Take off your shoes

I got to practice something new this week, something I had only tried once before.  The day after I got back from orientation, I got to 'preach' at my home parish, St. John's Richmond.  It wasn't too bad to do this at St. John's.  I have a friendly crowd there, because all the parishioners know me, and since I had just spent two weeks with the other YASCers, I had a lot to talk about.  This morning, I did the same thing at St. Peter's Parish in New Kent.  I was a lot more nervous about this one.  I am SOOOOOO not a public speaker, and having never been to St. Peter's before, I was worried about having to talk in front of all these strangers!  St. Peter's has been very generous to me, and I wanted to let them know how much I appreciate their support.  I was really surprised at what an awesome parish this is!  First of all, it's gorgeous!  I wish I had thought to get a picture inside, because it's all pine pew boxes, white walls, and stained glass.  My favorite sort of church architecture.  Also, Martha Custis Washington (George Washington's wife, for anyone who is not a history buff) worshiped here as a child.  The church building itself is the oldest in the Diocese of Virginia.  It beats St. John's building by almost 50 years.  (BUT the parish of St. John's existed for almost one hundred fifty years before our current church was built, so technically our worshiping body is older!)  What really struck me about St. Peter's, though, wasn't the gorgeous setting or the beautiful old building.  It was the awesome people there!  Paul, the rector, is just as friendly and welcoming as he could possibly be, and every parishioner I met was so excited about my work in Hawston that it made me even more excited to go!  St. Peter's is also sending a group of 17 youth to the Cherokee Nation in North Carolina next week.  I'm so excited for these kids to go on their mission trip.  They're going to do some great work, helping with home repairs, and more than that, they will get to be exposed to Cherokee culture.  I'm so jealous; I want to go!  Too bad I've got so much visa paperwork to occupy my time....

St. Peter's Parish, New Kent.  Notice the weather vane at the top!

Such a pretty church!  It's even better on the inside.  You can kick me for not taking a picture to share.

I'd like to share the remarks I made today at St. Peter's.  I would have done this a few weeks ago with my remarks from St. John's, but unfortunately I wrote them on the back of my train ticket on the way home from orientation, and it has disappeared into the formless void that is my very messy house.  Luckily, I was better prepared this time and typed up my notes.  Thanks to Julie for sharing the awesome poem/prayer at the end.  I've used it twice now and read it countless times.  I just love the first three lines, and I'm thinking of maybe framing this and putting it on my bedroom wall.  Enjoy!

Remarks for St. Peter's Parish, July 14, 2013

I am a missionary.  On August 18 (I just got my final date on Friday), I will be moving to Hawston, South Africa.  The program I’m a part of is called the Young Adult Service Corps.  It’s sponsored by the Episcopal Church, and it allows young adults age 21-30 to go overseas for a year to do missions.  Is there anyone else here today who is a missionary?  If so, please raise your hand.  All the members of the youth mission trip, you’re missionaries.  Are your hands up?  How about the rest of you?  How many of you are Episcopalians?  Please raise your hand.  Guess what?  Everyone with their hands up is a missionary.  The actual legal name of the Episcopal Church is the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church.  Missionary society.  So if you’re a member of the Episcopal Church, congratulations, you’re a missionary by default, whether you want to claim the title or not. 

So, what does it mean to be a missionary?  I didn’t grow up in the Episcopal Church.  I was a Baptist.  Being a Baptist meant that, in elementary school, I went to Girls Auxiliary on Wednesday nights, where you talked about all the Baptist missionaries all over the world who are busy converting the people to the Southern Baptist Church.  Because that’s what it means to be a missionary, right?  You convert the heathens.  You might do some other things too, like paint a house or host a reading camp, but really it’s all about the souls you’re saving.  That’s one view of missions, that actually has some historical accuracy, even within our own church, but I see some flaws in this definition of missions.

On the other end of the spectrum from the soul-saving missionary is the Good Samaritan.  When I was in college, I went on a service trip to Nicaragua.  My group worked with local college students in a rural community.  We worked on water systems and sanitation projects.  It was very practical work.  Here is a family who has no running water, so let’s get it to them.  There is a lot of value in this type of service work, but is it missions, or aid work?  My sister works for an NGO that sends her all over the world to oversee development projects.  She does great work, but she will be the first to tell you that she’s definitely not a missionary.  Was the Good Samaritan a missionary?  He was a heathen, and the man in the ditch was a Jew.  The Samaritan definitely helped the Jew.  Does that make him a missionary by his actions, or is he just a good person?

What really defines missions to an Episcopalian?  Is it the work you do, or your motive behind doing it?  Is it the fact that you’re a Christian who’s engaged in aid work?  Or is it something else entirely?  Remember, we’re all missionaries.  If you’re uncomfortable with that title, I don’t think you’re alone.  I’m pretty uncomfortable with it myself.  It comes with some expectations of what you should be doing and how you should act.  But I really don’t think that’s fair.  There are as many types of missions as there are missionaries. 

I am so excited about your youth trip next week.  When I was in middle and high school, I went on youth mission trips.  They were the highlight of my summer.  They were what first got me interested in missions.  I’m also really excited about what you’re doing when you go.  I love that you’re not going half way around the world, or even half way around the country.  You’re going to North Carolina.  That’s pretty much our own back yard, and it sounds like there’s a great need there.  The fact that you’ll be in Cherokee means that you’re going to be living in another culture, at least to some extent.  This is a really exciting mission!

Let me tell you about some of the other missionaries of the Episcopal Church.  I met many of them a few weeks ago.  When you decide to join the Young Adult Service Corps (YASC), or when older adults decide to go on a mission, you get to go to a two-week training session with all the other missionaries who are about to be sent out.  At this year’s training, we had 26 soon-to-be missionaries.  22 of them were young adults like me, and four were older adult missionaries.  We’re still trying to come up with a name for older adult missionaries, by the way.  The leading suggestion right now is Young At Heart Adult Service Corps, so we would have YASC and YAHSC.  Anyway, the other 25 missionaries were really amazing people.  Sean Brown is a 21 year old from Hawaii who is going to Japan to work at the Asia Rural Institute, which specializes in sustainable agriculture.  Dan Tootle is a grandfather from Maryland.  He is spending a year of his retirement in Haiti, helping the Episcopal school system reorganize their curriculum.  Will Pendleton would be a junior in college next year, but he is taking the year off to move to Cuba, where he is establishing a relationship between the Anglican Church there and his home diocese of New Hampshire.  Ashley Cameron is the other missionary from Virginia.  She is going to the Northern Philippines to work with a microfinance organization that gives loans to locals who want to start small businesses.  I am a nurse.  I am going to Hawston, South Africa, which is a small town about an hour and a half from Cape Town.  I’ll be working with a hospice clinic as a home care giver, and I’ll also be facilitating support groups.  So you can see, the missionaries of the Episcopal Church are really diverse in age, skills, and interests. 

So, if missions isn’t really about what you’re doing, what is it about?  As Episcopal missionaries, we’re not called to save the world.  We’re just called to live out our Baptismal covenant to seek and serve Christ in all people, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and to strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.  Our Gospel reading today told us who our neighbor is.  Everyone is our neighbor.  So if you want to be a good missionary, I suggest you start with the person next to you.  Missions doesn’t have to mean going around the world to do something amazing, it’s about being intentionally present in all your relationships.  My boss David, the ‘head missionary’, says that the mission of the church is Christ’s mission, and Christ’s mission is to restore all people to a right relationship with God.  I think what David means by this is that, when you’re out on a mission, it is more important to BE than to DO.  This is really hard for me, and I suspect it may be hard for some of you, too.  It’s part of our culture as Americans to want to see results from your work, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it is all too easy to let the doing get in the way of being in relationships with those around us.  The home repairs that your youth will be doing on their mission next week is really important, and it’s going to make a huge difference in the lives of the people they are helping.  But even more than that, your youth are going to get to spend time with the people they’re helping.  They’re going to form relationships.  THIS is what the Church does.  We make relationships with each other, and in doing so we help each other grow closer to God. 

Like I said before, I’m so excited that you’re going to be exposed to a different culture.  Really, what you’re doing on your mission trip is not very different than what I will be doing on mine.  We’re all going to live and work in a culture different from our own.  The biggest difference is that I have the benefit of two weeks of cross-culture competency training, and you don’t.  So, let me try to distill a whole two-week course into one sentence.  One of our instructors told us this, and it really stuck with me.  When you go out to do mission, you should take off your shoes.  Take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground.  Remember that God has been at work in Cherokee, just like He’s been at work in Hawston, long before we will get there, and He’ll be there long after we’ve gone.  We’re not going out to save people who desperately need our help, we’re going out to be with our brothers and sisters.  Everyone I met at orientation who had been a missionary before said the same thing:  they were impacted by their experience way more than the people they were serving.  I can’t wait to go to South Africa.  I can’t wait to swim in the waters of the whale coast.  I can’t wait to try some cape malay cuisine.  I can’t wait to drive on the roads there (on the left side of the road, possibly in a stick shift.  Please pray for me.)  But what I’m saying is that it is my privilege to go on this mission.  I am the one who is getting the benefit, and the same is true for you on your trip next week.  Challenge yourselves to step out of your comfort zone.  Start some conversations with the people you’re going to serve.  Learn about their lives.  Make relationships.  That’s why you’re going.

When I talk to the people around me in my every-day life, I’ve realized I talk a lot about being in love.  I’m in love with my husband, Jacob.  I’m awfully lucky to be married to a man who is letting his wife leave him to go halfway around the world for a year just because I feel like I’m called to.  I fell in love with the other missionaries I met at orientation.  I wish you could meet all of them.  They’re a pretty charismatic and energetic group, and they’re going to do awesome work.  You should be proud of the group that is representing our church abroad.  They’re very easy to fall in love with.  I talk a lot about being in love with the Virginia.  This is my home.  I was born here, I’ve lived here nearly all my life, and no matter where I go, I think I’ll always come back here. It’s my place, and Virginians are my people.  I really like to be in love, and I’m in love with lots of other things, like my dog, my best friend, I even talk about being in love with cupcakes.  My favorite Christmas movie of all time is Love Actually.  Not only is it hilarious, but it has a great message.  Love actually IS all around.  All you have to do is recognize it.

I’m really not a very ‘religious’ person.  I said before the title missionary makes me uncomfortable because of the expectations attached to it.  When I told my coworkers at the hospital where I work now about what I am doing next year, I never used the word missionary.  I’ve gotten a little more used to the churchy language that surrounds missions, but really it’s just not my style, and I think that’s OK.  For me, God is most real in this love I’m talking about.  Mother Teresa said, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”  I think to me, these small things are our missions - mine in South Africa, yours to North Carolina, St. Paul’s to Rome 2,000 years ago.  The small things are the mission, and the great love is God.  I want to challenge you to find something new to fall in love with.   Those of you going on the mission trip, fall in love with someone you meet or the town you’re visiting.  Those of you staying here, maybe try to fall more in love with something or someone you already love.

When I was at training, I was talking to one of the other missionaries about this ‘falling in love’ language I use.  She shared one of her favorite poems with me, by Fr. Pedro Arrupe.  I’d like to close by reading this as a prayer. 

Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.

Amen.