Who’s a missionary now?
Sermon preached by the Reverend, Maggie Guillebaud
Sunday 6 July 2025
Galatians 6: 7-16. Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
I wonder what image comes to mind when you think of a missionary? A white-robed monk, perhaps, poling his way up the Amazon to establish a mission upriver, probably to die of some kind of fever before his time?
Or perhaps some of you share my vision, of the ethereally beautiful Audrey Hepburn in the film ‘The Nun’s Story’, setting off for a mission hospital in the Congo, where, of course, she develops feelings – never requited – for the handsome Belgian doctor running the hospital. How I swooned as a teenager at the romance, and the heady idea of self-sacrifice, especially of someone so beautiful. Such dedication. Such certainty. Until the outbreak of the WW2.
That story was based on the true story of a nun called Marie-Louise Habets, a Belgian citizen who had left her order at the end of the war after struggling with her vows and her hatred of the Germans who had killed her father. After the war she continued nursing refugees and the survivors of the concentration camps. She died in 1987, having seen the Western world transformed by booming post-war economies and an increasingly non-Christian Europe whose focus had, by the time of her death, become money and leisure, with a loose, but unconscious and therefore unacknowledged, Christian ethos underpinning a liberal and tolerant view of society and of social justice.
Our reading from Luke today is full of a sense of urgency. As Jesus commissions the 70 as missionaries to make Jesus known, he twice uses the phrase: ‘The Kingdom of God has come near you’. This is what the disciples are to say as they enter a town which accepts them, and where they are to stay and heal the sick, preach and teach.
Paradoxically, it is the same phrase Jesus instructs them to use in the places where they are not welcome, this time as a warning to the people of the towns who are deaf to the message of love and hope. Disaster awaits the inhabitants of those towns. And we must remember that these missionaries were proclaiming Jesus before the Crucifixion and Resurrection. They were on a trial-run, as it were. Our modern missionaries proclaim a much fuller, post-Resurrection message.
So what might a missionary look like today?
Well, he might look a lot like our very own Ross, our excellent Missioner to young people, whose hard work is beginning to bear fruit. He or she however would bear little resemblance to either the romanticised figures of our imaginations, or to the men in today’s reading, who turned up in pairs with no shoes and no money, begging their bread and hoping you would ask them in to stay so that they could talk to you about Jesus. I think today very few of us would let them across the Welcome mat.
But that was then. And this is now.
The greatest change in the C21st is where such missionary activity needs to take place.
In what we used to call the ‘mission field’, all those places where brave missionaries, including my great-great-great-Grandfather, left these shores to proclaim the Gospel, they now have fully functioning churches run by local people who run them without the need of help from us. A success, in missionary terms.
No, I suggest our mission field now is here, in the U.K., where church attendance has been in steady decline for a long time, and where the Christian story has all but disappeared from national consciousness.
Our state schools no longer have morning assemblies, where children used to sing hymns and perhaps gain a small insight into the story of Jesus. Some schools have gone as far as banishing Nativity plays. When did we lose our nerve?
Last weekend in cathedrals all over the country bishops ordained both priests and deacons. But there are simply not enough priests and deacons to do the job that needs to be done.
So that would leave both you and me: we are the modern missionaries, laity as well as clergy.
We must step up. Because if we don’t, no one else will : The institutional church can no longer do this on its own.
I believe that today there is a great spiritual hunger, and a seeking for answers as to the meaning of life. But how ready are we to help people in their search? Let me give you an example from Islam.
My late husband and I were in Turkey some 15 years ago looking at one of the many new mosques. After the tour we were shown to a room where we were offered tea and the chance to find out more about Islam. This, I hardly need say, was not compulsory.
How many of our churches have ever offered this? And yet every time someone comes in to see one of our beautiful and historic churches and goes out with no more clue than when they entered what Christianity is about, we have lost a valuable mission opportunity. Faith is taught, not caught.
But all is not lost. As Bishop Stephen said at Christmas, there has been an unexpected rise in the number of young men attending church in the UK. 21% of young men in the age group of 18-24 now claim to go to church once a month, a great leap from just 4% in 2018. This was confirmed by Padre Pete, who preceded Ross and now is an army chaplain. He regularly has over 300 new recruits to his Sunday Eucharist, and is overwhelmed by baptismal requests. The Holy Spirit is moving.
And in France in this same age group of both men and women the number of baptisms rose by 28%in 2023, and over 30% in 2024. The Holy Spirit is moving.
We also have the example of Carolo Acutis, who will be canonised in Rome in September.
Dying of cancer at 15, Carlo had had a calling as a very young boy. He was especially dedicated to the Eucharist, and in his teens designed a website recording all the Eucharistic Miracles, the first computer-literate saint.
As well as living an almost secret life of intense spirituality and kindness, he did all the normal stuff teenage boys do, playing football and hanging out with his friends. Unafraid of his impending death, he was able to comfort his parents as he died. His motto was ‘The Eucharist is our highway to Heaven.’
In Assisi his shrine has become a magnet for teenagers and young people. He was relatable, contemporary, unassuming, yet deeply holy. And he wore jeans and trainers.
So today’s young missionaries need to be internet and AI savvy, because that is where a lot of people, particularly young people, spend much of their lives. Today’s missionaries need to learn how to use this medium effectively in order to capture the hearts of those who have never been to a church, or heard about Jesus, or what he did, and continues to do, for humanity. The internet grows ever more powerful, and the Church needs to be in that space.
‘The Kingdom of God is near you.’ That is as true today as then, and the note of urgency as strong. As Paul tells the Corinthians in his second letter to them, we have treasure in earthen vessels. Now is the time for all of us, young and old, to this treasure, actively. Because the Holy Spirit is moving.
Amen