I had a really difficult time deciding about what I should talk about today. I mean, certainly I need to talk about my experience in Japan. But there is a lot to say, and so it is hard to boil down in to a 15 minute...well, let's be honest, 20 minute talk. So, ironically, I've decided to tell you three different stories—three different missionary encounters with the Gospel.

The first story is about a Swedish missionary couple during the 1920's, David and Svea Flood. The Flood's traveled to what was then the Belgian Congo in 1921, and sought to evangelize to a tiny, remote village in the middle of nowhere called N'dolera. The Flood's were not allowed to enter the village because the chief did not want to offend the local gods, and so David and Svea built for themselves a little mud and grass hut about half-a-mile up the slope from the village. They lived in the hut for six years, with their only real interaction with the village people being a young boy who was allowed to visit to sell chickens and eggs to the missionaries twice a week. It was a difficult time for the young couple. They were seeing no results for all the work they were trying to do in the name of Jesus, and they were suffering greatly, both of them going through regular bouts with malaria.

Eventually, they found some encouragement in that they were able to lead the young boy who delivered their food to Christ. But soon after this, Svea died giving birth to a daughter. David gave up in his grief, left the baby girl with another missionary couple, and returned to Sweden.

After many years, after the baby girl had grown and married, she was reunited with her father. She had discovered after all those years something amazing about her parents' work. That young boy who used to deliver the food to David and Svea had gone on to lead the entire village to Christ. He later became the superintendent of the national church, which was made up of over 100,000 baptized believers.

Now, this is an amazing story in its own right, but it is also fairly stereotypical of missionary stories in many ways, isn't it? At least, many of the things that I generally associate with Christian missionaries are present in this story. You know, things like living for years and years in tiny mud and grass huts. Struggling through sicknesses like malaria while trying to reach a remote, tiny village that has never even seen someone from another country before. Suffering for the gospel is always a major theme of these stories, it seems like to me. I mean, isn't that part of what makes a missionary a missionary—doing something extraordinary and difficult for the sake of Christ?

So, it's no wonder, then that I had a difficult time thinking of myself as a true, honest-to-goodness missionary during my year in Japan. I mean, let's face it...I wasn't really suffering all that much. I didn't live in a dirty mud and grass hut. I lived in a relatively small, but comfortable furnished apartment with air conditioning, heat, a refrigerator, a washing machine...oh...and a robotic toilet.

I'm totally serious, Japanese toilets are absolutely amazing. The best thing about it was it had a heated toilet seat. So, you know how in the winter, you sit on the toilet and everything just goes numb because it's so cold. Well...not in Japan. This is a modern country we're talking about. They have technology to fix these sort of problems. Oh man, when I sat on my toilet in Japan...roasty toasty, all the time.

Er, anyway...my awesome robotic toilet aside, I wasn't really suffering like all these missionaries you hear about.

On top of that, the work I was doing often didn't feel like missionary work. The bulk of my duties in Japan were teaching English classes at the church. I spent about 30 hours every week doing this—teaching children from 4 years old, all the way up to one 72-year-old woman. And, while the reasoning behind this was good—the idea was to help introduce people to the church through the classes—but when you spend your day holding up cards and saying “Apple”, “Orange”, “Banana”...well...you start to feel less like a missionary and more like one of those muppets on Sesame Street (not that I'm taking anything away from Burt and Ernie...they're awesome!).

The truth is, I never saw a single person come to Christ while I was serving in Japan. And I very often felt discouraged and questioned why I was there. I mean, if I wasn't there to tell people about Jesus, about the Gospel...why was I there?

So now that I've done a good job of making you all think to yourselves, “Yeah...why did we send this guy over there. What did he do? Just get fat on sushi and watch a bunch of sumo wrestling?” Well, let me tell you my second missionary story. This is the story of my most successful time as a missionary while in Japan.

It actually happened not too long after I had arrived—maybe three or four weeks after I had finished my training and started working for the churches. I was invited by one of the members of the church to take a driving tour through some of the nearby mountain trails. Sato-san, the man who invited me, spoke basically no English, and my Japanese was...minimal at best at that time. So, I wasn't too surprised when Sato-san picked me up with another young man in the car. The young man (probably in his mid-30s) spoke a little English—broken and staggering, but between my broken and staggering Japanese and his broken and staggering English, we were able to understand each other.

As the tour started, the young man mostly served as a translator between Sato-san and me. “He say this mountain...biggest mountain in Tohoku.” “Ah, I see. Very interesting,” I would respond, and he would dutifully translate back to Sato-san, “Ah...omoshiroi desu.”

Pretty soon, though, Sato-san began saying things that my translator companion had difficulty interpreting. Clearly Sato-san was using words that were not generally taught in high school English class. After some stumbling and jumbling, I figured out that Sato-san was trying to tell me the story of his faith journey—about how he became a Christian. It was interesting to hear, but I wondered a bit why he was telling this story to me...especially since I had already heard his story at the church.

Soon, Sato-san's intentions became clear to me. Jin-san, my translator, was not a Christian. He had never been to church. Sato-san knew him from work, and had asked him to come along to help translate. Chances to tell one's conversion story in detail rarely occur in Japanese society. Everything is very formal at the workplace, and it's just not acceptable water-cooler conversation. But now, Sato-san had a captive audience in Jin-san. Jin-san had to listen to the story, because he was responsible for translating it to me. Here I was, with my fancy Master of Divinity degree and several months of missionary training, and my job in this particular missionary encounter was to just be present, to listen, to provide a reason for Jin-san to listen.

I did not really think anything would come of Sato-san's ingenious plan. But, to my surprise, the following week Jin-san appeared at the church following the service. He was there to practice his English some more. Apparently he had enjoyed our little trip. I never saw Jin-san become a Christian. But, when I left Japan, he was still coming to the church once or twice a month to practice his English

Okay, maybe this story doesn't really do anything to help my reputation as a missionary. After all, it was Sato-san who did all the work. But, I'll tell you, this experience got me thinking about the nature of my job in Japan—and really the nature of missions as a whole. It got me asking the question, “What is a missionary?”

And that brings me to my third missionary story. This last story, though, is one that most all of you will be familiar with. It's the story we read here in this book, the Bible. It's the story of the very first missionary: God.

That's why I picked this short scripture verse for the lesson today. Jesus says, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” It can't be any more clear. God, through Jesus, is our perfect example of what a missionary should be.

“Okay, great,” you might be thinking. But where does that leave us?

Well, if we're trying to figure out what the work of a missionary is, and Jesus is our absolute paradigm of a missionary, what was Jesus' work while here on the earth? Now, this could be a pretty tricky question. I mean, Jesus did a lot. That's why we have 4 gospels, several letters, a revelation, and not to mention all the prophecies all about him. But, really, I think most of us can agree that the work God sent Jesus to do comes down to two different things. First of all, Jesus came in order to serve as propitiation for our sins:

“...since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” (Romans 3:23-25a)

The second work Jesus did was to demonstrate God's love for us:

“But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

Now, the first work of Jesus that I mentioned is already done. It is not our job to save anyone else from their sins. The work of salvation achieved in Jesus Christ is complete and sufficient.

So our job, and the work of a missionary, then, is this second thing: to demonstrate God's love.

And suddenly, if we transform our thinking about “missions work” in this way, the job seems much different, doesn't it? Missions work is not defined by suffering, or living in a foreign country, or having to learn to translate the Bible into a different language. Missions work is nothing more and nothing less than participating in God's mission by demonstrating this amazing love God shows for us to others.

And, let me tell you, while I was in Japan, as I began to understand my work in this way, my attitude about my job and my title as a missionary changed. No longer was I worried about living up to the stereotype, saving souls, or even about proclaiming the name of Jesus fervently to everyone I met. The duty of the missionary is the duty that Christ gave us to demonstrate the revolutionary love of God. Sometimes this might mean proclaiming the name of Jesus. But not always. From my time in Japan, I can tell you that there are times when you can better demonstrate God's love by keeping quiet, listening—merely being an understanding and caring presence for someone else.

One day, one of my students told me something—the greatest compliment I have probably ever received. She was a middle-aged married woman, and after class she came up to me and said, “I've attended a lot of English lessons, but I just wanted you to know that your classes are different. I enjoy coming to your class because I feel like you want us to be here...like you care about us.”

She was not a Christian, and even though I invited all my students every week to come to my English Bible Studies, she never came. But her words gave me confidence—I suddenly saw that while I might never see or hear about any of my students becoming Christians, by God's grace I had still demonstrated to them something that I could never explain to them with words: My students felt loved. They were experiencing God's love through me.

And that is really what our job as Christians is. Notice that I say “our job,” because the truth of the matter is, while I am talking about missionaries, every Christian is a missionary. We all look to Jesus as our model, and Jesus is the ultimate missionary. So our job, then is to continue Christ's work of spreading the news of God's love—to spread the Gospel. And to be open to the possibility that the methods and means God has in mind may be different than the ones we have come to expect. After all, David Flood never expected the village to be saved by the little boy who delivered his food. I never expected that my mere presence and inability to speak Japanese could be used by God to sow the seeds of faith in a young man's life. And how unlikely must it have seemed for the salvation of us all to come through the death of a Jewish man two-thousand years ago?

But that's the Gospel. The Good News. God loves us and can use us as we are. And God reaches out to us wherever we are.

As God's ambassadors we are called to reach out in love. Sometimes that love might look like a smile for someone who has had a bad day. Sometimes it might be a dollar or two for a charity. And, sometimes it might mean getting on your soapbox and preaching in the middle of Walmart's parking lot. If you were thinking, “Whew! He's letting us off the hook with this love thing!”, well, I'm not. To task we have as missionaries of the Gospel is to go where we are called in the way we are needed. But don't worry, as we read in the last few verses, God has not sent us out alone and unprepared. He will be there with us. Even in those times when we don't feel successful, God is there, sowing the seeds and preparing for the harvest. Praise God. Amen.

This work is licensed by the author, Brian D. White, under a Creative Commons A-NC-NDW License.