Companion Relationship

I came on this trip to Honduras partly with my own agenda, and partly in response to a call.  With the opportunity to take three months away from my regular duties, I was determined to do something that would not be possible to accomplish in less time, and the first that came to mind was to return to Central America, a part of the world in which I have had life-long interest.  Added to the allure of the region was the possibility of studying Spanish, which has been a hobby for almost ten years, in an immersion experience.  When my wife decided that she would like to come too, and bring our daughter, the plan was set in motion.
Then I began to think about the official companion relationship that exists between my Diocese of Northern California and the Episcopal Diocese of Honduras.  I'd met Bishop Allen of Honduras and the Rev. Olga Barrera when they attended our diocesan convention perhaps six years ago.  I also had heard over the years from my clergy colleagues Ed Howell and Andrea Baker about their experiences there.  When I let my Bishop, Barry Beisner, Andrea McMillin, the Canon to the Ordinary know that I was thinking about maybe working a visit to Honduras into my sabbatical plans they responded very enthusiastically.  They informed me that Bishop Allen was going to be attending our convention again in November 2016, and promised to introduce me to him.
I did indeed get to chat with Bishop Allen at the convention.  I told him I was thinking of going to Honduras during my sabbatical, and gave me a brief summary of the different kinds of work going on in the diocese and his message to me was, essentially, "Yes, do come.  We'll be happy to welcome you; we have a place you can stay in San Pedro Sula, and from there you can go wherever you want."  I felt sufficiently encouraged by our talk to begin planning in earnest to include Honduras in my sabbatical plans.  Taking into account my family's various work, school, and vacation schedules I put some approximate dates on the calendar, and roughed out an itinerary that would include two weeks of Spanish-language school in Guatemala with my family, mixed in with some sight-seeing and vacation, followed by three weeks of solo travel, visiting the Episcopal Diocese of Honduras.

What form that visit ought to take was still unclear to me; I spoke with Andrea Baker, who had been a missionary for a year, assisting Rev. Olga Barrera at the Holy Spirit Bilingual School in Tela, and she encouraged me to spend my three weeks there.  Ed Howell described for me his more free-ranging experience, going all over the country on his motorcycle, staying in the homes of diocesan clergy, or sometimes in hotels.  My confusion about what to do while I was there stemmed in part from not knowing how our diocesan companion relationship between Northern California and Honduras works, or how my visit might help develop it.
In January I received an email from the Bishop of Honduras, forwarded on to the seven regional deans of our diocese by Bishop Beisner, of which I am one.  It included a request that someone represent Northern California at the annual convention of the Diocese of Honduras in late May.  I offered to be that representative, thinking that an introduction to the diocese in that capacity might help better understand the companion relationship, and plan my sabbatical visit accordingly.  (I also liked the idea of doing a little reconnaissance before arriving sight unseen with my wife and daughter.). As it turned out, the convention was also attended by Bishop Greg Brewer of the Diocese of Central Florida.  Central Florida has had a companion relationship with Honduras for over 25 years and a member of the Honduras Commission of the diocese accompanied the bishop.
This
highly developed and institutionalized form of companionship is unusual.  With some time on my hands back in San Pedro after the convention, I did some looking into the websites of other dioceses of the Episcopal Church listed on the Diocese of Honduras website as having a relationship with them.  Of the ten or so listed I found evidence of a diocesan-level commitment on three or four.  What seems more common is that a handful of people within a diocese, often in a single town or congregation will have a continuing commitment to a particular locale, or project in Honduras.
Now that I have been here for two weeks and have had a first-hand look, it appears that this is how it works in Northern California. The relationship established by Olga Barrera, Connie Sanchez, Bishop Allen, and other Hondurans who have visited us, and by Kent McNair, Ed Howell, Andrea Baker, and
others who have visited them, has resulted most recently in a particular connection to Holy Spirit Bilingual School in Tela.

First day of classes, Holy Spirit, Tela

And in the week that spent there I was pleased to discover that our retionship ishaving a real impact.  There is tangible evidence of it everywhere, from the beautiful liturgical vestments given be St. Barnabas, Mt. Shasta, to the security camera system from Aa Saints, Redding, and from the remodeled school library, easily the largest and best-equipped of any I have seen on my tour, supported by the Milennium Development Goals Fund of the Diocese of Northern California and Faith Church, Cameron Park.  This same partnership has produced a beautiful new art room on the school campus.

New art classroom

A group from Faith Church went to Tela in June to lead a vacation bible school, and their rector, Rev. Sean Cox, was so impressd with the students from Holy Spirit who assisted with the program that he is inviting some of them to Cameron Park tnext summer to help lead a bilingual VBS there.  Holy Spirit is the beneficiary of other companion relationships as well.  A St. John's in Alabama has been sending medical mission teams to Tela for fifteen years and there gear has a permanent storage space in the shower stall in the school director's office bathroom.  St. Michael and All Angels, in the Diocese of Dallas helped build the school cafeteria.  The needs in Honduras are many, and I am excited to see how the growing relationship of mutual-assistance with Faith, Cameron Park will impact the mission of Holy Spirit in Tela. At the same time, I wonder how much more of an impact this companion relationship could have ifmore connections o like this were to develop.  How would it be congregations across our diocese were partnering with a bilingual school, acongrgation, or a social service project of the Diocese of Honduras, so our companionship became truly diocesan in scope?  How might our Trinity Cathedral, for instance, benefit from a relationship with the cathedral El Buen Pastor in San Pedro Sula, for example, and vice versa, of course.  How might an expanded relationship, and the personal exchanges and transformationds it would entail, empower the development of bilingual and multiculfural ministries to Latinos/-as in our  diocese, something the Board of Trustees has recognized as a strategic priority?

Now that I have been here, I can say that, whatever form it ultimately takes, our companion
relationship with Honduras will grow by the proliferation of direct contacts between the people of our two dioceses.  I believe that it is by encouraging these contacts, through exchanges such as the one that Faith Church is planning, short- and long-term mission trips, and the like, that  relationships will be forged that grow into alliances , with a transformative impact in Honduras and Northwrn California.  A further benefit of expanding our involvement in Honduras would be the opportunity to work in partnership with mission-minded Episcopalians from other dioceses,many of whicom represent a more "conservative" and "evangelical" strain wthin the Anglican Communion.  There is important work of reconciliation for us to do there, which will contribute to the spiritual growth of all concerned.

Bound for Glory

Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11 

The glory of God, as the bible talks about it, is not a fact “about” God that we can use or not as we see fit.  It is not an “attribute of God” as a philosopher of religion might say, trying to describe what God is like.  Strange to say, the bible is not interested in describing God.  Rather, the bible is about the glory of God, and that is something that transforms the ones to whom it is revealed.  It awakens a response of the whole person, the whole community—a response of praise, of thanksgiving, of awe and joy and worship, of obedience and love. The glory of God shows us how much glory of our own we have to give. 

That’s why we sing in church, “Glory to God in the highest.”  Glory is not just something we can receive, it is something we can give.    So the essential question that the bible puts to us as human beings is, “to whom will you give your glory?”  Will you return it to the giver, to the one who is truly glorious?  Or will you give it to something lesser?  Will you follow the fallen angels and the ruler of this world, who try to keep the glory of God for themselves?  

When we talk about Jesus, about what makes him the Messiah, the Son of the Father, Christ the Lord, we very often say that he, unique among human beings, was without sin.   But the Gospel of John offers us a different vocabulary for thinking about Jesus, and it is all about glory.  John announces this in the prologue at the very beginning of his story, when he says, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”  And after the wedding in Cana of Galilee, where Jesus changes water into wine, John adds that this was “the first of his signs,” that “manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

And if we also believe in him, it is not because we believe this or that thing about him.  We believe in him because of his glory, that brings the presence of God to us.  When we say, before the reading of the gospel at every celebration of the Eucharist, “Glory to you, Lord Christ,” we are not praising a book, or even the words in the book, but the presence we sense in the words.  We are saying that, listening to these words of Jesus, we are beholding life and truth.  We are on the way that leads to the fullness of presence, that we have a foretaste of in our sacramental celebration, where together we ascend into heaven, and unite with the chorus of angels singing “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heaven and Earth are full of your Glory.” 

Today we come to that part of the gospel of John where Jesus is ready to complete his work, by giving over everything that a human being can receive of the glory of God.  This he will do on the cross.  But before he does, he prays that the Father will receive his gift, and give him an even greater one, the glory of the Father himself.  And this God will do, by raising him from the dead, and exalting him to heaven.  We are now 43^rd days from Easter.  It has taken us six weeks to get to this point, where we can understand just how far Christ’s resurrection takes us.  Because when Jesus prays to share the glory of God the Father, it is not for his sake, but for ours.   From now on, those who know the name of Jesus Christ, who keep his word, and believe that the Father sent him, will be the glory of God in the world.  And they will do this, says Jesus, when they are one, as the Son and the Father are one.

I spent last Wednesday and Thursday in the company of our Bishop, and the priests and deacons of our Episcopal Diocese of Northern California.  And I am happy to be able to report to you that the desire to be one, as the Son and the Father are One, is alive and well in this diocese.  It was manifest in the friendship and collegiality among the clergy, and between the clergy and the bishop.  The perspective I got was of a church that has ridden out the storms of conflict over biblical authority and human sexuality, and now desires something more than an end to hostilities—more unity, greater interrelatedness, a deeper sense of purpose, to glorify Christ for the sake of the world the Father sent him to save. 

In his informal report on Wednesday evening about what he’s been up to and thinking about, the Bishop told us about a church-wide conference that he attended in April in Memphis, called Reclaiming the Gospel of Peace.  It is part of a growing sense in the church that we need to speak out in response to our nation’s epidemic of self-inflicted violence.  And Bishop Beisner brought back from Memphis an invitation to send youth from every part of our diocese to join a pilgrimage taking place next summer in North Carolina, along the route of the Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights movement.  And if we decide we want to, and this first pilgrimage is a success, there will be an opportunity to join another, in the summer of 2016, which is going to Auschwitz.  The purpose of these pilgrimages will be to engage our whole diocese in supporting and learning from these young people as they become formed as ministers of reconciliation.

In a meeting of the clergy of the Russian River Deanery, the geographical subsection of our diocese that stretches from Sonoma and Petaluma in the south, to Fort Bragg and Willits in the north, we rediscovered our strong mutual interest in working together to support initiatives we cannot carry out on our own.  Among other potential arenas of collaboration we talked about supporting the Latino ministry currently centered at St. Paul’s, Healdsburg, and expanding it to other parts of the deanery.  I came away from that meeting with an invitation to preside at a girl’s traditional Quinceañera service in Healdsburg on August 9, where I will lead the Eucharist in Spanish for the first time in my life.

These are only two of the exciting possibilities that I heard about at the clergy conference, but they are enough to give you the gist of whole event.  And all this came along at a moment when I, personally, am quite tired.  It has been a long run from Ash Wednesday, and I’m ready for some summer vacation.  But when I think about these opportunities, even along with all the good work that we are already doing here at St. John’s, I get energized.  I think that is because this week showed me something about the church I’ve never quite understood before.  In the church we love the world, and our impulse to seek unity across barriers of race, religion, language, class, and even species, is how we give our glory to what God has made.  But it’s hard to know if we are going about it the right way.  Some of the projects that we talked about at the clergy conference may never get out of the starting gate.  They may never fulfill the potential we can imagine for them now.

But the real work of the church is not to improve society.  It is to bring the world our witness to its glory, as we have seen it in Christ.  We can only do this united, in an attitude of worship.  Our unity in prayer is our basis of hope for reconciliation, and healing, and peace, which is what we have to offer to the world.  When we are together in this way, we can dare to try almost anything, and it may succeed beyond our wildest dreams, or it may fail miserably.  We may even, as First Peter says, be reviled and suffer, but still we are blessed, because we know that our brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.  Besides, being a smash hit and admired by everyone wasn’t what we set out to do anyway.  So there’s no reason to be anxious about any of it, because our only real purpose was to be united in giving Glory to God.