Fourth Purpose: Outreach/Evangelism
(Romans 10:13-15; John 4:35-42)
Joy proclaimed
by The Rev. Ajung Sojwal

For those of you who are coming back after a while, we are in the fourth week of our preaching series of studying the various purposes of the Church. As a reminder for those of us who have been here right from the beginning, the first week we looked at worship as the first and most important purpose of the church. The second purpose was the importance of fellowship and how the church encourages and nurtures fellowship for growth. Last week we looked at discipleship as the difficult but necessary call to all Christians who are serious about their faith. Today we will look at outreach as our fourth purpose of the church. For a better understanding of outreach I have divided it into two components, which are Evangelism and Service or Mission. Today we shall talk about evangelism and next week we will talk about service.

If you are like me, evangelism is a very scary word. When I think about evangelism the first things that come to mind are people standing in Time Square handing out tracts. Or, two young men in black suits knocking at annoyed people’s doors, and I am really not interested in doing either one of those things, because I am just not good at it. For years I had sort of a secret love affair with evangelism. On the one hand, my heart would burn to tell everyone about Jesus and what He means to me and the world, on the other hand I just did not feel adequate or even brave enough to tell anyone about Jesus. I think one of my personal fears surrounding evangelism came about from my misconception that I am responsible for converting people to Jesus. Conversion as we know involves a change of heart, a change in belief and a change in ones’ life’s orientation. And it was not until I began to understand quite definitively that God alone is responsible for the change of any heart that it finally dawned on me that evangelism is not about a burden but that it is all about joy and sharing.

The word “Evangelist” does not mean one who converts as I mistakenly thought, but rather, it means one who brings good news. So evangelism has to do with proclaiming the Good News of God. And the Good News is that God alone has taken the initiative to redeem me from my sinfulness and restore my broken relationship with Him, through His one and only Son Jesus. I know the story of our salvation is so much more elaborate than that, but at the core of it all is God reaching out to us in love. In other words, we are so very precious to God that He had to send his only Son to become like us in order for us to understand that He would go to any length, even death, if only it would bring us back into a loving relationship with Him.

My sister, who has been to our church a couple of times, lives about two hours north of the city. She is one of the most excitable people I have ever known. In her day to day life if she happens to eat something new and she likes it, if she happens to see something beautiful, or if she heard something funny or extraordinary, she immediately starts thinking of all the people she knows to tell them about what she had found or heard. Sometime in the beginning of last year she discovered a Japanese restaurant up in Danbury, Connecticut. She loved the Sushi there and had to call me up immediately to tell me about it. Not only did she call me, she wanted to take me out there one day. So, a few months later, sure enough she drove down all the way from Katonah to take us to dinner at her Japanese place. As it turned out, that Friday happened to be one of the worse traffic days. We drove around trying to find alternative streets to get on to the FDR but just could not get on to it, and finally at 8:30 p.m. we gave up and told her there is no way we could drag ourselves up to Danbury for dinner. So we came home and had pizza instead. But a few weeks later she came down again and this time we managed to get there. Now I have to tell you, I have eaten better Sushi! But the point here is not about the Sushi! The point is that whenever my sister finds something that brings her joy she just cannot keep it to herself. She has to share it with the people she loves and cares about.

If Jesus brings you love, peace, healing, salvation and joy what do you do with it? Do you protect and preserve it so that nobody else can take it away from you? Or maybe you feel that God can surely find someone else who will do a better job of sharing the Good News? Let me tell you, the Good News of God is good news for you and me only when we allow ourselves to express that which has touched us deeply, because there is no good news until it is proclaimed. The Good News of God’s eternal love for us sinners is just too good not to be shared or proclaimed.

In Luke 15 Jesus illustrates the painful search of the Father for his lost children in the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. In all three parables the point is absolutely clear, that every lost child is extremely precious to our Father who is in heaven. For instance, in the parable of the lost sheep, the shepherd has 99 other sheep. For all practical and economic purposes, it is quite okay to lose a sheep or two in a year or even in a few months from a flock of 100. Come Spring there will be plenty of newborn lambs to make up for the lost ones. But no, for that shepherd he was not going to wait for Spring to replace his lost sheep. That one particular sheep he lost was just too precious to forget about it and move on with the rest. When he finds the sheep, what does he do? He calls his neighbors and friends to rejoice with him. The widow who found her coin does the same, so also the father of the prodigal. They proclaim their joy and they celebrate with their neighbors and friends.

We often think that evangelism is about passing judgement on others who don’t know God. But it certainly won’t be good news if evangelism were to be about passing judgement on others. For the Bible says that judgement belongs to the Lord alone. Evangelism is about sharing your story of having being met and redeemed by God, it is about the sharing of your experience of God’s love. In Jesus’ parables, the shepherd wanted to share his story of having found his lost sheep, the widow wanted to share her story about having found her lost coin, and the father was so overjoyed at having her son return, it was his story of joy. In our Gospel reading today, the Samaritan woman does not go around telling her townsfolk that they are doomed. She proclaims her story of having met the Messiah. When she tells them, “He told me everything I have ever done.” She is not telling them that Jesus is a fortuneteller, she is telling them that even with her story of a sinful life, God had reached out and touched her life in such a way that she was transformed. She was transformed because for the first time in her life she knew that she was precious enough for God to have sent the promised Messiah to her. It is our story of being met and transformed by God that calls for evangelism, because it is too good a story not to tell others.

Like I have said sometime ago, everything happened when I was thirteen, or so it felt like. So, in the turmoil of turning thirteen I was also confused by just how passionately I felt about every little thing. Every little squabble in a friendship turned into something monstrous in my rather active imagination. One day I had a rather heated argument with my best friend which foolishly led me to get hold of my first bottle of homebrewed rice beer from one of my other friends. As it turned out, by the time I started my second glass of the horrible tasting rice beer, the half-full glass rolled off my unstable hands and I plopped down on my friends’ bed and went off to sleep. There is a hilarious story about the six or so of my thirteen-year-old friends going berserk at seeing me unconscious on the bed, but that is for another day. What happened at the end of the day was that, my friends had somehow managed to sneak in my unconscious body into my room and pulled my blanket to cover me completely and left. Trust mothers to be worried about one missed supper! She came home and found out that I had not eaten and came to wake me up. All she found was her unconscious thirteen-year-old with the breath of a sailor. The year I decided to go to Seminary, she called me and told me her story about the night she found me drunk and unconscious on my bed. Until then, I was under the great illusion that somehow I had managed to hide that horrendous episode from my parents. She sat me down and said that she really had no clue what to do with me. So, she just knelt down beside my bed and prayed this prayer, “Lord Jesus, I don’t know what to do with this child, all I know is that if you don’t catch her now she will be forever lost to me and to you. So save her now, Amen.” And she said she just believed that God had heard her. Even in that unconscious state, Jesus truly sought me out and found me and that is my good news story for today.

That day, my mother confirmed for me the good news of a God that loves and works to redeem us even when we do not seek or know Him. If we have discovered and received the priceless gift of God’s love that heals and transforms us, what is stopping us from sharing that good news with our neighbors and friends? Do we stop and think about how God must feel for the many thousands of His lost and fumbling children who long to hear that He loves them and to understand that our lives stand as testimony to His love? It is not a burden that God has given us when He showed us His love on the Cross-of Christ and the hope in His Resurrection, rather He gave us joy, peace and hope.
Paul says in his letter, “For, ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?” How will people know of God’s love and His desperate longing to find all His children unless you and I tell them and show them our stories of redemption and healing?

As you live a life blessed by God, may your friends and neighbors be able to say of you, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" Amen.