Mission and Redemption

I had not been Bishop of Lexington very long when the need arose to relocate the diocesan offices due to the Cathedral’s needs for more space due to a nicely expanding ministry.  We went looking for space. 

We looked at an old furniture store.  It’s attraction to me is that it was located in Lexington’s primary Hispanic neighborhood and it had enough room to house a diocesan hospitality ministry for cancer patients and their families from Appalachia.  It was more money than we wanted to pay.

We looked at office parks.  Too depressing.

There was one vacated bank branch in the most hideous 1960s architectural style with a façade, appropriately enough, of turquoise mosaic.  Too tacky.

We kept coming back to an old house at the corner of Martin Luther King and Fourth Street.  It had a number of advantages.  It was cheap.  That’s always an important church consideration.  Though old, it was solid as a rock structurally.  It had both character and historic significance.  It was more than enough space for us and had the potential to house a number of growing diocesan ministries.  It placed us in a great location for mission.  Our presence there would be a stabilizing force in the neighborhood.  The neighborhood was definitely under- served.  The city’s second largest Hispanic neighborhood was nearby.  Its address was a plus.  Locating the diocesan headquarters on Martin Luther King Boulevard was itself taking an important stand.  It was conveniently located to the Cathedral where many diocesan events took place. 

It also had some disadvantages.  It may have been sound structurally, but needed no small amount of work.  The character of the neighborhood made us wonder if everyone would feel comfortable coming there at night.  There was parking lot paving that would need to be done, and the city had some challenging rules regarding drainage. 

But none of those was the biggest problem.  It wasn’t just an old house.  It was, in truth, a classic Southern ante-bellum mansion from the 1840s.  It had once been part of the Henry Clay family.  Given its history, it occurred to us that it may well have been built using slave labor.  This caused a great deal of concern.

So I decided I need to go and have a conversation with our historically African American congregation, St. Andrew’s, which was located just a block away.  I went with some concern about their reaction to what their new bishop was suggesting. 

I explained the situation.  They listened patiently.  There was a brief silence.  “Bishop, if you take that house and use it for mission, it will redeem it.” 

We proceeded.  Mission House, as it is now known, houses much more than the diocesan offices.  It also houses the offices of Reading Camp.  In fact, it is the site of an urban reading camp itself, during which the large downstairs parlors are transformed into themed classrooms where children left behind get caught up to grade level in reading.  It is the location for Church under the Bridge, a spiritual home for the homeless every Sunday afternoon.  English as a second language classes take place there.  Many community groups use it for meetings.  The neighborhood arts center uses it for classroom space on occasion.  It has earned its name I would say. 

     Quoting from the Prophet Isaiah, Jesus described his own mission this way:

          The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has 
          anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has 
          sent me to proclaim release to the captives and
          recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go
          free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. 
                                                               (Lk. 4:18-19)

Mission House was not about doing good works.  It was about participating in God’s saving mission to bring good news to the poor, to release those who are captives, to restore sight to the blind, to free those who are oppressed, and to announce God’s favor to God’s people.  As we followed along the path Jesus saw as his own, we in turn were allowed to participate in God’s own salvation.  To participate in God’s mission is to share in God’s own redemption. 

Jesus did not only describe his own mission in terms of the words of Isaiah.  He taught that to share in that mission was itself a redemptive activity.  “And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.  The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.  Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”  (Lk. 4:20)  Every mission opportunity before us is to fulfill this very Scripture.  As did Jesus.

I know this Scripture was fulfilled in Mission House.  A few years after the dream of Mission House, its presumed history notwithstanding, came to be, I got a call.  It was from two prominent members of St. Andrew’s, both important lay leaders in their parish and diocese, and one of them a very high-ranking official of state government.  Might it be possible for them to host a reception at Mission House, they wondered, for their 50th Anniversary, they wondered.  Of course it was.  I was honored to attend.  It was an event that neither they eyes of those whose hands had most likely built the house, nor the eyes of those dressed in hoop skirts going up and down the grand staircase, could certainly never have imagined.  “If you take that house and use it for mission, it will redeem it.”  On that day, the Scripture was fulfilled in my hearing.
Peace,

+Stacy
 

E Pluribus Unum

The Great Seal of the United States was approved by Congress on June 20, 1782.  It was a project on which Congress worked for six years.  After all, in 1782 there was nothing better to do.  There were many proposals and much bickering along the way.  Some things never change.

We are all very familiar with the product.  The seal is dominated by a bald eagle with spread wings bearing a shield with thirteen red and white stripes bound together by a blue field on its breast and bearing arrows in its left claw and an olive branch in its right, which the eagle is facing.  In its beak it carries a scroll on which is written the original motto of the United States:  E Pluribus Unum.  Out of many, one.   

Here is the interesting part.  E Pluribus Unum is no longer the motto of the United States.  It was replaced in 1956 by “In God We Trust,” which entered our national life as an expression, memorialized on the newly minted two cent coin, in 1864.  It became our official motto 92 years later.  And do you know why?  1956.  It was the height of the Cold War.  “In God We Trust” was a reaction to the threat we perceived from Communism, which is officially atheistic.  In the face of what we perceived as a threat, we as a country opted for a religious expression instead of one that was perceived to be secular.  It was at the same time, by the way, that we added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and the phrase “so help me God” to the standard form of the oath taken by federal judges.  Paper money began including the motto “In God We Trust” about the same time, in 1957.  

It is not surprising to me that when Congress decided to discard something “secular” in favor of something “religious,” it would have no idea what it was doing.  In truth, there is nothing more religious than E Pluribus Unum.  It is the epitome of what we celebrate today, Trinity Sunday, the only Sunday in the church year devoted to a doctrine instead of an event in the life of Christ.  Our understanding of the Trinity is that important.  We must not lose it, as we are sorely tempted to do when we let our fears get the better of us.   

In the midst of the Civil War, the phrase “In God we Trust” first entered our national consciousness on a coin.  In the mist of the Cold War, we traded away something very important, the reality that there is no real unity, at least not what the Gospel means by unity, in uniformity altogether.  It was at least as serious a threat to the ideal of the United States as what we so feared at the moment.  Leave it to Congress.  

Unity has everything to do with the tension between the concept of the many and the concept of the one, the tension at the very core of the concept of the Trinity.  The fundamental tension that was present from the very beginning of the life of the Christian community was, as it has always been, the tension between individuality and togetherness.  It was the very same tension at the very beginning of our life as a country.    The Founding Fathers (I wish I could say the Founding Mothers and Fathers, but the truth is pretty much otherwise) held these two realities together.  The anti-Communist anxiety of the 1950s pushed us toward abandoning that, toward leaning one way rather than the other.  Trinity Sunday, and the Sunday of Pentecost, which immediately precedes it, leads us in another direction, the recognition that the importance of the togetherness, the one, must, must be balanced against the importance of the individuality of the parts.  The orthodox Christian understanding, in fact, is that the unity of the whole depends equally on the individuality of the parts.  It is an admitted paradox, as truth often is.  

It is exactly the same thing St. Paul speaks about in the first letter to the Corinthians, right before the famous passage in which he speaks about the meaning of love.  He says:  “Now there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.  To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.  To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.  All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually—individually—just as the Spirit chooses.”  Later in the same chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul wraps up his argument about unity and diversity by again emphasizing the foundational importance of individuality.  “Now you are the body of Christ and individually—individually—members of it.  The unity is founded on the individuality and not in opposition to it.  

But in a world that is as anxious and fearful as ours is, the greater danger is to the importance of the individuality than it is to unity, to the forces of togetherness that are counterfeit relievers of what makes us vaguely uncomfortable or just downright afraid, whether that be evil empires abroad, or phantoms in the mountains of Afghanistan, or things that go bump in the night.  The spiritual danger we face, and the spiritual danger our country faces, is in sacrificing our individuality to the idol of uniformity.  

It is no wonder at all that all over America on September 12, 2001 the slogan that appeared everywhere was “United we Stand.”  And I will be the first to tell you what a comforting affirmation it seemed.  And as good as it made me feel at a time when I felt like I might never feel good again, I realize that it was not comfort in the true sense of the word, which  means to fill with strength.  Huddling together in fear is quite a different thing than to fill with strength.  What I wonder about sometimes is where we would be if, in the face of that horrible time in our national life we not created the Department of Homeland Security but instead created the Department of Homeland Adventure.   

Unity is not in opposition to difference.  And safety, it turns out, is only an illusion.  The orthodox paradox is that it is our unity depends on the precondition of  difference and our salvation much more in the our adventure than in our safety.    

E Pluribus Unum.   

Peace,

+Stacy