Fresh from our Pentecost celebrations, many of us are now working our way into a Trinity Sunday sermon. This week marks the 19th anniversary of my own ordination to the priesthood, at Trinity Cathedral in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. I served there for four years after seminary as chaplain to the school of 250 students, and as curate and priest to the varied and historical church congregation. It has always been meaningful to me that my first service as celebrant was on Trinity Sunday, at Trinity Cathedral, a complex place of ministry with a constant buzz of activity every day of the week. The Trinity is often described as the interplay, or dance, between the persons of the Trinity - perichoresis - 'peri' - around - and 'chorein' - meaning many things, such as 'making room for, containing, going forward.' It is profound to consider that one of the primary doctrines of the Church can be described as a dance. Perhaps God in three is mostly dancing and making room for, containing, moving forward, and ever calling us to join into that dance here where we live and move and breathe.

We are being invited into such a dance, in our churches and in our communities where we serve. We are constantly called to watch for opportunities to make space for, to move forward, and to join together. Today I want to draw your attention to one place in particular that is surrounded by the most fragile members of our society, and that holds great potential for our common ministry. In January 2016, our Board of Trustees worked to define areas of focus for our resources of time, attention and money. In our three days together, we named a few very compelling goals, one of which is to redevelop St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Sacramento into a fully functioning center for community outreach with worship and prayer at the core. We envisioned a place where we can not only feed the hungry, but also provide training and education for those hungry people that can lead to greater stability in their lives. There has been a resource center there for quite some time, but there is a recognized need to take a step back, to assess the facility, and to see if we can establish a program on a solid foundation, with wider community support and participation.

The Rev. Lucretia Jevene is a priest in our diocese, and she serves at St. Brigid's Episcopal Church in Rio Vista; is a part of the volunteer clergy team at St. Matthew's in Sacramento; is President of the Episcopal Community Services; and is a member of the diocesan Board of Trustees. She captured the conversation that we had at the Board of Trustees retreat in January, and wrote the following white paper as a supporting document that summarizes our reasoning and the discussion that led to a unanimous vote to make St. Matthew's Center one of the goals for our common diocesan ministry. I hope that you will join in this dance, partnering with others in the community and across the Church to both revitalize the ministry that is happening there, and to also receive the gifts that await us as we enter into this together.  How can you join? Start today by reading this compelling call to action, and praying for this continued ministry, both for and with the least of these among us.

A chief purpose of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern California is to welcome, equip, teach and train all of our members for ministry in the service of God's mission. What is God's mission? In Luke 4 Jesus, in the Synagogue in Nazareth, articulates that mission when he says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and to let the oppressed go free." He further articulates his mission towards the end of Matthew's Gospel in chapter 25 when he says, when talking about the last judgment, "in as much as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me."