Proclaiming the Good News

Five Marks of Mission part one

When Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel prize winner for his efforts to end apartheid in South Africa, was asked to put a face to what mission means for Christians, he told a story from his boyhood.

It happened when he was eight or nine years old. His mother was a poor, uneducated domestic worker who cooked and cleaned for blind black women. It was a time when blacks in South Africa were treated as inferiors, and had to carry passes.

Tutu recalled the story recently: “I saw something that I had never thought. There was a white priest in a long flowing cassock and he had a large sombrero hat, and as he passed, he doffed his hat to my mother. White priest, black woman in apartheid South Africa…For him it was a normal thing you do for any woman. This is how he demonstrated that he believed each of us is a God carrier…I wasn’t aware this story would stay with me. I am 80 now.”

Tutu said he later learned the priest was Trevor Huddleston, who later became an Archbishop. “I still remember the impact of Trevor Huddleston’s doffing of his hat, and that it was acknowledging what we say in our theology, you are created in the image of God, and you are a God carrier, and that is what we in our proclamation seek to be saying.”

The proclamation Tutu is talking about is the Five Marks of Mission first developed and affirmed by the Archbishops of the Anglican communion in 1984 and since adopted by the whole communion, and other denominations.

Today, for my last five Sundays with you, I begin a series on the Five Marks of Mission. Our Diocese is attempting to shift to a more missional focus, and the five marks are an important method to help us look at how we are doing—as a communion, as a national church, as a diocese, as a deanery, as a parish.

The five marks are:

First—To proclaim the good news of the kingdom.

Second---To teach baptize and nurture new believers

Third—To respond to human need by loving service

Fourth---To seek to transform unjust structure of society

Fifth—To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the world.

What comes to mind when you hear the word mission. For many of us, there are images of missionaries working with people in Africa, Asia, or Latin America, the great outward mission thrust of the early 20th century.

Another image of mission might be a Billy Graham Crusade or other gathering where people are asked to come forward and profess their faith in Christ.

But these images are only a part of what the five marks of mission are all about.

For Creation God has reached out to the world in love, sharing the bounty of creation with us. He sent his son Jesus to come among us—a gift to the world.

Our response as followers of Jesus begins with the first mark of mission, to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom.

The first Gospel to written down, the Gospel of Mark, begins with the words: “The beginning of the Good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.”

Later in the first chapter Mark writes: “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God and saying , the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news.”

Proclaiming the good news comes in many different ways, by words, through communications media, but also by our actions, by how we live out the Good news that we believe in.

We live out our Christian faith personally, through prayer, worship, study, and acts of service, and as part of a Christian community. All are important.

One of the memories I have from my early life growing up in the church is hearing that we can’t compartmentalize our lives—Sunday morning is for the church, and God, and the rest of our lives is something completely separate and different.

Archbishop Tutu also reminds us that love is the key to proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom. “Mission is really making us aware of the incredible love God has for all of us. It says things like, you don’t have to earn God’s love. God loves you, period. Everything flows from there.”

Katherine Jefferts Schori, the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, points to the need to embody the Good News in our daily lives.

“If we walked through life in that way, giving thanks and recognizing the image of God everywhere we go the world would work very differently. We live in a society that so often assumed the enemy rather than the image of God.”

We have a lot to think about as we consider this first mark of mission and how it might apply to our current discernment at Canon Davis Memorial Church in Sarnia.

We are part of a much larger trend---as an aging traditional mainline church in a society where the model of the neighbourhood parish church, with a parish hall, a rectory, and a full-time priest is no longer sustainable.

While that may be the case, the church has survived ups and downs for more than 2,000 years, including dark ages, plagues, wars and revolutions. The task of proclaiming the good news in our particular context remains.

And as a community that wants to be together, to build on an 86 year history, we need to look at where God is calling us now, and how we can proclaim the Good News.

There is no use dwelling on the past, or lamenting the present. We need to focus on the positive. What can we do with the gifts God has given us to proclaim the Good News? What is best way to move forward? With God’s help, and God’s love we can move into a new chapter of our life together.