Disciple: Keep Going!

The Pastoral Address to the 199th Annual Convention

By The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry

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Last year at our Annual Convention you may recall that we zeroed in on the word “go” as a word to define the mission of the Church in this 21st-century mission context we’ve been calling Galilee. We borrowed it from the old spiritual “Go Down Moses.”

Go and tell old pharoah. Go and speak. Go and do something. Go, go deep, to the soil and the life of God.

So this morning, I’d like to pick up where we left off. We’ve got to keep going. To do that we’re going to look at two texts: the words of Jesus and the words of Harriet Tubman. Put them side-by-side.

Here’s the calling conversation between Jesus and Peter in Luke’s Gospel:

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret [otherwise known as the Sea of Galilee], and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. (Luke 5:1-6)

In essence, Jesus says to Peter, “Put out into deep water, and get ready for a great catch.”

On more than 20 trips leading some 300 people from slavery to freedom, when they were about to embark on that perilious and hope-filled journey,  Harriet Tubman would say it this way:

If you hear the dogs, keep going.
If you see the torches in the woods, keep going.
If there’s shouting after you, keep going.
If the boiler breaks down, keep going.
If the roof needs to be replaced, keep going.
If there aren’t as many folks in church --

She didn’t say what I’m saying now, but she meant that. She said:

Don’t ever stop. Don’t ever quit.
Don’t give up. Don’t give in.
If you want a taste of freedom,
Keep going!

I submit that the word for the Church this day is keep going. Don’t get weary. Times are gonna get tough. Don’t you give up. Don’t you give in. We follow a risen and living Lord, and he didn’t quit at the cross, and we can’t quit with what faces us. Keep going.

FROM THE 1950s TO THE 21ST CENTURY

Our bishop suffragan, Bishop Anne Hodges-Copple, and I are both Baby Boomers. Both of us were born and raised in The Episcopal Church. Both of us were baptized according to the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. We were raised by this Church, formed by this Church. We are who we are because of this Church.

But the Church that formed us was the Church of the 1950s. It was a Church that was expanding because America was expanding.

My grandmother hails from back East, and in my grandma’s North Carolina, everybody was Baptist. You may have been a Methodist Baptist, Roman Catholic Baptist, Jewish Baptist, Muslim Baptist—but everyone was Baptist. And everyone went to church, and even if they didn’t go to church, they lied about it and said they did.

But that Church does not exist anymore. I love it because it made me who I am. I thank God for it, but it’s the Church of the past. Everybody’s not Baptist anymore. The fastest growing group of people in our culture are those who say they have no religious affiliation whatsoever. Fewer and fewer people are going to churches. That is the reality.

And in this context, the Church can no longer wait for its congregation to come to it. If we wait we’re going to be waiting for Godot, and he’s not showing up. Now the Church must become the missionary Church. The Church must become the evangelical Church in the best sense of that world. We must be the Church that goes forth in the name of the love of God that we have seen in Jesus Christ. In this context, when the word “Christian”—

I’m going to get in trouble. I am so far off this manuscript you can’t imagine. [Editor’s note: He was.]

Sometimes that word “Christian” has been so hijacked to mean things that don’t mean what Jesus of Nazareth stood for, you’re almost ashamed to say “I’m a Christian.”

We must reclaim the faith of Jesus. We must reclaim a faith that is grounded in the love of God, the compassion of God, the goodness of God, the justice of God.

But if we just do it behind our doors, if we do it when it’s just us around, nobody’s gonna know it. And it’s time for the world to know it. Billy Sunday, one of the lead revivalists at the turn of the 20th century, is reputed to have said, “Heaven help the rest of Protestantism if the Episcopal Church ever wakes up.”

My Brothers and Sisters, it is time for the Episcopal Church to wake up, to stand up for the way of God.

For the world to hear that, for others to hear that in North Carolina, we’ve got to go forth!

And that’s not anything new. It’s all over the Bible.

Abraham and Sarah were doing just fine, and the Lord said I want you to go to a land that is not your own, to a people that are not your own, because through you all of the families of the world are going to be blessed. (Paraphrase of Genesis 12:1)

And I hear God telling us in the Diocese of North Carolina, we have to go. We have a message to proclaim, a God to glorify, a savior to follow.

And it wasn’t just Abraham and Sarah. Remember Moses? Go? That’s what the song says:

Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt land.
And tell old, Pharaoh,
Let my people go. (Exodus 3)

And Isaiah the prophet in the temple of Jerusalem: “Who will go for us? Whom shall we send? Here I am Lord, send me.” (Isaiah 6:8)

And Jesus in Mark’s Gospel: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.”
(Mark 16:15)

In Matthew’s Gospel: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
(Matthew 28:19)

In the Acts of the Apostles Jesus says: Go; you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth—you will be my witnesses in 1st-century Palestine and in 21st-century North Carolina, but you’ve got to go! (Paraphrase of Acts 1:8)

Having said that, somebody is thinking, “Preacher, we’re Episcopalian. I know that’s in the Bible, but if it’s not in the Prayer Book, we don’t have to do it.” So I went to the Book of Common Prayer, and when I let my fingers do the walking, I fell upon page 366 at the conclusion of the Eucharist. The deacon sends the congregation out into the world with these words: “Let us go forth in the name of Christ.”

The deacon can also say: “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

Here’s another option. The deacon can say: “Let us go forth, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.”

The last command you hear at the end of Holy Eucharist is “Go!”

I think that the word “go” is the mission word in this context of Galilee. Go and proclaim that good news. Go and live the love of God in Jesus. Go.

GO SPEAK: SHARING OUR FAITH

You remember Bishop Hodges-Copple, Dr. Ayliffe Mumford, director of the School of Ministry, and Shelley Kappauf, their executive assistant, helped us do faith-sharing back in May.

A friend of mine says Episcopalians are a little Holy Ghost shy, so it was designed to create a way for us to tell our spiritual stories to each other.

Do you know a thousand of you participated? A thousand Episcopalians in the Diocese of North Carolina spent the night telling each other how God has touched their lives.

I went to several vestry meetings after that night, and they were not interested in talking with me about fixing the boiler or replacing the roof. They were not worrying about the every member canvas or why they don’t have more young people in their church. They wanted to tell me how God had moved in their lives.

The Lord’s been blessing you. He’s been blessing us. When we start to tell that story, start to live out of that story, we will find a way to make these churches move forward. We will find a way to stand up, and this whole Episcopal Church will give the rest of Protestanism something to worry about.  

GO DO: HARVEST FOR HOSPITALITY

We said we were going to go do, and we started the Harvest for Hospitality campaign to support the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry. We’ve already raised $100,000 of our $400,000 goal. Now we’re ready to kick into high gear. 

I have to tell you, I like to eat. I like turkey and stuffing, potatoes, rice, mac and cheese, and I like chitlins, too. It occurred to me that most of what I’m going to eat next Thursday, Thanksgiving, was likely picked or provided by a farmworker. One way we can give thanks to God for them is by making their lives a little bit better. Through the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry, we’re doing that.

At the board meeting last week, we gave thanks for the ministry of Father Tony Rojas, who’s about to retire. We’ve appointed an interim director, Dr. Juan Carabaña, who’s here translating. The Episcopal Farmworker Ministry is now financially stable—you don’t know what an accomplishment that is—and we’re about to move forward under his leadership. Juan, we thank God for you.

TO GO LONG, YOU’VE GOT TO GO DEEP

Bishop Neil Alexander, a former liturgics and homiletics professor at General Seminary, used to say about the length of sermons, “If you don’t go deep, don’t go long.”

There are no tricks that are going to fix us. There are no quick fixes, no easy solutions. If we’re going to go long, we’ve got to go deep—deep into the soil and the reality of the Living God. Deep into the reality of the Risen Christ. Deep into the reality of that sweet, sweet Spirit.

Jesus figured that out a long time ago. When he met Peter on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus knew full well it was one of the most unpredictable environments on Earth. It could be calm and peaceful one moment and explosive thunder storms, lightning, wind and hail the next.

In this Galilean environment, unpredictability and instability may well be the new normal.

And Jesus grasped that with Simon Peter and taught Peter you’ve got to go deep. If you go deep, you can handle uncertainty. If you go deep, you can handle ambiguity. If you go deep, you can handle a world that goes topsy-turvy. Jesus said to Peter: Put out your net into the deep, and then get ready for a great catch.    

I hear him saying that same thing to us.

I want to commend to you a movie that I haven’t seen. Actually I’ll commend the trailer. The trailer for Son of God depicts the Gospel lesson from Luke 5, where Peter is frustrated on the boat because he’s not catching any fish. I want you to hear that. We’re frustrated because we can’t make our church work the way they used to work. We’re frustrated because it’s costing more money, time and effort to get the same results—or maybe not even to get the same results. We and Peter are frustrated because we’re not catching fish like we used to catch fish.

And Jesus comes alongside of Peter and says, “Put out your net into the deep.” So Peter casts the net over the side of the boat, and soon he and the others are hauling so many fish they can’t handle it. Then Jesus says to Peter, “Now follow me.” Peter (in the movie, not in the Bible) says, “Where are we going?” And Jesus says, “To change the world.”

We follow Jesus to change the world. To change the world from what is often a nightmare for far too many to something closer to God’s dream for us all. To change the world into a world where no child goes to bed hungry at night. To change the world into a world where all men, women and children are treated as children of the one God. To change it by the transforming, transfiguring, renewing power of the love of God.

Our mission is not to worry about our numbers. Our mission is not to worry about our budget. Our mission is to transform this world in the name of the loving, liberating life of Jesus.

If you hear the dogs, keep going.
If you see the torches in the woods, keep going.
If there’s shouting after you, keep going.
Don’t ever stop. Don’t ever quit.
Don’t give up. Don’t give in.
If you want a taste of freedom,
Keep going!

God love you, God bless you, and keep the faith.

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The Rt. Rev. Michael B. Curry was elected the 11th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina in 2000. Contact him.