William Yagel
Grace Radford
May 28, 2023
Pentecost, Year A
Holy and Loving God - may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight O Lord you are our strength and our redeemer.
Amen
Mission is a term that gets thrown around a lot in church. Those of you who have been on vestries in years past, or maybe at other churches, may recognize mission, or maybe outreach, as an often under-funded line item on a parish budget. It usually shows up somewhere after building maintenance, salaries, and Christian Education. After the essentials are covered, in other words, the excess money is earmarked for “mission”. Often, I think vestries are so battered after the rest of the budget process that they can’t even think about what those missions are. Just a generic “missions” or “outreach” line item often appears and monies are allocated as needed throughout the year.
We are called repeatedly through the scripture to give of our first fruits. Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Amos, Corinthians, and Romans all call us to give first to God. We celebrate today the first fruit of the Spirit that was given to us, and we are called to do the same.
Our model of outreach here at Grace allows us to designate a dozen recipients through the year and each of us are invited to make a gift to those deserving groups from our own personal first fruits. It is a good model, but that is a little different from the body of the church observing their mission in the world. I mean, we will decide on our list of monthly missions at the June vestry meeting. We will decide who we will offer a financial gift to in the next year, but that isn’t our mission. It allows the gift to be offered, which is good, but that is not grappling with our mission. Just the same, it can be challenging because no matter length of the list and the necessity of those on the list, there are always more groups in need of support. I would guess, or maybe I should say I hope that every church in this Diocese, in this denomination, and in this country has grappled with these questions of budget.
These questions, however, really speak to the larger question that is lurking behind the finances. At least, the question I am pointing at this morning. Did the Spirit join us so that our budget would be perfect? Does God tally the monthly missions to award salvation? Not that it isn’t important, but we can all give money away without coming here. The bigger question that emerges for is: How are we called to be the church? What actually is THE Church’s mission, what is OUR Church’s mission? You know, we have a great mission statement in this congregation, it hides in plain sight every week. It is in small print just above the picture on the front of the bulletin. It says:
“The Mission of Grace Episcopal Church is to promote an atmosphere for the expression of God’s love through Jesus Christ, which calls each of us to know God by reaching out to others and inwardly to ourselves.”.
I love that statement. I hear it speak to our need for growth in ourselves, which allows us to be servants to those in our midst. Nothing in the world is wrong with it. I think our work of living into that statement it is a lifetime of work. Hear me say how important it is, hear me say that this is good and holy work and hear me say,
It answers the wrong question. Or maybe, it is coming from the wrong “person”.
Just like a budget trying to capture the mission in a single line. Trying to capture who and how we reach out to the world misses entirely the message of Pentecost.
Today is Pentecost, the Birthday of the church, the day when we mark the gift of the Holy Spirit in our midst. Today the Spirit sets fire to our hearts and calls us into the world. Today, on the fiftieth day, Pente-Cost, day fifty the Church Catholic was borne into the world. The Spirit came in a violent wind, disrupting all with an undeniable intensity. The Spirit emerged full of power and overflowed into all who were present. Always, the Sprit has been somewhat wild and unpredictable. From the beginning she acted in her own way, the maker of holy mischief, as many say.
This morning in Numbers as the Spirit was shared around the Tent of Meeting in the Wilderness with the seventy elders of Israel it could not be contained. Eldad and Medad also received a portion the Spirit. They were not of the 70, at least not in this reading, but the Spirit still found them, touched them, and gave them a prophetic voice. The Spirit moved as it moved, without permission or expectation.
But in the narrative from Numbers the Sprit appears at any rate, to have been limited to 73 (Moses, the 70, Eldad, Medad) folks. The select few were vested with authority. A model the church has really gravitated to. But, true to his prophetic voice, Moses embraces the work of God, the work of the Spirit in their midst when he offers: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and the Lord would put his Spirit on all of them!” Yes, all of them would be just enough.
Joel, our bonus reading this morning that was embedded in Peter’s words this morning in Acts, speaks to this expansive prophetic vision of the Spirit moving unrestrained in the world. The Spirit would land on everyone, no matter their gender or their age. The enslaved and the free would receive that gift of the Spirit in those days.
And of course, Peter is talking of Joel because Peter is in those days. Indeed, on Pentecost the overflowing and wild nature of the Spirit fell on everyone, from all corners of the Earth. The notion of the privileged few was eradicated, and all were welcomed in. All who were present understood that God was in their midst. They were convicted by the work of the Spirit, the work of God in them, they became the vision of Moses and Joel, of the prophets from ages past. They were infused with the Spirit and were the fulfillment of God’s prophetic word to the people of Israel.
This is the understanding of church mission that Presbyterian Pastor Darrell Guder and his ecumenical colleagues spoke about in the early 1990s. Missio Dei, the Mission of God, calls the church, the entire body of Christianity, to be God’s mission in the world.
Guder was not simply speaking about changing the allocation of resources on a budget, but changing the way we understand the church in our world. This notion of being God’s mission in the world pulls us away from a paternalistic or colonial model of Church where the church is the authority who pushes herself onto others.
Instead, the church is given the revolutionary charge of being God’s sent people in the world who are called in everything we do to be God’s Mission. The entire budget becomes one line:
Mission.
The church was established on this day AS God’s work in the world, not to DO God’s work in the world. This revolutionary charge should convict us every week to hear the words of the Gospel anew and to ask ourselves how God is calling us to be God’s church. The Spirit, the maker of Great and Holy mischief is here to sustain us, but also to challenge us, to disturb us, to force us to hear those questions that are easier not to grapple with. We are to hear the revolution to be the revolution. We are invited to see the entirety of our lives as a people sent into the world to be God’s vision of radical Love.
Any Mission statement necessarily falls short of the dynamic message of Pentecost. The revolutionary gift that the Spirit infused in our church at its birth is to be God’s love in this place with every piece of who we are. To know that Spirit has fallen on each of us, that the spirit infuses God’s Church to go forth into the world, rejoincing in the power of the Spirit, alleluia, Alleluia.
Thanks be to God. Alleluia, Alleluia.
Amen