It sounds so tidy on paper, but I assure you—it was anything but.
The young atheist Todd whom I met at Cutter’s coffee, whose son Darwin we baptized-- you met him in a sermon back in December—that sermon was a 12 minute happy journey but of course the reality for me was far messier—more like a weekly knife fight.
One week Todd came up to me ready to rumble, slamming down a pair of children’s toy hand cuffs on my table.
“Did you know the root of your beloved word religion means binding?”
Yes. Religare means that which binds us together.
Quid pro quo Todd-- What’s binding you up these days. You see everyone is bound to something, a slave to a master to one thing or another—bound to something I said picking up the toy handcuffs. I’ve intentionally chosen my master: Jesus Christ who is love. I’m curious about yours.
Todd slumped down once again in the chair ready for another round of conversation and relationship.
Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
That which binds us together—our meta narrative our story is love. Jesus.
God’s agenda that we know through our creed, that we know in our bible, that we know at the table is simply this: unconditional sacrificial love. That’s it. That all of it.
The church’s work is to Gather Transform Send. Gather Transform Send. Gather Transform Send.
We are all bound by – trapped by something. Wounded. Life does that. Can’t help that. It is what it is.
The good news is when we choose to bind ourselves to Christ, we bind ourselves to love.
Knowledge puffs up but love builds up.
2023 was not an easy year for Ascension and yet, here we are. Love has built us up. What has helped us to endure has been our pattern of being who we are. Gather Transform Send. Love bound us together.
While we may need different tools to be the church the pattern of the church doesn’t change.
Gather Transform Send. Gather Transform Send Gather Transform Send. That is the pattern of being Church. That is how love builds us up. It is Triune: God the
Source of all life Creator gathers us and forms us, God who is the Teacher Messiah and Savior among us shows us how we transform our lives and then we are SENT by the Holy Spirit who is the fire in our bellies to light up the world with this image of love and transformation. Gather Transform Send. This is what binds us together.
That’s vision of Glory: that is the love that builds us up and binds together.
Now: how will we do that work of gathering transforming and sending in 2024?
This a year of renewing our vision as we live more deeply into what our Grow committee has set before us. You will hear more about that in our Annual Meeting and read it in our Annual Report.
We will Gather this year to discern our vision for music and liturgy as we learn more a through our discernment process for music. Our Lenten soup supper formation program will focus on liturgy this year as a reminder of how we gather and what we gather to do and transform into. Christ.
I’m excited to have soup and conversations in Lent, to play with music in Easter, and then to create a fulsome picture of what we wish to engage with in music for our next Director of Music.
From the theology we will discuss in Lent over soup, to the music experiences that we will try on in Easter and then discuss through the lens of the Examen, we will come to a place of understanding what we hope our next Director of Music will offer us so that when we gather to transform, we are sent ready to transform others and see our neighbors as Christ.
This work of discernment is meant to give our next Director of Music permission and vision of how we yearn to live move and transform this place to be the body of Christ, the movement of Church that we long to be for Stillwater. Gather Transform Send Love Builds us up. Love binds up together.
This year we will also continue to move forward with our interim youth minister Aym as they will help us in our work to call our next youth minister. Our CYFF team has been hard at work too and they are ready to have the conversation with the vestry about the next steps for finding our next youth minister.
Today after our annual meeting we embark on a journey toward discerning with our youth what it means to walk this pilgrimage of Church together. We are starting a path of confirmation with a curriculum I’ve put together called Gifts and Acts. We will be exploring the gifts that ancestors have given to us on this pilgrimage: Creeds and traditions—the Book of Common Prayer. We will also explore other important things such reconciliation, nonviolent communication and forgiveness important tools for young adults to have in their toolbox for their journey. Gather Transform Send. Love builds up.
The women of this community are beginning to dream and imagine about redeveloping our Ascension Women’s Group as we ponder a Women’s Retreat this summer and working with the house of prayer to bring a program to Ascension
About to how conversations that matter. All of us know that this coming year will see us sitting down to dinner with neighbors and family and friends who may have different opinions different ideas. What would it be like to have tools for spiritual toolbox to have courageous conversations that didn’t lead to tension but instead led to understanding. Episcopal House of Prayer has been working on a curriculum to do just that. I am in conversation to bring that program to Ascension. Gather Transform Send. Love builds up.
Our Creation Care Committee will invite us in Lent tread more lightly on the earth with weekly reflections in our Font. They will ground us deep down into our scripture to remind us that the biggest moral issue facing our age is how we care for our beautiful planet. It is everywhere in our Bible when we stop and pay attention. Our Creation Care Committee reminds us to not be silent for the sake of our children, for the sake of the animals and the splendor of all creation for silence would certainly equal our own demise. Gather Transform Send. Love builds up.
All of this fits into the Grow recommendations we set into motion earlier this year as part of our program year missional goals.
In July of 2020 when I interviewed at Ascension and asked Daniel Pearson, your interim rector what was our biggest growing edge, he named Stewardship as our weakest link. But he then said along these lines to me:“ These are a very generous people. Ascension has good missional bones.” Was he ever right.
Our Mission Committee has certainly transformed and will continue to hone their partnership as we continue to walk with the poor of our county, partner with San Nicolas Episcopal Parish and their ministry to refugees, as well as feeding hungry college students through the Episcopal Campus Ministry at the U of M. College students these days should not have to choose between tuition and housing, food or rent. There are other amazing things coming out of Mission. Wait and see as we continue to gather transform and send. My favorite church ancestor—John Chrysostom wrote this: “Feeding the hungry is greater work than raising the dead.”
Alongside mission, is the work of stewardship—that is managing participating in the work of gathering transforming and sending ourselves out into the life of God’s world, God’s creation, bound in love. We seek to have 100% participation in the life and stewardship of this church. That’s why we formed Hospitality Guilds that everyone belongs to. No more STP—Same 10 people. 100% participation. Everyone gives something to this church. Gather Transform Send. We are bound together in love that build us up.
Church is not a spectator sport. These are not benches. You are an not an audience—you are Jesus. We are Jesus. Gather Transform Send Love Builds us up.
Looking a little further ahead, God willing, we will have these two permanent positions in plac by next autumn, we can then do some visioning work together as a whole parish with Diana Bender. Diana is a gifted national church lay leader who has enormous gifts for in congregational development, leadership coaching and organizational development. She has worked with the National Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Parish Network, countless Vestries, she is a teacher at the college for congregational development in the diocese of Olympia, a consultant for the Episcopal church foundation, and was the chair of her diocese’s commission on ministry. She has also formed several nonprofits particularly centered around education of children, runs her own clergy coaching and consulting business. She has taken a trip around the world and is active in a large thriving, fast growing Episcopal church on the west coast. She is a big part of why that church grew. We will be well served by her faithful leadership and guidance in helping us cast a vision for our future at Ascension and the ways we will
Gather Transform and Send. Love builds us up. Gather Transform Send. That’s the mission. It doesn’t change.
And how we do that does change and naturally, any change will cause us grief and anxiety. No doubt- Transformation is not clean work. If it were, the cross wouldn’t be necessary. Resurrection would be simpler. Grief and Love simpler.
Demons wouldn’t exist. Sacrifices wouldn’t be necessary. But here we are—trapped and bound by something. Living in the world of darkness with the light that we have. Our collect says it best: in our time grant us your peace.
The three-fold action of gathering transforming and sending us out again to be agents of transformation of others is what binds us all together.
Gather Transform Send Love builds us up. Amen.