“Hamilton” Musical and Missions?

By Luke Sinclair,
Mission Partner serving in Japan

A turning point on my journey to mission lies some­where between Aaron Burr and Alex­an­der Hamilton, the two rival char­ac­ters as por­trayed in the 2015 musical, “Hamilton”. Set in the early years of Amer­ican inde­pend­ence, Hamilton is a driven man who always says what he believes and works non-stop to achieve his vision for the nation and to leave a legacy. Burr, on the other hand, is cau­tious, non-com­mit­tal, and con­stantly holds back on radical action. He is best sum­mar­ised by his line:

“I’ll wait here and see which way the wind will blow.”

Although Hamilton is such an inspir­a­tional char­ac­ter, dis­ap­point­ingly, I’m prob­ably more like Burr in per­son­al­ity. Thank­fully, as Chris­ti­ans, we don’t have to be like either char­ac­ter. It was real­ising this truth — years before Hamilton even came out —  that led to my next small step toward cross-cul­tural mission.

After coming back to fol­low­ing Jesus at Uni­ver­sity, Eph­esians was one of the books I spent a lot of time in. The first chapter amazed me, par­tic­u­larly verses 9 ‑10.

“[God] made known to us the mystery of his will accord­ing to his good pleas­ure, which he pur­posed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfilment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” — Eph­esians 1:9–10.

Before the cre­ation of the world, God the Father made a plan centred on Jesus Christ. But He didn’t share this plan until the times reached their ful­fil­ment – when Jesus came, died and rose again. What was the plan? It was “…to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” Everything in all cre­ation, all people, and all parts of this broken world would be recon­ciled through Jesus’ death on the cross and united together under­neath Him as the head over all.

Besides the mag­nitude of this plan, what amazed me was its cer­tainty. God didn’t have any ‘Plan B’. Neither was it some vague inten­tion of what might happen. God planned Jesus to save and rule the world even before creation.

Knowing God’s plan means I don’t need to be like Hamilton, frantic­ally trying to leave my mark on the world and work out a “Con­sti­tu­tion” for God’s Kingdom. God has said what the future holds – Jesus will be in charge and will rule forever with perfect unity, peace and justice. He will get all the glory.

But also, through­out the Bible, God tells us the various ways He uses us to bring about His plan. So I don’t need to be a cow­ardly Burr, holding back, unwill­ing to stick out for Jesus until I see that it is safe to do so. If God has told us where history is going it is not foolish to take risks and do what He has called us to do. Being more like Burr in per­son­al­ity, that was an intim­id­at­ing and uncom­fort­able idea. But if risk is right, then my daily ques­tion should be:

“How can I go one step outside my comfort zone today to see Jesus fol­lowed as king?”

One of my first small steps was when a friend started coming along to my church and became a Chris­tian. Our pastor sug­ges­ted I catch up with him each week, read a chapter of the Bible, pray together and help him grow in his faith. An older Chris­tian had been doing this with me and I knew how helpful it was. But for me do this with an even newer Chris­tian?! I wasn’t sure I could and I felt awkward even think­ing about how to start some­thing like that. But if God has said His Church will grow through His people “speak­ing the truth in love” to one another (Eph­esians 4:15–16) then I could risk that awk­ward­ness. And so I asked my friend if he was inter­ested — he was — and we bumbled our way into some­thing through which God blessed both of us.

This ‘small step’, this prin­ciple, has been a con­stant dis­com­fort and I cer­tainly haven’t been con­sist­ent in apply­ing it. But God used that turning point in under­stand­ing to keep me asking the ques­tions that led me to where I am now. There have been mixed results. Even now, I have no idea what the outcome of each step will be – my wife, Naomi, and I serving in Japan could be an abso­lute flop. But I’ve got the big picture of where God has prom­ised the world is going. I have His word about how He uses His people — even their appar­ent fail­ures. Risk is right. I’m not throw­ing away my shot to do what God calls us to today.

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