Does God's Mission Have You? A Sermon for 21 August 2011

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Mer Rouge, La.

It is not that God’s Church has a Mission, but that God’s Mission has a Church.

I wish I could put that statement out there and just let you all think that I came up with it. But, in fact, I didn’t. As usual, I began sermon preparation by casting about on the Internet to see what others were saying about today’s lessons.

The Rev. Kirk Alan Kubicek of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Maryland made that statement, and you can find his sermon based on it on the Web at a site called “Sermons That Work.”

I think it is a brilliant insight, but plan to have my own way with it. So allow me to repeat:

It is not that God’s Church has a Mission, but that God’s Mission has a Church.

We church folks have a tendency to get such things reversed. We tend to talk about “the church’s mission” in and to the world.

And, yes, of course, it is in part just an easier way to talk about things. After all, the church is structured and organized to do certain things: to serve the spiritual needs of people, to spread the Gospel, to do various kinds of outreach, like disaster relief, soup kitchens, and so forth.

One could even argue that talking about these things as “the church’s mission” is a healthy way of taking responsibility and claiming ownership of the things we are called to do as the body of Jesus Christ in the world.

I would not deny or reject any of that. At the same time, it is also the case that the church has, throughout history, tended to get confused on this point. And when the church loses sight of its subordination to God’s Mission, when the church starts thinking it is pursuing its own mission, bad things tend to happen.

I am currently taking a course at the Diocesan School on Anglican Theology, and we began yesterday with a lecture on things that led up to the Protestant Reformation, things like the Roman church’s shake-down of believers by putting a price on forgiveness.

That was the practice known as the selling of indulgences, and it was the impetus and inspiration for the 95 theses Luther probably did NOT nail to a church door, but did present to his Bishop along with a letter of calling for open debate on the matter, and thereby kicked off the Protestant Reformation.

But we needn’t go so deep into history to find examples of churches acting arrogantly, and taking over the role of God in sorting the good sheep from the bad. In recent months we have seen religious fanatics, Muslim and Christian alike, blowing up, gunning down, burning holy books, sabotaging the construction of worship spaces… from the Middle East to Tennessee and Florida, and from New York City to Norway, of all places.

And then there’s the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas spreading its anti-gay hatred across the country. The churches behind the “pray away the gay” movement. Even our own church’s civil war over doctrine and the interpretation of Scripture.

These are surely examples of religious institutions—churches, mosques, synagogues—pursuing their own mission in the world rather than God’s.

But let us bring the point closer to home. If indeed we agree that God’s Mission has a Church, in general, then it’s not a huge step to recognize that the same is true for all of the church’s constituent parts: God’s Mission has a St. Andrew’s, and a St. Thomas’ and a St. Alban’s. God’s Mission has a Diocese of Western Louisiana, an Episcopal Church… and on and on.

How does it re-orient our thinking to say that these units of church do not have a mission, rather God’s Mission has them? Indeed, perhaps we should pose it as a question: Does God’s Mission have them?

This might be an especially useful and important question for St. Andrew’s to consider as you embark upon the task of preparing a parish profile as part of your search for a new rector!

Likewise, it is an extremely important question for this Diocese as we prepare a profile in search of our next Bishop.

Saint Teresa church window, Convento de Sta Teresa,
Ávila de los Caballeros, Spain.

                                
Do we think WE have a mission in the world? Or do we understand, accept and practice our faith in ways that make perfectly clear that God’s Mission in the world has us?

Our Bishop has been known to pose the question this way: “If Christianity were illegal,” he asks, “would there be enough evidence to convict us?”

And now, one more step, even closer to home. Consider this: It is not that Bette Kauffman has a mission, but that God’s Mission has a Bette Kauffman.

I was going to stand here and name names, but.. you can put your own name in the sentence. Now how does that distill your thinking? How might it adjust priorities for each of us?

We have lots of practice and experience in seeking to carry out our own mission in the world. Indeed, that is the primary job, for each of us, of our own precious ego.

But what can we do with and in response to this moment of profound humility? For as we recognize that the Mission is God’s, and that we are called to belong to God’s Mission, we must also recognize—in gratitude and with fear and trembling—that we are, at one and the same time, wholly inadequate but selected and formed by God precisely for that purpose.

The 16th Century nun, Teresa of Avila, said it like this:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which to look out Christ's compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good; yours are the hands with which he is to bless...

AMEN.

The Miracle: A Sermon for 31 July 2011

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La.

In this day of cell phones and iPads and GPS devices and laptops, iPods and more, it can be pretty hard to “get away from it all.” Indeed, I have noticed a change in my own travel planning. Any hotel that does not offer free wireless high speed Internet gets my business only in the absence of appropriately connected alternatives!

In late May of this year, I traveled to the Dominican Republic with a group of U.S. deacons to learn about the growth and struggles of the Episcopal church there. We were to spend some time living with the families of Dominican deacons, most of whom are working class. And so I braced myself for two days and two nights of “Internet withdrawal.”

Much to my surprise and delight, my Dominican family had—indeed—high speed wireless Internet! They were people of humble means, a lot of them living in a small space. No screens on the windows; no air conditioning. Water came out of the tap on demand… about half of the time. But there it was, on a high shelf: an Internet router blinking away!

We all complain that our inability to really get away is an affliction of contemporary life, and we tend to blame it on the ubiquity of electronic devices designed precisely to keep us in touch, no matter how far away from our everyday routine we have traveled. You’ve seen the commercials touting the latest gadget that enables us to conduct business from a remote beach.

So… how interesting it is that back in the day of row-boat technology, Jesus himself could not “get away.” Here again is the beginning of today’s Gospel lesson: Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns (Matthew 14:13, NRSV).

As the story continues, it sounds like the crowd might actually have gotten their first. When he went ashore, it says, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick (Ibid., v. 14).

Feeding of the 5000, by Justino Magalona.

Jesus could not get away from the needs of the world, even though, just like us, he needed to. But, why? Why did Jesus need to withdraw in the first place?

I’m not asking for a psychological explanation here, like “all humans need vacations and Jesus was human.” I’m also not asking the cosmic why, like people do when they wonder about God’s grand plan or scheme for each of us that involves inexplicable chains of events. Those might be useful discussions, but...

Rather, I’m asking what happened just before Jesus got in that boat, such that he felt the need to get away at that precise moment. What are the first 12 verses of Matthew 14 about?

It’s important to know that the lessons we read in church on a Sunday morning are often not quite the same as the original passage in Scripture. Often, they are adjusted slightly so that they will stand alone better, as “a lesson” for a given Sunday. And that often works well and facilitates sermon writing. Today, however, that practice directs our attention away from something very important.

So, let me read Matthew 14:13 again, as it actually appears in the Bible. It says, Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself (op cit.).

How’s that for a clue? But what did Jesus hear that caused him to need to get away? Verse 12, the one right before the beginning of today’s lesson, is an even better clue: His disciples came and took the body and buried it; then they went and told Jesus.

So, whose body was it? John the Baptizer’s body. You know the story well. The first 12 verses of Matthew 14 tell about Herod and Herodias, the wife he had taken from his brother, and Salome, and the dance, and the promise and the beheading…. a story—if ever there was one—of violence begot by and for power and politics.

It’s a story of the unnecessary sacrifice of human life out of sheer arrogance, a story of injustice by the proud in order to save face. The news of the day drove Jesus to need to get away. And does it not sound familiar?

And do we not have plenty to want to flee from today? Starvation in Somalia, due to the maldistribution of food worldwide. Religious fanatics, Muslim and Christian alike, blowing up, gunning down, burning holy books, sabotaging the construction of worship spaces… from the Middle East to Florida and New York to Norway, of all places. And our own federal government ready to do economic violence, very possibly global in scope, in order to preserve rigid ideological positions.

If we don’t flee from the news of the day, we are likely to become cynics. But notice: That’s not how Jesus responded. When the needs of the world followed him to his get away, he turned and ministered to the people.

And just what, do you suppose, was the miracle that took place on that hill near the Sea of Galilee some 2,000 years ago? I’m sure God can create out of nothing at any time. I’m sure God can cause molecules of bread and fish to magically multiply.. at any time.

But that kind of miracle would be almost unremarkable. After separating light from dark and sea from dry land, after hanging the sun, moon and stars in the heavens, I’m guessing God could multiply bread and fish without breaking a sweat.

I’m guessing a greater miracle happened on that day so long ago. I’m guessing Jesus blessed the bread and fish.. and through his compassion and his act of thanksgiving and praise, God became known to the gathered throng in the breaking of that bread.

And when God becomes known to humankind, our hearts are opened and miracles happen, miracles of giving and sharing even when we ourselves are in hard times, of welcoming the strangers…, of caring for the least among us. So much so that we have more blessing left over than what we started with.

You’ve heard it many times: “I went to the homeless shelter or the food bank or the mission field to give/help/do something for people who are less fortunate than me,” people say, “and I got more out of it than I gave.”

Meister Eckhart, a German theologian and Franciscan monk of the 14th Century, said it this way:
For not only bread
but all things necessary
for sustenance in this life
  are given on loan to us
    with others
    and because of others
    and for others
    to others through us.*

Amen.

*As quoted online by Edge of the Enclosure, 7/30/11.