Mission in the Interstices of Life, a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Paul Barton, Assitant Professor of Hispanic Studies, on February 26, 2004, in Christ Chapel

Matthew 28:16-20

 

Introduction

First a word about today's lectionary readings.  The lectionary reading for Thursday typically uses the Scriptures from the previous Sunday.  But since we are no longer in the season of Epiphany and have crossed the threshold of Lent, it did not make sense to use last Sunday's reading.  Nor does it make sense to use this coming Sunday's reading because that is reserved for next Thursday's chapel service.  So what do we do?  So we chose a lectionary text from the Book of Common Prayer's "Readings for Various Occasions.  Today's readings are thus independent of Epiphany and Lent.  So I am preaching a sermon for an "in-between" worship service, related neither to Epiphany nor to Lent.  So for today, as we deal with a text related to Jesus' resurrection, please leave your Lenten attitudes at the door.  You can pick them up on the way out.

 

And I am fine with this, because I am used to being in-between.  "In-between" is who I am and "In-between" is what I do.   So I figured I would use this "in-between" time to reflect on the "in-betweeness" of mission.

 

The In-Betweenness of the Disciples

 

I want to use a word to explore the situation of the disciples--interstice.  I love that word, interstice!  It means "A space, especially a small or narrow one, between things or parts."  So when the sun is setting in the west, especially in the summer months, and there are cirrus and cumulus clouds surrounding the setting golden ball, you can see the sun's golden rays bursting forth through the interstices in the clouds. ^[1]   If it were not for those interstices, for those small gaps in the clouds, the sun's rays would not be visible to us.

 

For the disciples in Matthew's Gospel, the sun had set on their hopes and dreams for the physical establishment of God's reign.  Now that they were alone unto themselves, they experienced utter confusion as they wondered about the meaning of the last three years they had spent with Jesus.  They felt guilt over having forsaken their Master and friend when the guards came to take him away  (Matt. 26:56:  Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.")  John's Gospel does a better job of portraying the sentiments and behavior of the disciples after Jesus' death.  John reports that they returned to their homes.  Some of the disciples returned to their previous careers as fishermen, thinking they could go back to the way things were.  They were also found holed up in a locked upper room for fear of persecution.  It is clear that the disciples feared for their lives and wished to return to their familiar existence before they had met Jesus.  The disciples were to learn what we have learned--that encounter with Jesus makes it hard to return to familiar habits and habitations.  Indeed, encounter with the risen Christ compels us to move beyond our familiar existence into areas that are risky, sometimes even dangerous.

 

Jesus' resurrection appearance breaks through the clouds of confusion for his despairing disciples.  His resurrection appearance transforms the fear, shame, and despair experienced by the disciples upon Jesus' death into marvel, wonder, worship, and eventually hope.  It is this resurrection faith that propels the disciples to carry forth the Good News of Jesus.  So there is clearly a connection between the resurrection faith and the mission impulse of the first disciples, and for the entire church as well.

 

This is a period of in-betweenness for Jesus also.  He remains with the disciples for only a while before departing in his resurrected form.  During this interval, Jesus teaches them, breaks bread with them, heals them, and commands them to tell the world about him.  In Matthew's Gospel,  Jesus appears to the disciples on the mountain in Galilee and speaks to them words of commissioning and words of comfort, words of blessing.  The words of commissioning are his commandments to go, make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Trinity, and teaching them to observe all that Jesus had taught them."  And the words of comfort:  "and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age."

 

Theological Education as In-Betweeness

 

These same words of commissioning and blessing have served as a foundation for the church's understanding of its mission throughout the centuries.  It has even influenced our own seminary's understanding of its mission.

 

Did you know that we have a mission-oriented curriculum at ETSS?  It says so in the catalog, so it must be true.  In fact, that is why some students have come to our seminary, so that they could be prepared to learn how to go, make disciples, baptize, and teach.  And during these three, and sometimes four years, students experience a sense of in-betweeness also.  Some of our students are in-between their previous career and their future career as ordained priests or lay leaders.  Others are between graduation from college and the life that awaits them upon graduation.  So during this one year if you are a CITS student, or two years if you are an MAR student, or three or four years years for M.Div., MAPM/MAC, you must learn to live with a sense of in-betweeness.   Anthropologists call this experience liminality.  Through liminality,  participants enter into a time of intense training, endurance, testing, and ritual, and emerge from this period  as persons equipped for new responsibilities in their community.

 

Sometimes it seems that we are never free from this sense of liminality as we encounter one transition after another.  We live almost constantly in times of in-betweeness. I believe that our vocational calling especially leads us to these interstices of life.   Students' vocational calling has led them to this time of in-betweeness. My vocational calling has led me to a situation of in-betweeness. Pat Mora, a Mexican-American educator from El Paso, uses a Mexican indigenous word to describe this in-betweeness.  She uses the term "Nepantla."  For the indigenous of the northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, Nepantla means being in one world and in another at the same time.  Persons who are Nepantla are able to move back and forth between the two worlds.  Nepantla entails simultaneously rejection and acceptance.  We can use the word Nepantla for ourselves when we recognize our in-betweeness in our own situations.  And when we allow ourselves to live fully into this in-betweeness, we are able to see God in new ways. In these interstices,  we experience vulnerability, uncertainty, ambiguity, frustration, anger, and sometimes even despair. Paradoxically, it is in this time of liminality and disorientation, in these interstices of life, that God comes to us in the new ways to remind us of our calling. As Jesus appeared to his disciples, God comes to us and reminds us, "I am with you unto the end."

 

Being in between, or the sense of Nepantla, can be a very uncomfortable feeling, because it is always unstable.  The ground is always shifting for the in-between persons and communities.  Let me give you one region that experienced Nepantla for several decades.  South Texas existed in between Mexico and Texas and then the United States in the early nineteenth century.  The area south of the Nueces River down to the Rio Bravo was in dispute, with both Mexico and the new nation of Texas claiming it as their land.  Then,  after annexation of Texas in 1845, the U.S. claimed it as U.S. territory.  So during the decades in the first half of the nineteenth century, there was constant warfare and border skirmishes on both sides.  Being in-between this conflict for the inhabitants of the region was incredibly harsh, for the inhabitants of this contested land faced constant violence originating from both sides.

 

The "in-Betweeness of mission",  the Liminality of Mission

 

When a community is engaged in mission, its members are in a condition of in-betweeness--both relationally and temporally.  Relationally, they are in between their home base, their community of familiarity, and the new community in which they are in mission.  They are relating to persons who are different from them while also seeing the world from the perspective of their home culture.  Temporally, being in mission means being between a period of vision and the realization of that vision. 

 

Being in-between is uncomfortable because it means you are living a conditional existence.  It means being accepted by the members of your own community but being rejected by those who are not of your community.  Or, it could also mean being rejected by your own community and accepted by those who are not of your community.  This was certainly what Matthew's Christian community was dealing with as they struggled with the eventual separation between Christians and their original Jewish communities.  But Jesus gave his disciples some thing that was essential for them to live as in-between persons; he said he would be with them unto the ends of the earth.  It is this promise of presence that provides a foundation for hope and for mission.  Persons and communities do not engage in mission on their own; instead they discern God's own mission work in the world and are called to participate in it with God.  And they receive strength from remembrance of Christ's blessing upon them.

 

This in-betweeness of mission provides an opportunity to see the Gospel in a new way, and to become involved in mission in new ways.  But the in-betweeness is difficult, and unsettling, and uncomfortable.  This Nepantla, this in-betweeness is also exciting and filled with new insights about God, about our world, and oneself.

 

So here were the disciples receiving Jesus' commandments to take what they had seen, heard, learned, and experienced, and to share it with others wherever they went.  On the mountaintop, they were all united in worship of the resurrected Lord.  However, some doubted, having difficulty accepting that this could actually be happening.  But when they left the mountaintop, this interstice of their faith journeys, they had to do the difficult work of fulfilling Jesus' commission.  And that is truly difficult work.  The questions must have abounded for them, as they do for us.  Where will we go?  What will we say?  Who will receive us?  What will it cost?   

Conclusion

So we find the disciples in this interstice of their faith journey....  completely surprised by Jesus' sudden appearance, unprepared to do what Jesus is asking them to do... filled with questions, and some even doubting what is really happening.  At the same time the disciples are in wonder, awe, and worship their risen Lord, their risen friend.

 

The hard work of the disciples is yet to come, but at this moment, they are given the words of commissioning and the words of comfort, words of blessing.  And they are able to spend time with their friend whom they had taken for being permanently dead. 

 

We have our interstices of life.  Our times and experiences of in-betweeness, our times of Nepantla,  Sometimes they may last for a moment, they may be nothing more than a conversation, or they may be three years of study.  During these interstices, the ground is constantly shifting, the cloud shapes reforming, and we can only wonder what is really happening.

 

But in the midst of the in-betweenness, the uncertainty, and the ambiguity, Jesus tells the disciples, "And lo, I am with you always."  That's what we need to hear every day.  Even when we don't feel that Jesus is with us, we still need to hear it.  That is the spirituality of mission that is needed to keep us going even when it appears that things are falling apart.  "Lo, I am with you always."