Discovering Missiology: Puzzle & Surprise
Over the past year, I have facilitated numerous conversations with FamilyLife, Kirby Laing Center for Public Theology “Missional HUB,” and Canada’s Power to Change around the topic of Missiology and gospel engagement. I enjoy conversing with inquisitive, subversive, curious and attentive scholars, leaders, and missiologists who, each in their own discipline and institution, puzzle over today’s missional reality.
I’m writing from my bed today, propped up by a pillow, suffering from a bout with COVID, which seems apropos since our discussions often look to the virus as the culprit that laid bare a host of lingering ailments.
In fact, although we do our best to wash our hands and put the pandemic behind us, I am convinced we have only just begun to experience its lingering effects. Missiology provides us with some helpful ways to engage the challenges at hand.
In last week’s post, I introduced Missiology as the study of the creating and redeeming works of God through the mission of God—the missio Dei.
Missiology requires us to get to know God and the mission of God through the True Story of the Whole World.
Missiology depends on the lead of the Spirit of God who invites and empowers us to participate as gospel witnesses.
Missiology recognizes the Incarnation as the creating and redeeming works of God brilliantly displayed by God’s self-giving.
Missiology accompanies other disciplines such as sociology, philosophy, anthropology, and history to inform our understanding of the missio Dei.
Missiology creates unrest and resists complacency, challenges institutional impulses, heightens our senses, and invites us to join the work of the Spirit in our corner of the world.
In this post I take a quick look at two fundamental elements of the mission of God—puzzle and surprise. As we get to know God and the mission of God in the True Story, we discover and rediscover that God is right in the middle of the most puzzling and surprising times.
For example, consider an exhilarating celebration that took place in Jerusalem, in the first century, during the Jewish celebration of Passover—a celebration meant to call to mind the historical event when God delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt.
As Jesus, some 1500 years later, enters Jerusalem during Passover, he is worshipped—hailed as King—by the Jewish crowds who hung their hopes on Jesus. Maybe he was the leader to finally deliver them from oppression. Within hours, these same raucous crowds condemned him to die by crucifixion. God the Son, the King with a crown of thorns, delivers humankind from bondage to sin.
Imagine the puzzle—the agonizing despair, the confusion and bewilderment as the disciples grieved his death then the surprise when the risen Jesus shows up and turns their grief to joy.
Then, for about forty days, Jesus appears to more than 500 people as he continues to speak about the kingdom of God. I especially love the story of Jesus accompanying two travelers on the road to Emmaus who bore witnesses to the puzzling events of Jesus’s death and resurrection. Jesus, beginning with Moses and the prophets, reveals the meaning behind these events and interprets the Scriptures as they pertained to him. Finally, as they break bread together—“this do in rembrance of Me”—the Truth dawns and then vanishes (Luke 24:13–35). Surprise!
Puzzles and surprises continue as God’s Spirit empowers all kinds of people from all walks of life. Not long after Jesus ascends into heaven, the disciples gather again in Jerusalem, along with people from every nation under heaven, for the Feast of Weeks (a Jewish celebration).
We learn from this short and surprising passage that in the place where the disciples are staying, God’s Spirit suddenly fills the room with a mighty rushing wind and fills the disciples with the ability to speak all kinds of other languages. Lest we breeze over the even more puzzling aspects of the passage, do not forget, divided tongues as of fire appear to them and rest on them (Acts 2:1–13).
The once small band of timid, uncertain, and doubting disciples, turnabout and become bold and courageous—multilingual—witnesses. This surreal moment sets into motion the mission of God led by the Spirit of God who still moves in and among the timid, uncertain, and doubting all around the world.
We can either read these stories as ancient fables or as ancient, powerful rumblings of our Creator calling us to remember that we follow the same God whose Spirit transcends reality in stunning and inexplicable ways!
Missiology, fueled by the Creator and Redeemer of all things, helps us to consider the True Story in fresh and meaningful ways.
This week, take some time to read the book of Acts with soft eyes—like you are reading it for the very first time. Mark the number of times you notice God’s Spirit moving, and, please, be surprised and maybe even a bit puzzled when you experience the Wind turning the pages!
How does understanding the mission of God through the lens of the True Story help us to view our current circumstances from a different angle?
