This is the welcome message I wrote for All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Beverly Hills on 20 November 2016.
Today, the Feast of Christ the King marks the completion of our church year. While months remain in our secular lives before the ball drops and we make our ill-fated resolutions, in our Christian world, we have reached the end. After we hear the final Gospel reading of the year, we will leave church waiting for a new story to begin.
And like many a depressing story, our Gospel reading ends the liturgical year with a violent, gut wrenching loss in the form of Jesus suffering on the cross. We don’t hear the rest of the story today. There is no word of resurrection, no promise of forgiveness, Jesus doesn’t even actually die, he simply suffers as the story fades to black, and we’re left with just a gnawing sense of unease about an unknown future.
Sound familiar to anyone right now?
But we know where this story goes. We know, thanks to the Bible that from fear, uncertainty, and betrayal comes rebirth, new life, and new movement. Mother Teresa once said, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
So we must begin. We begin to realize just how hard it really is to love one another. We begin to speak to each other again or not. We begin to search out common ground or not. We hopefully begin to be authentic with our feelings while honoring the feelings of those around us. And while we sit in that in-between time where one story has ended and another one is about to begin, we love our neighbors, family, enemies and leaders (both coming and going) fiercely and without restraint; because we’re Christians and that’s how we roll.
Welcome.
Jason Franklin
Communications
Leave a Reply