Archbishop and Missionary

There is an inherent tension in the life of the Church, and it is very much one in which we live today.  It is the tension of stability and change, of being settled and being a traveler, of safety and adventure.  It is this, the tension between safety and adventure, with which I am most concerned.  Ministry can, if one is not careful, be more about being stable and settled than about change, traveling, and adventure.  Mission is the counterbalance.  Being a missionary is inherently about change, traveling, and adventure.

I refer you to a medieval saint of the Church, Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg and Missionary to Denmark and Sweden.  This tension between safety and adventure played out in Anskar’s life in an interesting way.  In the course of his ministry, in 845, the Danes sacked Hamburg, rendering Anskar’s nascent archdiocese unviable, thus leaving Anskar without a base and, more importantly, without revenue for his work.  Here is where it gets interesting.

In order to solve this problem, the king decided to combine the more prosperous district around Bremen with the now ransacked diocese of Hamburg.  It was a sensible solution except it did not make the Bishop of Cologne, whose diocese had included the wealthy town of Bremen up to that point, happy.  It was no small controversy in Anskar’s day, and it finally required the intervention of the Pope himself to resolve.  My guess is that the Bishop of Cologne got a cash settlement from someone.

Now, here’s my point.  Archbishop and missionary.  The reason they do not go together without tension is that one can be very much about vested interests and the other is always about upsetting vested interests.  Fundamentally, the missionary effort is about upsetting vested interests.  It is about upsetting vested interests in a distant place by the proclamation of the Gospel.  Even more importantly, it is about upsetting those vested interests within ourselves by living it.

The fact that vested interests resist the missionary imperative of the Gospel was not new in Anskar’s day, and it is not new in our own.  It has always been so.  But that being the case, we must not let it be the last word.  We must, like Anskar, be willing to, indeed insistent upon, upsetting the vested interests in the service of the Gospel.  Here is the difficulty.  The Gospel and the Church are not synonyms.  The Church is full of vested interests that prefer safety.  That’s the archbishop part of Anskar.  Not so the Gospel, which prefers adventure.  That’s the missionary part.  And it’s why salvation is in the Gospel, even more than it is in the Church.

 Peace,

+Stacy

                                                           

Being Who We Are

The weeks in which we are now living are sandwiched in the calendar between the end of Christmastide and the beginning of Lent, between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday.  They are not a season properly speaking; they are between seasons.  They are what the Church calls ordinary time.  Just regular time.  Nothing special.

It is not, though, that they don’t have a theme.  They begin and end directing our attention to identity, to who we are.  They open on the first Sunday after Epiphany with the story of the Baptism of Jesus, this year from the Gospel of Mark.  It is a story about who Jesus is, a story about identity.  “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”  (Mk. 1:10-11)

This in between time ends each year with the story of the Transfiguration.  It is, once again, about who Jesus is, a story about identity.  “Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’”  (Mk. 9:7) 

The issue at the beginning is the same as the issue at the end.  It is about identity.  There is, though, an important difference.  In the beginning of the story, the divine declaration of identity is directed to Jesus himself.  “You are my Son, the Beloved.”  At the end of this time just before Lent, the divine declaration is to the disciples.  “This is my Son, the Beloved.”  Second person; third person.  It begins with Jesus understanding who he is.  It ends with us understanding who Jesus is.

It is an important point.  Mission necessarily begins internally.  It is a matter of knowing who we are, understanding who we are, incorporating who we are into the core of our beings.  That is not unlike the divine declaration to Jesus.  We bear the image of God in much the same way a child bears a genetic relationship to its parents.  And not only do we bear the image of God.  It is a reality that God declares good; indeed, very good.  “You are my Son, the Beloved.”

But that is not the end.  Our identity depends on what we do with that reality.  That is something we call mission.  Mission depends first on understanding who we are ourselves.  It does not end there, however.  If it did, it would be narcissistic.  God is not narcissistic.  Nor can God’s image be.  Mission is what delivers us from narcissism. 

The next step is to act in the world as Jesus.  It is the completion of who we are, the being of who we are, the actualization of who we are, the making real of our own belovedness.  And in being who we are, as Jesus did, the divine voice can be heard again.  “This is my Son, the Beloved.”  Only this time our identity has authority.  God adds, “Listen to him.”

Our mission is, simply put, God’s mission.  And God’s mission for us is, simply enough, to be who we are, God’s children, God’s beloved, God’s agents in the world for the salvation of the world.  It’s all about being who we are.  And acting on it, making what is theoretical, actual.  Mission is who we are. 

And, as this time of the year reminds us, that is just what we do in ordinary time—be who we are.  And who we are is God’s children.  Beloved.  Beloved in action. 

                                                           

Peace,

+Stacy 

Video: Where Is Your Place In Mission

Everyone, Everywhere 2011 Closing Sermon, October 16, 2011

Connecting the Separated

For several years now I have been greatly blessed to be associated with a mission project in Japan tracing its origins to The Episcopal Church’s fundamental identity as the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.  It was founded by a missionary from Kentucky, Paul Rusch.  Rusch first went to Japan answering God’s call to help rebuild YMCAs following the great Yokohama Earthquake of 1923.  He stayed to teach at the Anglican University in Tokyo and eventually turned his attention to the needs of the rural poor in the Japanese highlands in 1938 when he founded the Kiyosato Educational Experiment Project (KEEP).  Not long after he began that work, he was arrested, imprisoned, and deported at the beginning of the war, but he returned following it to take up his not only his work, but his life among the Japanese people. 

Today KEEP maintains Rusch’s vision and operates an experimental farm, an international conference center, and one of the most well-known environmental education programs in Japan in addition to a nursery school and an Anglican parish.  It has spread Rusch’s ideals to isolated parts of the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Tanzania, among other places.  It continues to do what Rusch started it to do, which is to “connect the separated.” 

A lot of good gets done by KEEP, but what continues to draw me to it and inspire me about it is Rusch’s vision of connecting the separated.  It was what Rusch devoted his life to, connecting the separated in a world where the chasm that separated Japanese and Americans at the time must have seemed insurmountable.  Yet, Rusch kept at it.  And he invested himself in it.  People in Kiyosato speak of him with obvious affection.  It is because, I think, Rusch did much more than do good.  He built relationships.  On my recent trip there to attend a board meeting of the American Committee for KEEP, I once again heard people speak personally about Rusch.  “He was my godfather.”  “He asked me to help rebuild KEEP after the war.”  “My father worked with him closely.”  “He introduced the church to my mother, and that’s why I’m a Christian.” 

He raised a lot of money for a lot of projects, too.  He was responsible for a lot of good, particularly in agricultural advances and healthcare.  He was a pioneer of what we know as sustainable community development.  He left behind a program that is completely operated by the Japanese.  But that, in the end, is not what really mattered, I believe, and it is certainly not how he is remembered by those who knew him best.  I never once heard anyone say, “Paul Rusch built this” or “Paul Rusch built that.”  The measure of Paul Rusch’s life is in the relationships he built, the fact that he lived out a life of connecting the separated.

The truth is, I believe, the world will not be permanently changed into God’s vision for it by any amount of doing good.  It will be changed only by building relationships in the process of doing good.  Transformation is accomplished relationally and, I am convinced, only relationally.  That is how unity overcomes estrangement, joy conquers despair, and the whole creation is ultimately reconciled with God.  It seems to me to be the essence of faith.  Faith, after all, is inherently relational, much more about relationships I engage than opinions I happen to have. 

That is why we Episcopalians, each one of us, also members of something the called the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, which is both our official corporate name and also a fundamental statement about our identity.  The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society exists to engage Episcopalians in mission, at home (wherever that may be in the 16 countries that are part of our Church) and abroad.  The staff of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society is entirely devoted to fulfilling that goal and helping our Church be what it was intended to be, fully missional and authentically apostolic (which means, of course, “sent”).  It is only in that that we are truly who we are, not only Episcopalians but disciples of Jesus. We are all about becoming, in the truest sense, a Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.