will you give up your spot?

 Mission Formation Talk

4 October 2020

Memorial of St. Francis of Assisi

The longer I'm in this Jesus business, the more jacked-up it seems.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

This plan bothers the crap out of me.  It bothers me more everyday.  It's just the worst plan you can imagine.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

Jesus leaves his home and his status in the heart of the Father, to be born homeless into a pile of crap that is our reality, only to end up bloodied and humiliated.

You want to send me - send us?  Like that?

You want us to go announce peace?  I say peace out, Jesus!  No wonder the laborers are so few.  Who would sign up for that job?

Except that you did.  I did,  We did.  Welcome to Mission Formation.

I was duped.  You were duped. We let ourselves be duped.

Fools for Jesus - if we accept Jesus' mission just as he offers it, can there be any other tagline?

You thought you were going to a party school.  Now it's your mission field.  

As the Father has sent me, so I.  Send.  You.  To KU.  Rock Chalk!

Jesus needs you.  Not because he need needs you.  Not because there is no other way.  But because this is his favorite way.  He could choose not to need you but he chooses not to not need you.  I know - that hardly makes sense.  And that's the point.  I don't really know what he's thinking.  His strategic plan for mission is super jacked up.  In his messed-up, paradoxical, my way is not your way kind of game-planning, he has devised a mission at KU in which He delights in watching you fumble around and screw things up, and I'll be darned if things don't turn out better than if He had done it all Himself.

Jesus needs you.  Not because He need needs you. But because He delights in needing you, in seeing you come alive by his needing you.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you!

The mission is super-jacked up, but there's more.

Jesus needs you also to fail.  On purpose.  The instruction  manual - build a kingdom with no money, no authority and no weapons.  Build our kingdom by being willing victims, lambs among wolves. Let everyone mock you.  Announce peace and a new kingdom by swallowing up violence with poverty, humility, generosity and mercy.

The plan will fail. Guaranteed! But that's the point.  It's supposed to.  He sends you to fail on purpose.  He needs you to watch the plan not work.  Then you get to say - peace out! After your time at KU is over.

What a pathetic strategy . . . but that too is the point .. pathos means to suffer.  The strategy is to fail, and to suffer.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

One more jacked-up thing about this mission.  The place that you have right now belongs to someone else.  Jesus gives up his status in the heart of God so that you can have that place.  He puts Himself on the outside to put me on the inside.  He loses so that I can win.  He is rejected so that I can favored.  He is bound so that I can be free.  He dies for me to live.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

Your place here at SLC belongs to someone else.  So does mine.  Wait a second, you might say, it's hard enough to feel at home at KU, to fit into this community, and I'm not even sure I have a place at St. Lawrence yet, and you're telling me I have to vacate?

Yep I don't care if you are God's gift to Slow Drip, or you're Sr. Raffaellas' very favorite spiritual directee, or if you're the GOAT at Focus Discipleship, or if you're clever enough to fool Dr. Murray - even if you're the greatest chaplain St. Lawrence has ever seen . . your place belongs to someone else.

Yep, in this jacked-up mission it's the only way this thing works.  The only things we have are those we give away.  It's why missionary discipleship is not an oxymoron, it's the only thing that makes sense.  The follower is also the one sent.  Having a place and having a mission are two-sides of the same coin.  In God's logic you can't have one without the other.  You don't know how to live unless you know how to die.  You can't keep something until and unless you give it away.

I have been blessed with this awesome  mission to my alma mater, of having the responsibility to shepherd this campus into the fullness of reality, truth, goodness, relationship and life - to guide the best stories and to lay hold of the sacred opportunity and terrible responsibility that we all have here together to grow into the likeness of God during our time on the Hill. 

But this mission will never be mine unless I give it to you.  And it'll never work until you take it from me, and give it to somebody else.

In our playbook for this mission, we call this student ownership. It's right in line with the jacked-up, paradoxical, strategic planning Jesus outlines in the Gospel.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

Today I choose to need you, not to need need you.  But I choose not to not need you.  I choose to believe in you and to delight in needing you.  This thing doesn't work unless you make this mission yours, believe in this jacked-up plan, embrace your role, and then go find someone to take your place.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.