The mission of the Church, according to our prayer book catechism, is “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (p. 855). Technically speaking, the Church herself does not really have a mission. Mission is always God’s mission, in which the Church is invited to participate. Our particular calling as the body of Christ, “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ,” is a lofty one.
We might get hung up on “all people” and “unity.” Our calling is universal: the Gospel must reach to the ends of the earth. And we are surely all too aware of the lack of unity in our own society, where divisions and rancor are rampant, and this disunity pervades even the Church. In short, the Church’s calling is not only lofty, it is deeply challenging.
Of course, we need the grace of God to accomplish what we are being called to do. But perhaps it also helps to look for visible signs. We seek out and treasure those signs of our partially realized or aspirational unity. And one such sign for the Church is the episcopacy. As the name suggests, the Episcopal Church is a church “of the bishops.” Episcopal comes from the Greek word episkopos, meaning overseer. From the earliest days of the Church’s existence, there were apostles, “walking sacraments” (to use the image given by the late Anglican theologian Austin Farrer) who journeyed to the ends of the earth to spread the Gospel and witnessed to the sacrificial calling of that same Gospel. The word “martyr” comes from the Greek word for "witness.”
St. Ignatius of Antioch said this: “Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church” (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm). Around the bishop, the Church gathers, as a visible sign of the Church’s call to perfect unity. Bishops are guardians of the faith, loving stewards of the mysteries of God and of holy doctrine, ensuring that this treasure of the Church is handed down from age to age. Bishops are pastors, hence the bishop’s staff or crozier, which is shaped like a shepherd’s crook. The bishop is him or herself a shepherd.
In the earliest days of the Church, there were simply bishops and deacons. Only the bishop celebrated the Eucharist, and deacons served. But as the Church expanded, bishops could no longer be the sole celebrants of the Eucharist, and so presbyters or priests were ordained to celebrate the Eucharist on behalf of the bishop. Accordingly, the exercise of my own priestly vocation is always done with the permission of the bishop. I am not a free agent. In order for the Episcopal Church to be truly episcopal, parishes must not be congregational, worlds to themselves. This is why our canon law points everything back to the episcopacy. The episcopacy is not so much an office of power as it is a visible, sacramental sign of the unity to which God calls us.
According to canon law, the bishop of a diocese must visit every parish in his or her diocese at least once every three years. This Sunday, our own bishop, the Rt. Rev. Daniel Gutiérrez, will visit Good Shepherd. This visitation is a reminder that every Mass celebrated at Good Shepherd is an extension of the bishop’s own ministry. A strong and healthy relationship with our bishop is essential, for it is a part of the vocation of the Church to gather around bishops as a sign of our unity. This is a particularly important witness in our own divided age and in a time when, especially within Anglicanism, splinter groups and alternative episcopal oversights are established that weaken the visible unity of the Church gathered around bishops, the successors to the apostles.
In addition to celebrating our call to unity as a Church, I hope that Sunday’s Mass will be an occasion of thanksgiving for how far Good Shepherd has come as a parish. We are growing in faith, hope, and love, and one visible sign of this will be the large number of parishioners coming forward to receive the laying on of hands by the bishop for Confirmation and Reception into the Episcopal Church. Ten people will be confirmed and four received, and two other persons will be joining us from other parishes in the diocese for Confirmation and Reception.
Through Good Shepherd’s difficult times, our bishop has lovingly journeyed with this parish, calling it back into unity with the larger Church. And still, through his gracious support, we receive some modest funding towards my own salary to support outreach through campus ministry. We have much to be grateful for in the support of our bishop and offices of the diocese. This Sunday, I hope you will take a moment to personally offer this thanks to Bishop Gutiérrez. I am personally thankful for his constant support in my time as a priest in this diocese.
I hope you will plan to be present this Sunday as our parish celebrates its visible ties to the wider Church catholic. Come to pray for and support our fellow members of the body of Christ as they are confirmed and received into this communion of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. Come and celebrate God’s gracious blessings upon this parish as we move forward as a hopeful, visible sign of the power of the Gospel in our own day.
Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle