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Sermon St. David's 2 Pentecost, June 10, 2007 Gal 1: 11-24 WPMahedy

Jesus raises the young man to life (Lk 7:11-17), exercising the power of God, over even death itself. In the first reading (1 Kings 17:17-24) we hear the Elijah implores God to restore life to a young man who had just died. God responded. We learn that the author of life fully intends that death shall not have the final word. In this morning's second reading, Paul testifies that he proclaims what he has seen through a personal appearance of the risen Christ. Like the original disciples who had seen the risen Lord, Paul also has first hand knowledge of God's power over death. Paul now knows God's final intention for the world; he understands the decisive event which points humanity in a new direction as children of adoption towards the newness of life. He has become an apostle, a messenger of this good news to the world.

Paul explains to the Galatians that he received his mission first hand from the Lord and he exercises his mission independently and in no way is he subordinate to the Jerusalem apostles. And yet, he also tells us, and we know from other passages, that he had checked out his message with the original apostles. We know that Paul was a part of the community which itself decided on how the mission to the non Jewish world,--the mission to the gentiles--was to be exercised. He did not operate outside the church, but he was an equal and independent force within the church. Paul once persecuted the church and now he is an apostle of the Lord. He states that those who witnessed this change in him now "glorified God" because of him. He the messenger of God's new life in Christ also embodies and exemplifies what he preaches.

With Paul, we go immediately to the heart and center of the Christian mission. Let me reflect on this mission as embodied in Paul from a personal perspective. In the second year of my four seminary years of theology and scripture study, I was so captivated by Paul and by this mission, that I volunteered for the missions in Japan. At the time I was a member of the Roman Catholic Order of St. Augustine.

A couple of years after I was ordained, while I was happily teaching in a small New England college, the Order sent me where I had asked to go.

I lasted in Japan only about a year because I experienced extreme culture shock. Most of the Americans, Canadians, Europeans and Latin Americans who were there experienced to varying degrees the same thing. About half had to return home within the first few years, but some endured for many years and some spent the rest of their lives there. Though for me the mission experience was very brief, it was both formative and normative for the rest of my life.

When I joined the Episcopal Church, I was impressed with its formal and complete name, i.e. the "Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America."

But does our branch of the Church still live up to its name? Are we really a missionary society? Or, have we now become merely "the Episcopal Church?" Episcopos is the NT Greek word for "overseer." Oversight of the community is only one of the many gifts mentioned in Paul's letters--it being no more important than any of the others. Are we now known simply as the church that has bishops? Our very public and now pervasive squabbles are all about who should be ordained as overseers. We have taken an office which in the New Testament has only a secondary significance and elevated it into the decisive and defining component of who we are. That's the way the general public sees us. Whatever the case, we are no longer recognized by others, nor perhaps even by ourselves, as primarily a missionary society.

Paul and his contemporaries in the first generations of our faith were above all missionaries. They took seriously the Lord's command to preach the Gospel to all nations. Of course the pastoral care of those already in the church must be met. Paul himself cared for his people. He wrote his letters to them. But he and they were immersed in the mission to those still outside. They stood against the ruthless and brutal Roman Empire and gave testimony by their lives and by their words that Jesus Christ and not Caesar is Lord. To be a missionary to the Roman Empire was dangerous business. Their vision of reality, their way of life was at odds with the Empire. They refused ultimate allegiance to Caesar and his minions. The Christian mission to the Roman Empire was a costly one, it was seeded with the blood of thousands of martyrs, men and women who died for their faith.

Like Paul, those early Christians were a "resurrection people," aware the God's power over death would triumph even over the Empire. Like Paul, they were members of a community of people. They were the body of Christ.

But like Paul, they were strong and independent and they were thoroughly innovative. For them, the mission came first and they organized the church according to the needs of the mission. Defined only by the common mission, different churches had different structures. Some had single overseer bishops, some had other forms of leadership. The notion of "clergy" was foreign to them. They did whatever it took to proclaim and live the Gospel of God's love in the teeth of a ruthless and brutal culture.

Nor did they wait till they got it all together before they went out on the mission. Paul publicly disagreed with Peter. Paul and Barnabas had a conflict that led to them taking separate missionary journeys. There were conflicts and questions, but they resolved these issues as they went along. They played it by ear and got on with the mission. And it worked

In that context let us now examine the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. It is true enough that we have our foreign missionaries, people like the Clearys and the Hardisons. True enough, we do mission work in our own parishes. The Vietnamese and the African congregations in our own diocese are examples. It is also true that there is much domestic mission work going on among some of our people. People here at St. David's are involved in many projects that fall within the ambit of mission.

But where is the zip, the zeal, the drive, the spiritual depth, the constant focus on the presence of God that is the sine qua non of all mission work? Where are the serious conversations among ourselves and with other Christians of other branches of the Church about how to exercise our common mission?

I read some of the stuff that comes out from the national church--and from those who have seceded from the national church. I get emails from the diocese about clergy stuff. I get the latest on the Windsor report and hear about what happened at this or that conference. But who cares? Where's the beef? Where's the sense of mission? This program, that program, or program-sized parish, or clergy wellness or tactics of congregational development. Can you imagine "wellness conference" in the church of apostles and martyrs? Perhaps in the Colosseum as they waited for the lions.

It seems to me we are spending all our efforts on trying to resolve the "Episcopal" part of our church. We are trying to figure out who can or can't be ordained a bishop. Or whether bishops from other provinces can come into the American church or what the House of Bishops will do or the Lambeth Conference of bishops, or the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Presiding Bishop. Other denominations are as bad. Look at all the time and energy spent in Roman Catholicism over the role of the Bishop of Rome. Look at the synodical battles of Protestant groups. Perhaps we at least, should try to surmount this nonsense and remember that the entire Church is supposed to be always and everywhere a foreign and domestic missionary society.

What has all this got to do with real life in the real world. Only this--don't take all the "churchy" episcopal stuff too seriously. Take only the mission seriously. Paul and the very first Christians were personal witnesses to the risen Lord and we are not. But, as John's Gospel says, "blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed." That's us. We do not face the Roman Empire, but we are confronted by the various empires of our present world, empires that focus almost exclusively on the autonomous individual self; empires that beguile us into believing that comfort and pleasure and the satisfaction of all our wants are the reason for being.

Our Christian ancestors resisted the empire, but too often we do not resist. We are instead immersed and subverted and seduced and co-opted Perhaps the reason the church is so self-focused is that its members worship at the altar of the Imperial Self, that most tyrannical of all rulers. God, as the readings today remind us is the author and giver and restorer of all life. Paul, in this reading as always calls us to mission.

Our mission, like that of our ancient ancestors is in the world and to the world. Our mission requires an overarching sense of community, but it requires as well that we be strong and independent operators in the world. It is a mission that requires time spent in prayer and study. It requires regular Sunday worship. It requires self-giving and attention to others. It is a mission of love, compassion, and sometimes of personal witness, a mission exercised on the run, at home, at work, in the markets and classrooms and shops and businesses.

It is a mission given equally to all of us in baptism, young and old, men and women. It has nothing to do with being ordained or not ordained. Herein lies the reason that all church offices or structures--like all ethnic, racial or national boundaries are insignificant. All creation, the vast expanse of interstellar space, the entire cosmos results from an outpouring of the love that exists within the Trinitarian heart of God. The exuberant and abundant love among Father, Son and Holy Spirit is given, donated to all creation. This is a direct, immediate and personal gift of God to each individual. Just as the persons of the Trinity are co-equal, so the gift is given to human persons as co-equals in the presence of God and to each other.

The word "missionary" comes from a Latin word which means "to send." We are sent by God into this world. But the prior sending takes place when the Father sends the Son into the World to become flesh among us, to live and die as one of us and to overturn the powers of sin, suffering and death. The Father and the Son send the Spirit among us to accomplish in us what was done in Christ. For this reason scripture says that we are "partakers of the divine nature" because we are children of adoption and co-heirs with Christ. Our first response is to give back that abundant love of God directly to God and then to each other and to everyone we encounter. That is our mission and it is a direct response to God's own mission.

So this morning let us renew our commitment to this fundamental mission. Let us resolve not to be distracted from it by anything in the world or any issue in the church. Let us praise God in our Eucharistic prayer, for "whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup we show forth the death of the Lord until he comes." Indeed in the breaking of the bread we again recognize the risen Lord. So unto God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be all honor praise and thanks. Amen.