Sermon about China

[This was a talk I gave at my home church on 8th Jan 2006, based on Luke 10:1-20]

As some of you may already know, I went to the south of China in the summer to a city called Shenzhen. I was with a teaching organisation which took Christian students from England and America to China to teach English to school children. This was a time of great blessing, both to the Chinese children, to the other teachers I was with, and to myself personally. However, rather than give you a simple glance through some dusty travel photographs and explain a little about what went on there (how different the culture was, how good the food was and how friendly the people were), I thought it would be better to base this talk on the Bible and give some examples to show you how the God of the Bible is still powerful today!

The passage I chose for this is the first mass missionary sending in history. Jesus gathers 72 of his followers and sends them out in pairs to prepare the way for him to come. They are to perform signs and to preach the message that “the kingdom of God is near you”. In China, the signs which we performed were not so much the supernatural ones, although we did see these happening too, but those which are more mundane and are usually harder, for example loving one another and especially trying to love some of the more difficult kids! Later I’ll talk more about the message that we preached.

So, I’ll start off by talking a little about the history of Christianity in China, and why there is such a need and readiness for the gospel there, how the “harvest is plentiful” and then go on to talk about the main lessons which I learnt from my trip; those of trust in God and the radical, life-transforming gospel message which we as Christians have had entrusted to us.

I’m sure many of you have heard about, or read the book “The heavenly man”. It is a very gripping true story about the life of a Chinese man called “Brother Yun” who was persecuted for his faith. The history of this persecution lies in the “cultural revolution” of the 1960′s and 70′s. Chairman Mao, the communist leader, decided to try to make China into a modern country. Everyone would be equal, in the great communist ideal, and “enlightenment” would rule. This meant that no-one would believe in old superstitions such as religion or God. Anyone who believed in God or practised any form of religion was rounded up, put in prison and sometimes even put to death. The Christian church was essentially killed off, save for a few believers such as brother Yun. These believers formed the house-church movement which still exists and is going strong in China. After Mao’s death, the communists became less strict and eventually in 1979 established the “Three self patriotic church” which is still the official church. The house-churches are still illegal, and there is sporadic persecution against them although they are being increasingly accepted. The Three self church is officially regulated by the government, but they can freely proclaim the gospel as long as they do not speak ill of those in charge. The main difficulty facing this official church is that they are not allowed to talk about Jesus to anyone under the age of 18. Some churches simply ignore this rule and do it anyway, but they are usually punished or disassociated for doing that. This is one reason why our trip was important, because we were reaching children, which is technically illegal in some ways.

In the 20 years since the Three-Self church has been established, according to official government statistics of 1999 there are 17 million members. However, these numbers are probably too small and the best estimate of the true number of Christians in China today is closer to 50 to 70 million. This might sound like a lot, but proportionally this is still smaller than the number of evangelical Christians in the UK. What the statistics do not tell though, is the social status of most of these Chinese Christians. Brother Yun is typical of many, having grown up in extreme poverty and travelling between many small villages to tell people about Jesus. However, Christianity in the cities and amongst the higher classes is virtually non-existent. They have swallowed the Marxist lies that religion is the “opiate of the masses” and has been disproved by science and hence look down on Christians as belonging to the lower, superstitious classes. These are the people with whom our organisation tries to work. Some of the poorer children get scholarships and the middle- and upper- class parents pay for their children to attend these summer camps where they will learn English from native English speakers. Many of the Chinese children long to be loved, because to belong in the higher classes, their parents have worked all hours, probably at a great distance from them and they will have grown up at boarding school (as most schools in China are). They will perhaps see their parents only a few times during the year. It is particularly important to reach this group of people as they are the future leaders of China and will thus have a say over the policy. If they have a good experience of Christianity at this early stage in their lives, then they will doubtless be more sympathetic to Christians even if they do not choose to accept Jesus for themselves.

A wonderful example of this was at the second camp which we did, the twelve English teachers each had a Chinese teacher in their classroom to help them manage the children. There was also one Chinese lady in charge of all the Chinese teachers. She was very interested in Christianity because the master at her teacher-training college had been to America and had had a good experience of Christians there. We managed to give her a Bible, but perhaps more importantly she heard that we were doing small services in the lunchtimes and came along. She didn’t understand what really happened, but thought it was very important, and so told all the other Chinese teachers to attend the next one. Partly as a result of this, two of the Chinese teachers decided to become Christians, and who knows what effect this new love will have upon the children and adults which they come into contact with in the course of the next year? The harvest will doubtless be plentiful!

In addition to this, many people on our team were from Oxford and Cambridge. These universities are known and respected in China, and so for a group of people to come from them, believing there is a God and showing how it changes their lives is a real surprise to intellectually minded Chinese, who have been taught from very early on that no scientific minded, rational person could possibly believe that God exists, let alone that He would want to love humans. This made them much more eager to listen to all the other things that we said to them about Jesus. During the several weeks that we were teaching, our team of about 15 must have had contact with 400 people and we gave out many bibles, gospels and evangelistic tracts. In total we must have given out about 60 or 70 Bibles and gospels, and we only gave to people who became Christians or who were really keen to find out more about Jesus, but even then we were not able to give Bibles to some because we ran out of them!

However, for a Chinese person to believe our message takes a lot more commitment and courage than for an English person. Chinese society thinks of Christianity as a western religion, and so many people are rejected by their families. One girl who became a Christian said that when she went home, her parents forbade her from being a Christian, so she had to read her Bible in secret. However, mercifully after seeing how she had changed and that they could not beat Christianity out of her, they grudgingly accepted her new found faith after a few weeks. In addition to this, to be a person of any rank, for example a head teacher, mayor or politician, you must sign up to the communist party, which involves renouncing any religion and accepting atheism. Some Christians choose to sign up to this but carry on in their faith, and some cannot in good conscience agree to that and are therefore resigned to a low-level career. This is probably the main stumbling block to many of the people that we spoke to, because most of them were in quite a good position intellectually and in the right social circles to be able to have a high-flying career in government or teaching. One of the Chinese teachers said “Maybe when I’m older and retired I will have time to think about religion, but now I have to study to improve my job, my car and satisfy my girlfriend. I don’t have time to think about God”. As Paul writes to Timothy “Everyone who wants to live a Godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2T 3:12). In China there is much more persecution than in England, but I can’t help thinking that I have far too comfortable a life in England. Is this because I am not vocal enough in my faith? Or perhaps I am not allowing the good news of Jesus to change me enough?

One of the main lessons which I learnt from my time in China was that of trust in God. In our passage, Jesus tells his missionaries trust in God “Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves, Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road”. They simply had to obey what God in Jesus had told them to do. I say “simply” but in fact it’s not simply at all. To live with total trust in God is very difficult for us, especially being brought up in a society where possessions are relied upon so heavily. Going to another culture where you don’t understand a word anyone says, you don’t understand how the people think or behave and what’s culturally acceptable and what’s not is a real test of faith in God. And yet when we are at our weakest, it allows God to work in us the most. I can think of many good examples from our time there that showed that God was really at work protecting us and guiding us, for example with some problems with plane tickets, nearly getting arrested by the police for failing to register when we stayed at a school, being taken to church by the young communists, getting caught in a Typhoon and loosing someone.

We had sent several people back into Hong Kong to get us some more Bibles, because we had run out of Bibles in China. We could buy Bibles from the local church in China, but they were an old Chinese translation which would be the equivalent of an English version full of “thee” and “thou”, which most Chinese people wouldn’t be able to understand. To get good translations in a bilingual Bible, we had to go to Hong Kong. The people bought a whole shelf of Bibles and packed them in their luggage. It was only by the wisdom of one of them that they thought to cover them over with clothes to prevent them being seen, on the very odd chance that they were put through a scanner when crossing the border (this virtually never happens). If they had been caught bringing the Bibles across, they would certainly have been confiscated, and the people would probably be denied entry into China. Anyway, as they were travelling across the border, they were stopped and put through a scanner which went off because of the amount of Bibles they had. They had several bags full of them and they were asked to open them. The guard opened the first bag which had been covered by clothes and asked what was in there, to which they replied that there were “just some books”. The guard said ok and waved them through.

Finally, the most important thing I learnt from this trip to China was that of the radical, life-transforming gospel message. “Gospel” is such a buzzword, and yet it is difficult to define. In our passage, Jesus tells his disciples to announce that “the kingdom of God is near”. The disciples are to tell this to everyone, both to those who accept them, and also to those who reject them. We tried to tell everyone about HOW the kingdom of God has come near, in the person of Jesus the Christ, his death for our sins and his subsequent coming alive again. Believing this does not mean simple intellectual assent, which it is all too easy to do (although by no means straight-forward), but it has to infiltrate and transform our lives in power, as shown by Jesus’ command to “heal the sick”. We have to both believe this message with our whole mind and heart and it also has to permeate into everything which we do. It was amazing to see the radical transformation which the gospel bought to some of these Chinese people when they heard it for the first time, leading to an abundant harvest. If we only realised what a great message we have, we would be much more excited about telling everyone about it. How have we lost our passion, that passion which we had when we first found Jesus for ourselves? Should our experience of rejection stop us or spur us on ever more? The six verses from verse 10 all talk about the consequences of rejection of the gospel message, so Jesus fully expects his message to be rejected by some, but that should not stop his followers from telling everyone about Him; they have been given the authority of God! We need to remember what we were before we found Jesus, and the forgiveness and many good gifts which we undeservedly obtained through his death on the cross.

The final story I want to tell you is the one which struck all of us the most. It is an awesome display of God’s power through many barriers, and also the radical, life-changing effect of the this message. Michelle was 8 and in my class. From the first day she was trouble. She was very spoilt and would yell at people and cry if she did not get things to happen her way. For the first week, during siesta time, she would be wailing up and down the corridors because she thought that everyone else was picking on her. There was nothing any of the teachers could do to calm her down. We were surprised when Michelle and her friend came to one of our lunchtime meetings, and they did not know why they came; they were just looking for something to do in their lunch break. Anyway, half way through the meeting Michelle stood up, crying and shaking and simply said, “I’m only eight years old, and I don’t know much, but after hearing this I realise that there is a God and that he created my father, my mother and me. He created all of us and I believe in Him”.

My co-teacher from America, Lillian had a long conversation with her afterwards in Chinese and English, explaining about prayer, forgiveness and the sacrifice which Jesus had made for her, and Michelle said that she had become a Christian. For the final few days of the camp she was very much changed and started being nice to people and helping some of the children in my class who were struggling with things. This would have been amazing it itself, however two days after the camp had finished, Lillian received a phone-call from Michelle’s mother. Lillian was rather scared because we all knew that it was a legal grey area for someone to talk to an under-eighteen about Jesus. However, Michelle’s mother said, “As her mother, I know Michelle is a very impatient girl, attention-seeking and always wanting things her way. Every day at home she would yell and cry. However, since Michelle came back she hasn’t yelled at anyone or cried for the past two days. She says that it’s because Jesus tells me that instead of being selfish we should forgive others and be generous. She has shown me this book that you have given her; perhaps you could explain more about this to me?”. So Lillian was able to tell Michelle’s family about Jesus as well!

Let’s just spend a moment in silence thinking about our own calling and experiences of Jesus. If we don’t yet know the power of Jesus personally, perhaps we should ask him to come in and transform our lives. If we do know Jesus, perhaps we should ask the Lord of the Harvest how we can best be serving Him.