We come to our 4th of July weekend as a nation and a church churned up...churned up by big things!
My prayer is that we stay a bit churned up. We are a people contemplating big things and that's a good thing, especially as we celebrate our country with families and friends, parades and fireworks and quiet sails on the blue waters.
We've been visited by some big issues to grapple with and they belong to us all, and include questions of race and justice and freedom and meaning of family for all.And questions of making things new.
Good things for the nation on its anniversary and a church at any time!
As a people, we were visited with the gun violence that took those beautiful, faithful lives in Charleston...and then by the families of the victims somehow leading toward forgiveness...and then by southern states rejecting old symbols of hatred...and then by the president and the other moving eulogists calling us to hear God's grace in the midst of the revealing tragedy...to find a more perfect union, emboldened by God's love.
And then this week the Supreme Court historically declared that the gifts of marriage are free for every family. Church bells, wedding bells, and parades poured out across the land as gay and lesbian couples, some together for decades, many with thriving children, heard their nation's civil endorsement in all fifty states. And then... at its convention the national Episcopal Church, after forty years of progress, took the big step offering spiritual and sacramental endorsement of marriage for all. It voted to make its canons on marriage apply to all and created liturgies to be used for the marriage of gay folks in all dioceses.
The Episcopal convention also elected the Rt Rev. Michael Curry, our first African-American Presiding Bishop. He is an inspiring leader with a broad, fresh voice to lead us. My response to every one of his sermons is Wow!
These big things churn us up. Sometimes to the points of tears. How blessed we are to have a country and a church where we are free to be churned...free to celebrate and to grieve, and free as Jesus call us "to make all things new"...from sea to shining sea.
Many blessings to you and yours,
The Rev. Timothy A. Boggs, rector