St. John’s Episcopal Church
Tallahassee, FL
Today we are commissioning
our youth mission team.
This group of nineteen
high schoolers and chaperones
leave this Thursday for Ecuador
where they will spend a week
hosting youth and children’s programs
and running a children’s camp
alongside St. John’s dear old friends
John and Caroline Allen.
So today,
I want to talk about mission:
what it is,
why we do it,
and what we Episcopalians
believe about it.
To get there, though,
I need you to pull out your
Book of Common Prayer
and open to page 855.
This section is called the Catechism.
It’s the prayer book’s
question-and-answer section
for all the most basic topics
about God,
the Church,
and the Christian life.
There at the top of page 855
you’ll see the last three questions
in the section dealing with “the Church.”
I’ll ask each questions,
and you give me the answer.
Q. What is the mission of the Church?
A. The mission of the Church
is to restore all people to unity
with God and each other in Christ.
Q. How does the Church pursue its mission?
A. The Church pursues its mission
as it prays and worships,
proclaims the Gospel,
and promotes justice, peace, and love.
Q. Through whom does the Church
carry out its mission?
A. The Church carries out its mission
through the ministry of all its members.
Through whom?
All its members.
Through whom?
All its members.
Through whom?
ALL its members.
* * *
That’s a good start,
but let’s boil it down even further.
The way I like to define it,
mission is the sharing
of the love of Christ
across any significant border.
Sometimes, yes,
that border can be an ocean away:
the literal border of a whole other country.
But not all significant borders are far away.
It can also be the nearby, invisible borders
that stand all around us,
right here in our own lives and community.
The border between
those who have little
and those who have plenty
right here in Tallahassee.
The border between
the faith we proclaim in our churches
and the politics we profess in our capitol.
Or it can even be
the border between
you and your coworker,
you and your own family member,
or you and the people you just don’t like.
All of these are significant borders.
All of these can be crossed
with the love of Christ
All of these are your mission field,
and you, O Christian,
are a missionary.
In fact,
did you know that in 1835
the official name of
the Episcopal Church became
the Domestic & Foreign Missionary Society?
(Actually, the whole thing is
the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society
of the Protestant Episcopal Church
in the United States of America.)
Instead of creating
a separate mission organization,
we decided almost 200 years ago
that all baptized Episcopalians—
by virtue of their baptism—
are and should be missionaries.
So congratulations, my friends.
You are missionaries,
whether you knew it or not.
But now that you’re aware of that,
there are three things
you need to know about mission:
1. Mission is first and foremost about relationship.
2. Mission is incredibly inefficient.
3. We do mission because God did it first.
* * *
So first, let’s talk about relationship.
A lot of people mistakenly believe
that “mission” and “evangelism” are dirty words,
and there are historical reasons for that.
“Mission” and “evangelism”
can carry the connotation
of colonization,
of conquering others,
of converting people by force.
A few weeks ago,
I told one of our parishioners
that she is an extraordinary evangelist,
and she immediately shot back,
“Do not call me that!”
She grew up seeing a very
coercive and manipulative version
of mission and evangelism,
but I explained to her
that I was not calling her
a door-to-door Bible
and snake oil salesman.
In calling her an evangelist,
what I was really saying is that
she loves our church,
and she loves the Lord,
and she does it all
with such an easy, gentle, contagious grace.
People feel loved and welcomed by her,
and as they get to know her,
they become at least a little curious
about the Church and the Lord
that give her such peace in her life.
She’s a relationship builder,
and relationships—above all else—
are what mission is about.
I recently asked Corinna Strayer,
one of our chaperones
for this week’s youth mission trip,
what the team will be doing
while they’re in Ecuador.
She explained about
the camps and programs
they’ll offer.
But then she said, “you know,
it’s really about relationships.
Relationships are core to our mission.
“Our investment in this mission
will not be seen in the walls we paint
or the programs we host,
but in the people and relationships we build.
“We believe in a reciprocal partnership,
and our goal is to impact the relationships
between those who go,
those whom they work alongside,
those they serve,
and all of you back home.”
Yes, they’ll paint some walls.
Yes, they’ll play games and sing songs with children.
But most importantly,
they’ll be sharing the love of Christ,
and that has the power
to change everyone involved—
including us back here at St. John’s—
in ways we cannot even yet imagine.
* * *
So that’s relationship.
But because mission is about relationship,
it is also incredibly inefficient,
and that’s not only okay . . .
it’s actually good.
At my last church,
we partnered with a congregation
in the Diocese of the Dominican Republic,
and after worshiping in and open yard
for nearly 50 years,
their great desire
was for us to help them build
their very own church building.
It took seven years.
I would tell that to Americans,
and they would, “Seven years!
It must be a cathedral!”
Hardly.
In reality, it only took seven weeks,
but those weeks were spread out
one week a year
over the span of seven years.
How ridiculously inefficient, right?
“Couldn’t it have been done faster?”
some might ask.
Of course it could have.
But what people miss in that question
is the fact that we were building
more than just a cinder block sanctuary.
We were building relationships.
Over the course of those seven years,
we forged a relationship
with our sister congregation
that never would have existed
if all we ever cared about
was a one-time building blitz.
Here in the United States,
we thrive on efficiency
and teach our children about it
from a very early age,
often without even knowing it.
Years ago when my kids were small,
we were running errands
and had one more stop to make
before going home.
They were tired,
and one of them said,
“Daddy, can’t you just drop us off at home
before you go to this last store?”
“What?!” I said. “No!
Why would I drive all the way home,
zig-zag back to the store,
then drive home again?”
To my efficiency-oriented American mind,
there’s hardly ever a legitimate reason
to do things out of order,
to duplicate effort,
to waste time, gas, and resources.
But in the Dominican Republic—
as in Ecuador and Cuba where
St. John’s has mission partnerships—
the mindset is different.
Relationships matter more than efficiency.
The work is often slower.
Steps are often repeated.
You move a pile of rocks
from here to there today
only to end up moving them back
the next day.
The thing is, though,
you do it together,
and that’s what matters.
And that is the case
whether you’re sharing the love of Christ
in a whole other country
or with your next-door neighbor.
It’s inefficient.
It takes time.
But it’s worth it.
You can’t rush love.
* * *
That brings us to the last point:
why we “do” mission at all.
We do mission
because God did mission first.
Yes, loving others
across any significant boundary
is incredibly inefficient.
But don’t you see?
Don’t you realize?
Don’t you know?
This is exactly how God operates.
If you don’t believe me,
look no further than Jesus Christ.
Long ago,
God the Father,
God the Son,
God the Holy Spirit
looked across the great divide
between heaven and earth
and saw us in need.
What did they do?
They could have conquered us be force.
They could have helped from afar.
They could have sent gift cards and checks.
They could have stayed remote.
They could have just ignored us.
Instead, they literally
got skin in the game.
In the person of Jesus,
God journeyed across
the greatest border of all
at great risk to himself
and came to live among us.
The time was limited.
The area was small.
But the impact was wide and everlasting.
And please notice,
Jesus was not on an
efficiency-oriented schedule.
He did not run around
with a day planner and
to-do lists in his hands.
He didn’t assign us endless tasks.
To the contrary,
he’s the one who says today,
“Come to me,
all you that are weary
and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you,
and learn from me;
for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy,
and my burden is light.”
He took his time.
He walked alongside.
He loved people where they were.
So why do we go “on mission?”
Why do we cultivate companion diocese
and sister congregation relationships?
Why do we care about this at all?
Because it is what God does,
and we are made in God’s image.
It’s what Jesus does,
and Jesus is the one we follow.
It’s what the Holy Spirit does,
and that same Spirit lives in each of us.
That’s why.
* * *
Mission is
the sharing the love of Christ
across any significant border.
Sometimes that border is the ocean.
Sometimes it’s Monroe Street.
Sometimes it’s just the next person over.
Every relationship in your life
is a mission field,
an opportunity for
grace and reconciliation.
So blessings on our youth mission team
as you prepare for your big adventure,
but blessings on all of you, too,
for you, also, are missionaries.
Find that border.
Build new relationships.
Love people as Christ has loved you.
It’s who you were made to be.
Amen.