Living By Mission

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at The First Religious Society in Carlisle Massachusetts
Sunday March 12th, 2006


OPENING WORDS by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch--
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.


READING: “IF” by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!


****

For some reason all this past week I’ve been thinking about a Saint Patrick’s Day not so many years ago when my kids thought it would be “clever Ha-Ha funny” to dye the dog florescent green. I use the word “kids” somewhat guardedly, since they were both in their twenties and old enough to know better. Stephenie was home from college for Spring Break, and Jacob had flown up from California with his girlfriend, Shelly, just to see his sister and help celebrate his mom’s birthday, which was only a couple of weeks away. Parker was still a puppy, and the apple of both Margie’s and my eyes -- the adorable little “infant” we had never been able to have together, and a tangible focus for the nurturing love of two middle-aged “empty nesters” trying to adjust to the surprisingly difficult challenge of being a couple rather than a family.

I honestly to this day don’t know what the kids were thinking. Or maybe they weren’t thinking. Surely you’ve heard the old adage: one kid, one brain; two kids, half-a-brain; three kids, no brains. My father certainly said it often enough to me, and maybe I should have repeated it more often to my kids, since this may well have been one of those situations. When Margie and I woke up the following morning, there was little Parker at the foot of our bed, frantically wagging her tail and appearing only slightly traumatized, but apparently with no real idea whatsoever of just how ridiculous she looked, which made her even more pathetic than she was already.

For my own part, I could appreciate the attempted humor of the situation; but I was afraid to show any sign of my amusement, because Margie was furious. Furious, and outraged. Not only was she ashamed of how ridiculous SHE was going to appear walking a florescent green dog around our neighborhood; but after three or four attempts to wash the dye out, Parker started hiding under the bed every time she saw Margie coming or heard the water running, which only added to the humiliating indignity of the offense. Margie decided that it wasn’t enough that the kids understood that what they had done was wrong. They also needed to FEEL bad about it. In short, Margie decided that she wouldn’t be satisfied until she had made both kids cry, and it became her mission to make certain that it happened.

Stephenie was a pushover. To this day Steph swears that she wasn’t even the culprit; that it was all Jake and Shelly’s idea, and she was merely an innocent bystander who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This apology by itself would have doubtlessly been enough to earn her absolution from the minister of the family, but Margie is a trial lawyer who doesn’t place much stock in such feeble alibis. About twenty minutes of “what could I have POSSIBLY said or done as a parent to make you think that treating a small, helpless animal this way was in ANY way acceptable” and Steph was sobbing tears of remorse, and ready not only to make a sincere act of contrition, but also to join with her mother in exacting some sort of horrible vengeance on her brother and his girlfriend for getting her into this mess in the first place.

Jacob was a much harder case. Not only is Jacob a boy, and therefore socialized by popular culture not to pay any attention to his personal feelings or let them in any way interfere with his doing whatever it is that needs to be done, but Jacob and Shelly had also already left the scene of the crime and fled the jurisdiction, crossed state lines and returned home to California, forcing Margie to pursue her objective entirely by long distance telephone. For over a week she phoned him several times a day, and often late at night as well, just to let him know that the dog was still green and how upset she still was about it. And then suddenly she stopped phoning, and instead returned home one evening with the satisfied look of someone who has just crossed something important off of her “To Do” list. And of course Jacob and I, both being boys, have never spoken since of the incident.

And then it was my turn. Apparently I had not been quite as supportive of this mission of emotional retribution as my now former wife thought I ought to have been, and therefore needed to be taught my own lesson in emotional sensitivity as well. But fortunately at this point fate intervened in the form of Margie’s legal assistant, who borrowed the photo of Parker Margie kept on her desk, scanned it and photo-shopped it, then installed it on Margie’s computer as a screensaver which changed color every time the screen refreshed. And with this, Margie was finally able to appreciate the underlying humor of the situation (or at least see that she was in danger of appearing a little ridiculous herself), and so even though she was still angry (and the dog stayed green for months), I was off the hook, at least for the moment.

Now I realize that most of you know Parker, and some of you may even have met Jacob and Stephenie, but so far as I know, none of you have ever met Margie; so just let me say in her defense that she’s not nearly so obsessively driven and vindictive as I’ve probably made her sound, and (as you might imagine) she is a fantastic lawyer, and she and I are still pretty close friends, and she knows that I was planning to use this story as a sermon illustration this week and even helped me recall some of the key details. And the point of this whole story (if I can boil it down to a single sentence) is that Not all Missions are Created Equal.

It’s good to have a purpose in life, something that gives us focus and meaning, and helps us to achieve the things we feel are important. But often HOW we choose that mission is just as important as successfully carrying it out. A worthwhile mission encompasses values and principles, and not just a purpose. It identifies real needs and recognizes them as opportunities, builds upon our existing strengths, and reinforces our commitment to something larger than ourselves. And sometimes the most worthwhile missions of all are the ones that will never be completely accomplished.

When I first started thinking about this topic I came up with a slogan I thought I’d share with you. “Mission: it’s not just for Missionaries (or the Marine Corps) any more.” Or perhaps you might prefer the same insight in the form of a riddle: What do Mormons and Navy Seals have in common? Some years ago I read a provocative article by a well-known church consultant which described several dozen similarities between ordained clergy and commissioned military officers. Among these, both occupations can be recognized by their distinctive clothing, which sets them apart from the general population; both attend specialized schools administered by members of their own profession; both generally experience multiple, firsthand encounters with death much earlier in life than the majority of their peers, and are often expected to serve overseas and to put the needs of the organization ahead of their own personal ambitions and preferences, or even their own comfort and safety. And for both the Warrior and the Priest, the Mission Comes First.

Missionaries are individuals who have deliberately and self-consciously chosen to devote some portion of their lives to spreading their religious message to people who would otherwise never hear it at all; and even though they often get a bad rap from folks who DON’T necessarily share those beliefs, the commitment exhibited by missionaries in general is certainly remarkable. And like soldiers, even today missionaries sometimes end up sacrificing their own lives in the attempt to fulfill their mission.

The word “mission” (like so many of the words I’ve been talking about lately) comes from a Latin root, missio, which means “a sending away.” It’s the same root as the word “missile” (which is basically a weapon that is launched toward its target from a distance) and also “missive” meaning a letter which one sends in order to communicate important information to someone far away. So not only are there religious missions and combat missions, but also diplomatic missions, trade missions, and all of the other activities for which “emissaries” are “sent away” in order to accomplish. An embassy is a form of mission, and an ambassador simply a missionary in more formal attire, who represents a government rather than a church.

One of the reasons that the missionaries of bygone days have such a bad reputation in our present time is that they were not especially diplomatic when it came to spreading the Word of God. They expected the heathen savages to conform to the standards of Christian civilization, and made little effort to adapt their message to the people they hoped to “convert.” On the other hand, the most successful missionaries were the ones who made the effort and took the time to understand the people they hoped to serve, and were often profoundly influenced by them in return.

Of course nowadays the idea of mission is everywhere, and every organization from the largest multinational corporation to individual human beings have their own “mission statements.” How many of you have every attended a meeting, or a workshop, or a retreat, or served on a committee or task force, where developing a “Mission Statement” was the principal task on the agenda? I’m a great believer in the importance of this sort of activity, but I’m also afraid that over the years I’ve gotten a little cynical about it. The problem with many mission statements is that the work seems to end once the statement is completed, when that ought to be when the work really begins. If the mission of the organization is merely to revise its mission statement every once in awhile, what’s the benefit of that?

Furthermore, at least in the business world, the underlying mission of developing a mission statement has more to do with increasing profitability than it does with spreading a prophetic message of hope and salvation (unless, of course, you happen to see increased profits AS the source of your hope and salvation, which I suppose in some respects is a perfectly reasonable thing to do). But the notion of personal sacrifice, and that the mission comes first, can become profoundly exploitive when the mission itself is merely material profit rather than spiritual witness. The question of who sacrifices and who benefits from that sacrifice is of critical importance. Matthew’s Gospel cautions us to beware of false prophets, who come in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous as wolves, and advises “by their fruits shall ye know them.” Living by Mission means valuing sacrifice in the original sense of the word, as something made sacred by being offered to God, rather than cheapened in the pursuit of some mundane objective.

Of course nowadays even religious organizations are encouraged, and indeed often encourage themselves, to understand their Mission in terms of numerical growth. In many ways numerical growth is a terrific mission because it’s so easy to set objective (if often arbitrary) goals, and then to measure one’s tangible progress against them, which leads to either a palpable sense of achievement and accomplishment, or perhaps at times frustration and disappointment, depending on how “well” you see yourself doing at the time.

And yet, there is also a price to be paid for equating numerical growth with the mission of the church, a price which is often invisible until the bills start to show up, and everyone starts glancing around waiting for someone else to reach for their wallet. Growth requires change, which means learning to do things differently: changed habits, changed attitudes, the loss of comfortable, familiar routines and the ever-increasing presence of new and unfamiliar strangers who have different assumptions, and often different objectives as well, or who may simply like to do things differently than the way they’ve always been done before. Church growth typically requires increased financial expenditures as well, as the costs of new activities and expanded program gradually filter back into the system. The expectation that somehow the newcomers will pay these increased costs themselves is terribly naive. Membership growth is above all else an act of hospitality; nobody invites their neighbors to a party and then sticks them with the check.

So I’ve started to look at the mission of “growing the church” in a slightly different way. I believe in the growth of Wisdom; growth in Understanding of both ourselves and others, as well as the growth of Compassion, the growth of Generosity, of Gratitude and Forgiveness and Humility and Trust and all of the other virtues associated with a spiritually rich and authentically optimistic life. I also believe in growing the ability of a congregation to serve the needs of its members and the surrounding community. Growth in Leadership, growth in Stewardship, growth in Fellowship, and the ability to Communicate and to Cooperate with one another, to dream big dreams and then work together to carry them out.

And here’s the trick: if a congregation learns how to do all these things well, it will also grow in size; and continue to grow and grow and grow until it reaches its natural plateau, wherever that may be. To approach growth in any other way is to put the cart before the horse, and practically a guarantee that nothing important will never really change

I’ve also started to wonder lately about whether the entire traditional understanding of Mission isn’t hopelessly combative and “heroic,” and in a deeply gendered way; which is to say that it is far too dependent upon a culturally-conditioned understanding of service and commitment and sacrifice which encourages both men and women to suffer in silence, and to keep their personal feelings out of it, and instead stoically accept without complaint whatever fate and circumstance may cast upon them as the burden of their faithfulness. So I want to contrast the reckless “pitch and toss” of Kipling’s “If” with Emily Dickenson’s “slow and cautious way,” and ask whether it isn’t just as noble to be a faithful missionary of the word in an upstairs room in Amherst as it is to serve as an emissary of Empire on the Indian subcontinent.

And I also wonder whether my former wife wasn’t really on to something when she realized that it was important that Jacob and Stephenie really FEEL bad about what they had done wrong when they dyed our beloved little dog green, just as they should feel GOOD whenever they did something right, rather than simply being expected to “know” it without needing to be told.

Living by Mission is not only about selfless service to a higher purpose. Living by Mission is about passionate sacrifice -- a passion which suffers, and yet is redeemed by that suffering, because it cares so strongly and feels so deeply about the importance of its mission that it is able to endure pain and disappointment, not in stoic silence, but with an agonizing cry of ecstatic suffering which transcends the limits of both tears and fears, and embraces a mission which (dare I say it?) boldly goes where no man has gone before....

And yet even as I say this, I also wonder whether the most important characteristic of Living by Mission is simply the ability to let go of the past (and all the old grudges and assumptions that go with it), to embrace the change we hope to see, and above all else, to listen and learn from one another, and to laugh at ourselves and the foolishness we all share, when we dream of a world made sacred by our sacrifice.