What a great joy is has been to gather with you this weekend.
Thanks again to the congregations of Ascension and Trinity for your months of hard work and preparation for this 182nd Council. You have been marvelous hosts!
This has been a weekend of celebration and challenge. We have seen and heard of so many ways that this church has been involved in the healing and reconciling work of the Lord Jesus Christ - from the soul work of the Bishops Mission Corps to the medical work in Honduras. It is a holy thing that we do when we pause to remember and give thanks to God for how God has worked through us through the years. We have tried to live into the South African concept of "Umbutu" - roughly translated, "I am because you are," or in the idiom of our weekend - "We are all in this together."
We have sought to expand our sense of what it means to be a reconciling church in Mission. Bishop Ezekiel and Rebecca have blessed us by their presence and their witness and have shared the faith and hope that is within them. We have heard how the same Lord guides and directs, and is our hope, in profoundly different cultures. And I could not help but notice the remarkable symbol of their little Telaar, now Paul, being carried to and fro this weekend by so many of you. Unaware, at least for now, of what all of this means for him, Paul has traveled thousands of miles to be baptized here in Mississippi and has become that outward and visible sign of what St. Paul was talking about when he wrote that by the blood of Christ, "those who are far off have been brought near."
And we have acknowledged the challenges that confront us. There are the severe economic challenges that hinder the reconciling work of our church; but, there are other challenges as well. There is a question that dwells within every one of us. What is the cost - emotional, spiritual, financial - of the work of reconciliation? Desmond Tutu once wrote that the prostate cancer that developed during his tenure with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission "seemed to dramatize the fact that it is a costly business to heal a wounded and traumatized people and those engaging in this crucial task may bear the burden themselves." The cross stands ever before us. Every one of us knows that reconciliation is costly and everyone of us in our own ways is constantly counting the cost.
And now we have brought all that we have done this weekend to this altar - all that we have said and heard and seen and thought. We have brought to this altar all of our hopes and fears and confusion and sorrow, ourselves, our souls, our bodies. We bring our deepest desire to be a reconciling church and our deepest fear of what that might mean, to that holy place where the veil is lifted and God's ultimate reconciling act in Christ Jesus is revealed. This is my body - broken for you. This is my blood - shed for you. Listen carefully - those words are spoken to you and are about you and your God.
Our capacity to be instruments of healing and reconciliation is directly proportionate to our ability to hear and incorporate the reconciling work of God in Christ into our own souls: You are loved by God. In the act that we celebrate at this altar, you have been reconciled to God. That reality is foundational to all that we do.
So much in our lives prevent us from hearing this extraordinary good news. So much in our lives resists the reconciling love of God. And so in a moment, we will pray for healing - for ourselves and for our world. And following the reception of the bread and wine - body broken/blood shed - there will be stations where the sacrament of unction or healing will be offered. It, too, is God's gift to you mediated through God's church.
We are people in need of healing. We are a church in need of healing. We are a nation in need of healing. We are a world in need of healing. But we are not alone; we have not been left to our own resources. Isaiah's words shout through the centuries. "The Lord is the everlasting God . . . He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."
The challenges are so great. It is so easy to be discouraged, so overwhelmed . . . The work of reconciliation in this world will not be accomplished in our lifetime - but that is really not the point. We have chosen to focus on specific areas - the most vulnerable in our state or the most vulnerable overseas, not that we expect to solve the problems of our state or our world. Reconciliation is not a product for us to produce, but a life to be lived in witness to the one who has reconciled all things to God.
Ever since Adam and Eve ripped themselves away from God in the Garden of Eden, God has been in the business of reconciliation. We are a broken, imperfect, often rebellious people that God has called into being to be the vehicle of God's healing, reconciling love in a broken, imperfect rebellious world. It is the foolishness of God that we pray is greater than the wisdom of this world. So I close now with those words of St. Francis that I have referenced throughout this weekend: "Lord make us instruments of your peace - where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." Amen.
