Dear Friends,

I recently returned from the 79th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which is currently meeting in Austin, Texas. This triennial gathering, made up of clergy and lay deputies and bishops, meets to discuss and pass legislation for the larger church. Amidst all the legislative hearings and debate, there is also time for worship and witnessing. On Sunday July 8, many of us gathered outside the convention hall for a vigil against gun violence. After that gathering, over 900 of us traveled in buses to the Huto Residential Center, outside of Austin, a federal detention center housing women immigrants – some of whom are still separated from their children.

We read about and discuss terms like “gun violence” and “immigration polices,” and such terms can have an abstract quality to them.  But all issues that are political have profound personal implications. At the vigil against gun violence, we listened to moving testimony from the family of Carmen Schentrup, one of the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School shootings in Parkland, Florida. Camen was an active member of her youth group at  St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church in Coral Springs, Florida. Her father spoke eloquently about God’s weeping over the violence that took his daughter’s life, and about our call to end such violence.You can read more about the Schentrups and their witness here.

Then, at the detention center, though we were somewhat far off from the facility, we could make out the hands of women in the center, waving to us with hands and cloths, expressing gratitude for our solidarity with them You can read more about the public witness at the detention center here

We know that when any issue or policy is given a human face, we are forced to move beyond the abstract, and to consider the personal consequences of policy decisions. I was humbled by the witness of the Schentrup family, who though still in the midst of profound grief, are calling Christians  to hear the words of the prophets and of Jesus, and to lay down our swords and spears. And I was moved by the silent witness of women waving their hands, reminding me of my call to see beyond policy debates to the persons who are directly affected by the decisions we make and the votes we cast. All political decisions have profound personal implications. Our civic responsibility as citizens should aways be informed by the ethics of our faith. Perhaps the words of Carmen’s father, Philip Schentrup, are the best way to end this letter:

“God gave us free will, the ability to do good, to be complacent, to inflict harm. God gave us the prophets, his son and the Holy Spirit to show us the way. God wants us all to live into his path of love and kindness. I realized that God’s plan was simple. He gave us the ability to choose to love and to care for one another, and he taught us how to do it. Evil and violence happen in this world because we allow it, not because God allows it. We suffer violence because we collectively allow it. God is waiting for us to choose to make the world he wants.”

Faithfully,

Tom

Dear Friends,

This coming Tuesday, I will be headed to Austin, Texas, where the General Convention of the Episcopal Church will be meeting. Thomas Brown is one of the eight deputies of the Diocese of Massachusetts, so I will be joining him for part of the convention, which lasts for two weeks.

The General Convention meets triennially, and is the Church’s highest temporal authority. Among other things, it has power to amend the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church; to amend The Book of Common Prayer; and to carry out various other responsibilities and authority. There are two legislative Houses of General Convention: the House of Deputies, made up of an equal number of clergy and laity, and the House of Bishops.

As with any legislative body, the work of General Convention is complicated. Legislative committees meet, resolutions are considered, revised, sometimes adopted and sometimes rejected. In a time when many governing institutions are being attacked, there are those who criticize the structures of the larger church as being ineffective or unwieldy.

And yet, if Jesus promised that where two or three are gathered in his name he is there, then the Church believes that even when over a thousand are gathered in one convention center in his name, he will be there as well.

I invite you to remember in your prayers all who are gathered for the 78th General Convention, meeting during the first two weeks of July.  Pray that they will hear the Spirit, see God’s beauty, and act in love, even as we seek to do so in this place.

Faithfully,

Tom

You can find out more about General Convention here.

“In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”       Mark: 1:35

Dear Friends,

More than once in the gospels, we are told that Jesus went away to a quiet  and deserted place to pray.

This week, I was fortunate enough to spend two days on retreat at Emery House, a retreat center of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in West Newbury.  It is certainly not a deserted place.  I had the opportunity to meet with one of the monks there for conversation, and other monks and guests were in residence. But it was a quiet place, as it was a silent retreat. This meant not only refraining from conversation with other guests and monks (all the meals are taken in silence) but also stepping back from the many other conversations that occupy much of my mind during the day. To step back from the 24 hour newsfeeds, the emails, and all that the internet has to offer was, I admit, a challenge but also a great blessing.

To choose to step away from all of that is not a process of putting one’s head in the sand, but rather an opportunity to listen more closely to the most important conversation of any one of our lives -the conversation that God is having with us. Two days seemed hardly enough to remind me of the vital importance of that conversation, as I seek to address the challenges that confront our communities, our nation in this time, and the world. But oh, it was a start!

The theologian Karl Barth once wrote that we should read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. That is good advice. But every once in awhile, it is ok to put down the newspaper, and engage more deeply in the conversation that God is having with us those quiet places. In the silence, we discover that such places are anything but deserted. They are filled with the presence of God.

Faithfully,

Tom

PS – Retreats such as the one I was on are by no means limited to clergy. If you would like to learn more about retreat opportunities, either at Emery House or at the brothers’ monastery in Cambridge, please speak to me.

The Westtown, NY, Presbyterian Church, my grandparents’ church

Dear Friends,

Back in the day when Sunday Schools presented awards for perfect attendance, and my family was on vacation, my mother would encourage me to approach  the minister of a church we were visiting. I would  then ask him – and it was always a “him” back then – to sign a worship bulletin, which I would then bring back to my home church as “proof” that I had indeed gone to church that Sunday.

As you go about your summer sojourns, I encourage you to bring back a bulletin from places where you worship. No, I will not be checking up on you for any perfect attendance award. But it can be fun and informative  to see how other communities worship. We’ll have a bulletin board set up so you can post your bulletins there – and add any comments you wish.

Perfect attendance – implicit in those words is a goal to achieve, and perhaps even a bit of judgment if one fails. But what if we describe our attendance at church in another way – as faithful attending.  Attending to what is important and vital in our lives is not about winning awards but rather about paying attention to what is essential, to what nourishes us, and to what God desires. Consistent participation in the liturgy of God’s people,  wherever those people are gathered, is a way of paying attention.

So let us know where you have worshiped this summer. And if you cannot join us at St. John’s on a summer Sunday, there are still ways to participate. For most services, sermons will now be posted on the website in the week following (click on the Sermons link on the menu on the left hand side of the homepage). You can see the readings for each upcoming Sunday in News and Notes, and now you also can see a copy of the upcoming bulletin in that same section of News and Notes.

Thank you for all the ways in which you attend to the liturgy of our lives.

Faithfully,

Tom

Dear Friends,

Our Presiding Bishop, the Most Rev. Michael Curry, has been making the rounds of morning talk shows this week, after his sermon at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle evoked so many responses of interest and excitement. Presiding Bishop Curry is a powerful preacher and in his sermon he preached on the redemptive power of love.

Love takes many forms, and certainly many people were focused on the romantic love which is so often expressed by a newly married couple. The presiding bishop reminded us though, that the love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ is also about the challenging commitment of addressing the needs of others, in a world where so many are lacking so much.

As if to emphasize that point, tonight the bishop joins other religious leaders in a  service at National City Christian Church followed by a candlelight procession to the White House.

The events in Washington, D.C., are part of “Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis,”  an ecumenical Christian elders’ initiative launched in March to “reclaim Jesus” from those believed to be using Christian theology for political gain.

I hope you will read or listen to his sermon – there is a link to it in the article below. And I hope you will read more about the statement on “Reclaiming Jesus,” which you can find here.

Love is made manifest in the generous outpouring of our hearts when we are “in love” and in the ongoing and sometimes challenging commitment “to love” – to love  God and our neighbors, as ourselves.

Faithfully,

Tom