Spiritually Damaging Experiences

I’ve been reflecting on four years as your colleague in mission.  After my appointment had been announced four years ago I remember writing to all of you expressing my excitement at the prospect of working with you.  I have never, not once, been disappointed in that.

I also remember saying something about which I have thought many times since.  I said that working for the church ought not be a spiritually damaging experience.  I think I said it to begin with because I realized the enormity of the challenge ahead and I was trying to say words of encouragement to myself.  I’ve come to realize that is easier to say than it is to make a reality.  I’ve also come to realize that making it a reality is my own work to do.

What is true is that there will always be those who are challenging.  Sometimes there will be those who are just mean.  From time to time there will even be those committed to damaging others, but even then, I don’t doubt they do it with the best of intentions in a strange sort of way.  From time to time, we will be challenging, mean, and damaging to ourselves.  These things build up to run the risk of a very spiritually damaging experience indeed.  In a strange sort of way, it is to be expected when people care as much about an endeavor as they care about the church.  Family is the only thing that comes close.

This is what I’ve learned from you over four years of working together to focus The Episcopal Church on mission:  I can’t do anything about how others behave, well or badly, above board or underhandedly, transparently or not.  Yet, whether any of this damages my spirit is entirely up to me.  It threatens to, of course, from time to time.  But it only harms my soul if I allow it to. 

For me that means struggles with anger from time to time, and worse, acting out of anger, particularly speaking out of anger.  It helps me to remember that anger is in essence and at its root the same emotion as grief.  In fact, the word anger comes into English from the Old Norse word angra, which means to grieve.

I know more what to do with grief in a spiritually healthy way than I do anger.  I know that my spiritual well-being depends on letting myself grieve when I need to until I am ready to move on.  Grief is not fun.  It just has to be done.  Tears help.  Sadness eventually yields to something else.  Never, though, have I acted damagingly out of grief. 

I find it helpful to approach anger more like grief than anything else.  I just need to grieve until I’m ready to move on.  Tears help.  Sadness dissipates eventually while if I just leave it as anger, it tends to hang around longer.

So it is true that working for the church ought not be a spiritually damaging experience, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be wrongs, injustices, and hurts in this holy work of ours.  It does mean that what they do to us, and whether they damage us, is ultimately up to us.  Our spiritual well-being is in our hands alone.  And God’s.

Here’s looking toward the years ahead and the holy work we have been given to share.  We will make of it what we will and we will never let it damage our spirits.

Peace,

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 

Meeting Jesus in Mission

At first, the Gospel passage for today does not appear to have much to say about mission.  It appears to be about Jesus being a smart aleck, which is no doubt exactly how the Pharisees and Herodians saw his clever way of avoiding their question.  But everything has a context. 

The context for this passage is that just prior to this question about paying taxes to the emperor, Jesus had been talking about, you guessed it, mission.  He was telling one of my favorite parables, the one about the king who gave the wedding banquet but none of the invited guests would come.  The king’s creative response, after a burst of anger at those who had neglected the invitation, is to send his servants out into the streets to invite anyone they can find, as Matthew says, both good and bad, so that the hall could be filled with guests.  The context for this encounter about paying taxes is about going out into the streets and inviting everyone, good and bad, to enter the king’s banquet.  It is about inclusion of everyone.  It is about mission.

Now conversations about mission, especially ones that start with including people in the king’s banquet indiscriminately, do not necessarily make everyone comfortable.  I once had a parishioner in my former diocese, frustrated with my understanding on this point, who said to me that if the kingdom of God was as inclusive as I said it was, who would want to be a part of it.  Of course, it wasn’t I saying how inclusive it was.  Monica Vega  spoke yesterday morning about how central to mission it was that people be led out, even forced out, of their comfort zones.  That is, in many ways, the whole point of mission - to force us out of our comfort zone into a transformational experience. But that is not something everyone is always thrilled to sign up for.

Jesus was talking about mission, about including anyone who will come, the best people and the not-so-best people, and being more than a little critical of those who had failed to do so.  Sure enough, someone tried to change the subject.  That happens a lot when you try to direct the conversation to mission.  Someone will try to change the subject.  There’s something about mission that makes people quite uncomfortable, as transformation, which is just another word for change, often does.  You can see the scene.  When Jesus encounters the Pharisees, Jesus is talking about mission, about those on the margins being invited into the banquet and one of the Pharisee raises his hand.  “Oh, Jesus, Jesus.  Let’s talk about something that really matters.  Taxes.  Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

Fortunately Jesus had learned a very important lesson in life which I commend to you, which is this.  Just because someone asks you a question doesn’t mean you have to answer it.  And that is how Jesus dealt with the sabotage of the Pharisees with a question of his own.  He showed them a denarius and said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’  They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’  Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’”  And with this Jesus was back in control of his own agenda, and that agenda is mission.  It is always mission.  Here’s why.

If coins bear the emperor’s head and title and are the emperor’s, what then is God’s?  If coins that bear the emperor’s image are the emperor’s, what then bears God’s image and is therefore God’s?  We do.  Human beings do.  Theologians call it the imago Dei. It is one of the most basic principles of the Bible, coming as it does, in the very first chapter of the very first book.  Humankind is made in the image of God.  In exactly the same way that a coin bearing the emperor’s likeness belongs to the emperor, human beings belong to God because they bear God’s likeness.  In exactly the same way that a coin or a statue represents the emperor, we human beings represent God.

Jesus asks a very important question, not about ancient Roman coins, but about us.  Whose image do we bear?  Is it the emperor’s?  Or is it God’s?  And if it is the latter, that we bear the image of God, is it not the case that the image of God necessarily implies the imitation of God, that the imago Dei necessarily calls forth the imitatio Dei, that being the representative of God necessarily means acting on behalf of God?  And if that is the case, we have found what our mission is.  It is God’s mission.  It is simply to be ourselves, who we were created to be, God’s image, God’s beloved, God’s partners.  We exist to be the people of God’s mission.  It is simply who we are.

So this is an important question for us.  Whose image do we bear?  Whose are we?  To whom do we belong?  The answer has to do with being who we are.  For the wellbeing of our souls, which is another way of saying for the sake of our very identities, we must pay attention to this question and to what this question means.  What is God’s?  Who is God’s?  And what does that mean for us?

That is why mission is not about something we do.  It is about who we are.  It is not about doing good.  It is about following Jesus.  It is about following Jesus where he went and to whom he went and for the reason he went.  It is about doing that for this simple reason, to be with Jesus.  And if we want to be with Jesus, where he told us we would find him is with the poor.  If we want to be with Jesus, where he told us we would find him is with the hungry.  If we want to be with Jesus, where he told us we would find him is with the sick.  If we want to be with Jesus, where he told us we would find him is with the oppressed, the marginalized, the outcasts, the sinners.  It simply comes down to being who we are, followers of Jesus.  Nothing more than that.  Nothing less than that. 

God is eternally oriented to the other.  God has oriented Godself toward the creation from the first moment of time.  And God has affirmed that orientation in Christ, always outward, which is what the word apostolic means, to be sent out.  It is that outward orientation God invites us to take up because, it turns out, it is the very source of God’s own life, which God offers to share with us.  Thus mission is about reaching out to others, not to do something for them, but in order to be who we are, to be true to who were made to be, God’s very image.  If something gets done that is a good thing, but it is the means to building a missional relationship and not the end of it, and that sort of relationship cannot be without understanding that the really good thing we are seeking, to be with Jesus, is for ourselves.      

The point is to meet Jesus.  The point of it all is to be transformed by Jesus.  That is mission, to be transformed by Jesus, transformed by Jesus in the person of the poor, the sick, and the oppressed.  All the good done in the world will, in time, just pass away without the foundational reality that our mission is to be transformed by Jesus.  So give, therefore, to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.  You. 

The Rt. Rev. Stacy F. Sauls
Chief Operating Officer, The Episcopal Church
Sermon: October 16, 2011, Everyone Everywhere Mission Conference 2011
Estes Park, Colorado