My two cents on the Primates meeting last week, or somebody's two cents at least.
"Therefore I will put up with this church until I see a better one; and it will have to put up with me until I become better."
from Erasmus, found while reading The Reformation by Dairmaid McCulloch.
I mean, what else is there to say?
Friday, February 23, 2007
Saturday, February 17, 2007
A Welcome to Remember
Greetings to all from San Francisco. Many of you know that the Lee family has moved to California following God's call and a good job. We are aclimatizing quite well to the sunshine and dry weather, although my skin is starting to dry out! I have had discussions with many of you about welcome and visitors to St. David's and I have recently gotten the welcome that I would challenge all members of God's church to meet.
We arrived for the Sunday morning Christmas Eve service at 11am. As you can imagine, the service was light on people, many chosing to come in the evening service instead. It is easy enough to hide in a large crowd if you are a newbie, but as we all know at St. David's visitors are hightly visible with less than 20 people in a large room. I must admit I am not a wallflower, but I was definitely a visitor to the sights and customs of this parish. As the celebrants and attendants gathered for the begining of service, Rosa Lee, the vicar, walked right up to me and said, "Heather, it's about time you got here."
If we are builing heaven right here on earth, Rosa Lee is the chief door greeter. One of the blessings of community is the quality of being known. Christ reminds us often in the Gospel, that we are known to God. But to relish the fullness of joy in being known by God's people, we must first trust that if He finds us worthy, then we must indeed be worthy. It can be scary to come to a new place with different customs and expectations. As disconcerting as it is within the tradition, imagine how difficult it is for people who have not grown up in the church, or who have had that trust violated.
That was the perfect greeting for me, in that time and place. As most of you know, my husband had been in San Francisco for several months before we joined him, and I was pretty resistant to leave my loving and trusting community of faith. We may be a people of the book, but we all read it pretty differently. I am a preacher, and I had concerns that I would find a community that I could still speak to. I am a homebody and what I like best is deepening old relationships, not necessarily making new ones. How perfect then, for me, to receive a welcome of the tardy child rather than the potential stranger. I knew that it was not just a priest who greeted me but God reinforcing the rightness of this move for our family and for His work in our lives.
I realize that not everyone can or should be greeted in this manner. But I think that no one who enters the doors of our churches should encounter a challenging greeting or a lack of greeting at all. We all enter the building with the desire of encountering God. It is the responsibility of those of us who already inhabit the halls of God's house to remember that we are not only the hands and feet of God doing good work in the community, but we are the voice and comfort of God's love to those who seek. Anyone who enters our buildings has already been blessed and found worthy by God, all we have to do is make sure we and they don't forget it.
Thanks be to God!
We arrived for the Sunday morning Christmas Eve service at 11am. As you can imagine, the service was light on people, many chosing to come in the evening service instead. It is easy enough to hide in a large crowd if you are a newbie, but as we all know at St. David's visitors are hightly visible with less than 20 people in a large room. I must admit I am not a wallflower, but I was definitely a visitor to the sights and customs of this parish. As the celebrants and attendants gathered for the begining of service, Rosa Lee, the vicar, walked right up to me and said, "Heather, it's about time you got here."
If we are builing heaven right here on earth, Rosa Lee is the chief door greeter. One of the blessings of community is the quality of being known. Christ reminds us often in the Gospel, that we are known to God. But to relish the fullness of joy in being known by God's people, we must first trust that if He finds us worthy, then we must indeed be worthy. It can be scary to come to a new place with different customs and expectations. As disconcerting as it is within the tradition, imagine how difficult it is for people who have not grown up in the church, or who have had that trust violated.
That was the perfect greeting for me, in that time and place. As most of you know, my husband had been in San Francisco for several months before we joined him, and I was pretty resistant to leave my loving and trusting community of faith. We may be a people of the book, but we all read it pretty differently. I am a preacher, and I had concerns that I would find a community that I could still speak to. I am a homebody and what I like best is deepening old relationships, not necessarily making new ones. How perfect then, for me, to receive a welcome of the tardy child rather than the potential stranger. I knew that it was not just a priest who greeted me but God reinforcing the rightness of this move for our family and for His work in our lives.
I realize that not everyone can or should be greeted in this manner. But I think that no one who enters the doors of our churches should encounter a challenging greeting or a lack of greeting at all. We all enter the building with the desire of encountering God. It is the responsibility of those of us who already inhabit the halls of God's house to remember that we are not only the hands and feet of God doing good work in the community, but we are the voice and comfort of God's love to those who seek. Anyone who enters our buildings has already been blessed and found worthy by God, all we have to do is make sure we and they don't forget it.
Thanks be to God!
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