Earlier today, Mark Sayers posted a reflection on the joy and sorrow intrinsically found in mission.  I thought it was very challenging and well observed, especially his comments on the Michael Caine classic ‘Get Carter’, which I agree gives a very harrowing and bleak view of humanity:

The story is basically a revenge caper, Carter played by Michael Caine is a hired killer who returns to his hometown of Newcastle in England’s north to avenge his brothers death. But the true message of the film is deeper. There are no good people in the film. Everyone is complicit in some way in the sordid happenings. There is no trust, no decency, no love. Carter kills with no remorse, his vengence is cold, calculating and without mercy…..The movie is brutal and souless, that is its genius. It portrays a world devoid of anything good. In which violence and evil play out against a desolate and disenchanted landscape. You could say that it is a world in which good and God have been removed.

As he continues:

The brutality of the movie, made me contemplate a present and a future devoid of God. It made me think of what this meant for others. I sat late in my lounge room and wondered to myself how I slowly had come to care less about the present and eternal futures of those around me. I realised how I love the joy element but forget the sorrow element of the Gospel.

Thus any individual, any church, any movement who wishes to see mission happen, must hold in tension the joy and the sorrow, the kingdom and the Cross. We must be compelled into mission by the joy of the resurrection and all the good news that it brings, but we must also be motivated by the reality of lostness, and the sorrow of the fact that there are those walking the path towards a future without God. People who desperately need you and I to share with them the entry point to a future filled with love, goodness and God.

Read the full article here.