Lent 5A

Preached at Saint James’, Essex Junction
World Mission Sunday, transferred

About seven miles south of Quito, Ecuador, in a poor neighbourhood, one finds la Misión Emaús, Emmaus Mission. The two year-old congregation currently meets in a storefront that is provided to them, rent-free, by the mother of a member of the congregation. They do pay rent for the back half of the building, the erstwhile living quarters, in which they have a meeting room, a tiny room that serves not only as the priest’s office but as the examining room and medicine cabinet for a weekly clinic the mission runs, a windowless classroom and a bathroom. The church part of the building has six rows of benches, a simple wood panelled ‘apse’ with a lovely cross given to them by Trinity Church, Indianapolis, who supports them in mission.

La Reverenda Lourdes Inapanta Páez, a vibrant Quiteña, has been walking with this congregation in formation. She has dreams — many — for this small congregation. One concrete dream is being realised behind the storefront — the first floor of a three-story church, built by a member of the congregation, has risen with the promise of larger meeting spaces for the doctor’s clinic, the literacy classes and the other activities that currently are crammed into their little space. The other floors are waiting the $50K it will take to complete them.

When asked how people up here might help out, Lourdes’ answer was in words to this effect: First, get to know us. Come down and spend time with us. See how we live. Talk with us. Then, come back again. And perhaps then, if you feel moved to contribute something, we can talk.

This, brothers and sisters, is the new face of global mission. This is the new voice of partnership that we share with Episcopalians and Anglicans around the world.

If you were to ask the same question of the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of the Region of Central America, Martín Barahona (who came to Saint James’ last year), he would respond likewise. At the October 2007 Executive Council of The Episcopal Church meeting, he implored the International Concerns Committee, of which I am a member, to think of mission in new terms: “We define mission as giving the good news of God of salvation in Christ and the mission is the same in the US, Brazil, Central America, in Africa, in whatever part of the world. What changes are the people, the institutions and strategies. Matthew 28.19 is very clear: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ What we need to do is bring the good news for ourselves in our context. A scholarship or medicine is good news for us. When we make promises to companion dioceses, the only promise we make is to walk together in the same mission. In walking we help one another. Sometimes we believe that we don’t need help from others. I want to say that mission is not only money, please. The most important is your heart.” He reiterated this to me in a phone call this past Tuesday.

The Office of Anglican and Global Relations at our Episcopal Church Center in New York recently prepared a notebook for Executive Council and the Standing Commission on World Mission of the General Convention: We Are An International Church.

As an aside, do you know where international dioceses of The Episcopal Church are located?

How about: the Convocation of American Churches in Europe, Haiti, the Virgin Islands, the Episcopal Church in Micronesia, Taiwan, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador Central, Ecuador Litoral, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Venezuela?

In addition to these dioceses who are fully a part of The Episcopal Church, we have long-term covenants with the following: The Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil, the Anglican Church of the Region of Central America, the Anglican Church of Mexico, the Episcopal Church of the Philippines and the Episcopal Church of Liberia.

We are an international and mission-driven church! Mission is in our very DNA, for the legal name of The Episcopal Church is the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS) of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

But how we engage in world mission today is very, very different from how we have in decades past. To me, the new ways of embracing mission are signs of resurrection.

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God asks the prophet Ezekiel: Can these bones live? And Ezekiel answers humbly: Oh, Lord, only you know.

From John’s gospel, we hear a different story of resurrection, the raising of Lazarus.

In both, what was thought to be dead has been given new life. What has been cast down is being raised up, what is old has been made new, and all things are being brought to their perfection through Jesus Christ.

Life — out of that which has died or lost its breath, its soul, its being — is what the lessons are about this morning. The Israelites, exiled and in captivity after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, state plaintively: ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Both Martha’s and Mary’s accusation, ‘If you have been here, my brother would not have died,’ is equally poignant. Where is hope? Where can one see life in the midst of death?

Ezekiel’s response to God who asks him, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ is quite simple and to the point: ‘Only you know.’ The people in the gospel story are equally clueless about the source of life. John ironically portrays Jesus as he persists in the face of a number of deterrents to bring life to the dead. First, when the word comes of Lazarus’ illness, the disciples urge him not to go back to Judea because to do so would endanger his life. They misunderstand Jesus’ metaphorical use of ‘sleeping’ in reference to Lazarus, thereby arguing that if Larazus is resting, why should Jesus go back? When Jesus finally arrives at Bethany and explains what he is about to do, Martha cannot grasp what he is saying to her. Most around are irritated that Jesus did nothing to prevent Lazarus’ death. At the tomb, Martha worries realistically about the possibility of there being a stench if they open the door.

No one understands. No one expects that life can come out of death. No one grasps that Jesus is the life-giving power of God that overcomes death. To Martha, Jesus declares, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ (This is the fourth out of seven ‘I am’ statements that Jesus pronounces in John’s gospel, all of which pertain to his relationship to God and eternal life.) Jesus raises Lazarus, whose name means, ‘God helps,’ with God’s help. And they believe.

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Mission today is being resurrected from a paternalistic, moribund understanding of the north imposing itself on the center and south to a partnership of equals. It has taken us in the north a long time to realise that we don’t have all the answers or goodies and our brothers and sisters in the global center and south have their own treasures to offer.

I can’t personally speak to Sudan, but I know that many of your lives here at Saint James’ have been touched by your walk with NESEI and its efforts to build schools in Sudan. Many of you have helped out with the growing Sudanese population in Chittenden county. You can witness to how your lives were turned upside down, resurrected and brought to new life in ways you never could have imagined. You can witness to how you came back enrichened when you thought you were giving.

My life has been incredibly blessed by my long journey with the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador as a member of Fundación Cristosal and then as Canon Missioner of that church. Others have their stories of places that have changed their understanding of God’s mission in the world and partnership.


For those who would like to learn more about mission, several groups, including E4GR, AGR, ERD and others are sponsoring a super conference, Everyone Everywhere, 5-8 June, at the Maritime Institute in Linthicum, MD (just outside of BWI). If you don’t want to travel, you can always become part of our diocesan Global Reconciliation Committee. Speak to me about it.

Through these venues, we learn that these bones of mission can live! There can be resurrection and new life in mission as it is shared throughout our communion and church. God is breathing new life into our shared mission with other parts of the Anglican Communion.

No matter what you do or how you live out this part of your faith life, we are all part of proclaiming the mission of God to the world. We are all part of reconciling the world to God through Christ. Each one of us can make a difference and all of us can do something. So, go spread the good news of God in Christ to a broken world that desperately needs to hear this message of reconciliation, resurrection and hope.