What pouring out of God are you being made to be part of? What pouring out of Gods love are you being made part of? Jesus walked about in the story today and had compassion on the crowds, who were harassed a helpless-God pours out his love into our hearts. And that pouring out sends us into the world to shape things up a bit more in healing and gentling and wise and compassionate ways. What pouring out of God’s love are you being made to be part of?
And as indicators of that love, you might just simply ask one another: What makes you leap when you see it? What makes you laugh to hear it? In the story of Abraham and Sarah, visited by three strangers during the hot and drowsy afternoon, there at the doorway of the tent, notice that they look and leap, listen and laugh. Abraham sees the strangers-sees them, sees them perhaps with his heart-and his response is to welcome them, offer a little food-that is a banquet like one for a long-lost son- and pour out water for them. He leaps up to pour something of himself out for them. Sarah hears them-hears them-and can’t help but laugh at the strangers’ promise that in one year’s time, she will have a child. ‘Ha!’ What they see and what they hear brings forth a true response, one they must further discern in truthful conversation together with God-it is now God they are in conversation with, who raises new knowledge and awareness for Sarah and Abraham about the life God is pouring out in them. God witnesses the laugh and calls for wonder at what it means. God witnesses the laugh proceeding from the mouth of someone who had known suffering, and endurance, and the shaping of life under its pressures. God witnesses a response from deeper down that signifies a sense of hope and freedom, that here and now, in the next year, things might be different, better.
So here at CHS, you might take a moment to notice with one another what makes you leap, what makes you laugh, what might things be like in a year’s time. June 2024- where might we find ourselves. Looking forward like that together might unearth a sense of hope and also freedom to experiment, and to suffer the learning and transformation of character God offers. And in the spirit of hope and freedom, it’s worth remembering that Episcopal Christians have been working out ways of mission since at least 1912 on Vashon. CHS is not the first Episcopal community here. Christ Church first gathered for prayer in 1912. You can read about this in Vina Moffit and Marj Watkins lovely parish history. Christ Church was founded as a mission of Trinity Parish, Seattle. The rector there, Herbert Gowan was bivocational, a prof of oriental languages at UW. In 1912 he sent his son Vincent, who was discerning a call to ordained ministry, to Vashon, to lead morning prayer, read a prepared sermon, and share lunch with a family from the church. Coe, Thomson, Cristman, Mattson, and others had organized a Sunday school, and met in Olinda’s store. “This was a period of rapid growth for the Pac NW and the Episcopal Church. There were five busy parishes in Seattle and the church went to the people in widely scattered areas in the form of missions. Sometimes Dr. Gowan himself conducted services, but mor often he sent his curate, Mr. Frost, or one of the faithful groups of lay readers he had trained.” The pattern that every Episcopal church entity needs a seminary trained priest gentleman or woman in residence and on call is rather a figment of the post-war industrial imagination and its budgetary potentials. This history can help you and I imagine something a bit more back to basics. I mean, the climate is changing, more and more of us are on the move out in our tents gasping for meaning, and God still calls. What pouring out of God’s compassion for the crowds, for the homeless, for the climate migrants, for you and I are you being made to be part of?
That’s a question I hope can help us all here the call to be sent out. It’s not merely about getting the liturgy just right, or getting behind the right social cause, or calling just the right rector. Well and good is those serve us having a truer conversation about what God is doing in and among us. Notice what makes you leap and what makes you laugh and listen to what life and promise are poured out for you in these. And God is pouring out divine love through the Holy Spirit into our hearts, simmering up hope that lets us endure.