21 May 2019
 
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.[1]
 
Dear St. Mark’s Community,
 
I want to begin by thanking everyone for their participation in our discernment process to date. Our regular parish meetings have been an integral part of the faithful and courageous journey we have taken to get where we are today. The uncertainty of the future with regard to how we will live out our common life is, in many ways, as murky as it was before.
 
As the words from St. Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, quoted above, make clear the way through the murkiness of the challenges that are facing us as is through a steadfast commitment to love. These words are perhaps most often heard at weddings. That being the case, I would suggest that the love outlined in the 1 Corinthians 13 is at least as important to Churches that are committed to and passionately engaged in the Missio Dei, or Mission of God.
 
It is important to remember that the church does not have a mission the church is the Mission of God in the world. By Church, we do not mean the building that houses the congregations that worship regularly as the Body of Christ. Rather we understand the church as an ecclesia or ‘gathering’. This gathering is made up, as Paul so aptly tells us, of many members making up one body (see 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4). This reality is evident in our common life. We are a group of folks brought together by the spirit of a Trinitarian God that has made itself manifest in our lives in a variety of ways. The movement of God in us as individuals has helped to form us into a missionary outpost of the Gospel that Jesus himself described in Luke’s Gospel,
 
“16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18 “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
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”[2]”
 
The anointing we all have received at Baptism has drafted us into the same mission of declaration.
 
Just as those who were closest to Jesus misunderstood his intentions and thought he was ‘full of himself’, we may find times when we believe we appear to be out of our depth. I would suggest that is not a bad place to be. In fact it is a place where one’s dependence on prayer and the Power of God is most clear and that upon which we are required to rely when the going gets tough.
 
I am confident that as clarity of our next steps emerge that we will summon the courage to pray and the will to Love in a way that endures all things and brings us safely to the shores of one of the good and pleasant futures that are possible in God’s imagination for us at St. Mark’s.
 
In Christ,
 
---Fr. Warren +


[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (1 Co 13:8–13). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

[2] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (Lk 4:16–21). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Romans 1:1-7

THE LETTER OF PAUL TO THERomans
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,
 To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Today's reading is typical of Paul's introductions to the letters he wrote to communities that he helped found and form. The difference here is that the church in Rome is not a community that Paul had actually visited or helped to found. 

Paul believed that the radical claim of "Jesus is Lord" was a direct and necessary challenge to the Roman claim that "Caesar is Lord". This is critical to Paul in claiming that Jesus was indeed equal and co-eternal with the God of the Jews. For Paul it logically follows that every power and principality is subject to the kingship of Jesus and that the coming of the Kingdom of God is the central and ultimate truth to which all of creation toward which the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus points.

Paul begins laying the groundwork for his project of full inclusion of all people in the mission of God or missio Dei represented by Jesus ongoing work in the world through the witness and struggles of the fulfillment of God's plan for the world proclaimed in the person of Jesus and his ongoing ministry in and to the world.

20 August 2018
 
Dear St. Mark’s Community,
 
Over the past several weeks we have concentrated on the Letter to the Ephesians in our Bible Study and Preaching. The Cliff’s Notes version has been Paul’s (?) message to a church seeking to find its voice in a new apostolic age. That basically means this church is being directed by the author of the letter to get clear about what the Good News (Gospel) of God in Christ is and how to go about sharing this Gospel with the people among whom the community lives, moves and has its being.  I have been concentrating on this basic call of and to community as a model for how we might be called to discern and articulate our call to mission and ministry at St. Mark’s.
 
In his contemporary American Opera, Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin famously wrote perhaps the work’s most famous song, “Summertime (and the Living is Easy)”. In a number of ways the American Church has patterned its first leg of Ordinary Time (the Season after Pentecost) along similar lines. September is often viewed as the beginning of the ‘program year’ in the church. Life at St. Mark’s is no different in many ways and profoundly different in another. Summertime is often viewed as a sort of ‘holding pattern’ in the church. That is, a time of waiting for the ‘real work’ of ministry to begin again.
 
The ‘program year’ is often viewed as the time when ministries ramp up for another year in the life of a congregation. For any number of parishes this means more of the same with a sprinkling of new initiatives and responses to the needs of the congregation and the community it has been called to serve and in which it has been commissioned to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”[1]
 
The basic story of Porgy and Bess is of Porgy, a disabled African-American street beggar living in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina and his efforts to save Bess from the clutches of her principal exploiters, Crown, a violent and possessive lover and Sportin’ Life, Bess’s drug dealer. It seems to me there are important parallels for our common life at St. Mark’s.
 
Like Porgy, we have obvious and seemingly insurmountable challenges to the mission to which we have been called. Also like Porgy, we are bound not to let those limitations keep us from serving as agents of good in the lives of those we have been called to seek and serve in our community.
Despite ups and downs, barriers and obstacles, Porgy persists in his mission to save Bess in spite of his limitations and the underdog and apparently futile nature of his commitment to seeing Bess freed from the clutches of the relationships that threaten to destroy her life.
 
We too are called to persist in the work we have been given to do in being the incarnation of the Body of Christ in Hampton, the Peninsula, the Commonwealth, the nation and the world.
 
To be sure, there are problems with the depiction of African American life as written by composer George, lyricist Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward (the author of the story upon which Porgy and Bess is based). That being said I believe that we can learn from Porgy’s tenacious pursuit of one whom he loves and the noble and enduring aims he has in seeking the redemption of Bess despite her troubles and somewhat dubious life choices.
 
In the days, weeks and months to come it is my fervent prayer that we, like Porgy, pursue the work we have been given to do without fear of the damage it may do to our reputation and with the steadfast belief in the power of love to set free captives like Bess and those who are like her.
 
 
--Padre Warren +
 
 


[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (Mt 28:19–20). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.