Associate Priest's Report, 2021 Annual Meeting

Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face; here would I touch and handle things unseen; here grasp with firmer hand eternal grace, and all my weariness upon thee lean.

Horatius Bonar, hymn 318 in the Hymnal 1982

Reflecting on the past year brings this hymn to my heart. For starters, you and I have collected more than enough weariness to lean upon God. So much to grieve. So much loss. So much to carry. So much endless flexibility, adjusted plans, difficulty, and surrendered control: individually, in our nuclear and extended families, our friendships and social circles, and together as the Body of Christ in this place. I am grateful for the hymnist’s giving us permission to admit to our weariness in God’s presence.

Yet, just as surely, I find myself wanting to say that this season has also been one of grasping “with firmer hand eternal grace.” This year has witnessed so much generosity, creativity, and compassion. This year has asked us to open our hearts to love without condition, given and received, through the vulnerability it has asked of us. This year has made the work of pretending difficult and so has asked us to trust God to meet us in our need for God and one another. Time and again, God has met us in the space of that living trust. When I reflect on this past year, my heart both grieves and is full of gratitude.

I am so grateful for and proud of the resilience I have seen in our church. Very little of the last ten months is what we would have chosen. And yet. The showing up with God’s help to each new day in trust and hope and determination and expectation has been both inspiring and a witness to the God we gather to praise. I have seen this living witness across the gamut of our common life, in my share in the weekly youth activities, and in each of Holy Trinity’s active ministries. I’ll be focusing the remainder of this report, however, on the three main area’s of the Associate’s responsibilities: a) coordination of worship, b) adult Christian education, and c) staff meetings and development.

Worship

Worship coordination is a work of daily appreciation. So many folks, in ordinary years, offer their lives and labor to make our common worship possible, but that much more so in a season of pandemic. We have worshiped in no less than five separate formats this year, with more painstaking considerations for each one than I have paper to detail. I am so grateful for Fr. Keith’s decision making and overall direction and guidance, always with the well-being of our parish family and visitors to our community in mind. Amanda McCoy has been a miracle (and tireless) worker as the director of recordings and in making all services accessible and available online. Marilyn Ford has been a glue at every stage and especially in preparing for the reintroduction of in-person worship. And I don’t have words adequate for our many musicians, led by Lauren Murphy-Hale and Dennis Kinzler, with Al Clark playing a tremendous and largely invisible support role with sound editing, who have been amazingly creative, flexible, and faithful as they help our parish family continue to make a joyful noise to God.

Additionally, the Altar Guild, directed by Kathy Roemisch, has ably assisted the clergy through countless changes and adjustments, with characteristic generosity and grace. Greg Fox gave so much time installing the new camera equipment that helped make the weekly livestreams possible. Grace Johnson and the acolytes. Zoe Holmes with the readers. Terry Tunks and Matt McCoy with the ushers. Patsy Pratt and Marilyn with the greeters. Sally Meek with the Vestry. And all of you who have continued to serve in these respective ministries. Ken Bailey built HTbtL an outdoor altar! Malinda Miller and Sharon Fullington shepherded our children and a lot of joy at our outdoor Christmas pageant. Lauren Murphy-Hale and Marla Quimby kept us singing at the manger beneath the star. Thank you. Bless you. And God love you. We truly are the church together.

Adult Christian Education

I’ll include at the end of this report a summary of the Christian education offerings this past year, which serves as a kind of time capsule looking back, especially after March, but here I’ll simply name my appreciation for the adaptability of each one of you. Few of us knew much about Zoom at the start of this year. Now several of you are setting up and hosting your own meetings. Many of you are joining the weekly and monthly offerings of the church. Our formats are different, but we have navigated the changes in ways that allow us to keep the focus the same: growing together into the likeness and full stature of Christ.

One of the things you’ll notice that the role of technology allowed us to do is involve speakers and guests from a wider range of places and contexts. This is something we hope to continue, even after the necessity of distanced programming subsides. This year’s topics sought to be pastoral, encouraging, responsive to current events, and conferring of dignity to the ministry of each person. Your life and vocation matter to God! My prayer is that these opportunities have strengthened each one’s sense of imagination, empowerment, and belonging for the good work God has given us.

I want to especially name here the prayer group ministry that formed in response to the desire to grow in relationship and connection, even at a social distance. Zoe Holmes worked with Amanda McCoy to steer the ship out of harbor, with respect to logistics. Others of you signed up to lead. Still others of you signed up to pray. A beautiful embodiment of Holy Trinity’s commitment to seek the flourishing of our faith community at a difficult time.

Staff Development

Holy Trinity by the Lake is blessed with a remarkable staff. It is both humbling and a tremendous pleasure to seek out prompts and questions to open and guide our weekly reflection time and frame our meetings together. It’s an honor (and a lot of fun) to work with each of them. I admire and learn from them. And I thank God that life and this work can mean our personal and professional friendships. Please join me in naming appreciation for them as often as you think to.

Finally, I thank God for the gift it is to walk the life of faith with you as your associate priest in this place. I am glad for the opportunity to serve alongside my colleague and friend, Fr. Keith, and to grow in holy friendship with each of you in community. On a personal note, many of you know that this year’s weariness for me included the death of my grandfather to COVID-19. I have been deeply touched by and grateful for your many expressions of love and support, for me and my family, as we remember, name our thanks, and grieve. I’m glad for the opportunity to share our joys and sorrows, one with another, along this pilgrim way, and I’m grateful for your heart for Jesus and the new kingdom to which he’s called us. Thank God that he’s so called us.

May God continue to grow our grasp of God’s eternal grace at Holy Trinity by the Lake, in ways that grow our affections for each other, bless and serve those beyond these walls, and ever and always give glory to God.

Every blessing, and God’s good peace.

Fr. Jonathan

 

Christian Education Summaries

 

Lenten Series: Lent, Life, and Following Jesus.

Taking our lead from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s 2020 Lent Book, we engaged a series exploring creation care, looking especially at the work of ministries like Bonton and Plainsong farms, the scriptures, and next steps available to individuals and the church. This series was moved to an online setting midway, owing to the pandemic.

Special Programs in Response to the Pandemic

April 8: Pray and Stay Awake. A conversation on prayer and the altar of repose with the Rev. M. Randall Melton.

April 15: Formed in Time and Space: Reflecting on Christian Gathering, Worship, and the Spaces We Inhabit. A conversation with the Rev. Dr. Daniel Cochran about how our spaces shape us as God’s people and the ongoing nature of conversion and formation.

April 25: At Home with Holy Chaos. Kate Byrd helped me collect stories from across the country – including those of some of our members! – about how life was going and how people of faith were finding ways to navigate their still new pandemic circumstances.

April 30: Mental Health, Musicians, and the Rest of Us. A conversation about mental health, first in music, then applied to pandemic circumstances with organist and licensed therapist Lauren Murphy-Hale.

May: Prayer Group Training for Leaders. It was such a gift to offer the orientation to these leaders, whose ministry provided life-giving connection to our parish family in an extremely difficult time. Some of you reported feeling closer to members of your parish family than before the pandemic. Prayer group leaders stepped into an unknown role at an important time, and I am so very grateful for them.

June 17: Solidarity and Support in N. Minneapolis: Following George Floyd’s death and subsequent community responses across the country, a conversation with Steve Mullaney, campus minister at the University of Minnesota, about solidarity understood through the lens of baptism, mutual aid, changing models for emergency assistance, and the needs of local neighborhoods there.

Fall Programs

September: Labor of Love, a behind the scenes and in-depth series of conversations with ministry leaders from a full range of the church’s life, sharing stories of joy and encounter with Jesus. A complementary piece to Fr. Keith’s Love Thy Neighbor series in August.

September: Stop-Motion and the Scripture. A youth-oriented online series in which we explored the stop-motion process and discussed the process involved in identifying the main elements of a story and telling it through stop-motion.

November 15: Intergenerational Online Talent Show. A warmly supported opportunity to gather as much talent, across all ages, as we could muster on Zoom.

 

Theology on Tap

Gathering the first Wednesday of each month at 7pm (currently online):

o   February: Poetry Night! (Y’all were amazing.)

o   March: Lent, Life, and Following Jesus (overlap with Lenten series)

o   April: Lent, Life, and Following Jesus (overlap with Lenten series)

o   May: Pain, Praise, & Pandemics

o   June: Racism and Listening to Voices of the Black Community

o   July: Covid, Connection, and the Enneagram (a summer pop-up series with Lauren Murphy-Hale)

o   September: Human Dignity, Humility, and Joy

o   October: Learning to be with One Another: Imitating the Life of Heaven (Sam Wells)

o   November: Refusing to be Enemies (Daoud Nassar)

o   December: Do not be Afraid (Nadia Bolz Weber)

o   January: Epiphany: Prayers in Pajamas!

Sunday School (These were mostly 3 week series gathering at 9:30am on Sundays)

o   Feb: The Way of Love (following Presiding Bishop Michael Curry)

o   Mar/Apr: 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversation

o   Sept: Living Faith: Faith’s Expression in Our Every Day Lives

o   Oct: Sing a New Song

o   Nov: The Book of Common Prayer (Confirmation and Inquirers’ Class)

o   Dec/Advent: Be Not Afraid: In Conjunction with Illustrated Ministry

o   Jan: Crafts and New Creation: Exploring a Theology of Making

Holy Chaos

12-15 folks from HTbtL, on average, joined the Rev. Kate Byrd and me for this monthly gathering oriented at discerning God in (the sometimes messy) rhythms of ordinary life. Having gathered at 12N on 3^rd Wednesdays in 2020, this gathering looks to take on a different format in 2021, with details TBA.

_____________

2020-21 Annual License Renewal Letter

Each year, just before Advent, I request the Bishop's renewal of my license to serve in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas. These annual letters have become wonderful opportunities to step back and reflect, and I have made a practice of posting them here on the blog, as a small window into and review of a given year.

Peace,

J

Dear Bishop Sumner,

I pray this email finds you well! I am writing to request licensing for the upcoming year, beginning in Advent. My form is attached, although I will readily admit that determining the number of Eucharists this year is still a work in progress for our church (what with hybrid online services, etc.). 

By way of the less formal report, what a year to attempt to report! Additional duties of my position in pandemic have included beginning an interactive, online worship service, training up virtual small group leaders (these groups have been a remarkable gift to our community's life), and continuing to develop especially adult Christian formation opportunities, making lemonade out of lemons and bringing in as many outside (Zoom-able) voices as possible. In these and my other continuing responsibilities (assisting with youth, staff development, liturgical planning), I've developed an approach that I've tried to remember again each day: as quickly as possible, let go of what we cannot do in a pandemic (rather than feebly attempting to make sad replicas of things we've lost) and (also as soon as possible) look for the things that we either could not or would not do EXCEPT for the pandemic (the way our largely elderly small group leaders overcame reluctance to master Zoom still makes me emotional - we have relative newcomers reporting to us that initiatives like the small groups have them feeling MORE connected than they felt on track to feel after many months in church). 

Of course, there has been so much loss. Lives and jobs lost, to such an extent that admitting personal struggles strikes some people as overly self-centered. I have tried to discourage that way of thinking. Much of my staff development work has been to find new ways to hold space in meetings for the humanity of our staff, with the stresses of rising to new challenges always threatening to come at the expense of the individuals working tirelessly to do the work. It has been interesting to observe stages to the stress, and then to learn from experts across the country that there are normalize-able patterns many of our teams are sharing. For example, Form, Storm, Norm, Perform is a 4 stage dynamic that, upon discovering it, allowed our team to quickly locate ourselves in those stages across the past 8 months and, most importantly, discover that those processes did not mean we had done the thing wrong. Indeed, we could each feel a sense of accomplishment for having made that journey not just once, but in each of the important circles in our lives (work, family, friendships, etc.).

Back a few months ago, a book for which I had been invited to contribute a chapter was published. I had written it back before we moved, so it was a gift to be connected to a larger project and see it come, at long last, to fruition.

At Holy Trinity, things are a lot like life - there's a lot of life and generosity, there's a lot of emotional strain and uncertainty. Much grace, and also weariness sufficient to prevent our forgetting for a second our need of said grace. Personally, navigating office life has proven a special challenge to protecting personal bubbles necessary to stay connected to my at-risk parents. I am so weary, on the human level, of having each day to either hold or not hold boundaries that will be perceived either way as a measure of my commitment to ministry. But on the more life-giving side, my father-in-law, a radiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, sent me an article a while back, We're All Start-Ups Now, that helped me account for the unexpected energy that has attended these days for me: seven years in campus ministry was, for me, the ultimate start-up experience and to have the parish require those skills has opened beautiful and adventurous spaces. There will have been much in this season, when it is over, for which we will need to overcome our embarrassment at what will seem an inappropriate or scandalous suggestion, and thank God.

But one day at a time. Thanks, as ever, for reading. And for your leadership of the Diocese of Dallas, especially in this season. 

Peace,

Jonathan

Coffee Chat, Show Notes!

 

Mike's Advent Spotify List!

Sam Wells and "Being With"

The presentation and questions for October's online Theology on Tap at Holy Trinity by the Lake. 

Questions for Discussion: 

1. With whom does “being with” come most easily for you?
2. How are being with, being for, working with, and working for distinct and/or connected? Have you experienced one leading to another? What was that like?
3. Why is it sometimes easier to help a person without spending time with them?
4. When have you experienced relationship with a person you found challenging transformed through spending time with them?
5. What are your thoughts about Sam Wells’ observations that Jesus prioritized being with and that being with is one way we imitate the life of heaven?

Vacation in 2020

I used to approach vacation as a celebration, an escape, a carrot on a stick to endure the hardest parts. Which is fine as far as it goes, but where it goes, inevitably, is to a dread or apprehension that will find you, confine you, about three days before returning. When the countdown to Relief resets to 365, give or take, and so you brace yourself all by yourself to hold again the longest breath.

Without trying, this has changed for me. Which is to say vacation no longer names for me escape. And because it does no longer, vacation, yes vacation, now occupies a place much more like discipline in my life. And, yes, this names a privilege, to have work that one loves. And also an achievement: to learn to love my work on the emptiest of days has taken work of its own and all kinds of help; to learn and to trust that discomfort names a day of new possibilities unfurling.

The only dread I fear now is that of failing my obligation to the work, with all the imagination, preparation, perseverance, and surrender that entails.

So vacation comes and says, "Hey, put it down." 

And I think of it as practice for retirement. Or death. Was it Michael Jordan who said he could imagine himself dying, just not losing the ability and position to which he'd grown accustomed? Vacation, retirement, death, all of it defying my claims to be essential, to be operating in any other than the space of life that comes as gift.

Thank you, gracious God, and help me to receive it, and wear it well,

this space of life,

that comes 

as gift.

Someone is ready for her trip. 💗

This Week's Links!

• Tues and Thurs, 12pm: COVID, Connection, and the Enneagram with Lauren Stroh and Fr. Jonathan. REGISTER HERE!

• Wed, 12pm: Standing with One Another in the Messiness of Life with the Rev. Kate Byrd and Fr. Jonathan. REGISTER HERE!

• Wed, 5:30pm: Healing Prayers

• Sunday, 10:30am: Holy Eucharist 

• Monday, 9am: Coffee Chat with Fr. Jonathan 

• This past Sunday's sermon: An Unsettling Farmer & the Merciful Disappointment of Life (and Love) We Don't Control

Following Jesus on a Path that Turns

The earliest Christians were called followers of the Way. It’s the name Paul uses in the 22nd chapter of Acts to refer to the people he had formerly persecuted. The nickname finds roots in Jesus’s own claim about himself, when he says in John’s gospel, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” And these words in turn led St. Catherine of Sienna to famously say, “All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, “I am the Way.” To simultaneously enjoy the presence of Jesus and yet still to be on the way, on the path, is the experience and situation of every Christian pilgrim.

About this time last year, my friend Gary was walking the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, making a pilgrimage that covers most of Spain and often includes portions of France or Portugal along its five-hundred-plus mile route. The journey is at once fantastic and ordinary. Fantastic: in 2018 alone, over 327,000 pilgrims made the sacred trek. Ordinary: foot care, good socks and shoes (I am told) are among the secrets to completing the journey. Ordinary: one pilgrim wrote a book about his experience which he titled simply and profoundly, “The Way is Made By Walking.”

We are those strange people called Christians, and so we are followers of the Way. We are pilgrims on a path. We are the people who some days find it too fantastic, too much to take in, too spectacular, to have been made a part of the mystical Body of Christ, to have encountered grace and God’s mercy, the Good News of Christ like this. We are also all too familiar with the ordinary. That we are not beyond need of the encouragement and reminder to not neglect our socks. To take one step. And then another. To show up again and repeat. The Way is made by walking.

But of course it’s one thing to imagine a path and another to be on it. What had sounded straightforward at the ranger’s station becomes significantly less when the path and, say, the map disagree. Or the signpost shows signs of tampering. And what about the unexpected trail that’s not supposed to be there? Where did that come from? The map shows just the one route, but in what is coming just now as a major disappointment, several more possibilities present themselves?

And, for Christians called followers of the Way, perhaps most frighteningly of all, what happens when following the path of Jesus takes us off of and away from a central path we had been following all before and until the paths divided? Away from the familiar? Maybe we had assumed that the two paths simply ran parallel the whole way or that they were really just one road that went by several names. Until one day it happens. Where we had assumed a journey that would allow us to thoughtlessly continue without much in the way of critical choices or sacrificial options, the path of Jesus clearly invites us to take a turn that departs from the old way we had known. 

Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

 

Evidently, to follow Jesus is to follow a path that will turn and take us away from the familiar, what we know, and into something new.

Now, as I’ve observed before, for most of us, it is not news that daughter and mother-in-law might experience conflict. What is news is that following Jesus might occasion the conflict. What is news, to listen to Jesus, is that conflict isn’t even a sign that we’re doing it wrong; but to be ready for conflict is to remember that following Jesus leads to an encounter with something wholly substantial. The living God makes claims on the lives of God’s people that are real, concrete, embodied, and true.

Jesus proclaims Good News. News that is good. And goodness that is new. So the life of discipleship, of following Jesus, presents a necessary contrast to the life we knew before it. That is to say, it is a gift that asks us to empty our hands. When in your life have you taken a turn that took you away from what you had previously known in order to stay closer to Jesus?

Every Wednesday evening, from five to nine pm, Dominque opened her modest Minneapolis home for pasta night, an open dinner for anyone who would join her. No sign in the yard, only festive Christmas lights strung on the top of her chain linked fence out front. Some regulars she could count on to help with the hosting. And then, between 40 and 70 people, over the course of four hours. Some familiar to the regulars and some, like me, strange. Word of mouth, invitation, only. Friends and neighbors. Rich and poor. Black, white, and latino. Students and professionals. The just off work and the out of work. Single moms who relied on the community as a parenting reprieve. Families looking to breach the walls of their suburban fortresses. Six digit incomes and those without incomes. Laughing together. In enough languages to go around. Lots of pasta, of course (Dominque only rarely left her place by the stove top.) No beer or hard alcohol, which would have presented particular challenges whose battles with addictions had left scars on their bodies and their lives. The night I went as a guest of my friend Steve, a stranger eagerly invited me to try his homemade kombucha. The regulars never brought faith up at pasta night, but faith had started pasta night. And kept it alive in that community, through 3 different hosts (Dominique was the 2nd) over fifteen plus years. It was like a new family, each week expecting to discover lost kin. To attend, much less host, pasta night requires an intentional and sometimes anxious departure from familiar paths of socioeconomic status, individualism, predictability, and self-protections. Paths sometimes difficult to imagine leaving. That’s what makes the joy one encounters so beautiful. My friend Steve calls it the closest thing he’s experienced to the Kingdom of God.

Anna was speaking one night at a gathering of three-hundred and fifty mostly undergraduate students, crammed in and hanging off the balcony at a church at UW-Madison. Seventeen campus ministries, including the one I served at, had organized the event together, simply to witness that God has taken a good many of us followers of Jesus on a turn that led us to a deeper awareness of sins of systemic racism, of which Christian churches have very often been complicit. A turn that occasioned repentance and the desire to listen and engage. And Anna stood up before everyone and said that, as a white woman, a student at UW-Madison, with a commitment to racial justice, she had been challenged by her Black friends to act on what she could not yet feel. She did not know what it felt like to have her criminality presumed. She could not imagine what it felt like to stare down statistics that could land a quarter of her family in an incarceration industry that felt designed for the purpose. She cared, but did not show up, did not prioritize, did not act, did not turn, until her friends asked her to prioritize the acting before the feeling, and trust the feeling to come along. She did, and it did. Jesus invited Anna on a path that turned off of the old one. With God’s help and good friends, she followed. And, in following, she found new life.

Conflict names the turning. Jesus tells us, when we feel it, the conflict, not to be afraid. Don’t be afraid, he says, because you belong to God, and God will not lose no one who belongs to God. Don’t be afraid. But there are so many mostly good reasons to fear! What if I do lose something? What if I get lost on the way, that is, what if I lose myself? What if I mess it up? What if I embarrass myself or can’t find my place? Maybe it’s better to stick to what I know. The script with which I am familiar. The silence that keeps me safe. What if the status quo pushes back? What if I’m told I’m a sell out, a traitor, or worse? What if I do something wrong? What if I am wrong?

I want you to take these questions seriously, because I want you to take just as seriously the answer that Jesus speaks next. The answer that Jesus gives to his friends.

“A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher...So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

Did you hear that? Three times Jesus tells them, “Don’t be afraid.” Christians find our fearlessness not in the assurance that we are up to the task or that it won’t cost us anything or that we know what comes next, but Christian find our fearlessness in the faithfulness of God’s love for us. Not because we’ll get it right, but exactly because we may get it wrong and still God’s love will blanket us. Even in such a moment, God’s love, God’s truth, defines us. The waters of baptism don't evaporate! And so we take the risk.

There’s that question again: when in your life have you taken a turn that took you away from what you had previously known in order to stay closer to Jesus?

A young Roger Schuetz, years away from founding the ecumenical community of brothers called Taize, revolutionarily bridging age-old chasms between Catholics and Protestants, was simply imitating his grandmother’s example when, at the outset of World War II, he moved to that small town, on the edge of the fighting, to harbor and provide safe-haven for Jewish refugees. You can imagine the risk. After the war, once the Germans had lost, the refugees safe, Roger went back to his family. Except Roger did not go back to his family; instead he opened his home again, this time to escaped German prisoners of war. For Roger, trust in God’s love led him to seek out and stay in the place of risk-taking love for another his cumulative work, his track record, guaranteed to make sense to no one, except and only as measured by the mercy of the Kingdom of Jesus.

It’s an astonishing thing. An astonishing reversal. You can imagine that trusting God’s love as the most true thing about a person might easily have lead a person the other way entirely; it could have lead a person to use divine love as an excuse, a fallback, a safety net, isolation and permission to check out or neglect right relationship with God and/or one’s neighbors on the Way. Let someone else show up and do the hard and dirty work. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, after all. But instead, Paul invokes God’s love today, grace, as exactly the thing that makes it possible for us to show up, to enter uncomfortable space without fear. You are loved. You have nothing to lose! And so we can lose. We can put down all the rest. We can turn toward hard things, even things we don’t know how to fix. We can seek out hard conversations with each other and even strangers. Unthinkable for Americans, we can even be weak, which is to say, we can be our true selves. We can be opened. We can see God in each other. And on the days God is harder to see in some people, we can even love our enemies, just as, before we knew God, God first loved us. We can take the costly turn and follow.

So St. Paul asks the Corinthians, and us, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” The conflict names the turning. Jesus tells us, when we feel it, not to be afraid. Don’t be afraid, he says, because you belong to God, and God will not lose any of those that belong to God. 

O my Child, do not be afraid. More is possible than we fear. Trust in God, and show up for the mess - even this COVID ridden, racial justice yearning moment, even the sometimes reduction of politics to formation in disdaining the other, a forgetfulness of our common identity as citizen and as children in the kingdom of God - all of this mess of humanity God is yet redeeming, determined to make beautiful. Take heart. Look alive. Child, you are loved. You belong to God! Trust in God, do not be afraid. God ain’t about to let slip even one of those beloved of and belonging to God. But neither would God deprive you of the abundant life, the good life, the beautiful life-that-is-life life, that takes - for each and every one of us and all of us together - some turns along the path to follow. 

Sermon preached at Holy Trinity by the Lake Episcopal Church (virtual worship), June 21, 2020.