It was during one of the early sessions of our most recent Wednesday Night Live series. To illustrate forgiveness, specifically self-forgiveness, I showed what to me is the most powerful dramatization of forgiveness on film. It was a scene from “The Mission”, starring Robert DeNiro. In fact that movie had a lot more to it than simply a story of personal redemption. It explored well some of the broader issues having to do with Christian mission and how it has brought both positive outcomes and almost unimaginable abuse to indigenous peoples whom European Christians felt compelled to civilize. The Church and individual Christians have always struggled with what our mission is and how to accomplish it.
We just celebrated Holy Week, climaxing as it does with the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. In the Gospels, no sooner did Jesus rise from the dead than He directly contacted His various followers in different ways and different contexts, but in every instance He left all of them with a mission. That mission may have been more or less expansive “Go and tell my disciples that I’ll meet them in Galilee,” or “Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel.” In every case, though, the mission always involved going to others to show them something and to tell them something. The fact is that our mission – as the Church and as individual Christians – is really quite simple, not complicated, and yet also quite difficult, demanding.
What is our mission? It is to show that God loves all people and wants to bring redemption to everyone. This we do by demonstrating our love – Christ’s love in us – for each other within the community of the Church and to people in all conditions of life in the wider world. Our mission is to love one another and to love others as well by joining, giving, helping and serving people wherever and in whatever circumstances we find them. Our mission is to show God’s love by loving in concrete ways.
The other dimension to our mission is to tell – to pass on – what we know. I don’t mean preach at people about what we know by rote, but to share what we know of God – of Christ and the Spirit – by personal experience. In this way, what we have to say doesn’t come across as dogma, but from personal relationship.
One of the problems that the Church and individual Christians have had is getting mixed up when it comes to how to accomplish the mission that the Risen Christ gave us. Personal agenda has often gotten in the way – when Christians have focused on trying to make other people more like themselves – whether that took the form of Jewish Christians making Gentile converts get circumcised or Roman Christians making Germanic tribes learn Latin before they could be converted to the faith or European Christians making indigenous converts in the southern hemisphere wear more clothes. That was never what Christ commissioned us to do. That’s mission rooted in pride rather than in Christ’s humility.
Over the generations the people of St. Paul’s have always tried to be faithful to our mission of love to the local community in all sorts of different ways. Whether by starting food banks or a nursery school or building Habitat houses or providing Christmas baskets or giving to Episcopal Charities, St. Paul’s has been a beacon of love to the local community. But even though it may be true to say that “charity begins at home” we must not be content to let our love in action stay home.
That’s why the Youth of St. Paul’s and their adult escorts will shortly be leaving on our mission to the Dominican Republic. Many thanks are due to Trish Nugent-Miller for all her tireless hard work in making all the arrangements, spearheading the fundraising events, and organizing the team-building gatherings over the months. Since a maximum of 20 of us can go, she has set aside her plans to go on the mission in order to allow all of the teens who wanted to make the trip to be able to go. We’ll miss her leadership, but she is certainly demonstrating the self-sacrificial love and humility that we hope to instill within all us. She’ll stay at the home base, here, to monitor what’s happening in the Dominican and to relay information. After all, our purpose – our mission – is to demonstrate love with humility – God’s love and the love of Christ. We want to share ourselves with the people we’ll meet. We want to share our personal stories of the love of God in Christ. But we go as much to receive from the people we meet as to give. I know that the missioners will grow from our association with the people in the Dominican more than they will grow from their association with us. That’s God’s blessing, and we look forward to it. Only 20 of us can go, and we’ll be there from April 13-20. Please pray for us each day while we’re away – for God’s grace to fill us, guide, strengthen and help us throughout. We’ll return bearing tales of what we’ve seen and heard God doing in order to strength the faith of the church in turn.
Affectionately in Christ,
Phil +