Our Map of Tiny Perfect Things – Mark 2:1-12, Acts 2:1-11
Maps are very useful things. As many of you know we have recently moved to the manse, and there are lots of up-sides to living there (they’re in my report for the church meeting) but there’s one down-side. No one can find it! We’ve had some furniture delivered and I’ve been on the front steps saying, “Are you sure you’re driving along Currie Crescent because I can’t see you. Can you see a big building that looks like a church? We’re behind that.” Or for food deliveries. “We’re on the corner. We’re the only building that looks like a house!” One poor man tried to scale the fence on the Telopea Park side into the backyard!
So, Cecelia prepared this very useful map. (Slide 1) Maps are very useful things!
And I have prepared a map of where we have come during this May Mission Month of thinking about authentic mission – mission that is about authentic relationships, that is based on authentic love and that branches into people following Jesus in their own distinctive – their own authentic – ways.
(Slide 2) We started somewhere on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza with the wonderful encounter of Phillip, one of the first Christian refugees, forced to flee Jerusalem, and an Ethiopian eunuch – an encounter brought about by the Holy Spirit and by both men’s willingness to form authentic relationship.
I spoke of the image of the two of them sitting side by side in the chariot, one perhaps the teacher, one the learner, and then the tables being turned, when the Ethiopian says, “What is there to prevent me from being baptised?” How this moment represents the conversion, yes, of the eunuch, but also the conversion of Phillip, because authentic relationship is about listening to others and being prepared to learn from them; about sharing your life with others and being prepared to share theirs.
Then we moved on to thinking about God’s authentic love the source of our authentic love; of the love of God for us that took God to the cross; choosing in that action love over punishment, love over retribution, of the love of God that calls us friends.
(Slide 3) We spoke about the way this love was worked out in a group that called itself – that still calls itself – the Society of Friends, the Quakers. That their understanding of God’s friendship meant that they were to be friends to one another, and to others, and drew them into all sorts of social justice causes, “including abolition and women’s rights. It…seemed pretty obvious to them: friends did not let friends be held in slavery.” God’s friendship with us means that our friendship circles are constantly expanding.
And today we are thinking about how this authentic friendship and authentic love leads to people following Jesus in their own authentic ways, and to illustrate this we’re moving to Malawi (Slide 4) to hear from Tim Downes, one of the Global Interaction workers there.
(Slide 5) Video…
That’s a glimpse of what people following Jesus in their own distinctive ways looks like – as Tim said, “Local believers rising up and doing what they believe God has called them to do; sharing the Kingdom in their village, in their language, in their own cultural ways.…” It’s wonderful. It’s exciting. But it also requires people like Tim to move aside, and to move aside, to tear down, to break through the barriers that get in the way of these new expressions of faith.
Which brings us to our gospel reading this morning, to this wonderful story of four friends bringing their friend to Jesus.
We see in this story authentic friendship. Here are friends prepared to help, to carry a stretcher for miles, to go the extra mile (or in this case the extra metres to the roof!)
And we see in this story authentic love. Love in their actions, yes, but love for Jesus, too. They believe he can help – that he will help – their friend. (I have spoken before about the English word for ‘believe’ coming from the German, ‘belieben’ or love. Believing is not to hold an opinion, but to commit ourselves to someone or something.) And in his response Jesus also expresses love. Forgiveness, love, healing; they all come together in this wonderful story.
But when they first come to the house they find the way blocked. “So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door…” And what do they do? They innovate! They find a new way! They make their way to the rook and start tearing it apart – breaking through it – to get their friend to Jesus. The Pharisees too with their narrow understanding of how God works – of who God works through and how God longs to express God’s love – are also a barrier here, a barrier that Jesus breaks through.
It is a powerful metaphor for the work of mission today. Global Interaction speak of their commitment to removing barriers that prevent local people hearing the good news – barriers of language, barriers of culture, barriers of power imbalance and oppression.
And it is a powerful metaphor for what is happening in our local mission activities as well – our map includes us! (Slide 6) – and during this month we have heard about the authentic mission happening at Kingston Kids and Cooking Circles and the Kingston Organic Community Garden (and we could have gone on to with other activities that take place in the Community Centre, other programmes we host or support, Baptist Care activities like Tara’s Angels or Queanbeyan Baptist’s Nurturing Womanhood or the hundreds of different, distinct ways that each of us go about being authentic missionaries in our daily lives) our authentic relationships, our authentic love, our commitment to breaking down barriers so that people can find their own distinctive ways of following Jesus.
I was speaking to another minister recently about someone who’d told me about a friend trying to convert them, and I was reflecting on the pressure this person had felt, the sense of coercion, and whether we can share the love of God without communicating that, whether this is what working with the Holy Spirit means. And my colleague said, “Belinda, it is also about what we are converting people to. Are we trying to convert people to the church? Or do we want them to discover the Kingdom of God for themselves?”
I was speaking to two Salvation Army officers – husband and wife – at St Andrews on Sunday night and they commented how wonderful the service had been, but how uncomfortable – how inappropriate – it would have been for their congregation. “Covid was an absolute gift for us,” they said. “We could finally stop all the rigmarole of organising a regular church service and just have a simple gathering at 4pm – a time that works much better for most of our local people – where we share what’s happening in our lives, read a Bible passage and talk about what it means to us, pray and eat together. It’s given us our lives back and is giving life to our community at long last. We’ve found our way of following Jesus.”
We too are committed to enabling people to find authentic ways of following Jesus, but the thing about authentic ways of following Jesus is that there is no ‘one size fits all’.
We watched a movie the other night called The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, a – and this is a bit of a mouthful – 2021 American science fiction romantic comedy drama! It tells the story of Margaret and Mark two 17-year-olds stuck in a time loop endlessly repeating the same day. “Like in Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow,” Mark explains to his best friend – each day – in the film. Initially he thinks repeating the same day is meant to make him a better person, so he creates a daily routine to help the people of his town, or that he is supposed to use the infinite time to do something big – something important – like cure cancer! But what he and Margaret realise, by observing one day over and over, is that in that one day there are small perfect events that happen; an eagle swooping down to catch a fish, a perfect skateboard jump, a van with wings painted on the side that pulls up once a day behind a man on a bench and makes him look like an angel…. (Something like this – Slide 7) I won’t give away much more, but eventually it is this – this mapping of all the tiny perfect things – that resolves the drama and allows them to move on.
What are the tiny perfect things that you do – or you see – during the week that enable others to see – to find – their own authentic ways of following Jesus? Can you think of just one? I invite you to draw it or write a few words on the post it notes in your pews to describe one tiny perfect – perhaps ordinary – thing you see or do that communicates love.
Because what I love about Pentecost, about the passage we read today from Acts, is that it doesn’t describe one big final overarching important gospel message – one sermon to end all sermons! – but a whole lot of tiny perfect tongues of fire resting on a whole lot of human beings so they could communicate in tiny perfect ways to other human beings who could go on to find their own tiny perfect distinct authentic way of following Jesus.
That is what authentic mission is all about. It is about authentic relationships, authentic love and authentic ways of following Jesus.
What are our ways – our tiny perfect ways? As we sing the next hymn you are invited to bring your post it notes and map the location where that thing happens. Cecelia has again been busy drawing a map – this time of Canberra. (My apologies to visitors and those living beyond the borders – feel free to use the margins!) Now we want to avoid congestion, so we have seven verses of the next hymn to come forward – so pick your time – but let’s come and, as the Spirit calls us to, “Praise the love that Christ revealed, living, working in our world!” Amen!