Canadian Mennonite
Volume 10, No. 07
April 3, 2006
Our great ancestors who left their homeland were pilgrims
The following sermon was preached at Charleswood Mennonite Church, Winnipeg, by Jung Hoon Han, chair of the congregation’s Korean Ministry, at the joint Korean-English service on Memorial Sunday, Nov. 13, 2005. It is based on Genesis 12:1-4, Exodus 3:10-12, and Mark 1:16-20.
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Today we are celebrating Remembrance Day. Instead of remembering the veterans of the world wars, I suggest we remember some good Christians who have affected our Christian faith.
I remember my two grandmothers. My grandmother on my father’s side was born in 1904, and she passed away in 1996. She met an American missionary when she was a teenage girl and heard about Jesus Christ; however, she did not believe in Christianity and was a Buddhist until she was 80 years old. When she was 80, all the members of my father’s family had become Christians, and she became a Christian too. After she became a Christian she went to early-morning prayer meetings at her church and she prayed for our family until she died.
I also remember my grandmother on my mother’s side. She went to a Sunday school when she was young, and she is still a member of her church. She is now 88 years old and attends every prayer meeting.
Both of my grandmothers are very important persons for me to remember. They are great ancestors of mine who remembered all the names of their grandchildren and prayed for them every morning. I am very proud of them, and thank God for having these great Christian ancestors.
Who do you remember as your great Christian ancestor?
I would like to remember our great Mennonite ancestors. They tried to build up a new paradigm of church—one that was like the early church, with a more biblically based Christian life. They were even called radical.
They left their hometown and built a new community. They were persecuted, but endured the difficulties. They tried to live as they believed. Due to their hard lives, we are now able to worship God freely without any hard problems in our very comfortable environments.
They are our great Christian ancestors who kept their faith with their lives. We must remember them proudly. They did many important and significant things, such as disaster relief and human rights recovery. However, we don’t remember them as good human beings; we remember them as faithful instruments of God.
In Genesis, God asked Abraham to leave his homeland. His homeland was the place of his comfortable and easy life. He was rich enough to support many of his family members. But he left his homeland and started his suffering life. His future was unsure, but Abraham trusted God and followed God’s leading. So God blessed Abraham—and even more, God called him a blessing. Abraham is a great ancestor of ours whom we should respect and remember today.
God also ordered Moses to go to Pharaoh and rescue Israel. This was too amazing a project, and initially Moses hesitated to answer God’s call. But God continued to seek to persuade him, and Moses left his personal hiding place, went to Pharaoh and finally rescued God’s people. Moses fully trusted God, and so he became a great ancestor of all Christians, and he is someone we must remember today.
When Jesus came back from the desert after defeating the devil, he asked Peter and his brother Andrew to follow him. Peter and Andrew left their nets and followed Jesus. Their nets were the most important instruments of their lives. They were fishermen. But when invited by Jesus, they gave up their business. There was no way for any fisherman to make money without nets. But they left their job and their homeland, and they followed Jesus. They became great men of Christ and our great ancestors whom we must remember today.
There are similarities between Abraham, Moses, and Peter and Andrew. They found God’s important mission from outside of themselves. They did not search God’s business from their families, their jobs, or their immediate environments. We should learn this from them.
We should not be Christians who are going to church because of our families and ourselves. We should not use our gifts for our families and ourselves. We should not stay in this church happily and joyfully, and exhaust our spiritual energy inside this church. The Bible teaches us to love our neighbours like ourselves.
As Christians who hold eternal life through God’s great grace, we must be alive as missionaries for our neighbours. We are also missionaries for our communities. We are not to be people who survive for our families or ourselves. Any churchgoers whose lives are focused only on themselves and their families are the persons who do not understand, or even remember, Abraham, Moses, Peter and Andrew.
I have one simple question: How much are your lives oriented toward God’s mission? If you are mission-oriented Christians, you will work for God and live with God at your office, your business and your neighbourhood. You will preach God’s words and teach anyone you meet about Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ gave a great commission, which is to go and make disciples. We should conduct his holy mission of salvation, which is the most important God business in the world. We must pay more attention to our neighbours and communities. We must leave our church for this mission, because there is more interest of God outside our church than inside our church.
There is one more common similarity between Abraham, Moses, Peter and Andrew, and also the early Mennonites—they were pilgrims who left their homeland and comfort zone.
They were pilgrims. We should make our church a headquarters of worship, Christian education, fellowship and mission of Christ. And we should train ourselves in this church and leave this church in outreach for Christianity.
Pilgrims do not have their desks, chairs or offices in the church. Pilgrims are not interested in any belongings, property or positions in the church. Pilgrims always have their interests outside of the church. They have one primary interest, and that is the salvation of non-Christians. They are searching for lost children of God and preparing themselves to be faithful instruments of God. Pilgrims are godly persons who devote themselves to God’s world.
We must come out from our comfort zone, in which we enjoy Christian life easily, become good respected persons, and satisfy our value of Christian lives. Our great ancestors came out of their comfort zones and chose the persecuted life of being God’s witnesses. This is the reason that we are remembering them as our great ancestors.
Jesus Christ chose the same life. He could have become a great teacher, philosopher or political leader, but he chose the way of suffering and death. Jesus did not choose to stay in his comfort zone.
All of our great ancestors who received much respect and became remembered persons were the ones who left their comfortable home, comfortable church and comfortable communities. We must remember them and learn from them, following their examples. I strongly encourage all my brothers and sisters in this church to come out of their comfort zone.
In conclusion, I want to make one important point. As they were great persons to be remembered, all of you should also be remembered by your great-grandchildren. We must devote ourselves to God as much as our great ancestors did, and we must become God’s pilgrims who pay more attention to God’s lost children outside of the church. If we become God’s faithful instruments in his great mission, we will be remembered by our great-grandchildren every Remembrance Day.
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