Living Marks of Mission

Trinity Church Cornish                                                                       the Rev. Susan Langle

Joint Celebration of Trinity Claremont and St Paul’s Windsor                     August 22, 2010

 

Living Marks of Mission

First of all, I invite each of you to make the secret sign of the cross.  Imagine where the cross is marked on your body.  Remember that at your head was sealed with this sign on the day of your baptism.  Make the secret sign of the cross.  The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is a sign on your head, and your heart.  The cross marks what you hold, where you walk, and the words that come out of your mouth.  Make the secret sign of the cross. 

 

The sign of the cross also marks us as a body, as a community and communion.  It is the sign of Jesus, the sign adopted by some of the earliest Christians as a proclamation that the power of love could not be killed by terrorism, or vengeance or preemptive execution.   Love abides, no matter what.  After Jesus died the sign of the cross, secret or public, proclaimed that God is in charge of this world and that God is at work restoring and redeeming the mess we humans have made.

In the Gospel of Matthew the disciples are commissioned to go to the ends of the earth, preaching teaching and baptizing.  You are here tonight because someone went to the ends of the earth for you.  Someone – perhaps your mother or grandmother or godfather – someone shared the life of Jesus with you.  Someone made the sign of the cross over you and lovingly invited you to join the community that is marked by this sign of love. 

 

The mission of the church is the Mission of God.  The Official Name of The Episcopal Church proclaims that we are engaged in the Mission of God.   We are the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.  When other churches were sending missionaries east to China and west to Kenya and north to Alaska and south to Brazil, this church decided that we should be missionaries right where we are, and wherever we go.  We are missionaries right in our own back yard, and in the hospital wards of Ethiopia and schools in Ramallah and college campuses in Micronesia. 

 

This idea of commissioning missionaries at Baptism has taken some time to sink in.  As we continue to grown into the images, and language of the “new” 1979 Book of Common Prayer we are starting to get the idea that when we take a smiling grand child to the Font we are handing that child a backpack full of grace, and power and light and we are sending that child to bear the light of God out into a world that mostly lives on fear, that mostly lives in anxiety. 

 

As we grow into our commissioning, as we grow more and more mission centered the secret sign of the cross becomes more evident not just in church adornments, and our jewelry, but also in the way we allocate our time and treasure.  How we live our lives in our own households and in our household of faith can show forth the sign of the cross, the mark that we are becoming more and more of one mind with Christ.

 

The Anglican communion adopted “Five Marks of Mission” in 1990.  Our Church – the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society – otherwise known as the Episcopal Church adopted these five marks as the guidelines for our three year budget passed at General Convention in Indianapolis.  We are embarking on a major restructuring of the church – with the goal of being lighter, more nimble, more able to respond to the real and urgent needs of God’s world.  We are embarking on a reorganization so that the mission of God, which is the mission of the Church, can get more of our energies.   Such a restructuring might affect the ways diocese and parishes are organized.  Such a restructuring might generate excitement for new collaborative ventures.  Maybe even collaboration with our Methodist and Lutheran cousins!  The Holy Spirit continues to hover over the waters, bringing forth life and giving growth to the tiniest seeds we didn’t know were in the soil.

 

The discussions our church is having are grounded in the Five Marks of Mission.  These are the core marks by which The Episcopal Church, and its dioceses and its parishes show forth God’s love.  Let me offwer some reflections on these 5 Marks. 

 

We announce Good News of the Reign of God.  This actually says it all.  In Jesus’ first sermon at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke he pulls out the scroll and finds the place and reads … the spirit of the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  We are to speak out the news of new life, a fresh start, the possibility of recovery to the addicted, the down trodden, the dispossessed.   God is concerned about those who have lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their way in this world.  Our God is a God of second chances, but how is the world to know this if no one lets the cat out of the bag.  The Episcopal Church continues to invest in communication strategies that tell the story to contemporary people who have never seen a Christmas Pageant or been inside a lovely church.  The Episcopal Church continues to expand our presence among people who don’t speak English; Haiti is the largest Diocese in the Church and its growing.  More and more parishes are being founded among Spanish speaking Episcopalians.  We Christians need to communicate God’s love to the unchurched in our neighborhoods.  How are you going to tell the story of God’s love tomorrow?

 

We Engage and Form new Christians.  We teach our children the great stories of Moses and Miriam, of David and Mary of Nazareth, and the Great Story of Jesus.  We spend time coming to know the might works of God.  We read the bible at home, and together.  We seek understanding, and we engage in discussion, dialogue about how God’s world propels us to live Christ-like lives. 

 

The Episcopal Church is investing in the Young Adult Service Corps – a post college experience for young people trying to figure out where God is leading them.  Wouldn’t it be great to have a community of young people living and working in Claremont and Windsor?  Wouldn’t it be great to encourage one of our young adults to spend a year in a household of prayer and work in Los Angeles?  And our church is investing in college ministry, Youth Events.  So much of that work needs to be done right at home, by wise adults.  So what are you doing to grow your faith?  What are you doing to help the families with children in your congregation find time to grow their faith?  What hurricane is near, a storm that needs Christians – Lutherans, Methodists and Episcopalians to stand up and work together?

 

We respond in love to human need.  We respond with our money and our hearts and hands.  We pray and we act.  We look for ways to help our neighbors.  The response to Hurricane Irene was one of the finest hours of the people of faith in the flood ravaged areas. 

 

Its not enough show up for church most Sundays.  Necessary, but not enough.  Worship can and will transform us if we let it.  Worship can move us from going to Church to Being Church.  Its not enough to send checks to Episcopal Relief and Development.  Necessary but not enough.  Its not enough to send a few cans to the food pantry.  We need to be present to and with those who are in desperate need.  Not just our representatives who hold the discretionary account check book, but each of us, all of us, need to have a loving presence with those in human need.   What tornado is brewing in our communities today that needs us to notice, and to act.

 

We seek  to transform unjust structures in society.   We are trapped in evil systems.  We repent the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf.  We have a sacred obligation to be engaged citizens, engaged investors, engaged workers.  We have a sacred obligation to notice and fight racism and sexism and homophobia – all of the prejudices that fuel hate crimes.  We have a sacred obligation to resist the judgmental hardness of heart that creeps into our lives.    What oppression is working its dirty work in your town?  Is it cutting the town welfare budget?  Is it cutting health benefits for the least paid people at your work place?  Is it the subtle expectation that everyone work a little unpaid overtime just to keep a job?  How might we call evil by its true name and work together to unmask and resist it?

 

We strive to safeguard the integrity of the creation and renew the life of the earth.  What we put in the trash, what we burn for energy, what we eat and drink are all spiritual and religious questions.  Where we buy our coffee, and who benefits from the check we write for the beans is a spiritual and religious question.  How are we being careful with the earth and the goods of the earth is a spiritual and religious issue.  We are stewards of this fragile earth, our island home.  It matters to our children’s grandchildren whether we look out as much for them as for ourselves.  It matters to the endangered animals if we have an attitude of gracious protection even it costs us to safeguard their homes.    In the end of course we are all held in the web of life and there is no such thing as our own back yard.  The whole planet is our backyard.  

 

We are one in God’s sight.  We are one in Christ.  We are all walking the way of the Jesus.  The river that divides us has a long lovely bridge across it.  Wouldn’t God smile if we found ways to walk across that bridge and sing God’s praises, and minister to God’s world together?  Wouldn’t the reign of God shine a little brighter if I could see the secret sign of the cross on your forehead, and you could see it on mine?