What is the Work that Friends are Called to Finish?

Ben Richmond

The Isaac T. and Lida K. Johnson Lecture, 2002.

The Isaac T. and Lida K. Johnson Lectureship is made possible by their gift. The inaugural lecture was given during the 1940 sessions of Five Years Meeting. This is the nineteenth lecture in the series.

The original minute of the Central Committee said, “It is further recommended that these lectures shall, within the jurisdiction of the Executive Committee, be restricted to the field of Christian scholarship and the Christian message and its application to life.”

What is the Work that Friends are Called to Finish?

We have been given the theme: “Now, finish the work.” So, I would like to ask the question, “Just what is the work that we are to finish?” The much revered 17^th century American Quaker John Woolman, who is famous for cleansing our portion of the church of slave-holding, observed in his Journal that to speak unnecessarily in a Meeting where there were 300 gathered for even one minute is the equivalent of holding one person captive for five hours. I do not want to hold you unnecessarily captive for even five minutes, so, I would refer you to the button in your registration packet that reads, “Friends United Meeting: Listening to Christ.” That is a fair summary of tonight’s Johnson Lecture.

Listening to Christ: that is our work. We finish the work when we bring other people into communities where they, too, listen to the Living Word of God. And then, of course, we must do whatever it is that we hear Christ saying. In that sense, the work is never done.

If I were as wise as John Woolman, I would sit down and allow that to be the Johnson Lecture. However, dear Friends, forgive me, for I am going to go on.

We celebrate our work

Since this is the one hundredth anniversary celebration of our life together as Friends United Meeting, it makes sense to look back to see what was the work that we started to do one hundred years ago. Mahalah Jay, a dynamic woman and leader in Indiana Yearly Meeting, gave a paper in the first sessions of Friends United Meeting back in 1902 when FUM was called Five Years Meeting. The paper was titled, the “Present Condition of the Foreign Missionary Work of American Friends”[1] and here are some gleanings from it:

In 1871 Samuel Purdie from Indiana Yearly Meeting began a work at Matamoras in Mexico, “conducted mainly on three lines — the press, the school and the church.... The girls’ school,” Jay reported, “has been continuous for twenty-nine years. Preparations are now being made in Victoria for a school of a higher grade and a Bible Institute for young men.... Seven monthly meetings have been set up. Six Mexicans of intelligence and filled with the Holy Spirit have been recorded Ministers....”

Iowa Yearly Meeting began missionary work in Jamaica in 1883, and in 1902 reported 13 missionaries, “with an average attendance at all their places of worship of 780 persons each Sabbath. This mission has a well-established training-home for girls and is opening such a home for boys.”

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was working in Japan since 1885 with a meeting and a school. “Over the entrance to [to the Meeting-house] is a sign-board, bearing the text ‘This is Life Eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.’”

Kansas Yearly Meeting was at work in Alaska since 1887. There they started church services and a day school.

“In 1887,” New England Yearly Meeting “took ... charge of the mission in Palestine, at Ramallah.... Its main features,” Jay reported, “have been its medical work which [in 1901] reached from its dispensary 1,335 patients” and its training-home and school for girls. That year, they reported an average attendance of 125 at meeting for worship. In 1901 a “much needed training home for boys was opened.”

Western Yearly Meeting worked with Indiana Yearly Meeting in Mexico and then, “in 1889, established a mission of its own at Matehuala.... They report four established churches and ... 139 pupils in schools.” They also reported that, “medical work was opened nearly two years ago, and has made rapid progress in preparing the way for the reception of the Gospel.”

Ohio Yearly Meeting started its work in China in 1890. They had a boarding school, three day-schools and two churches. They also reported that their dispensaries provided medical care to some five thousand patients.

Oregon Yearly Meeting had also been at work in Alaska since 1894. They “now have a church of 54 members.” At another location “131 natives requested membership” but the missionaries thought this might have been the result of temporary emotionalism and so they were waiting to see how stable was their commitment “before sending their names in.”

California Yearly Meeting was also active in Alaska in the far north where the mission consisted of a home, a schoolhouse and a warehouse.

Meanwhile, the other Yearly Meetings in North America were helping “in one or several of [the mission fields] of other Yearly Meetings.”

Mahalah Jay was the first executive secretary of the American Friends’ Board of Foreign Missions. She reported that, in 1900, “with the authority and instructions of seven Yearly Meetings [that Board had] made preparations to take up [its own] work in Cuba.” She reported seven Friends missionaries from the United States in Cuba, and one Cuban evangelist working with them. “They are holding two stations now; Gibara and Holquin, and some other preaching places, with church and school and coportage work in successful operation. A third station at Banes, the headquarters of the United Fruit Company” was being prepared.

Finally, Mahalah reported: “The Friends’ Africa Industrial Mission for which funds have been solicited in most of the Yearly Meetings, obtained the amount deemed necessary to make a start.... It sent out its three pioneer missionaries last Fourth Month.”

Those three missionaries worked on a plan like the other missions of evangelism, schools, and as the name of their mission implies, industrial development.

Two reflections come sharply to mind from this survey. The first is this: God has moved Friends to make a mighty and enduring impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people through the mission work of Friends United Meeting. Their thanks role down the century to us at this meeting; it is part of the great chorus of praise and adulation of the saints around the throne of God.

The second observation is this: The work of Friends mission always included schools, industrial development, and medical assistance. And everywhere Friends went, the center of the work was evangelism. Teaching, healing, practical work were, I think, not used cynically to attract people for the ulterior motive of starting churches. Rather, I think, Friends understood that salvation reaches to the whole person and that God is as much concerned to save people in the context of this life as to bring souls to heaven after we die. This does not diminish the importance of salvation in the spiritual sense, but it is simply to insist that eternal life begins in this life. In the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus says:

“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.” (John 5:24, my emphasis)

Salvation begins in this world and touches every aspect of our lives. Then, having already known the saving power of God, we look forward with confidence to the final judgment when God will bring us safely through to the joy of the resurrection of life.

And Friends were explicit about this. In the discussion that followed Mahalah Jay’s 1902 speech, Wilfred Rowntree who, with his wife Della, had just returned from the work in Palestine, offered this observation about the impact of the Friends Schools in Ramallah:

The parents did not at first care to send their girls, but now that is all changed. The girls go back into their homes to their people with messages of salvation. The children who come to the day schools carry back messages of salvation to their parents. These girls really know what salvation is and they are doing good work, and soon in the future their efforts will bear fruit.[2]

Recalled to our Foundations

Holding on to this complete understanding of salvation has not been an easy thing for Friends. There is always a danger that we will come to look at service and evangelism as if the two were enemies of one another. Over the last one hundred years, Friends in the United States have struggled over this. I want to tell you a little of that struggle because it is out of this controversy that Friends United Meeting has come to its current clarity about our work.

The Five Years Meeting of Friends was formed in 1902 by the action of eleven yearly meetings in North America who, in the immediately preceding years had adopted what was called the Uniform Discipline. This Discipline did three things. The first was to lay out a common statement of faith. The second was to provide for the normal procedures by which the life of Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly Meeting business was to be conducted. In these respects it was in character just like the discipline that Friends in East Africa are in the process of receiving now. The third thing that the uniform discipline of 1902 did – and this was the great innovation – was to establish a new body called Five Years Meeting to “have advisory supervision of the interests of the denomination.” Five Years Meeting was also authorized to establish common work in missions, evangelism, education and to make statements of social policy on behalf of Friends.[3]

It was not long before it became clear that Friends would not maintain this uniform discipline. In the 1940s an attempt was made to thoroughly revise the discipline to keep up with the changing circumstances of the member yearly meetings. However, the yearly meetings did not adopt this revision. Soon all that remained of the uniform discipline was Chapter Five, the section that laid out procedures for Five Years Meeting. The member yearly meetings chose to continue revising their own books of Faith and Practice as best each saw fit. At this point, what had already become obvious was official: Friends did not have a common declaration of faith.

Coincidental to the loss of theological unity among FUM Friends in America, the impulse for outreach lessened. You will already have noticed that almost all of the areas where we in Friends United Meeting are at work today had already been initiated a hundred years ago. Friends United Meeting does have three new mission fields: Belize, in Central America, and here in Kenya where we support the work in Samburu and Turkana. The remarkable thing to notice about these new fields is that, although Friends United Meeting helped start them, American Friends were not the first missionaries. A Belizian Quaker who had been touched by our work in Jamaica started the work in Belize, and the work in Turkana and Samburu, of course, has been carried out by Kenyan Friends.

In a way, this is a good thing, and it is certainly a sign of things to come. In the course of the last century, the center of Quaker population and energy has shifted from the United States to the south, just as in the previous century, the center of Quakerism had shifted west: from England to the United States. An indication of this is what has happened in our membership. In 1900, the yearly meetings that today make up Friends United Meeting in North America had about 75,000 members. A hundred years later, those yearly meetings have about 42,000 members. In the meantime, Friends in East Africa report a growth to 130,000 members.[4]

In North America, the great impulse to send evangelists virtually disappeared. In frustration, several Yearly Meetings withdrew from Friends United Meeting to form what is now called Evangelical Friends International. We came to the low point in our unity in 1987, at the triennial sessions in Greensboro, North Carolina. Not for the first time, Friends in those sessions were unable to unite in reaffirming the 1887 Richmond Declaration of Faith – a document that had been central in the original uniform discipline and which is still part of the books of discipline of many our Yearly Meetings. The discord of the 1987 sessions continued over the next several years. Then, it seemed, God did something remarkable among us.

At the 1990 triennial sessions, God sent prophetic messengers to us. First, Charles Lamb, a Friend from Ireland, wrote an epistle to the sessions in which he said:

Beware of those who seem to speak Jesus’ language, but who do not confess Him as Lord.... You are called to live for the glory of God in the same life and power and spirit that the apostles and disciples lived in the book of Acts.

Then, a young man appeared who told us that, although he was not a Friend, the Holy Spirit had instructed him to come to these sessions and bring us a message. He said:

George Fox wanted to come back to the earliest possible roots of the primitive church.... [The] heartfelt action of this man sent a fire across England.... The fire that propelled you to this point in time and history has just about extinguished.... [Y]ou have to go back to the roots of Jesus Christ and the apostolic church.

And then, in the final evening session, a young woman rose during open worship to say, “I am not really one of you, but the Lord wants me to read this scripture.” Then with no further words she read Deuteronomy 6:13-19, beginning with these words, “Fear the Lord your God and serve him only...”[5]

In 1990, God was was wrestling with Friends to restore us to the fire, and the purity, and the power of our calling. It seems to me that God believed in Friends and in our message more than we did, ourselves. In June 1992, God gave a Friend in Texas this word:

I am sending revival to the Friends Church. This will not be called Pentecostal or Charismatic, but will be a Friends revival. This is a sovereign work. All will be included from the young to the old. The elders will be especially used, even those who felt their usefulness in the church was over. There will be open weeping and laughter.... No man will be able to stop this.”[6]

In this atmosphere, the General Board of Friends United Meeting held special retreats in 1992, and again in 1993. It was in those meetings that God gave us this purpose statement:

“Friends United Meeting commits itself to energize and equip Friends through the power of the Holy Spirit to gather people into fellowships where Jesus Christ is known, loved and obeyed as Teacher and Lord.”

This statement tells us that, in the end, our work is to Listen to Christ. We finish the work when we bring other people into communities where they, too, can enjoy that kind of life. When we say that we are looking to Jesus Christ who is known as Teacher and Lord, we are proclaiming a specific message of salvation – one full of power and glory. It is a message that has the power to transform not only individuals but entire cultures. I would like to tell you what I believe that message is.

Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus met in an upper room with his disciples to celebrate the Passover feast. Jesus used that meal to explain the meaning of his coming crucifixion:

He took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood." (Luke 22:19-20)

Jesus inaugurated the New Covenant on the cross. This is why, in the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus is called our High Priest and the mediator of the New Covenant.

Jesus as mediator of the New Covenant was central to George Fox’s preaching. In 1652, in one of his earliest letters to Friends, Fox wrote:

the Blood of Jesus Christ will cleanse you from all sin. For through it and by it we do overcome, which Blood of the new covenant is but one. There shall you witness the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.[7]

In a long tract on the New Covenant written much later in his life, Fox wrote:

So the new covenant is not according to the old; nor the New Testament is not as the Old. For the New Testament is in the blood of Christ, which cleanseth from all sin; and in him, the one offering, ‘who offered up himself once for all, who is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.’ And the New Testament is in Christ, who is the life and light of men.[8]

William Penn wrote in 1668:

“...the Quakers never knew of any other Name than that of Jesus Christ, through which to find acceptance with the Lord; nor is it by any other, than Jesus the mediator of the New Covenant, by whom they expect Redemption, and may receive the promise of an eternal Inheritance.”[9]

When they wrote the Richmond Declaration of Faith of 1887, Friends called Jesus, “the one Mediator of the new and everlasting covenant (1 Tm. Ii. 5, Heb. Ix. 15)....”

The New Covenant is the key to understanding the Gospel as Friends have proclaimed it, and Quaker practice as we have lived it. The New Covenant is found in Jeremiah 31:33-44, and it is repeated in the New Testament in Hebrews 8:8-12:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah....

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:31, 33b-34)

The New Covenant has three parts. They are, first: God declares our sins to be forgiven; second: God promises to write his law inwardly on our hearts; and, third: everyone gets to know God directly without the need for anyone else to teach them. The new covenant is God’s way of giving human beings the possibility of living lives that reflect God’s own character – of restoring the image of God that we were made in.

The forgiveness of sin is the beginning of eternal life. “Here,” William Penn said, “is God’s meer Crace asserted.”[10] By this he meant that God is under no compulsion or law that requires forgiveness, but God chooses, by his sovereign will, to show us grace, love, mercy, and everlasting kindness because this is God’s own heart. We can’t buy God’s love by our good deeds – or even by the correctness of our beliefs and doctrines. God has simply made the gracious decision to forgive.

It is impossible to out-love God. On the cross, Jesus shows us that God would rather suffer death than allow anything to separate us from that love. When Jesus taught us, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” he said that only this kind of love reflects the universal, overflowing, love of God. “Love your enemies...” Jesus said, “so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:44-45)

To one degree or another, all of us live in fear. We fear being hurt. We fear being rejected. We fear that we will not have enough. Our hearts become hard as we build up internal defenses against our fears. What casts out fear but perfect love? God’s declaration of forgiveness frees us from bondage to fear. God’s declaration of forgiveness frees all of us who have hurt others and all of us who have been hurt by others from bondage to the pain and guilt that we have experienced. We can start our lives over again. We can be born again. God’s ever repeated declaration of forgiveness and love is the method that God is using to do for us that which we can not do for ourselves: to take our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh; to make us fully human as God intended from the beginning of creation.

The second promise of the new covenant is, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” This is great joy. We have only to look around to see that written rules and regulations have not been successful in bringing about the kind of lives that reflect the love of God. In the New Covenant, God acknowledges that this is true even of the laws of God. In giving the New Covenant, God acknowledges that even his Commandments have been insufficient to save us. Why is this? Until we come to the law written inwardly on our hearts, we are left with our own intellect, to calculate as best we can what is good and what is evil in our particular circumstances. We discover that our judgments are inevitably flawed, and that we are always able to rationalize whatever our own selfish will desires.

In recent years, we in Kenya and the United States have suffered in dramatic ways from just such miscalculations about the good. In the 1980s, the United States government wanted to end a communist dictatorship in Afghanistan, so it took and trained some Arab freedom fighters to set that Islamic country free. The group that the United States funded and trained became Al-Qaeda and later bombed the embassy in Nairobi and destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City.[11] The world desperately needs to learn the New Covenant truth that human calculation about good and evil so often leads to death. This is true in the hidden places of our private lives as well -- in our relationships with those we love, and in our work, and in our own souls.

The heart is where the decision to love and obey is made -- and Jeremiah perceives that the heart is so corrupt that, on our own, we cannot love and obey God, even if we want to. He writes:

The heart is devious above all else;

it is perverse --

who can understand it?

(Jeremiah 17:9)

Paul cries out, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.... Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:19, 24))

Praise be to God, the answer comes: “I will write my law within you.” And so, Paul proclaims the Good News:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4, my emphasis)

God has chosen to do inside of us, that which we cannot do for ourselves. This is why Quaker worship de-emphasizes outward ritual but, instead, emphasizes whatever helps us listen to the voice of God whispering in the secret places of our souls.

This listening spirituality touches every aspect of our lives. In 1648, George Fox had a vision of salvation that he referred to often throughout his ministry. He said:

Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God.... And the Lord showed me that such as were faithful to him in the power and light of Christ, should come up into that state in which Adam was before he fell....[12]

Before I sit down, I want to take a little time to look at what the Bible reports to us about life in the Garden of Eden, which is paradise. It presents an amazing vision of God’s intention for human life. If this is what salvation is about, we should know it and celebrate it -- because it is revolutionary and challenges everything oppressive and death dealing in our fallen cultures. So, turn with me in your minds to the first few chapters of Genesis.

“The Lord God formed adam from the dust of the ground.” (Genesis 2:7) Adam, is the Hebrew word for humankind, and, oddly enough, adamah is the word for the ground, the earth. Adam is formed from adamah. Even the words say, “this is where we belong.” ”The Lord God took adam and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” (Genesis 2:15) Humanity is charged with important work. In paradise, people are entrusted with the responsibility to create order out of chaos, to care for the creation, to nurture its fruitfulness. In this day of ecological trauma, it is important to know the truth that the care of the earth is part of God’s gift of salvation.

After the rebellion, we read:

“...cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground...." (Genesis 3:17b-19a)

Ecological destruction and meaningless toil are signs of the curse that results from humanity’s rebellion from God. A sign of salvation is the experience of work as meaningful and creative. In salvation, we are co-laborers-with-God in caring for and giving meaningful order to the creation.

The Garden of Eden is described as having abundant water, abundant fruit, abundant wealth! In paradise, we know we have enough, because we experience the overflowing love and care of God. To be saved means being freed from the fear of scarcity. We can live lives of simplicity and generosity. No more hoarding, no more petty graft, no more economic oppression of one group over another. All such things deny God’s power to save.

The first thing reported in the Bible to be “not good” is the loneliness that adam/humankind felt in the Garden. So God responded by creating human community. As humanity/adam had been formed out of the ground/adamah, so a woman/ishah was formed out of man/ish. Woman and man were created to be help-partners, one for another. There is no hint of subordination here. But after the rebellion, Eve heard this curse:

“... in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." (Genesis 3:16, my emphasis)

Patriarchy (the rule of males over females) is a condition of the rebellion. Equality of men and women, whether it is in the family or in the church or in society at large, is a sign of God’s salvation.

Before the rebellion, Adam and Eve were “naked, and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:25) It was only in the rebellion that they knew shame in their nakedness. In salvation, men and women know no shame in the sexual experience, but there is pureness and satisfaction and due awe at the power of sexual intercourse to transform two individuals into “one flesh.” Here is the foundation of family, the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman – both submitting to the other under God. The ravages of sexually transmitted disease, such as AIDS, is a sign of our rebellion. In salvation, as we rejoice in faithful marriage, we know ourselves both to be both sexual and good in the eyes of God.

After Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, the very first thing that happens is the murder of Abel by Cain! Violence is soon tearing apart the social fabric. In just three generations:

God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence....” (Genesis 6:13 )

In the twentieth century, nations around the world fought in over 202 armed conflicts[13] and technology has made the threat of universal destruction plausible. But Eden is a pleasure-park of harmony and peace. A sign of salvation is the restoration of the peace which flourished in paradise. The reality of peace that we have come to know deep within has the power to transform situations of even intense conflict. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)

From the beginning of creation God intended for humanity a life of creativity, abundance, peace, community, equality, wholesome sexuality, and integrity. Salvation touches every aspect and corner of our lives. When Friends United Meeting says that our purpose is to gather people into fellowships where Jesus Christ is known, loved and obeyed as Teacher and Lord, we are saying that we are inviting people to enjoy this is the kind of life. Such communities are of immeasurable importance to the life of the world. They are a sign of hope that there is a better way to live, that there really is a God who loves at the center of the universe. Communities of salvation stand as counter-cultural witnesses against the evil and oppression of this world. They are outposts of the new heaven and the new earth that we will one day enjoy.

But we cannot create these communities by our own will or calculation. The source is a spirituality of listening to the living word of God within. This is part of the Genesis story, as well. Adam and Eve enjoyed just such a listening relationship with God. The Bible puts it like this:

And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.... (KJV Genesis 3:8a)

The root of all that is good in the Garden of Eden comes from attending to the voice of the Lord, the qol Yahweh.

The final promise of the New Covenant is that everyone will be able to hear the qol Yawheh once again. “No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest....” (Jeremiah 31:34) All those things that Friends testify to: peace, equality, integrity, sexual purity, simplicity and community depend on God being present to us as our Teacher. This is where we need Jesus so very much.

Gathering people into fellowships where Jesus is Teacher and Lord

At the Last Supper, Jesus said, “You call me Teacher and Lord -- and you are right, for that is what I am.” (John 13:13) Then he explained how his death would make his presence as Teacher and Lord available to all through the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

"I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.... You heard me say to you, 'I am going away, and I am coming to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.” (John 14:25-26, 28)

This is what Jesus was talking about when he said:

“I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” (John 15:15)

And this is what the Apostle Peter was talking about when he explained what had happened when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples at Pentecost:

“This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.’” (Acts 2:16b-18; cf., Joel 2:28-29)

In this sense, Friends are certainly a Pentecostal church. We are quiet – because we don’t want to drown out the quiet whisper of the inward voice of God – but we are utterly dependent on the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

We need to be a church that includes everyone. If God is pouring out the Holy Spirit on all flesh so that anyone (young or old, men or women, slave or free) might be the one to bring God’s living message fresh today, we dare not fail to invite them all in. What if black people or white people were excluded, or women subordinated, or children despised, or the elderly ignored, or the poor turned away? What if all were “welcomed” but some were prohibited from speaking? The consequence would be that the community of God’s people could not hear the words God was delivering through them. The community of God’s people must be ready to hear the word of God as it is expressed by anyone.

This is why Friends often enjoy times of quiet waiting upon the Lord during our worship: we are listening inwardly to the Risen Jesus Christ, our Teacher, and making an open space in our midst out of which anyone can speak the living word God has given them. This, also, is why we do our business by waiting together for unity – because everything depends on listening to Christ who has promised that his word can come to us from anyone, from the least to the greatest.

In our purpose statement, Friends United Meeting commits itself to the task of gathering people into these fellowships “through the power of the Holy Spirit.” This is because we know that we cannot do this work through our own strength. This is not false modesty. It is simply the truth that fellowships where Jesus Christ is known as Teacher and Lord can only be created by the Holy Spirit.

In the work of evangelism Friends have always known that God has gone ahead of us. The promises of the New Covenant are unconditional. God has said, “I will write my law on their hearts.” “Everyone will know me.” There is no one whom we can encounter in whom God has not already placed his witness. They may be Muslim or Buddhist or have an animist spirituality or claim to have no spirituality, but we know that God is already available to them as Teacher and Lord. God said so. Our task, as ministers of the New Covenant, is to reach to that witness that God has already placed within them. The wonderful thing is that this can only be accomplished by the Spirit of Christ that is already at work within us. We cannot truly reach the witness of God in another person by intellectual argument or emotional appeal alone; that only reaches to that part of the other which is “perverse” beyond healing. Telling others true things about the love of God revealed by Christ is, of course, often part of evangelism, but the real work of salvation comes about through the invisible interaction of the Spirit of God which is within us, reaching out to the witness of God already implanted within the other. This awakens a yearning within the other to know the fullness of Life that they can already spiritually sense. Then our task is simply to say, “Yes! That is God. Stop running from him. Listen to Christ, your Teacher and Lord. He is already within you, and he will bring you to eternal life.”

This spring, the Holy Spirit was powerfully present among some sixty leaders, men and women, young and old, who came together at a conference for “emerging leaders” in Richmond, Indiana. Wayne Cox, one of the young adults at the conference wrote these words after one of our sessions:

Lord, make the desire of my heart, to obey you

Even though I'm unyielding, unwilling, vain

Search my heart, and find my selfish ambition

Knead my heart, till it's pliable for you

.......

The desire of my heart is to follow you

to obey whatever the cost.

God is moving among us, raising up new ministers of the New Covenant for this generation. Wayne’s words echo Jesus’ own prayer to God at Gethsemane.

"Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done." (Luke 22:42)

This prayer, “not my will, but yours,” is the doorway to salvation. It is the prayer to baptized spiritually.

Spiritual baptism means to be willing to give up our own rebellious wills in preference for the leading of God. Paul calls this a baptism into Christ’s death:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:3-4)

To yield our rebellious will to God is the way of the cross. As we learn to listen to Christ, the living word, God beckons us beyond the cross to the resurrection and eternal life.

This is the gift we have for the world. So, now let us finish the work.