What Bugs Me: The Strategy of Distraction, as demonic in origin as Legion

In Luke 8:26-38, Jesus lays down a Sending Statement for the man freed of the demons collectively named Legion.  “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.”  The terminology of a Sending Statement is drawn from John 21:8, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  It is a deliberate shift in vocabulary from “Mission” to “Sending”. 

To me, this shift takes our eyes back to Jesus.  Because distraction is a power tool of the devil.  Take our passage for Sunday.  It is easy (for me anyway) to get distracted, to go down the rabbit hole, of trying to figure out what scared Legion into bargaining with Jesus (something no other demon has done) about not returning to the Abyss.  It is not a stretch to sideline the magnificent power of Jesus expressed here to chase down these apparent ‘ethics of hell'.

Distraction, it speaks to another question bopping around this pastor’s skull.  Why is it such a big deal to change the phrasing from “Our Mission” to “Our Sending”?  Because of distraction.  “Missions” is a Christian technical term that is encumbered with so many meanings that a new term,  “Missional”, has been coined to try and recapture its focus. 

Consider our own church.  We have our Mission Statement (our Sending Statement) and we have a Mission Committee.  However, the Mission Committee’s responsibility is not the oversight and implementation of our Mission Statement.  Rather, it is the focal point for our church missions, whether they be ‘hands on’, in partnership, or through financial support.  Which in turn links us to our Presbytery Mission Committee, where we are exploring the possibility of ‘mission micro-communities’, churches that together work with the same mission partners.  This is NOT to imply that there is 'error' in either the Statement or the Committee.  There is not, but distraction and confusion from trying to parse the meaning of the over-burdened term "missions" dampens our energy or, even worse, has us dismissing it as a vague notion that this is 'just something churches do'.   

We are not dumping the word 'mission', we are simply going to clarify what it means FOR US (follow here for more details).

In our passage, contemplating Legion and the Abyss took my eyes off the Lord.  In our church life, wrapping our head around what ‘mission’ means invests our energies elsewhere than into our Lord.  I think that is why Jesus offers us Peace first, before He Sends us.  There is peace when things are clear.  Jesus said, "I send you" and our Sending Statement is a clear declaration of how FPC Merchantville responds.   

To begin, we encourage one another to celebrate our life in Christ.  As our example this week, we look to our Scripture and follow the example of a man freed of a legion of demons.  

Peace,

pastor pete

 

PS-As someone who loves language and enjoys playing with it, I offer the following. We have A Sending Statement that speaks of who we are as we carry Christ forward, that will lead to our Ascending Statement when Jesus calls us home.  : )