginning, a kind of January in Jesus’ life.  As he comes back in, he comes back in to the synagogue.) 
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.  He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 

       Luke 4:14-20

This is Jesus’ first sermon. When he comes out of the wilderness, it’s the sabbath. And let the record be clear that the Bible tells us that when it was the sabbath, when it was their Sunday, Jesus went to church. He went to synagogue. He was a person of discipline in this respect. He respected the discipline of going to the house of worship. And it was a practice in the synagogue (that’s one of the wonderful things about this scene that Luke gives us of this sermon, is that we learn something of what life in a synagogue was like here).  It was the practice to read a number of different texts every sabbath day, as they gathered for worship.  One of the texts that was always read was a text from the prophets.  It was a kind of lectionary, a list of different passages to read.  They worked their way through the scriptures on a regular basis.  Something from the prophets needed to be read every sabbath.

So as they prepared to read for the sabbath, they followed another practice which was when you had a visiting rabbi there (and Luke tells us that Jesus was already known as a teacher, a rabbi), that it was appropriate to invite that visiting rabbi to read one of the texts that day.  This rabbi was their hometown child, their hometown boy.  So it must have been a particular pleasure for them to invite Jesus forward on this special day, to read this text from the prophets.

Jesus reads this wonderful text from Isaiah, which is a kind of mission statement, I think. I don’t think it’s just coincidence that Jesus reads this text, although scholars are not clear whether he chose it or whether it was the assigned text. But I think it’s God’s work that he is at this text in either case.  Because it’s a kind of mission statement.

The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to proclaim the recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the acceptable year of our Lord’s favor.

As a mission statement, the people in that synagogue would have understood that the words were meant to include more than just those suffering from physical illnesses.  But when the good news was proclaimed to the poor, it meant all of those who stood in need. To be about the business of bringing the gospel, God’s mercy and grace and good news to them. When he talked about proclaiming release to the captives, it didn’t only mean those who were in jail, but those who were held captives perhaps by their own sins, their own actions, or perhaps by addiction, or perhaps by the hardheartedness of their own lies.  Proclaim release to them. 

And the recovery of site to the blind meant not only that those who could not see physically would be able to see in God’s kingdom, but also that those whose vision was blocked by their inability to understand, or by bitterness and anger from something in their past, or by their inability to discern, that they would be able to see because of God’s grace also.

And the oppressed going free included not only those who were oppressed by rulers and those in political power, but those who were oppressed by their own actions, those who oppressed by the actions of others around them, perhaps in their business or their work. Perhaps even in their own family system. 

And when they proclaimed the acceptable year of the Lord’s favor, it was a proclamation that God loved them and that God was working in their future, even in the year ahead. That God’s grace would touch them.

I think it was a kind of mission statement for Jesus. I don't think it’s just coincidence that he read this text. I think it’s a mission statement for him.

Do you have a mission statement? They are very popular, you know, these days. Do you have a personal mission statement?  It’s January. It’s a great time to be making your own personal mission statement. What is it that you want to accomplish in the year ahead. When you get to December of the year 2001, December 31, what is it that you want to be able to say you’ve done, where you’ve been, what you’ve achieved, what you’ve fulfilled?

I like, when I walk around hospitals, looking at the mission statements that are on the walls. (I’m in the hospitals quite a bit.) Hospitals, I guess like most businesses, seem to be very interested in mission statements these days. They are usually framed by the elevators. And now I’ve notice that they are not just mission statements, but they are also sometimes vision statements. In the last year they have grown to include not just mission and vision statements, but a values statement. And now I’ve seen one that has not just a mission statement, but a vision statement and a values statement, and a statement of defining characteristics. You know, the elevator is up and down four times before I can finish reading it!

A person who really kind of makes fun of long-winded mission statements, value statements, vision statements, and statements of defining characteristics, is the fellow who writes the comic strip, Dilbert.  Maybe you’ve seen some of Scott Adams’ work. I guess it’s Catbert, the evil human resource fellow, who is the one who’s creating the mission statements. I don’t know. But if you go to the Dilbert website on the Internet, they’ve got a little interactive thing where you can punch in some information and it will write a mission statement for you. You don’t need to spend a lot of money sending executives off to some exotic site for a four-day retreat any more. You can get it done on the Internet. Dilbert says the point of what you really need in a mission statement is for the words to seem impressive enough that people think you’re doing something, but unintelligible enough that they can’t really figure out what it is you’re supposed to be doing.

For example….If you are trying to write a mission statement for the engineering group, you punch in a few words in the website and this is what you get:  We seamlessly maintain quality technology in order to enthusiastically enhance high payoff content to exceed customer expectation. What does that mean?

Or how about this one for information services….It is our business to continually initiate performance-based paradigms to allow us to collaboratively network scaleable deliverables for one hundred percent customer satisfaction.

Bob and I have talked about the one that I have enjoyed the most, and that was the one that used to be on the wall at Steak and Shake. They’ve changed it now, but as I’d sit there and eat, I’d noticed they had one laminated and on the wall. I went over, finally, to read the print that was pressed on the metal, and it said, “Our mission: Make hamburgers.

I mentioned it to the waitress, and I said, “Now that’s succinct. That’s really to the point. You’re able to recite it at gunpoint, just a simple phrase.  Our mission: Make hamburgers.  She said, “No sir.  It’s doesn't say ‘Make hamburgers.’ It says, ‘Make Steakburgers.’ And therein lies all the difference.

Jesus has a mission statement, I think. It’s interesting to me that when he stands up and goes to get it, he goes to the prophet Isaiah. He goes to the Scriptures. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. To proclaim release to the captives. To proclaim recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord’s favor.

January is a good time to work on your mission statement. You ought to have one. Maybe you can think of it as your understanding of what God’s call is in your life. What is God calling you to do? That might be multi-faceted. I’m convinced God’s not only calling me to be a pastor, but God’s also calling me to be a father and calling me to be a husband. I don’t think one of those calls is somehow superior to the other. They have to be played out together in my life.

Your life is probably like that, too. What is God’s call in your life? What is your mission? Just in the year ahead? It may not necessarily be tied with you vocation, although it can be rich if it is. But it may not be.

I’ve got a neighbor who loves to make reindeer. Wooden reindeer. I believe that that is a part of God’s call in his life. It’s not the way he makes his living, but I think it’s a part of God’s calling. Do you know why I say that? Because I’m leaning on Frederick Boechner’s phrase that Your call is that place where your deep delight meets the world’s deep need. I noticed how much this neighbor loves making those wooden reindeer. You think the world has a deep need for wooden reindeer? I’m thinking that helping the world celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus, is a wonderful way to join in the community. I’m thinking it’s a part of God’s call in his life, where his deep delight meets the world’s deep need.

Where’s your deep delight, and is there a place where God is calling it to meet the world’s deep need in the year ahead? What is your mission. This is a good day to work on it.

Some of you may be called to be elementary school teachers. Heaven knows I don’t think there’s a more important job in the world right now, (if so maybe it’s making wooden reindeer.) Heaven knows we need the Lord to be calling some people to be elementary school teachers.

Some of you may believe that it’s in your call to be an attorney, and I believe we need attorneys who feel called by God to this business of helping to create laws and make order in the world. It’s popular, you know, to tell lots of attorney jokes now. I’m resisting the temptation at this moment. I’ve got a brother who’s an attorney, and believe me, I know them all! But I want to be sure attorneys know that  I believe that God is calling some of them to this important work. Jefferson said “We use laws as an alternative to using our fists. In the last two months we went through a national crisis, and one of the things I observed is that we did not go out into the streets and tear down the nation in our attempt to create order. One of the large reasons why we didn’t is because we are a nation of laws and we rely heavily on attorneys to help us understand what it is that we have agreed to do in a fair system of arriving at decision.

Maybe you feel called in your vocation. Maybe you feel called to share the news. Maybe you feel a call to be a good neighbor. Maybe you feel a call to raise a child. Maybe you feel a call to visit the sick. Maybe it’s a call with respect to just one person. What is God calling you to do in the year ahead? This is a good day to revisit it.

Now as you do that, I ask you to remember one thing. Jesus, when he stood up to make his mission statement, didn’t start by just thinking, What is it I want to do? Jesus starts by reexamining God’s mission. You see, he works from the presumption that his mission ought to flow from his understanding of God’s mission. And that’s a great way to start.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has appointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

In a moment we are going to call forward those in this congregation who have been elected to the office of Elder, because it’s our liturgy and our practice to install them to this work and to ordain them to this work. But I want to be sure that you don’t believe one minute that they are the only people who are called, that they are the only people who have a mission. God is calling each one of you, perhaps not just to one thing, but to multiple things. And I hope you’ll join your hearts in prayer as we install them to this work, to discern again what it is God is calling you to in your work. Can you feel yourself being set apart, even as we set them apart?

What is your mission?  And how does it flow from God’s mission in the world?

© 2001 John T. DeBevoise