Fr. Mark’s Newsletter Message 5/27/2022
Hello, my friends at St. Mark’s, I’ve missed you. I look forward to worshipping with you this Sunday at 10:15 in the morning, in-person, or online if you can’t join us in person.
I am recording this message for you on my front porch. Kate and I have always held a practice on the first day of school to take a photo of our children on the front porch, and on their last day of school. Today, our daughter Maya graduates from High School. She has been formed by our friends and family, and churches and by God, by teachers and coaches and friends and students in towns like Wellesley and Needham, and here in San Diego at 4S Ranch and in the city where Maya has gone to high school at OLP.
We are grateful to God for everyone who has helped our daughter become an amazing, beautiful, strong-minded, opinionated, yearning-to-learn woman. So today we will celebrate with tears and joy in our hearts. Well, I’ll be the one crying, I think.
But my tears will be blended today with tears mindful of the families who lost children this week in the shootings in Texas and throughout our country. Our country… I am sad, I am sad to just confess that this country that I love so much is obsessed with death and with gun violence. I’m tired, I’m tired of having to record these pastoral letters, it almost feels weekly now, where we have to talk about another shooting. It is almost numbing. It has almost become ‘normal.’ What a sad world we live in that we have grown as a society in the last 20 years, to become a country where this is normal.
We can do something about it. We start with prayer, of course, we gather, yes, and we mourn. But we are called to do more than that aren’t we?
This Sunday we will hear in the book of Acts, how Paul and Silas did great work for Jesus Christ, did great work for the Kingdom of God, and they put their lives at risk to do so. Much like teachers and safety officers and our police officers do so often to protect other people’s lives. But we carry the shield of Jesus Christ, we carry the armor of the Gospel, we carry a blessing from God with the Holy Spirit called our baptism. And in our baptism, we are united to work together with love, that is the power of love.
But love is not passive. Love doesn’t sit back. Love doesn’t say: oh that is too bad, let’s cry and pray. Love says change, love says transformation, love says we can do this together, hand in hand. You, we, the people of St. Mark’s, we’ve demonstrated already in the last twelve months that we can lead change and transformation not only of our congregation, but of ourselves, and an understanding of who God is calling us to serve. And that transformation is hard, it is difficult. This Sunday, Paul and Silas remind us that God is with us knowing that it is hard and difficult. Because it becomes less about you and less about me, but more about the glory of God. That is our to work together to love Jesus Christ in each and every person. To fight for the dignity of every human being. That means we have to put aside our own wants and desires, our own sense of security and safety. And we have to provide those gifts to others. We can do that by our example. We can do that together. And we can do that by serving our neighborhoods.
I invite you to read Bishop Susan’s letter to the diocese this week after the shooting. In that she writes very clearly about how we can take action to love our neighbors. We can do this St. Mark’s. You can do this Child of God. And we can turn those tears into hope.
Fr. Mark