To The Ends of the Earth--And Beyond!

One of my favorite characters is Buzz Lightyear, so I’ve adapted his famous line for the title of this post.  A while back I had some posts on witnessing, and I’ve been forced to give the subject more thought as the due date for a course project looms near.  I’ve written a study of Jesus’ commission in Acts 1:8, and how the Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to move toward its fulfillment in three decisive episodes—what I’ve called the “Three Pentecosts”—at Jerusalem (Acts 2), Samaria (Acts 8), and Caesarea (Acts 10).  I plan to post the entire document in the “for what its worth” department of my web site once I put the finishing touches on it.  I would like to go ahead and share part of my conclusion here, especially as it relates to being Jesus’ witnesses “to the ends of the earth.”

We may doubt whether the disciples who heard Jesus’ commission in Acts 1:8 understood at the time what it meant to go “to the ends of the earth.”  They certainly had no idea how they would get there.  They embarked on a process of discovery as the Spirit prompted them and they responded in faith.  At different stages, they may have thought of Caesarea, or Antioch, or Rome, or Spain as “the ends of the earth.”  But when they reached there, they discovered that the ends of the earth lay yet before them.  The conclusion of the book of Acts is open-ended.  Paul is prison at Rome, but he’s preaching and teaching about the kingdom of God “boldly and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31).  He’s doing what he’s always done as a witness of Jesus.  

So the mission of the Jesus’ witnesses remains open-ended today.  “We are still discovering the meaning of ‘all the world’ today” (Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church).  We are still discovering new “ends of the earth.”

We are discovering unreached people groups, the ethnē who Jesus commissioned us to disciple.  Sometimes they are small groups, cut off from the witness that may surround them, but yet be incomprehensible to them because it has not been translated into their language and in terms of their worldview.  Sometimes they are large groups who have not heard the testimony because of political barriers, or because Christ’s witnesses have been too intimated by walls of religion, culture, and tradition.

Through tragedies such as the genocide in Rwanda, we are discovering that not all nations that have been “christianized” have been “made disciples.”  A new, authentic testimony for Jesus is needed in such places.

We are discovering how far Western Europe and North America have moved from their Christian past, if in fact they were ever truly made disciples.  Disciples of Jesus find themselves in a cross-cultural situation, in which they are called to be faithful witnesses—understanding, living in, and relating to the dominant culture, but ever wary of its seductions.

We are discovering that global mobility has brought “the ends of the earth” to our doorsteps.  The cities of the world, in particular, contain a host of large ethnic communities.  Many members of these communities are isolated from Christian witness that may be geographically near but, linguistically and culturally, is as far away as “the ends of the earth.”

When I went to live in New Zealand for three years fresh out of college, I was about as far away as I could be physically from where I was born and raised.  Often since arriving in Africa, I’ve felt that I was at “the ends of the earth.”  But there are thousands of disciples here in Africa who are just as commissioned as I am to be Jesus’ witnesses.  If you’ve seen the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, you’ll remember the little bushman who takes the Coke bottle to the “end of the world,” to get rid of this thing that had caused such disruption in his little world.  What does going “to the ends of the earth,” mean to the Watchi people?  What does “the ends of the earth” mean to you and God’s calling for your life? And what does it mean to me, as I await God’s next calling?