The Haystack Phenomenon

17 September 2006
Carolyn L Roberts
Mark 8.27-38

            St. Francis of Assisi is credited with saying, “Proclaim the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.” Our scripture this morning deals with that proclamation, putting words to the mission of Jesus. On the way to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” He receives a host of answers: John the Baptist–who had been beheaded by Rome’s puppet, Herod. Elijah–the 8th century BCE prophet whose return Israel saw as the precursor to the coming of the Messiah. One of the other prophets from Israel’s golden age of those iconoclastic gadflies. The Messiah himself. Then he asks, “Who do you say that I am?” The question is the essential question for Jesus’ first disciples, just as it is the essential question for us twenty-first century followers. How we proclaim Jesus is directly related to who we are called to be in relation to Jesus.

            Our responses to that question are as multifaceted as the responses to today’s reading, so it’s essential to look at the story which frames this question. It’s a story which begins with Jesus’ baptism, with his being completely infused with and taken over by the Holy Spirit. It’s a story which describes Jesus’ teaching and healing and breaking bread in open communion. It’s a story that describes Jesus’ challenges to power and convention, a story which describes his contemporary living within the reign and realm of God, a story of his extension of that realm to Gentile and Jew alike. Together, these stories proclaim Jesus’ mission.

            Like Jesus, we are a people of mission. As people of faith who are disciples of Jesus, we cannot separate ourselves from mission any more than we can keep ourselves from breathing. As members of the United Church of Christ, this exciting and exasperating mix which traces its roots to four historic denominations, our mission story is a particular story to tell. [PowerPoint slide show: UCC The Haystack Prayer Meeting]

  • On the campus of Williams College in Massachusetts
  • Five students gathered regularly for. The year was 1806
  • One day a thunderstorm drove them to take shelter on the lee side of a haystack.
  • They continued in prayer.
  • And the Holy Spirit spoke to them.
  • They felt called by God to bring the Gospel to the world.
  • As a result of their enthusiasm, the Congregationalists of Massachusetts established the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1810.
  • On February 6, 1812 the first Protestant American foreign missionaries were ordained in Salem, Massachusetts.
  • Although four of the five men were married, it was only the men who were ordained–but the women were just as committed to the mission.
  • Less than two weeks later, these ABCFM missionaries sailed for Calcutta, India.
  • Their instructions included:
    1. Cultivate your personal devotional life.
    2. Be charitable to each other.
    3. Cooperate with missionaries of other denominations.
    4. Do not meddle in politics.
    5. Avoid every occasion of unnecessary offense to those of whose opinions and customs differ from yours.
    6. Form yourselves into a church at once, and observe the Sabbath most carefully.
    7. Seize every opportunity of helping those around you. Learn their language. Do not attack their beliefs; simply proclaim the gospel of Christ.
    8. Pay particular attention to the Christian education of children.
    9. Develop some means of supporting yourselves.
  • Early missionaries served in India, Sri Lanka, Hawaii, the Near East, South Africa, China, Turkey, and with the Choctaw and the Cherokee–remember that the West was still ‘foreign’ territory.
  • After 150 years, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had sent out nearly 5000 missionaries to 34 different fields.
  • We had established over 1000 schools, colleges, and hospitals.
  • In 1957 the United Church of Christ was formed by the merger of the Congregational Christian Church and the Evangelical and Reformed Church.
  • Four years later, in 1961, the ABCFM merged with the Board of International Missions of the Evangelical and Reformed Church to become the United Church Board for World Ministries (UCBWM).
  • In 1995, Global Ministries was established as a partnership between the UCBWM and the Division of Overseas Ministries (DOM) of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
  • Today, the former UCBWM is now Wider Church ministries, and continues to partner with the Disciples as Global Ministries.
  • Global Ministries has 108 fully-supported missionaries in 41 countries.
  • One of the biggest changes in mission is that today, when mission personnel are sent overseas, it is at the request of our partner churches. Requests for personnel always outstrip the funds and available individuals.
  • A second big change is the North America is now one of the world’s biggest mission fields.
  • Two hundred years have passed since a storm drove some students into the shelter of a haystack, and we remember their prayer meeting with thanksgiving. 

            My first real memory of the church engaged in global mission come from a mission faire our Presbyterian congregation held in the spring of my junior year of high school. It came about because our Christian Education Director, Barbara Roche, had a passion for overseas mission, and a particular fascination with India. So the church school made a paper maché “sacred cow” and several of us high school students dressed in saris or the loose-fitting pants and tunics Barbara supplied from her own mission visit to India. I got to wear a sari–and I can tell you that being wrapped head to foot in silk is amazing! Indian students stayed with our family, and spoke in worship and at the faire. I experienced that spiritual connection in Christ with those members of the church from half-way around the world. And I was forever changed.

           

            That doesn’t mean my own support of foreign missions hasn’t undergone revision. As my understanding of the world we live in became more complex, so did my recognition that we export our cultural values along with the gospel, leading to pineapple plantations–and exploitation of native peoples in Hawaii on the one hand, but education for women on the other. Our not-so-subtle racial prejudices here; hospitals and healing resources there.

            At the time of the first missionaries, there was no thought of partnership with the people of India; they were the objects of mission. Now, as our slide show indicates, we partner with foreign nationals at their invitation–and we recognize the United States as a mission field that needs to hear again the gospel entrusted to us. Often, it is from Christians of other nations that we hear that gospel in ways that again become good news.

                                  Scott Couper and Susan Valiquette are a UCC missionary couple serving in South Africa. Aaron stayed with them during his 9 weeks of service with the HIV-AIDS ministry this summer. Approximately nine hundred people a day die in South Africa. About one in five adults are  infected with HIV. We don’t have accurate information about the number of deaths resulting from HIV-AIDS–it’s a disease people of that region steadfastly refuse to disclose. But in an act of faith, the Good Samaritan Church of Pinellas Park, Florida, sent to its sister church in southern Africa a long narrow banner in rainbow colors. [slide] The word “AIDS” and a cross were inscribed at the top. Scott writes, “Whatever its intended purpose, it was unstated and seemingly uncompleted. Partnership was intended. The Holy Spirit inspired those who...received the material to complete the project so that it would have true meaning where it was sent.” Now the completed banner travels to a host church for one month. The host congregation pins white ribbons to the banner with the names of loved ones who died of AIDS inscribed upon them. It is both a remembrance of the individuals snared by this tragic global pandemic, a proclamation of hope and faith in the eternal promise that God never leaves us. At the same time, it is a powerful proclamation of our global partnership, our global ministry as Jesus’s disciples. Who we are is a direct outgrowth of who Jesus is; we are a people of faith engaged in mission, sharing with others in ministries of teaching and healing, and where needed, challenging the structures of power. We are a people preaching the gospel in word. And in deed. Thanks be to God!