Mission

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 53:4-12, and Mark 10:35-45.

Brandon Gamble met his future wife in 6^th grade. That love story ended in the early hours of February 1, 2018. That's when his wife Tyeisha smelled smoke in their house. When Brandon opened the bedroom door, the hallway was ablaze. Brandon broke the bedroom window and told Tyeisha to get out of the house. Then he ran through the fire to find their 5 children. He broke the window in their bedroom and started picking them up. A neighbor who was awakened by all the breaking glass took the children, ages 6 through 13, from Brandon as he handed them out of the window. Tyeisha was treated for smoke inhalation, the children had cuts from the glass, but they all survived. Brandon didn't. He died saving his family.

It is amazing when a stranger runs into a burning building to save people he doesn't know. We admire that person but we wonder why they would do that. However, we don't ask that question when a person does it for someone they love. Instead we secretly ask ourselves if we were in the same situation, would we act just as heroically? We hope so.

Brandon Gamble gave his life out of love. He ran into the burning hallway on a mission to save his family. Having a mission, an overriding purpose, can make people do extraordinary things. When the Nazis occupied Poland, the Jews were all herded into the ghetto. And that's when Irena Sendler found her mission. Sendler was a social worker in Warsaw. She obtained a fake ID that said she was a nurse. This allowed her to go into the ghetto and bring food, clothes and medicine. When she found out that the Nazis were planning to exterminate the Jews, she joined the Polish underground and recruited 10 friends to help her. This group, which eventually grew to 24 women and one man, began to smuggle out Jewish children in boxes, suitcases, burlap bags and even coffins. Most of the children were taken to Roman Catholic orphanages, convents and homes but Sendler recorded their names so they could be reunited with their families. The scraps of paper with the names were put in jars and buried in a friend's garden. When she was captured by the Nazis and tortured, she did not give up her friends in the underground nor the location of the jars. During one session her interrogators broke her feet and legs. She escaped with the help of a Gestapo officer who had been bribed by the resistance. She went into hiding. After the war, she unearthed the jars and tried to reunite the children with their families. Sadly, it turned out that many of the families had been gassed by the Nazis. Then Sendler would get the children adopted by Polish families or by Jewish families in Israel. It is estimated that Irena Sendler saved the lives of about 3000 children.

Scientific evidence shows that a key part of both mental and physical health is having a purpose in life. In a recent study adults who had a sense of purpose scored better in memory, cognitive function and executive function tests than those who didn't, regardless of their education level. Teens who had a purpose in life had a more positive self-image, less delinquency, and were better at transitioning to adulthood. Another study found that those with a greater sense of purpose had a 58% reduced risk of death. And even when they adjusted for wealth, physical activity and smoking, the risk of death was still 30% lower than people who saw little or no purpose in life. In yet another study those with a sense of purpose had “lower levels of inflammatory gene expression and higher levels of antibody and antiviral genes.” Having a purpose in life can boost your immune system.

Having a purpose is also a key component of happiness. In fact, studies show that pursuing happiness is a great way to be miserable. It is more important to seek to be useful and to find meaning in your life and work. As psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl observed, “happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.” It comes from finding and pursuing a purpose in life. Your purpose will in turn give meaning to your life, even the painful episodes. For instance, let's say your purpose involves doing medical research into an obscure disease. That can be a long and painstaking task. Finding funding for a rare disease can be frustrating. Hitting dead ends in your research can be discouraging. But as you make progress you will be able to look back and see those obstacles are just part of fulfilling your purpose. It's the same when people are pursuing a career in sports or entertainment or law or ministry or anything worthwhile. I tell the inmates at the jail that their incarceration at least gives them time to find a goal, a purpose, a better life and to start working out the steps they can take to achieve that goal. I pray with them that someday they will be able to look back on their experience and say, “That period of my life sucked, but now I know what I needed to learn or how I had to change as a person. Now I know why I had to go through that difficult time.” Often God's plan for you can only been seen in retrospect. Only by looking back can you see how things came together to bring you to this point, though at the time those events may not have looked as if they were part of any plan.

You know what enlisted people say is the hardest thing about adjusting to civilian life after having been in a theatre of war? Not having a mission. We might think it'd be great to sleep in and spend time with the family and not have to worry about having your legs blown off by an IED, and they do too. But they miss having a mission. “Today we are marching to point X and looking for Y.” “Your job is to monitor radio traffic or scan satellite images for evidence of enemy activity.” “Our mission today is to set up a pump system so this village can have clean reliable water.” Everyday, they were given a mission, all laid out, precisely and step by step, with measurable goals. And when they get back to the States, they miss having a clearly defined mission.

When we look at passages such as our reading from Isaiah 53 we tend to concentrate on Jesus' sufferings. But just as prominent is his mission: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” Jesus didn't suffer for no reason any more than Irena Sendler did. He didn't die randomly any more than Brandon Gamble did. He suffered and died to rescue us, those he loves, from the things that enslave and destroy us.

Jesus states his mission in our passage from Mark: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” He did not come to be treated like an oriental potentate and be fawned over and have his every whim fulfilled. He came to heal and to teach and to die to save others. And if we are his followers we must take part in his mission: to serve others self-sacrificially and to tell them what he has done.

When a soldier is sent on a mission, he is given whatever he needs to complete it. If he needs it and asks for it, he gets it. Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you.” (Matthew 7:7) He is not talking about asking for a million dollars or your heart's desire but about what you need. “Is there anyone among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish will give him a snake? If you then, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11) God will give us what we need to carry out our mission.

What we need can be our talents, or skills, or training. Because your mission is not necessarily the same as someone else's. Bach and Handel were musicians. Their mission was to help people praise God through music and song. The missions of El Greco and Michaelangelo were to glorify God through painting and sculpture. Giotto and Sir Christopher Wren carried out their mission through architecture. Giotto was a painter as well and Wren was an anatomist, astronomer, geometer and mathematician/physicist and so he made multiple contributions to the common good. Many doctors and nurses and other medical personnel feel called to use their skills and training to help people. And there are less heralded and less glamorous but nevertheless vital activities, like keeping the books and maintaining and repairing equipment and cooking and getting information out and driving patients to appointments and so much more, that may be certain folk's missions for God.

What we need for our mission can be our personality or demeanor. Sometimes the right person for the job is someone whose personality or attitude invites others to join or puts people at ease or who communicates on a level other than mere words. George Burns was a wannabe comic, who would do anything to be on stage. If a vaudeville show needed a dog act he would get one from the pound. He would say he was a singer, or a dancer, just to get before an audience and tell jokes. He was getting nowhere. Then he found Gracie Allen. He took her on to feed him lines. But then he realized that she was funnier than he. So he became the straight man and let her get all the laughs.

Which leads me to this: what you need to do your mission can be another person. Maybe they can do the part of the job you can't. For instance, there are also people whose personality is not suited to being the public face of an enterprise but they can get the work done. I've worked with doctors who were great at their specialties but had a terrible bedside manner. It even happens in show business. You may never have heard of Gummo Marx. He was the Marx brother who didn't like being on stage. He left the act very early and became a theatrical agent who represented his brother Groucho and other entertainers. He knew where his talents did and did not lie. Ask anyone who's ever been in a show. Those "behind the scenes" people are invaluable.

Sometimes the biggest obstacle to our getting what we need is our reluctance to ask someone to help. We have a vision of what we want to do but we need someone practical to organize it. We need someone to finance it. We need someone to supervise it. We need someone to recruit others or to motivate them. When I was in rehab I learned that walking involves 11 muscle groups, more than I realized. Too often Christians think we are to be the Lone Ranger, doing God's will all by ourselves. But even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. We are the body of Christ. We have each other to help us do what God calls us to do. We can use their input as well as their talents in carrying out our mission.

What is your mission? What did God put you here to do? Some clues are: what things are you good at? What are the things you love? What does the world around you need? Where those things overlap you will usually find your purpose.

One of the reasons that churches die is they lose their sense of mission. They think their mission is just to exist. They forget that they are here to do what Jesus commissioned us to do. And he never said, "Go build beautiful buildings and shut yourself up in them, separated from the world." He told us to go out into all the world. He told us to make disciples of all nations. He told us to baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. He told us to teach them to observe all that he has commanded us. And what did he command us to do? To love God with all we are and all we have, to love our neighbors as ourselves and to love one another as he loves us. How you do those things, how you use what he's given you and who he's put in your life, is your mission. It's what God called you to do. It's what he created you for. It's what the world needs. And it is what you need to be fulfilled and happy and to give meaning to your life in Christ.