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.
No comments:
Post a Comment