Camina, Camina, Camina!
My wife Eve and I are just back Wednesday from a mission trip in Mexico. It was early spring in the southern highlands, flowering trees coming out, and I was remembering a trip to Israel in 1988, also in February, when it was early spring, and the trees were in flower, and the wild flowers were coming out on the grassy hillsides around the lake in Galilee.
We finish our month long reading from the Sermon on the Mount today. When Jesus taught by the lake, it was not desert. There is desert in Israel, and not very far away. But Galilee is not desert. There is a lot of water, a good sized lake, and all kinds of wildflowers.
Consider the lilies of the field, said Jesus. (Matthew 6:28)
Consider the lilies of the field – they are beautiful, glorious, even King Solomon in all his glory was not more beautiful than these.
But in the light of the Gospel there is something even more beautiful, even more cherished and loved by God – even more clothed in the glory of God’s love.
And that is the individual human life. Created by God. Loved with a saving love by God in Jesus Christ, who came that we might know and believe the love God has for every single one.
Jesus has given us many teachings in the Sermon on the Mount about ethics. At the heart of Christian ethics is the conviction that each person is created by God and of infinite value. I believe basic human rights are basic to Christian ethics. And extremely important – however hard to safeguard and put into practice – in thinking out our responses in a shrinking volatile changing world. An important Anglican contribution to Christian ethics is a commitment to dignity and value of each person joined with a commitment to freedom of conscience in making ethical decisions.
The most beautiful is the one child, clothed in God’s love.
I was thinking of this visiting a village, getting to know the people, including the children, in a very far away place and culture. A from our parish and diocese flew down to Mexico a week ago – flew to Mexico and then changed planes for the trip to the far south, the Mexican state of Chiapas.
On Saturday, February 19, our team was driven, in the van belonging to the Anglican Diocese of South East Mexico, to the mountain village of Yochib, where a community of people have joined our Anglican church.
Yochib is high in the southern highlands – very high, about 8,000 feet I believe – and we had on sweaters and scarves. It warmed up by noon.
How did we connect with a village in southern Mexico? Some years ago, our Diocese of Chicago established a companion diocese relationship with the Anglican Diocese of South East Mexico. Chicago also has a companion relationship with the Diocese of Renk in the Sudan.
Parishes and individuals are of course perfectly free to form relationships on their own and Bishop Lee encourages these. St. Chrysostom’s Day School has formed a relationship with an Episcopal school in Haiti – and that has my full and enthusiastic support. Hurrahs and Te Deums.
Our original connection was through our diocese, because it was a diocesan mission connection. Eve and I met Bishop Benito and his wife Angelica, who have been to Chicago a number of times, and been to St. Chrysostom’s and we have visited them in Mexico.
And indeed – was it ten years ago? -- we had a Brunch Auction for Mission to benefit South East Mexico and bought four Chevrolet pick up trucks for their clergy to use in the far flung diocese (Mexico is big, and traveling on mountain roads is slow) and also put water in a priest’s house.
Several years ago at another Brunch Auction parishioners Lisa and Michael Coleman offered their house in San Miguel de Allende, a lovely colonial town in quite another part of Mexico, in the hills north of Mexico City – and then they bought it themselves and gave it to Eve and me to use with the hope we would have Bishop Benito and Angelica come stay for some R & R. Bishop and Angelica did indeed come, what fun we had – and we were joined by Judy and John Bross who had just gotten married!
It was Bishop Benito, and his deacon, the Rev. Deacon Charles Parker – US citizen, professor of economics in Mexico City, commander in the US Navy, renaissance man – it was Bishop and deacon Charles who drew our attention to the new community emerging in the far south state of Chiapas.
Another question – what are Episcopalians doing in Mexico? I thought it was Roman Catholic? Well, Mexico is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, as is our own city of Chicago (since the 1880s). However Mexico is a big and complex society. As in all of Latin America there is a growing Pentecostal Christian community. There are also mainstream Protestant churches – if you look across the valley in the village we visited one can see the spires of the Presbyterian church! Anyone who knows me, knows I love many things about the Roman Catholic Church – and I pray we all will find ways of working together. But there is a (I hesitate to use the word, it is neither Biblical nor theological) “niche” for the Episcopal Church. We used to say between Rome and Geneva, that the Anglican Church was a middle way, via media, between Rome and Geneva. But perhaps between Rome and Pentecostalism. Also Mexico is a free country and people have religious freedom.
On Saturday the 19th we arrived in Yochib and greeted everyone – some faces familiar from last year. Many new. Our team climbed the dirt path up to the clearing in the forest where the church is. The church is a simple hut, open on three sides, with a tin roof and a dirt floor.
So, what did we do? Well, what do Christians do when we gather? We say hello and get to know one another. We read the stories of Jesus together, listen to the Bible stories. We share the Eucharist. And we have a meal together.
This is exactly what we did. In all of these things it was in no way “us” and “them” but the baptized people of God, gathered together at Jesus’ table.
Eve Webster led telling the children a Bible story, assisted by the local lay leader Francisco. Meanwhile, Victor Conrado, who is from our diocese (from the Cathedral) and originally from Colombia, led a study with the women and older teens.
Not everyone in Yochib speaks Spanish. Many speak the indigenous Mayan dialect Tseltal. The local school is bi lingual, Spanish and Tseltal! As Eve Webster told the Bible story in Spanish, Francisco translated into Tseltal. Meanwhile another friend Esteben translated into Tseltal in the adult Bible study led by Victor Conrado. Esteben Lopez Gomez is a key lay leader in the new mission in San Cristóbol de las Casas – and related to some of the people in Yochib.
Judy and John Bross had brought along a wooden ark for telling the story of Noah – and also had us bring crayons which we passed out for the kids to color. Great fun! And then we sang songs – they taught us some wonderful ones.
On Sunday we drove out to Yochib again with Father Florencio, Anglican priest in San Cristóbol de las Casas, who celebrated the Eucharist, in Spanish with readings and translations of Deacon Charles’ sermon into Tseltal. .
Our primary mission is in the city of Chicago. The primary mission of St. Chrysostom’s, Chicago is here in the city.
But an key part of the mission of the Christian church, from the days of the earliest church, there has also been support of the mission of the church beyond our borders. Not instead of, but also. If you stand amid the ruins of the palaces on the Palatine Hill in Rome, one can look over to the ancient monastery where Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine to be the first Archbishop of Canterbury in England. To organize and build the Church in England from which we descend.
It means a great deal to me to try to be supportive of this new Church plant in Yochib – to support a Christian community somewhere that was not there before. To support something starting, a church plant, a beginning, something new.
We went to Yochib because of the companion relationship of our diocese with theirs. Church structures have their failings! But in this case, I believe the Holy Spirit has used the larger relationship between dioceses, to lead two groups of Christian people from extremely different places – in terms of culture and history and language – to be friends.
When Christians get together we often have food. We also have parties. And I want to invite you to a party to celebrate our friendship with Yochib.
Judy Bross and a team (including Eve and me) are planning a ¡FIESTA! here at St. Chrysostom’s on Friday, May 13 to celebrate and benefit our companion diocese of Southeast Mexico, and especially this new congregation of Yochib. Please know an invitation.
When we were leaving Mexico on Wednesday, we flew to Mexico City, and for the second year in a row, flying up from the south, had spectacular views of the two great volcanoes outside the city.
Mexico City of course is famously big, the airport is big, and when Eve asked which way to the international flights she told me the policeman she spoke to said it was down the hall, a long distance and then he said “Camina, camina, camina.” Walk, walk, walk, journey, journey, journey!
Remembering how Jesus said, in John 14, “I am the way,” in La Biblia Latinoamerica, that Father Araiaca gave me, “Yo estoy el camino.”
Jesus who is himself the way, calls us to follow him on his way of self-giving love, caring for one another on the way – caring for others in the church beyond our parish borders, and also beyond our diocesan borders, over all sorts of walls.
Camina, camina, camina. Jesus, may we faithfully follow you day by day. Amen.
(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, February 27, 2011, the Eighth Sunday after the Epiphany.)
