Dear Friends,
Please continue to have patience as we move forward with lessening the restrictions during worship. We still ask that for the next week or two, while not required, please make your reservation if you plan on attending service in person so that we can more accurately gauge and be prepared for those in attendance. Let us know you will be attending worship in person by signing up here. And, if you forget? No worries, please come anyway!
This week’s Hump Day Message comes from Bishop Porter Taylor from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, originally published on Monday, June 7, 2021:
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A We Are the Equipment
As I have thought about the divisions and the level of acrimony in our country, I remembered a book by the monk and theologian Ronald Rolheiser: Sacred Fire: A Vision of A Deeper Human and Christian Maturity. Rolheiser outlines what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in our times. He offers “Ten Commandments for Mature Living.”
- Live in gratitude and thank your Creator by enjoying your life.
- Be willing to carry more and more of life’s complexities with empathy.
- Transform jealousy, anger, bitterness, and hatred rather than give them back in kind.
- Let suffering soften your heart rather than harden your soul.
- Forgive — those who hurt you, your own sins, the unfairness of your life, and God for not rescuing you.
- Bless more and curse less!
- Live in a more radical sobriety.
- Pray, affectively and liturgically.
- Be wide in your embrace.
- Stand where you are supposed to be standing, and let God provide the rest.
As this pandemic ends, there is an opportunity to avoid simply going back to where we started in the Spring of 2020. We have learned how fragile life is and how interconnected we are across the globe. I suggest that we have a great internal garage sale by letting go of all that keeps us from abundant life. If this is the only life we have to live and if this life is short, now is the time to align ourselves with God’s intentions for us and for all humankind. Now is the time to ask ourselves what is worth doing in what the poet Mary Oliver names as our “one short and precious life.” What about this world; this country; this state; this city or town keeps its citizens from being all that they are called to be? How might some of the items of Rolheiser’s list above begin to remediate that?
It’s not enough to complain about those people who are ruining our country as if being a citizen much less a Christian is a spectator sport. We all are agents of grace and peace and communion. As we begin to re-encounter others after a year of being socially distant, let us embrace the opportunity to change our relationships with those we meet incarnately and those we see on the news programs or read about in the newspaper. As Ron Rolheiser suggests, “Be wide in your embrace.”
I am a big fan of the television series, Ted Lasso (on Apple TV). Ted is an American football coach who is hired to coach an English soccer team in England even though he knows nothing about soccer. However, the owner wants the team to tank in order to get revenge on her ex-husband because the soccer team is his love. She assumes this American will fail badly. Ted doesn’t try very hard to teach anything about soccer. He tries to teach the players what it means to be a good human being as well as what it means to be part of a larger body. And he does it by example. He pays attention to the man responsible for managing the locker room. He shows the star player what it means to respect other human beings. He reminds the players that life is too short for acrimony or jealousy or self-centeredness. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus sends out the disciplines and tells them not to take anything on their journey. Here’s how The Message translates this passage: “You don’t need a lot of equipment. You are the equipment.”
In our baptism we have been commissioned to spread the Good News. We have been sent out. It may feel as if we are challenged to coach an English soccer team even though we’ve never even watched a soccer match. Perhaps we could begin with, “Stand where you are supposed to be standing, and let God provide the rest.” We are the equipment. Let us be about changing the world.
Bishop Porter Taylor
*Published by the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia on Monday, June 7, 2021