Rediscovered themes of mission

Over on urbanarmy my good friend Gordon has a series of postings entitled, "Lost themes of mission". I've been revisiting some of those ideas over the Christmas period and have re-started reading Miroslav Wolf's, "Exclusion and Embrace: A theological exploration of identity, otherness and reconciliation" which is challenging and stretching my thinking considerably.

Inclusion is becoming one of my missional mantras for 2008. I'm not sure if inclusion ever was one of Gordon's lost themes of mission, but I'm moving on to the idea that the themes are not lost but rediscovered. There's a certain arrogance in claiming that we've rediscovered something as if everyone else has lost it, and that's not my intention. Rather, the point is that the church needs to keep rediscovering themes like inclusion: rediscovering in every age and in every context; rediscovering to maintain our focus; rediscovering how Jesus lived and taught the values of His Kingdom.

Sunday (6th Jan) is Epiphany Sunday. The coming of the magi (Matthew 2:1-12) reminds us about inclusion. He that is born King of the Jews is the King of the Gentiles too - the king of everyone. The gentile magi are included. They come from a pagan background and encounter God Incarnate for themselves, submitting their astrology to the authority of Scripture along the way, and bowing before the King of Kings at the conclusion of their journey.

God has revealed Himself to all people. Through Jesus we are all included.

Inclusion matters because if God has graciously included me then there is a real challenge for me to work for the inclusion of others. Part of that entails doing nothing that would make someone choose to exclude themselves.

Wolf asks a lot of hard questions about what it means to be included/excluded. Surely, no accident though that Matthew tops and tails his gospel with the inclusion of the gentiles at one end and the great commission at the other?

Inclusion. It was there all along. Rediscovered? For me, yes, but the next set of questions inevitably starts with, "Now what?"