Sermon: Entering the mission field

Matthew 3:13-17

January 9, 2011

The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen

Trinity Church, Staunton

“You are now entering the mission field.” These are the words on the signs as you leave the grounds of my home parish, the one that sent me to seminary, Redeemer Church in Midlothian, Virginia. I remember when those signs were first put up and what puzzlement they brought to me and, no doubt, to many others who saw them. The mission field. That term had always brought with it images of selfless saints who went to foreign and distant lands. Missionaries were warriors for God-those who were so sure in their faith that whatever God had for them, they simply accepted it and ventured forward. It had seemed like such a special and specific calling, to go out to the ends of the earth sharing the gospel, certainly one that most of could never live into.

Today in our gospel reading from Matthew we hear of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist. At first John protests saying, “I need to be baptized by you and do you come to me?” Jesus responds, pretty much saying, “Yes, John, I am talking to you!” “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” And so Jesus is brought under the water with John’s help. Jesus is baptized, and surrenders his life to God. One could see this act as foreshadowing of his surrendering his life on a cross just a few years later. By going under the water he dies in a sense and then Jesus comes up out of the water, “suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him.” A voice from heaven said, “’This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’” And hence, Jesus begins his public ministry. I wonder if as Jesus left the Jordan and headed into the desert he saw a sign that said, “You are now entering the mission field.” You will have to keep coming to church to hear all of the stories associated with Jesus’s mission in the world. For today we can just say Jesus reached out to all in his midst, he saw them and he listened to those in his path, wanting all people to be within reach if his saving embrace, showing no impartiality to rich or to poor, to the strong or to the weak, to the joyful or the sorrowful.

So what does this story have to do with us? Matthew the gospel writer considers Christ and his church as an inseparable unity. When we are baptized into the death of Christ, we, too, are buried with Christ as we go under the water. And when we come up out of those waters we are a new creation and our mission is set before us: to pray, to study, to turn back to God when we sin, to proclaim the good news of God’s love to others, to seek and serve Christ in all people and to respect the dignity of every human being. You just heard the mission outlined earlier in the service with the renewal of our baptismal vows. (I sometimes think with the Episcopal tradition of pouring water on one’s head and not being fully immersed some of this significance of death and new life is not fully appreciated or understood.) In this surrender of our lives to God and accepting new life we are given such an incredible promise of life, a reason to hope, a motive for courage.

Today we will enthusiastically commission several of our members to go to Honduras for a mission trip. Many of you have gone before so you have an idea of what to expect. And several of you have not been before so you really have no idea of how hot and miserable you are going to be(Just kidding about the miserable part!). And many others of you have been on mission trips to other places in our world-to Africa, to Haiti, even to Philadelphia! So, what makes something a “mission trip” and not just another vacation? And exactly what does it mean to enter the “mission field?” When we enter the mission field, it means we are willing to seek and serve God by getting out of our self-focused world, to enter someone else’s world, to risk discomfort, to be vulnerable, to see with a new pair of eyes, to hear with a new set of ears, to step forward in faith and to listen closely to those to whom we are sent. For our ideas of what others may need and desire may be very different from what they actually need and desire.

I remember a colleague at a church in Northern Virginia who was all set to go with a group from her church to visit a church in the Sudan. Just before the group was to fly out, the trip was cancelled due to new outbreaks of violence in the Sudan. The rector was terribly disappointed not to be able to go. She called the priest at the church in the Sudan to tell him they would not be able to come, and she suggested to him that they send him the money that would have been spent for travel, which certainly added up to thousands of dollars. The Sudanese priest told her that he would much rather her keep the money so that she and the others could come another time. The Sudanese much preferred the missioners’ physical presence than their money. (Now another day they might have told the American priest they would indeed appreciate the money but this time physical presence was preferred.)

In a similar story from Trinity’s outreach dinner Christmas Eve, one man’s present was not found at the time it should have been given to him. The church got him a replacement gift for him after Christmas. When the man was notified that his gift was ready to be picked up, he said that really the gift was not important but that the actual dinner had been a significant gift to him, especially the music-that the music had been the best gift of all.

Jesus was aware he was in the mission field all the time. He took no vacations from it. Even his time in solitude and prayer was part of his mission. As baptized Christians we, too, are all in the mission field ALL the time. I would even take it a step further and say we do not even need to leave the church grounds to be in the mission field. St. Therese of Lisieux offers us these words:

Jesus does not demand
great actions from us
but simply surrender
and gratitude.

Can we simply surrender as we go forth into the mission field? Surrender and look and listen to God’s revelation as we encounter his creation? You might be sent to do “great action” in a distant land such as Honduras but you might just as possibly be sent to listen to a church member who is need of a friend. You might be sent to eat at or serve at noon day lunch where the hungry can be fed. You might be sent to encourage the frazzled grocery clerk or you might be sent to Haiti to build schools and build relationships and to laugh and play with the neighborhood children. Wherever you are sent, look around you, see the people in front of you, and listen to them. God is already there in front of you. Surrender to God’s love and reflect that love to all he sends into your path.

Amen.