It's as if all that has led to this day was the pre-season and now the regular season, ordinary time, has begun!
The instrument through which we re fueled for our work is the Blessed and Holy Trinity, God in three persons: God as Creator, God as Son and God as Holy Spirit.
On this Trinity Sunday we are given the toolkit. It is up to us to use the tools.
Right now, in the life of Ascension, we have the opportunity to use all these tools as we enter a period of tremendous transition , a period of change, a time of journey.
This past week I and then our vestry heard the very preliminary plans for the adaptive re-use of our buildings-- the church proper and Bittner Hall
These were difficult conversations. Tears were and will be shed.
Anger flared, despair set in and some of us, myself included, began to feel very very nervous and kind of scared. As I said the plans are very preliminary and I have already begun scripting our response. The bottom line is that, for a adaptive re-use project to be successful for a developer, they need to use this space-- our worship space-- in other words, we may need to create a brand new worship space elsewhere in our two building complex. We may need to give up this space in order to carry our new life, a new life begun on Trinity Sunday 2011 when we began our 4:30 service and I joined you as priest in charge.
Only a few of you remember that day... There were about 9 of us who came for regular worship on Sunday mornings....a search for a priest had not been going well...so you took the advice of the congregational development people at the diocese, and began to look for a parish with whom Ascension could enter into a covenant relationship, sharing a priest and developing partnership. It was a scary scary time. For you and for me.
What many of you don't know, is that the first steps toward the covenant relationship began in January of 2011 when Tom Zimpfer called me to ask if I'd be interested in discussing a possible partnership. I had to tell him that while I would be interested, I needed to delay our discussion until April because I was just beginning cancer treatment. While I was very confident that I wasn't going to die of cancer anytime soon, I had no idea if the treatment would work , if the cancer would stop growing, if my treatment that was supposed to end in mid April really would end, or if I would have a recurrence-- a possibility my doctors kept reminding me was possible.
I could have given into my fear and quit, passively letting the doctors do whatever they were going to do and hoping that it would work.
Or I could face the facts, I had cancer, and with determination and faith, walk into the journey, eyes wide open and head held high, determined to deal with the changes cancer would bring to my life. I deal with those changes every day. Some days I barely remember that I am a cancer survivor, other days I feel a twinge, I notice a bump or I just don't feel right and I wonder, "has it come back? " but today I am celebrating from 53 rd birthday. I am healthy and I am happy three years after my formal treatment ended.
And today, three years after we began our journey of faith together, we average 18 people a Sunday...with the possibility, if everyone comes on a Sunday, for 25 people. We have a wildly successful pet food pantry, distributing literally tons and tons of food to thousands THOUSANDS of people.
Today I am alive
Today we are alive.
We're not big but we are mighty.
But we have our own cancer, our own chronic problem....these beautiful, yet aging and expensive buildings. This church was built for a congregation of a couple hundred. It was a different time, when everyone went to church, when stores were closed on Sunday and no Girl Scout troop, hockey team or real estate company would dare hold events or open houses on a Sunday. Sunday was family day.... church day.
Life isn't like that anymore. And while that might be sad, even unfortunate, it is reality.
Our church buildings were built for a different time.
We are in a new time, and we have an organization willing and eager to transform most of our space into housing...leaving us with a more nimble, adaptable and remodeled worship space. They will pay for it; we will keep the remaining endowment and we'll have space for our pet food pantry, worship and socializing, education and meetings.
It will be different.
It will be scary.
It will be new
It will be ........who knows?
Much like the disciples after the journey of excitement and despair, hope and loss, confusion and clarity, we are on the precipice of something altogether new. But we are not alone, we don't have to figure this all out by ourselves. We have a triune God-- Creator, Son and Holy Spirit to guide us. A Creator who formed us to love each other as God loves us; a Son who walks ahead of us in time, standing beside us, in all we do.
And we have the Holy Spirit, that still small voice inside of us that soothes us, prods us, encourages and supports us in all we do.
These next few months will be hard, and God in three persons, blessed trinity will be with us.
The next few months will be sad and God in three persons, blessed trinity will be with us.
The next few months will challenge our commitment to each other, our love for each other, our faith in our diocese, our parish our leadership and God in three persons, blessed trinity will be with us.
The next few moths will expose joy and peace and fellowship in ways we can't even imagine right now and God in three persons, blessed trinity will be with us.
The next few months will define the next 150 years of this parish and God in three persons, blessed trinity will be with us.
The next few months will offer us a variety of experiences, a multitude of emotions and a range of responses and through it all, God in three persons, blessed trinity will be with us.
Thanks be to God.
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