Anniversary Service - February 28, 2016
Well…Happy Anniversary to Church at the Mission! Hard to believe it’s been 18 years since we formally launched as Church at the Mission. Actually we didn’t have a name when we started.
Two different members of the mission’s Development department called Kerry, the Senior Pastor at the time, and me separately to ask for a name for the church because they needed to put something about it in the mission’s newsletter.
Kerry and I and other leaders at the mission had talked about everything to do with the church, but we hadn’t come up with a name.
So separately and without knowing it Kerry told the Development staff member that, “We’ll…we’re, uh, the church at the mission”.
And, again, separately and without knowing it, I told the development department “Well, we’re the church at the mission.
And the then the name just kinda stuck. At one point we spent time as a congregation seeing if we wanted to have a name change. Over a period of a month or so the only other name that appealed to some was: Bethel Church. That got voted down, and so we stuck with our current name.
It’s a practical name. Nothing fancy, nothing poetic. Perhaps a reason we haven’t sought to change the name is that we know it’s a name.
A label. An identifier that can’t, the same way any other name can’t, truly reflect the nature of the congregation or the character of the church.
It’s always been up to us to determine that. It’s up to you and me to shape this church, to give it its character, to give it its feel, and to help it grow and develop into what God wants us to be.
This church belongs to Jesus Christ. He is its Lord and Master, and our purpose is His purpose: To glorify God, to lift up the name of Jesus, and to do His will. Why was Jesus sent by God?
Quoting from Isaiah 61, Jesus said: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18-19
After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to our forebears, the disciples, and said: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you”. John 20:21 So, that’s why we’re here, in a nutshell.
For those of you who are new, I should mention that Church at the Mission grew out of two other churches that had started in around 1987 – Cabbagetown Community Church that met at the Christian community Centre down the street for years.
That plus Church on the Street, a church that was created to serve street youth and others connected to the street. Barbara and I and Jan were part of that church.
My wife Barbara and I started in 1987. (We had met the year before that on the Summer Missionary Team at Evergreen, Centre for Street Youth).
Anyone want to guess my role in the church at the beginning? I was the flute player in the band. Barbara served in the nursery.
Pastor Jan joined the church shortly after she came to Christ, in 1991, and pretty much right away started ministering to you and to street-involved women.
She was so good at that that 5 years later I hired her as our Community Outreach Pastor in 1996.
So many people have been part of this church over the years. As I think back, there are thousands, actually, that have participated over time.
Some have become very involved, serving here. Ben Bowser was a youth here and served in the youth worship band that we had back in 2000.
He preached his first sermon at this church at the age of 16. He is now a missionary in China, serving Christ with all his heart and soul along with his wife, Meghan.
They are having a baby soon. He just wrote me and said that his experience here has helped him to shape his ministry in China.
Because he was given opportunities to grow and taken seriously as a young person, now that he’s older and in a position of leadership, he is doing the same with the young people in His charge who are serious about serving Christ.
We’ll be seeing them here in the next few months when they come to speak.
Nicole Smith and her husband Jonathan were part of this church for years.
They moved to Orangeville a long time ago to serve with Youth for Christ, and currently Nicole is in India for a short period ministering the gospel to a lot of people. She went there by herself. Gutsy woman.
Cindy Lai, who was a part of this church for years is serving in Cambodia at a Christian School, working among missionaries.
So many, so many have come and been a part of this congregation.
So many have served, cut their teeth on ministry, blessed others and been blessed and equipped to go out into the world, sent by Jesus to bless others and invite them to follow Him.
There are hundreds of others. Hundreds, thousands that have called this church their home.
And when the time comes for them to move on, if they let us know they are leaving, we send them with our blessing and commission them to go out into the world, aligned with another congregation, to go out into the world and be a blessing.
We don’t cleave to people, pressure them to stay, but we do celebrate the God who brings us great gifts in the form of…you!
It’s a legacy that we don’t talk a lot about, largely because we’re busy with right now.
But it’s important to reflect on all the good that God has done among us, how He has blessed us and strengthened us throughout our many changes over the years.
One of the best things to happen to the church was when Pastor Lee and Helen became part of us as members of the congregation.
And then a few years later, when we were looking for a new assistant pastor, Lee was helping us do just that.
Helping us interview prospective pastors. And then God said, “...Uh. Lee’s your man”.
And the rest is a very positive history of blessing that has come to us through Pastor Lee and his wife Helen, two very dear people to this congregation.
So, to wrap up this part, in one way, counting back to 1998 when we formally launched as a church, we’re 18 years old.
In another way, if you count back to the founding of the predecessor churches we’re (count with fingers) 29 years old.
In another way, actually, we’re 120 years old. Anyone know why? This year marks the 120th anniversary of Yonge Street Mission. Cool, eh?
So…Thanks be to God for His abiding faithfulness and love for us for 18, 29…120 years.
God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.
Today I mean for us to spend some time meditating on joy. Are we up for that? And joy, God’s joy and our joy, are truly important aspects of our lives, and of our worship. What is our joy? Well, the best way to get to the answer to that question is to look at God’s joy. (Pause)
Now there is always something hard, something difficult, something unwanted, or even some great sadness that, precedes, that comes before joy.
There is something that makes joy sweeter, something that points to a contrast between the way things were before and the way thing are now since joy has come.
We experience this even in little things, and it’s important to notice the little things. Up until this past week, getting an education beyond high school has been very difficult or altogether out of reach for a great number of Canadians.
In Ontario, at least, it’s now the case that young people who are part of families with lower incomes will be given what amounts to a free college or university education.
That’s actually really remarkable. There will be bugs in the system, and it’s not a perfect solution, but for a whole lot of people, a post-secondary education, especially one that won’t mean graduating with a huge debt, is now in reach.
That will enable graduates to get better jobs, to have better incomes and to be lifted out of poverty. That’s good news.
But until now, it’s been brutal for young people to afford to go to post-secondary school. But before the good, there is very often the bad. Before joy there is sadness. That’s in the natural.
Now, we know that God is revealed in the Holy Bible as Father, Son and Holy Spirit…that is the very identity of God.
A good answer to the question: “Who is God?” is “God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit – three in one.”
Did you know that God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit have also experienced sorrow, sadness? God now dwells in joy, but let’s take a look at the sadness and joy of God.
The Sadness and Joy of the Father
What was the sadness of the Father? After Creation, after saying that all He has created was good, after God’s perfect creation including humanity had come, sin also came.
Genesis Chapter 3 recounts how a perfect creation was marred by human sin.
Genesis 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
Genesis 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" 10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
So shame and fear and eventually all forms of sin and destruction came into the world and reigned. God and humanity became alien to each other, alienated from the fellowship and intimacy that God always wanted.
That was the Father’s great sadness. And how great a sadness. Pause.
Now the joy of the Father was in knowing that He had a plan. A plan to fix every last thing that was broken due to human sin.
A plan that He had since before creating anything, that would mean that humanity, the very top of His creation, would once again be able to dwell in the garden with Him.
No matter how bad bad was to get, God would make a way home to the garden for you and for me. That’s the sadness and joy of the Father.
The Sadness and Joy of the Son
Now the sadness of the Son was connected to this. You see, the Son, come down to earth, incarnated as a baby in a manger…the Son got to see face to face all kinds of human evil.
This is a remarkable part of the Christian story. God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, though separated from us due to our sin, was not aloof or distant from us.
The plan of God all along had been that the Son would lay aside His majesty, His glory…and would walk the roads we walk and struggle with the things we struggle with and suffer like we suffer.
Hebrews 4:15 says: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin”.
And the Son’s sorrow was made complete in His suffering. He who knew no sin became sin for us.
He was arrested, falsely accused, ridiculed and mocked and whipped and falsely tried and ultimately murdered on a cross.
But even as Jesus carried his cross to the place of his execution, His joy was on His mind. He endured the cross for one reason:
Hebrews 12:2 “(Jesus) who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame”.
What was Jesus joy? What could possibly come out of His tragic suffering and loss? Do you think it was because He knew He would end up back in heaven?
No, actually. It was because He knew that His actions, His suffering and death on the cross could lead to YOU joining Him back in heaven.
And that happens when we take Jesus sacrifice personally, when you believe that Jesus died for your sins. It’s a free gift, not earned, not merited.
When we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour we become redeemed children of God. Amazing.
And when we do this Jesus gives us the power to live life the way He lived it…putting others first, seeking God’s Kingdom, living not for ourselves but for God’s glory. Hallelujah.
The Sadness and Joy of the Holy Spirit
Before Jesus suffered, He promised He would send us the Holy Spirit, which He did on the day of Pentecost 50 days after His resurrection. When the Holy Spirit came as recorded in Acts chapter 2, the church exploded with power and grew incredibly quickly.
The Holy Spirit of God is called the third person of the Trinity. He is fully God and is that person of the Godhead who is present to us here on earth.
God the Father sits in heaven with God the Son on His right hand. But God the Holy Spirit…He is here in this place. And He was present to the early church.
Now remember that sadness always goes before joy. There is a particular sadness that the Holy Spirit experiences. The Apostle Paul talks about this in the letter to the Ephesians:
Ephesians 4: 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
This is a lot closer to us than the story of Creation and the Fall.
This is closer to us even that the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is sadness, here identified as grief, in the Holy Spirit.
Our distinct behaviours have an impact on the Holy Spirit. Bitterness is one of them. I found a good definition of bitterness.
“Bitterness is a frozen form of latent anger and resentment. Bitterness grows out of our refusal, to let go when someone or something is taken from us.
Bitterness is being constantly hurt by a memory and is holding onto a hurt until it has a hold on you”. So bitterness grieves the Holy Spirit. Hmm.
Rage and anger are indicated too, as are the things they can lead to: brawling (or fighting) and slander, (telling lies about people to hurt them).
“Every form of malice”. Malice is desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another.
Unforgiveness is something else that hinders us. To not forgive is to allow the person who has offended us to live rent-free in our heads.
C.S. Lewis said that “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
Martin Luther King Jr. said: ““Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.”
So these are things that grieve the Holy Spirit. When people, especially God’s people behave in ways that do not honour God, when they behave as though they were not redeemed, when they behave as though they do not have the Holy Spirit living in them, this grieves God.
The Holy Spirit’s joy is in our conduct… when the way we behave with each other is the way of love, the life of love, just like Christ’s love for you and me.
Look at this: 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
5:1 Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph 4:42-5:2)
The Holy Spirit’s joy is expressed in the fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
So God’s joy is ultimately realized in the saving of a people, a people whose conduct and attitude reflects His own. A people who are becoming like Jesus in attitude, in behaviour and in conduct.
The joy that God gives is actually not dependent on any outward situation. It doesn’t depend on good news from the government for students.
It transcends all the ups and downs of life. Sometimes that joy breaks through real sadness.
Some of you know that I’ve lost a lot of people that I love, close family members, in the past number of years. 9 years now.
Each person that passed, my brother Craig, my father Lewis and my mother Eleanor left me with a profound grief and sorrow. I led or was involved in each of their funerals. Those were the darkest and most agonizing times of my life.
At the same time though I had such a profound sense of being held by God, of not in any way being alone in the process.
And often as I was going through those losses I would just stop and weep and thank God for holding me, thanking Him for giving me such a sense of His presence in the midst of great sadness.
I would call that joy in the midst of rough waters. I think our joy is that we are indeed held, safe in God’s hands, shielded from so much harm.
Our joy is in knowing that God sent His Son into the world in order to redeem our lives, to save us from sin, from ourselves and from the enemy of our souls, the devil. Our joy is in knowing that Christ has won the victory for us.
But that joy only first comes to us, again, after sorrow. Every Christian who celebrates what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross, begins by first humbly recognizing his or her own sin and that in fact it was that sin that led Jesus to the cross in the first place.
Sorrow over our sin leads us to repentance. We turn away from the darkness, we confess to God and often others what it is we have done wrong.
And we experience forgiveness. We are cleansed. The sin that once bound us…God in His grace forgives us. The Scripture says”
Micah 7:18 Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. 19 You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
And Isaiah 43:25 says: "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more”.
Jesus Christ has won true freedom, true liberty for you and for me. He has forgiven our sins, removed our shackles and brought us into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
He has given us His Holy Spirit. He has brought us back into relationship with the Father.
And He has given us as a church His mission: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you”. John 20:21
What is His mission? To proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 and to proclaim the Lord’s favour.” God is for us and not against us. Luke 4:18-19
So, may our joy not be fleeting, may we not trust in things that rust. May our joy not be shallow, seeking happiness in things that fade.
And may we cast our vision forward, celebrating all that God has done among us over these past many years, but focussing our hearts and energies on being the church that He wants us to be as we continue to serve Him.
Let us never stop fixing our eyes upon Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. In His glorious name we pray. Amen.
