Have you ever taken a walk in a cemetery at night?  When I was a teen my friend Randy liked to drive through the local cemetery real slow...especially on nights when it was foggy and a light mist shrouded the tombstones like a blanket.  He wanted to stop the car and get out to walk around and I told him it gave me the creeps!  My dad told my stories about graveyard legends.  He, my uncles and my aunt used to have to walk by a cemetery on their way to a one room school house in Fenwick.  The steward of the cemetery told them many tales about bony fingers and skulls and certain places they "should never look at night."  Of course that was an invitation to go back at night to see what they were not supposed to see.  Plenty of horror movies have a cemetery scene because the truth is...death is scary.  It is one of the fears that all people have but hate to talk about.  Some scholars believe that Joseph or Arimathea and Nicodemas hid in the tomb until Jesus was dead so they could be the first ones on the scene to claim His body.  I have been thinking about what that must have been like.  Spooky.  These two secret disciples were ashamed of who they were and ashamed of who they were not!   But, Jesus died for them.  It is never about what we do for Jesus that makes us right with God, it is always about what Jesus has done for us to make us right with God.  If it was up to our performance, we'd all fall short of the glory of God.  But praise the Name of the Lord, the Lamb of God took away the sins of the world and was buried...completing the satisfaction of the penalty we deserved.   He was buried...but not for long :-). 

Why in the world are we using Latin phrases? Wouldn't it make more sense to just say, "Mission of God" or "Sending of God?"?  Maybe, but this is phrase we are hoping will assist you in your thinking about "mission" in unique ways.  There is some confusion about mission, missions and missiology these days.  We hope to bring some clarity to these terms and more importantly to our practice this weekend.  For example, it's important to remember that we have missions because of mission.  Missionaries are "sent ones".  We are not all missionaries but we are all a part of God's mission.  The mission of God is global, we are local.  God cares about the rest of the world; He is working, speaking and taking initiative to bring the nations into "white hot worship" of Himself.  This would be best for us and best for the world.  Not because it is a western ideology but because this is fundamental to who we are.  We are dependent, God is creator and sustainer.  How could it possibly be better for us to live independent of Him?  The mission of God is to be known, to be recognized as our Father-King and to be enjoyed.  Are we making much of Him?  Do our lives "speak well" of Him?  Do our words reflect His grace?  Since we cannot all "go" to other places to proclaim the day of God's favor; do we pray and give that others can do so?  We are all a part of something much bigger than ourselves.  This story we are "in" has a lot of characters and many layers.  Are you finding some ways to engage with the missio Dei?