Missional Monday-Love not Pity

What can do the marginalized, prostitutes, foreigners and sinners teach us about being missional? When we recognize such individuals in the genealogy of Jesus there is a lot that we might learn.

There has been a lot written about the fact that The Gospel of Matthew includes five women in the genealogy of Jesus, an unusual feature for genealogies of the time. Such an unusual feature is surely meant to capture our attention. Here are a few things that I have taken away from the insight as I think about carrying on Jesus' mission.

1) God has a heart for the marginalized. The fact that the list has women, some put in vulnerable positions (Tamar was left without a husband and denied motherhood), and some foreigners helps me recognize that we should have a heart for the vulnerable on the fringes of society.

2) God longs to bring salvation to the sinner. Tamar, Rahab and Bathsheba have reputations for some morally questionable behaviour. I need to be engaging the "sinners" as well.

3) God has a heart for the nations. Ruth and Rahab were definitely Gentiles. We are given a foreshadowing of the eventual expansion of the Mission of God to all nations.

4) There is no place for pride in missions. If God used the outsiders to preserve the messianic line when His own people seemed to be dropping the ball, we who are God's people should enter missions with humility. Sometimes missions has come from a place of pride and pity. Whether rich to poor, developed nation to developing etc. it is not our status, our culture or our socio-economic standing that we seek to export. For those of us in the modern West, we can find it jarring to hear that the rest of the world is now sending missionaries to us! Cultural or economic pride, superiority or condescension has no place in Missions. Missions must come from a place of humility and love.