Mission: Something Very Near

July 8, 2007, 14^th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Isaiah 66:10-14 Galatians 6:14-18 Luke 10:1-12

To the church in the diaspora[1]

& to the church of the unchurched[2]

Introduction

Root meanings

A good sixty years ago my great Capuchin professors at St. Lawrence Seminary, Mt. Calvary, WI, gave me a sound training and a great affection for the classical languages of Latin and Greek. Because of them I can taste the root flavors of many of our English words. For example, I can hear and taste the word `mission’ in the past participle of the Latin verb to send: missus sum. It can be translated as “I have been sent” or “I have been missioned.”

Missionary dynamism

Christian theology abounds with a missionary dynamism. From all eternity God is a Father who begets a Son and sends Him forth on mission. The Father and the Son, in turn, send forth the Holy Spirit on mission. Those two missions constitute the internal life of the eternal God[3]. Then when the fullness of time came, the Father sent his Son on mission into this world. He, in turn, chose twelve apostles (the word means `sent’), and sent them on mission (Lk 9:1-2). Later on he chose another seventy-two and sent them on mission (Lk 10:1). After his resurrection from the dead, he appeared to the eleven apostles, chided them for not believing that he had risen from the dead and then gave them a great missionary mandate saying, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to every creature” (Mk 16:15).

We are reminded of our missionary dynamism at the end of every Mass. Ite Missa est, we are exhorted. Go, the Mass is ended. It’s a dismissal to go forth on mission into the week ahead. In fact, the very word `Mass’ (Missa in Latin) comes from the Latin missus meaning `sent.’ We are a `missa’--a group of people sent forth on mission by the weekly celebration of the Eucharist. From top to bottom, from beginning to end the church is missionary by her very nature. We’re all sent on mission.

Christian mission?

We’re all sent on mission but what’s the mission we’re sent on? When Christians claims that “Outside the church there is no salvation,”[4] then mission takes on an urgent, almost frantic, dimension. Then the mission is the overwhelming task of making the whole world Christian (for outside the church, you know, there is no salvation). Such a claim is fraught with all sorts of mischief, as the dark history of Christian missions proves. Such a claim makes the church God’s very special favorite and gives the church infidels to overcome either through conversion or Christian Jihad.

Islamic mission?

Islam, like Christianity, is also a missionary religion. What’s Islam’s mission? Is it to make the whole world Muslim? One of the five great Pillars of Islam is Shahada. That’s a proclamation of personal faith that there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet. Subliminally at least, Shahada is loaded with missionary urgency. Sometimes listed as a sixth Pillar of Islam is Jihad – Holy War. That can mean a holy war of self discipline waged upon one’s self in the struggle to surrender to Allah.[5] Or it can mean something less noble.

When some Islamists claim that “Outside the mosque there is no salvation,” that claim, too, is fraught with mischief. Then Jihad becomes a holy war to make the whole world Muslim. That mischief, in fact, is a very great concern at this very moment in the UK where extreme Islamists were recently foiled in an attempt to detonate a car loaded with explosives in London, and where the same terrorists rammed a Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow Airport.

The message is clear. After all the dust and debris have settled down, the writing on the wall (if there’s a wall left standing), written there by the Immans (Islamist clerics), is “Our way is the only way; every other way has to go!” The claim that outside the mosque there is no salvation makes the mosque Allah’s favorite and gives Islam infidels to overcome either through conversion or Holy Jihad.

Judaic mission?

What, we ask, is the mission of Judaism? Is it to make the whole world Jewish? Unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism is not a staunchly missionary religion. In the early church when a problem arose about Jews mixing with Gentiles (Acts 10:28) Peter Simon, a Jew, got up and said, “I now realize that God has no favorites but gives welcome to the man of any nation who fears Him and acts uprightly" (Acts 10:34-35). The same theme that God has no favorites is found in Deuteronomy 10:17, II Chronicles 19:7, Job 34:19, Wisdom 6:7, Romans 2:11, Galatians 2:6 and Ephesians 6:9.

If God has no favorites but gives welcome to any one from any nation who fears him and acts uprightly, then there is no urgent or frantic need for Judaism to go forth and make the whole world Jewish. Judaism rests in peace; it lives and lets live, and it wishes itself to be left in peace. It launches no crusades. It plots no terrorist attacks on airports. It has no infidels it must either convert or destroy.

A new approach

Dr. Joseph Hough, President of Union Theological Seminary in New York, calls on Christians to take a new theological approach to other religions and consequently assume a new attitude about mission. To be passionately Christian, he maintains, does not mean we must believe there is no salvation outside the Christian Church. It does not mean that God can reveal himself in no other face than that of Jesus. We can be passionately Christian, he maintains, and still believe that God can reveal himself in any face He chooses. We can be passionately Christian and still believe that God has no favorites, and that we Christians have no infidels we need to convert or destroy.

Mission after Vatican II

Some of us remember pre-Vatican II days when we Catholics reveled in our majority. We gloried in our numbers. We could boast of an endless supply of priests and nuns, an abundance of Catholic schools and hospitals, a sufficient number of parishes to accommodate large Catholic constituencies, and an impressive army of missionaries to send off to distant lands. In those days we were a colossus on the roll. Then along came Vatican II which sowed the seeds of our present minority. In the mysterious plan of God the council has cut us down to size. We are no longer a colossus on the roll. We have now become a little flock, and Jesus bids us not to be afraid of our minority. “Nolite timere pusillus grex.” “Do not be afraid, little flock. It has pleased the Father to give you the kingdom” (Lk 12: 32).

Vatican II inspired a crisis in the old concept of mission. It gave mission a new emphasis and direction. Mission now is not about numbers. Mission now is not about something we do to people, e.g., convert and baptize them—make them Christians (because outside the church there is no salvation). Mission now is something we do for people. When Jesus chose the twelve he sent them forth to do something for people. “Go! Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and drive out demons” (Mt 10:8). Spelled out in an enigmatic nutshell, mission is not spreading the world's love for Jesus but Jesus’ love for the world! Jesus sends forth the twelve and the seventy-two and ourselves not so much to do something to people (convert and baptize them) as to do something for them‛.

A legendary missionary who baptized everyone

The old concept of mission to do something to people (convert and baptize them) is embodied in a legendary missionary model: St. Francis Xavier. Born in the Basque area of Spain in 1506, he joined up with St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order, and became the greatest of all Christian missionaries, with the possible exception of St. Paul. He is called “the Apostle of the Indies” and “the Apostle of Japan.” He could count hundreds of thousands of converts (perhaps as so many notches in his belt). He died in 1552, and his body was buried in Goa, a city located on India’s west coast. There it lies to this very day. His right arm, however, which baptized so many thousands of converts, is preserved in a glass reliquary in the church of the Gesù in Rome for all to see!

A great missionary who baptized no one

Compare that legendary missionary of the past who baptized everyone with a great missionary of the present who baptized no one: Mother Theresa of Calcutta. She was the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Her mission was not baptism but charity. When she died ten years ago on September 5, 1997, a Hindu gentleman at her funeral called this passionately Roman Catholic nun "the Daughter of God" and declared that her religion “was not important to her!” Strange as it might sound, that was a profound compliment. He was saying that her religion did not stand in the way of her catholic love—her universal love. It embraced those whom others didn’t want to touch, and it even embraced diverse religionists. That Hindu gentleman was praising Mother Theresa who did nothing to the Hindus she found dying in the streets of Calcutta (i.e., convert and baptize them) but did everything for them.

She gathered them up and carried them to her hospice for the dying. There she and her sisters bathed and fed them. Then without pouring one drop of baptismal water over their heads, Mother Theresa and her sisters kissed them and sent them off to heaven believing, at long last, that they were human beings worth loving. In the new day that is mission marvelously accomplished!

Mission: not too mysterious or remote

What’s mission? We can say of mission what Moses said of the Law which Yahweh commanded him to give to the people: “It is not too mysterious and remote for you. It is not something up in the sky, that you should ask, `Who will go up into the sky to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?’ It is not something from across the sea, that you should ask, `Who will cross the sea to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?’ No, it is something very near to you, …and you have only to carry it out” ( Dt 30:10-14).

Mission “is not something across the sea.” It is always something very near to us. Mission was very near to the Good Samaritan on the road to Jericho where a poor man was waylaid by robbers. There on that road the Samaritan found his mission and carried it out. Mission was very near to Mother Theresa. There on the streets of Calcutta she found her mission and carried it out.

Mission “is not something up in the sky.” It is not only for famous stars like St. Francis Xavier or St. Mother Theresa. Mission is also for little guys like Jerry Quinn who owned a bar and restaurant in Boston. In the morning newspaper he read that Franklin Piedra, an Ecuadorian, 33 years old, was suffering from chronic kidney failure. His mother wanted to give him one of her kidneys. The transplant would cost at least 100,000 dollars, and she has no health insurance.  The Ecuadorian Consulate suggested that he go home and die. Jerry Quinn had a better idea.  He was saving his money for a major down-payment on a two-bedroom apartment in a suburban part of Boston with a river view and all. But another thought kept popping up, and he couldn’t get rid of it. He called the reporter at the New York Post who wrote the story. He said he wanted to help. She asked, “How much do you want to donate—a hundred bucks? A thousand bucks?”  He replied, “I’d like to do the whole thing! The whole $100,000!”

“I’m not a very wealthy guy,” he said. “I’m comfortably off, but I got this thing in my life—you can use only one car, you can use only one kitchen, you can use only one bathroom, you can only eat so much. That’s my theory of life. So what more do I need?”

Quinn was a little guy who discovered his mission in the morning newspaper one day and carried it out in a big way.

Conclusion

Their only proof

The mission of the Good Samaritan was critical for the poor man waylaid by robbers and left half-dead. The mission of Mother Theresa was critical for all those untouchables left dying by the roadside. The mission of Jerry Quinn was critical for Piedra dying from kidney failure. Their missions were critical because they were the only proof which the roadside victim and the dying Hindus and the penniless Piedra had that God loved them.

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[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!

[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!

[3] Vatican II: “The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature. For it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father” (Decree on the Missions, Ad Gentes).

[4] Extra ecclesiam nulla salus – Outside the church there is no salvation is a phrase used by St. Cyprian (200-258). The phrase always requires a ton of explaining away.

[5] In fact, Islam is an Arabic word meaning to surrender i.e. to surrender to God’s will.