The Kiss of Mission

Sermon preached by the Very Rev’d Titus Presler, Dean and President,

Professor of Mission and World Christianity,

Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest,

at the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas,

on the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, 9 February 2003

Year B, Epiphany V: 2 Kings 4.8-37; 1 Corinthians 9.16-23; Mark 1.29-39

A kiss —

            care in a kiss,

            affection in a kiss,

            cherishing in a kiss,

            self-offering in a kiss —

            all that in a kiss.

It’s your kiss —

            a kiss offered by one of you,

                        by a member of the Church of the Incarnation,

            a kiss that incarnated, put into flesh, the vision and the outreach  of the people of this parish in Honduras.

Whoa! you may say — What kiss is this? — and why so public?

Well, it’s a kiss that you put it out there in public,

            or someone in your communications department did:

            someone sorting through dozens of pictures from the first mission trip to Honduras and trying to choose which one to put in your booklet that introduces the Church of the Incarnation —

            whoever that was came across a picture of Polly Richards kissing a young Honduran girl on her cheek.

And all of a sudden the pictures of the medical work and the pictures of the dental work — well, we can imagine why those ones didn’t make the cut —

            but also the pictures of the eyeglasses dispensary, the Vacation Bible School, and the church construction —

            all those pictures of the good and important work that the team went to Honduras to do,

            all those pictures were put aside.

The picture of the kiss, Polly leaning down and kissing the Honduran girl —

            that’s the one picture chosen to illustrate the international mission work of this parish.

Let’s call it the Incarnation kiss.

Let’s call it the mission kiss.

Let’s do more: Let’s say that God’s mission comes down to a kiss.

A kiss is personal.

A kiss is intimate.

And that’s just how personal and intimate God’s mission is!

Look at the two stories about God’s mission we hear today in scripture.

Elisha and the woman at Shunem.

The meeting, the inviting, the meal, the in-law apartment, the birth of the boy —

            how homey, friendly and personal!

The boy dies on a hot, freakish afternoon,

            and the woman of Shunem knows that the mission of God that entered her life has just got to have another act.

Elisha goes in, he closes the door and he prays,

            and then he stretches himself upon the child and puts his hands on the child’s hands and, the scripture says, “put his mouth on the child’s mouth” —

            “the flesh of the child became warm,” and then there was the sneezing.

God’s mission came down to a kiss.

Elisha did lots of public things as he wandered around,

            but this is one of the longest stories about any prophet,

            and it’s a private, domestic story about the mission of the prophet in a friendship with a family,

            and there God’s mission came down to a kiss.

Today’s Jesus story is another private, homey story.

Jesus had been doing lots of big public things,

            like liberating a man from a demon in the synagogue in Capernaum,

            but at the end of the day he and his disciples had to go home,

            and home was Peter and Andrew’s home.

It’s the home of both of them, so it’s an extended-family home,

            and, sure enough, the extended family is there, Peter’s mother-in-law,

            and she’s sick.

“And Jesus came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her.”

Not literally a kiss, but a healing in the bosom of a family,

            a healing that arose from a close relationship.

Not literally a kiss, but still the mission kiss.

I want to say that the incarnation itself,

            the central, supreme and surpassing act of God around which you gather and name yourselves in this parish,

            the whole of what God was up to in Jesus of Nazareth

            can be summed up in a kiss:

            the kiss of God the Word becoming flesh and living among us,

                        God in Jesus coming into the human story,

                        God in Jesus embracing the human story,

                        God in Jesus kissing you and me —

            God’s mission comes down to a kiss. 

Mission is about sending and being sent.

Mission isn’t ours, nor is it the church’s.

The mission is God’s.

The call to mission is God’s call that we participate in what God is up to in the world.

Mission is ministry in dimension of difference.

We’re on mission when we participate with God across the boundaries of difference,

            when we let God call us beyond who we are to encounter those who are different from who we are.

Those differences can be any kind of differences —

            ethnic, racial, social, economic, national, linguistic, geographical.

Mission can be with a different community right here in Houston.

Mission can be with a people in an entirely different part of the world. 

In May, it was an inspiration to be with Scott and Carol Kellerman,

            missionaries of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society

            who are working with the Batwa pygmy people in western Uganda.

A hunting and gathering forest people, the Batwa were evicted from the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest by the Uganda government in order to protect the gorillas there —

            and now they’re on their own in modern Ugandan society with challenges and diseases they never imagined.

It’s with help from this diocese that the Kellermans are working with the Batwa,

            Scott as a physician and Carol as a teacher and spiritual guide.

My wife Jane and I got up to their remote station high up in the mountains in the Diocese of Kinkiizi, and they took us to the Batwas’ settlement

            where we had a good visit with them.

And there on their ridge was the Diane Stanton Health Clinic, named after the spouse of the bishop of this diocese,

            for Bishop Jim and Diane have been very involved in mission in Uganda.

Jim and Carol are doing excellent work with the Batwa,

            but what stands out in their presence is the care, the affection, the humor, the tenderness of their relationships with this victimized people. 

Relationship is the heart of mission

            and what we’re seeing in this new century is that companionship is the central quality in that relationship.

The Standing Commission on World Mission of the Episcopal Church, which I chair, has just prepared a 30-page vision statement for the church’s world mission for this year’s General Convention.

What we’ve found through talking with missionaries, mission supporters, and Anglicans around the world is that money, programs and projects are not longer the heart of world mission.

People are instead seeing that relationships of companionship are central.

God is calling our church as a whole to be a companion with other churches in the Anglican Communion and beyond. 

Dioceses and parishes are living out their call to be companions with dioceses and parishes in other countries, just as you are living out a companionship with a congregation in Honduras.

Individual missionaries like Valeska Daley and the Kellermans are ministering as companions in their places of service.   

Literally, companions share bread together. 

Theologically, companions share in Christ the bread of life. 

Today the missionary and the mission community journey with others and form community in Christ.

 In such companionship both missionary and supporting community are transfigured as they experience the gospel life of their companion communities.

Companionship in mission constitutes a shift from some modes of the colonial era,

            when sending churches in the Global North were sometimes confident that they had everything to teach and nothing to learn —

            now we know that all of us are learners in the mission journey.

Solidarity with the suffering is a central expression of mission companionship. 

The mission church may not be able to solve the anguish, violence and injustice suffered by the companion church,

            but simply being present in the place of fear, loss and isolation expresses the love of Christ.

That is what you are up to in your many engagements around the world

That is what God is up to through your many engagements around the world. 

It’s the Incarnation kiss.

It’s the mission kiss.

God’s mission comes down to a kiss.