What is missional? Part 2: Missio Dei
// July 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS
Missio Dei is a heavy Latin phrase that brings a smile to my face everytime I hear it or see it in print.
When kept in the context of the Scriptures, missio Dei correctly emphasizes that God is the initiator of His mission to redeem through the Church a special people for Himself from all of the peoples (τα εθνη) of the world. He sent His Son for this purpose and He sends the Church into the world with the message of the gospel for the same purpose.
Furthermore it means that God is not a passive God, but that He is actively at work throughout the world trying to bring the Kingdom (His rule and reign) into the world and upon people. The result of His Kingdom means that people are set free, they are transformed, they are given a new identity, and they live empowered by the Holy Spirit and out of a heart repaired by the overwhelming love of God that enables them to, in turn, love and reach out to the world.
This is who’s mission? It’s God’s mission. He started it. And He will finish it.
Now when Jesus walked the planet He was the “sent one.” He proclaimed this Kingdom of God not just with words, but His very deeds demonstrated the power and love of God and left no question as to His love for the world.
But what most people don’t take notice of is the fact that Jesus lived a life of relationship and dependency on the Father as He was on mission with God.
John 5:16-19
Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him; not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
Would you have said that Jesus’ life was normal? You might be thinking, “No, it’s not normal.” It really depends on who’s saying normal. Because in Jesus life and times, what He did on a daily basis drawing crowds to Himself of the people who just wanted to hear Him speak, blessing kids, feeding thousands of people with a kid’s meal from Long John Silver’s was normal. People walked who’d never walked. People gained hearing who’d never heard. People saw the sunrise who’d never seen the light of day. People dead and in their graves – rigormortis had settled in; they were stinking and somehow their lungs expanded and the blood flowed through their veins again – this was all a day in the life of Christ. It was normal.
RELATIONAL RESPONSE
How did Jesus live out this life? If you notice, no place was safe when He was walking the planet. He did a few things in church (the synagogue), but the whole of His ministry was spent among real people, among the broken, in a broken world. Things broke out when Jesus was walking into cities, attending weddings, fishing – even when he was 3 days late for funerals. And the reason wasn’t just because He was God in the flesh.
Jesus modeled a way of relating to God as He did ministry. Jesus remained intimately connected to God the Father. He got away if that’s what He needed to do. But the important thing is that when He left those times of solitude, He didn’t walk away from the Father. He remained with Him.
The very nature of being sent was to reveal and represent the Father.
We toss this term “incarnational” along very loosely these days and thereby render it powerless. Truly being incarnational doesn’t mean you hang out in coffee shops and that you do social justice in your community.
For Jesus it meant:
“You want to see the Father? Then take a good look at me.”
“Do you want to know how the Father desires to respond in this situation? Then take a look at what I’m doing.”
Jesus wasn’t trendy, or cool, or hip like the Church often tries to be. Jesus simply intimately connected to the Father; He knew what God was doing, and God’s heart desire was the engine that propelled the heart of Jesus.
Anything that is NOT initiated by the heart of the Father is religion; because all mission is birthed out of relationship.
If it’s not what God is up to, then it’s just what we are up to and trying to initiate in the absence of God. And, quite frankly, it’s not just religion, but it’s sin.
Do you want to be incarnational? Then speak the words of the Father. Do precisely what God desires to do in the moment.
That’s scary for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons:
- They are afraid to assume that they know what God wants to do.
- They aren’t hearing the voice of God so they have no clue what to do.
- They’re pretty sure that God hasn’t sent us the same way He sent Jesus.
- They think it’s audacious to say, “You want to see what the Father desires to do at this moment? Then take a look at what I’m doing.”
I think Scripture has made it abundantly clear that God reveals what He is desiring to do in a relational way just like it was for Jesus.
John 15:15
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Jesus is holding back anything. But often I do question our desire to actually seek and sometimes to wait for the Father to reveal what He’s wanting to do.
And the other matter with regard to audacity is simply this:
The world already thinks that you speak for God.
The world already thinks we’re audacious.
And I think it’s pretty audacious how we’ve assumed that God wants a distant, general relationship with humanity that is so superficial that it causes us to be so uncreative and distant in the everyday places where God was once known to work, to heal, to transform, to save through the life of our Master Jesus Christ.
And if you think it’s pretty dangerous to send people out like Jesus with them doing the works and speaking the words of the Father, then you probably wouldn’t be comfortable with Jesus’ discipleship program:
I am sending you just as the Father sent me – John 20:21
Misso Dei. Seek to save what has been lost.
Join God in what He is doing.
Make the unseen Father seen in the moment.
Allow every moment and every space the place where we pray: “Father, let your Kingdom come right here, right now. Whatever is not what you’re desiring, let it be undone. It has to stop. And Father, whatever it is in Your Kingdom, let it me so in this place in this moment.”
