Cha, cha, Changes (August Lion's Roar)

How can it be August already?!?!?!?!  We have been together for one year almost.  That does not seem possible.  One year ago, I was preparing to move to the area and to begin our ministry together.

The first year in a new setting is always challenging.  There is so much to do.  There is so much to learn.  This goes both ways.  I am continuing to learn about the history, customs, traditions, and people of St. Mark’s.  You are still learning about me.  And we are learning what it means for God to have called us together in this time and place.

The past few years have made church life (well, life in general) even more challenging.  There has been so much going on all at once in our community, in our nation, and in the world.  Communities continue to be torn apart by gun violence and the battle for the full inclusion of all without regard to race, ethnicity, and sexual identity or orientation.  COVID continues to be with us and exhaust us.  The political divide tears us apart brothers and sisters, even in churches.

In addition to the struggles just named, St. Mark’s has its own set of unique challenges.  You have said goodbye to a priest who was here for a long time and welcomed a female priest.  We are creatures of habit by nature.  We do not like change.  Notice how we all sit in around the same general area of church on a Sunday morning (LOL).  And this is one reason I love our liturgy; its familiarity grounds me amid life’s uncertainty.

Change, on the other hand, is unsettling and makes us uncomfortable.  Living beings, like us, instinctively avoid anything that brings discomfort.  We try to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.  However, change is constant . . . sometimes even necessary.  Imagine if you or I stayed a baby.  Consider if suffrage and civil rights never took place.  Society, and you and me, are better off for these important challenges that faced us and for how we changed as a result.

Change is what enables us to grow, as an individual, as a community, as a nation, and as a church.  No, change is not always easy or smooth.  Change is very often messy, frustrating, and confusing.  Change asks that we are patient, flexible, and persistent.  These are often also not our strong suits in this face paced, on demand society.  Change also requires trust, in God and in one another.  And it is that mutual trust, that mutual openness to God (along with patience, flexibility, and persistence) that will see us thrive together as St. Mark’s.