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.

How we know

• Acts 2:14a,36-41
• 1 Peter 1:17-23
• Luke 24:13-35
• Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17

Last week I had lunch with the pastor of a church in town whom I suppose one might describe as a conservative evangelical.  Our conversation was cordial and wide-ranging, and when it was all over I was left with two overall impressions.  The first was that this man was supremely confident in the purpose of the church as a missionary enterprise.  He gave no sign of inhibitions or defensiveness about reaching out to people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  And I found myself admiring him for that, even a little bit envious.  But he also seemed to equate the mission of the gospel, somewhat simplistically, with converting people to the Christian religion as he understands and practices it.  And so my second impression was one of rigidity, of a conviction that is tied to the need to be right, to be certain, and to compel others to be certain, of absolute and invariable truths. 

The resurrection of Jesus might seem to be one such truth.  Either you believe it happened as an objective fact, the thinking goes, or you do not, and therein lies the line of demarcation between being a Christian and being something else.   But in the stories of the resurrection in the Gospels themselves, proving the certain factuality of the event is not the most important thing.  They are stories, by and large, about subjective experiences that Jesus’ disciples had of encountering him after his death.  A common characteristic of these encounters is their ambiguity; often they hinge on the question of whether it really is Jesus, and how the disciples will know that it is.

You could say that the essential message of these stories is that the life and work of Jesus goes on.  The physical and mental healing of the afflicted, the renewal of Israel’s faith and hope, the restoration of covenant community that he accomplished through his words and actions--these works are still underway, where Jesus is remembered and learned from and loved.  When we say “Christ is risen!” we are bearing witness that the same life-giving power of God, which was manifest long ago in Jesus of Nazareth, is still known, still active in the human world on human terms in those who carry on his name, his story, his Spirit.

But couldn’t we say the same about any particularly wise, noble, courageous, faithful, and loving person?  We might imagine, on our very best days that something like this could even be said about us after we’re gone.  We can hope to be remembered, and that in the memory of others we would live on.  And if we have lived our lives well, perhaps the memory of us will give some hope, encouragement, and inspiration to the next generation, or even the one after that. 

We can certainly think about the resurrection of Jesus in this way.  Under the influence of modernity, this is more and more how we do think of it.  But it is hard to imagine the Christian movement exploding into the world the way that it did if this were all that the resurrection really means.  And the historic confession of the Christian faith says that it is not.   We say that the God of Israel, the creator of heaven and earth, was involved in the life of Jesus in a unique and particular way.  God chose Jesus’ time and place for a decisive intervention in the sacred history of his people.  And with the Spirit of God guiding him, Jesus gave that sacred story new power with his life, and broke it open with his death, so it could become the sacred story of the whole world.  It became the story of the transformation of all humankind into the holy people of God, a transformation coming about through the risen life of Jesus.   

But if Jesus had died at a ripe old age from eating a poisonous mushroom, as is said of the Buddha, his resurrection might have been a stupendous miracle, but it would not have made him Messiah and Lord.  It is not incidental to the exaltation of Jesus, or to the transformation it initiated in the world, that the body that rose alive from the empty tomb had been put to death in a gruesome public spectacle.  It had been tortured and killed as an act of terror meant to crush any idea of resistance to the power of the state.  It was the resurrection of a victim, murdered in a miscarriage of justice, in which the religious leaders of the people of God were deeply complicit.

The gospel proclamation of the resurrection of the crucified puts a particular stamp on the mission of the church.  Or at least it ought to.  But when you’re talking about God’s decisive breakthrough into history, and about uniting the entire human race in a single spiritual destiny, it is easy to slide into religious imperialism.  It is easy to think that we Christians, or we, the true Christians, are now in charge of the world’s transformation, which is something we effect, by converting people to our religion, convincing them that we and only we can possibly be right. 

But to say that Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the great victor over the powers of evil and death and the final judge of the world, is only half the truth.  Because his is the victory, through the power of God, of a victim; the victim of those who were certain they were right.   And the zealous attempt to remake the world on the basis of half a truth is why, when you look at the record of what has been accomplished so far, you see tremendous achievements in humanizing society: hospitals, schools, and orphanages, music and art of transcendent beauty, profound expressions of philosophical truth, movements of social reform and emancipation; and also so much conquest and murder, so much enslavement and oppression, so much rape of human beings and the natural world, done in the name of Christ.

This morning’s reading from the Gospel of Luke, describes faith in Jesus’ resurrection, not as a moment of decision, when we grasp the truth of a doctrine and make it our own, but as a journey we make together in the company of a stranger.   It is a conversation that begins not with an announcement but with a question: “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?”  The disciples have no answer, but just stand still, looking sad.  So we might say the resurrection faith is a conversation Christ begins with us when we are stuck, at a standstill, when our hopes for God’s redemption and our faith in God’s promises are disappointed.   The stranger then calls the disciples’ attention from their own disheartening and confusing circumstances back to their sacred story.  Not to pick out texts as proofs of Christian doctrine, but so they see the whole panorama of Moses and the prophets from the vantage point of a God who is with his people in their suffering.

He shows them a God who speaks liberation to the oppressed, comfort to the afflicted, consolation to the bereaved, who speaks out on behalf of widows and orphans, exiles and slaves, and the alien in your midst.  And though the disciples still don’t understand why, their hearts begin to burn with longing for the living presence of this God.  So when they come to their destination, they press the stranger to stay with them a little longer, “for evening is at hand and the day is past.”  He accepts their kindness (or is it their need?—maybe a little of both); he comes in and sits down with them as their honored guest.  And when he breaks bread and blesses it and gives it to them, they know. 

Their minds go back to a hundred other meals at the end of a day of hard walking, to rude peasant cottages and tax collectors’ villas, where Jesus was the guest who became the host; how he blessed and broke the bread, and together they feasted, a company of strangers from all walks of life, the not-quite-right and the not-all-there and the too-much-too-fast and the too-cool-for-school.  They remembered how those meals seemed to go on and on, and nobody worried about the time, or whether the wine would run out, but their hearts were light and their laughter was easy, and for those few precious hours they were one people, brothers and sisters in the family of God. 

The disciples in the house in Emmaus came out of their reverie, and saw that Jesus was gone.  But they knew he was alive; and they knew that what they’d seen was not a memory of the past but a vision of the future.  And they knew what they were supposed to do.   

        

On the move, at the door.

2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30
Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Friday afternoon at 3:30 I had a rendezvous here at the church with two older guys from Indiana named Ron and Dan.  They drove a twenty-foot box van full of sleeping bags and duffels and bicycle repair equipment into the parking lot behind Cram Hall, and they wore matching t-shirts with a logo that said DeCycles West Coast 2016.  According to the email I got in April requesting to stay overnight at our church, DeCycles (like “disciples”—get it?) is an ecumenical Christian youth program, sponsored by churches, businesses, service organizations and individuals in Indiana, that has been taking teenagers on summer bicycle trips since 1969, and giving them the opportunity to practice kindness, caring, service, and other principles of a Christ-centered life.   This year’s group is riding down the coast from Seattle to Los Angeles and Ron and Dan were the advance men, who go to the overnight site ahead of the pack of riders, to get the lay of the land. 

I showed them the parish hall, the library and the nursery as potential sleeping areas, the kitchen and the bathrooms, the courtyard and the supply closet, and we discussed the deployment of chairs and tables, and dining arrangements, and where to lock up seventy-five bicycles.  They asked me for the passcode for the wireless network, assuring me that only selected adults would be using it.  While I was at it, I gave them my cell phone number, in case anything came up after I left.  We finished the tour, and they’d asked me all the questions they could think of, and no one else had arrived so I invited them to see the church. 

Needless to say, they were greatly impressed, especially with the front door and the stained-glass windows, and Dan kept lamenting that the craft of making such beautiful things seems to be passing away.  We were just coming out, when another, smaller truck pulled up, with the DeCycles logo on the side of the cargo box.  Ron directed the driver to parking lot, and another smiling older man got out, and a woman named Liz with a charming accent I soon found out was Welsh.  This truck was loaded with cooking gear and food.  Liz was in charge of meals, and I led her inside to the kitchen, and when she saw our refrigerator, she practically squealed with delight. 

It was just about this time that the first wave of what would eventually be 60 bicycle riders, aged 13 to 20, and 15 adult staff, all in matching black and white DeCycles West Coast 2016 jerseys, rounded the corner from 5^th street onto C, looking for their vans.  And for the next hour or so I stood around, answering questions, giving directions, solving problems, and watching with amusement as order gradually emerged from chaos.  Kids rolled the serving carts from kitchen down the wheelchair ramp to the food van and brought them back, piled with ice chests.  Someone else found the fans in the chair storage closet and set them up at either end of the hall.  Bowls of trail mix appeared on the coffee hour food table, and on the other table where we serve the drinks, I piled the letters and care packages that the mailman had been dropping off in my office all week. 

At one point Ron had to ask me where the supply closet was again—in all the confusion, he’d forgotten where that was.  One young man asked me if there was Wi-Fi available, and I told him there was, but that only the adults would be using it.  “That’s cool,” he said, as if both the question and the answer were of complete indifference to him.  “It’s like a three-ring circus,” Liz cracked to me at one point, “with no ringmaster,” and I laughed, because she had it about right.   Still, by the time two-thirds or so of the kids pedaled off again to the Petaluma Swim Center for the showers and the pool, and the others rolled out their sleeping bags and lay down for a rest, they’d sorted out who was sleeping where, and how they would lock up the bikes for the night, and what would be for dinner.  And when I dropped by the church yesterday afternoon, there was a window open in the men’s bathroom, and a garbage barrel that is usually in the kitchen in the parish hall—but other than that, there was no sign that they’d ever been here.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of how Jesus sent his twelve disciples out, to heal and cast out demons, and announce the Kingdom of God.  But only Luke tells about a “second wave” of 70 or 72 (the ancient manuscripts differ) whom Jesus sends out later on the same kind of mission.  Luke is also the only one who says that Jesus sent them on ahead, like Ron and Dan, to the places where he himself was about to go.  Luke gives other details about the ministry of Jesus as he makes his way through Galilee and Samaria and Judea that are not found in the other gospels.  A few weeks ago, for instance, we heard about the women, like Mary Magdalene, who went along with the other disciples, and provided for their material needs.  And, unlike Mark and Matthew, Luke ties his episodes loosely together into a single story of continuous and purposeful movement.  They are encounters and teachings that happen on the road to Jerusalem.

Luke’s version also describes a movement in another sense of the word.  All the gospels speak about the twelve men who form the inner circle around Jesus, who are his conversation partners, and foils for his teachings, who do what he tells them, and follow where he goes.  They also speak of a much larger group of followers, known only as “the crowd.”  The size and composition of this group is left undefined, but one has the impression that the crowd shrinks and swells as new people are drawn to Jesus by need or curiosity, and others decide they’ve seen enough, or have better things to do, and drift away.  But only Luke describes a second, larger circle of committed disciples, like the women I referred to a moment ago, or the seventy-two Rons and Dans Jesus sends out in advance of his journey.  If we believe Luke, Jesus was not just drifting, with his little company of twelve, from one random encounter to another, but was methodically and purposefully building a movement.      

This fits with Luke’s over-arching purpose as an evangelist.  He (or she) is also the author of the book of Acts, which tells how this movement continued and spread and became The Church.  When we say “the church” we think of something firmly established, with deep foundations of doctrine and tradition that change only slowly, if they ever change at all.  But experiences like my encounter with the DeCycles, and stories like the one from Luke today, remind us that at its heart the church is less an institution than what it was at the beginning—a movement.  The new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, The Most Reverend Michael Curry, is fond of point out this fact, calling us to membership in the “Jesus Movement” as the defining core of who we are. 

Luke says this movement signals the beginning of the end for the powers of evil and death, and the beginning of the new creation of the kingdom of God.  But the movement is not itself the kingdom; rather, it exists to point to it, to spread the news that it is coming near.  This communication cannot take place in a casual encounter on the road—the gospel doesn’t fit on a bumper-sticker or a tri-fold brochure.  Neither does it spread by armies on the march or demonstrations in the streets.  It moves, instead, by the formation of new relationships that begin with a greeting at the door.  The news of the kingdom travels through the world through countless risky overtures of peace, and equally vulnerable responses of hospitality.  Everyone in this room today, from the person who is here for the very first time to the one who’s been here for sixty years, had at one point to walk up to that big arched door that impressed Ron from Indiana so much, and come in, hoping to find the desire for Christ’s peace she carried in her heart in some way reciprocated.  And I hope it was, and is, and will be, because that’s how we know we’re still part of the Jesus movement.