Dear People of Christ Church,
Back from vacation, I'm glad to be settling back in with you, but so aware of how much changes. I was almost to Wyoming, where Jim Hewitt grew up, when I got the news that he died. I was so, so sorry to hear it. Jim was the junior warden (working with Marcia Luce as senior warden) when I began at Christ Church 9 years ago, and his unfailing sense of generosity, respect, and overall kindness covered my many errors in leadership as a relatively new priest. I remember one particularly tough call (the circumstances of which now escape me, so I assume it turned out fine) when, as senior warden, Jim looked at me with a kind of devilish glint in his eye and cheerfully declared, "Well, you're the CEO!" Which of course I wasn't, but his confidence in me made me much more brave than I felt at the time.
That's the magic of church; we are here, not because we are the same, but because we are one. Most of American culture is constructed on the assumption that you want to be with people who are like you; you watch either Rachel Maddow or Glenn Beck, and never the twain shall meet. In church, we have the latitude to be a bit more creative. Jim taught me that in a profound way.
Church is changing, the world is changing. St Paul would have been incredulous at the notion that churches would own large buildings and pay their clergy to preach, teach, fundraise, and run them like non-profit organizations. In the late nineteenth century, Frederic Fales would have been shocked that in addition to English, we also had services in Luganda (St Peter's Ugandan) and Spanish (Missionary Church of Christ) all held under the same roof, with French thrown in once in a while with Mission Maranatha's occasional rentals. Fifty years later, Francis Webster would have thought we were crazy to let a secular organization use our east lawn for an environmental education program-you didn't have to create meadows at the turn of the century. Fifty years after that, George Ekwall, rector from 1930-1960, would think that a man on the altar guild was an April fool's joke (nevermind women instead leading the service!).
But church is a living, breathing, recreating thing. It's a thing that's dying and a thing that's being raised. Churches aren't intended to be fortresses against the scary world outside. Instead, we're called to be as porous as we can-not to say "yes" to every whim, but to look at a broader sense of our mission and our gifts, to look around ourselves and be rooted enough to be open. It's Episcopal Churches in St Louis holding prayer vigils for Michael Brown and for peace in the city. It's Good Shepherd, Watertown, hosting a kids' craft table at the farmer's market. At the same time as we are anchored in the eternity of God, we are also called to look around us at the world as it is now. I'm grieving Jim but I also know that he's still part of the same holy Church as I am. He's returned to God's eternity; I just catch it like a hummingbird flitting just out of the corner of my eye. But I know it's still there.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8: 38-39).
Amen, Amen.
Blessings,
Sara+
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