During this year’s annual meeting I gave an exhortation (which is a strong encouragement not an soft obligation) to our parish of simple ways we can live-into the mission of the Kingdom of Jesus this year in our context. So that those who weren’t with us last night, and for those who were but were helping watch kids or clean-up, or for any of those sitting int he back who could not hear, or for anyone who cannot now remember what they were, here they are:
I. Missionally Prayerful (3 + 3 + 3)
Let us grow in being missionally prayerful. Think of this in three sets of three: (1) discern three folks in your life (neighbors, co-workers, friends, members of your ʻohana, etc.) who do not know the lord, that you want to commit to praying for; (2) discern three folks from within our parish that you want to commit to praying for; (3) dedicate time on three days of each week to pray for those names.
II. Missionally Hospitable (3 + 3)
We exhorted in scripture to show loving gospel-hospitality to both the stranger (xenophilia) and the brother-in-Christ (philadelphia) (Rom. 12:10-13; Heb. 13:1-2). As I’ve written elsewhere, hospitality is the mission of the Kingdom. This is not a romantic attempt at becoming a middle-class socialite, it is rather to make our lives and our homes theaters in which the drama of God’s welcome of prodigals can be played-out.
The exhortation is, like the one I gave regarding prayer, in a set of threes: (1) discern three individuals or families who do not go to church and/or who do not know the Lord and invite them to share a meal with you; (2) discern three families within our parish and invite them to share a meal with you.
What’s that? You live in downtown Honolulu and don’t have the space to host a bunch of people in your house? That’s okay! Here’s my exhortation to those in that position: find a space to host. Jesus does this all the time. Ask a family in our church if you can use their space to host (like the Brianses); or partner with a few others who also don’t have the space and do something at a park; or, even, something simple such as taking someone out for lunch (and paying for their meal) and asking “how are you?” can be an act of hospitality too.
The Spirit of the risen Jesus Christ lives in you, when people eat with you they eat with Him. When you bring people to the table you bring them into place where they can encounter Jesus.
III. Peaceably Serving
Thirdly, I encouraged everyone to discern and pursue service. But I want to be clear about precisely what that means. Often this can become just another call to fill needed volunteer positions. Rather what we mean by service is the divine service of the priesthood of all believers. Every believer is called by God to stand in who they are and serve the Lord int he beauty of holiness.
Avoiding burn-out, performance-subjectivity, or the exhaustion that comes from collapsing who-we-are with what-we-do, we want to enter into the mission of God from a place of deep peace that comes from knowing (get ready, it’s another set of threes): (1) who God is; (2) who he has said that I am; (3) that he has called me to his service, whatever shape that may take (preaching a sermon, parenting a child, setting-up chairs at church, crunching numbers at work, taking a ring into Mordor, etc.)
IV. Restful
Finally, I exhorted everyone to labor to pursue biblical rest. Often a call to “rest” or “sabbath” from pulpits easily and ironically becomes another thing we have to “do” and thus we often begin already defeated. One can think of a few steps to cultivating biblical rest, I’ll offer three: (1) sleep (phones totally off, lights totally out, with screens off a few hours prior) is a daily sabbath, take it; (2) sabbath, which now has become transfigured and glorified as the Lord’s Day (Sunday), is a day dedicated to the worship of God and to fellowship with his People at his Table— once a week we journey into his presence, labor to enter that rest (Heb. 4:11); (3) beyond these two cycles (daily and weekly) we also need to find other ways to be at peace, which is often so different from what we mean by rest (netflix, vacations, “doing fun things” with a checklist to prove to others how much we’ve rested, etc.), it means taking moments to cease from labor and enjoy what God has given you.
A key part of the sabbath logic at work in the Gospel is, also, doing the kinds of work that give sabbath to others, like saving a neighbor’s ox that has fallen into a pit (Lk. 14:5), granting manumission and freedom (Lev. 25), and saving people from losing “the shirt off their back” because of debt (Ex. 22:26-28). Make sure to take sabbath, make sure, also, to give it.