Friends, I share my thoughts and meditations with you from the confinement of my home. Like many of you, this has become a way of life that falls far short of many expectations of our lives, normally energized by Spring, sport, outdoor life, fellowship, work, school, college, and of course, retail therapy, and physical therapy after my heart surgery. Many physical restrictions have now been placed on my lifestyle.

But then millions throughout the world are going through their own discourse of isolation, social distancing, unemployment, poverty, and sickness. I spent five days at Beth Israel and, I noted the pause when doctors or nurses asked about my profession. Their response, “We need your prayers.”  The plight of hospital staff, first responders, families of the dying, the aged are brought to our attention daily. We also face limitations in our church life. As a family church, we yearn to be close to one another, to touch, feel, pray, and physically reach out. We are enslaved by the paradox of virtual connections. However, our vestry has never ceased the need for regular meetings and workshops. We continue the task of Prophetic Listening based on our parish conversation and major tenets of the Mutual Ministry Review process.

But the nature of St. Cyprian’s Church will manifest a solution by persons rising to the challenges. We shall overcome!

I had the time to read about an online workshop I had attended three years ago, about, The church in transition; the role of the leader. In spite of the challenge of sitting in front of a computer five hours a day, I found the ecumenical group of clergy who had joined me when I did the course from all over the country an interesting paradigm.

•  The course was based on Systems Theory as a tool to help understand oneself and as an assessment to understand congregational leadership dynamics and the functioning of congregational leaders
•  To articulate what it means to be a self-differentiated leader
•  To identify an example of self-differentiated leadership in scriptures
•  To use scripture as a resource to help others understand relationship among people

I hope to workshop these experiences with the vestry and the congregation soon.

I was reminded of our bishop’s remarks in his weekly meditation: Our calendar this year is out of sync. With the world crisis surrounding us, we are in a continuing state of anxiety and sadness. Though the liturgical calendar says we have made the transition from Easter into Pentecost season, the reality around us suggests otherwise. Living in the northern hemisphere, we are accustomed to an alignment between the message of resurrection and the bursting forth of spring. But this year neither the world’s vernal renewal from gray to green, nor the church’s liturgical transition from purple to white, is aligned with the continued global struggle with isolation and fear. There is nothing linear about this journey.

On this day, the liturgical color changes from the white of Easter and Ascension to the red of the Holy Spirit. This might suggest that, with Jesus gone back into heaven, the focus of the Church’s worship is turned to the Holy Spirit. But Pentecost is not a feast of the Holy Spirit but the commemoration of the Descent of the Holy Spirit. It is as much a feast of Christ as Christmas or Epiphany or any other great day in the Calendar, a thankful remembrance of what Christ has done for us. ‘No man comes to the Father except by me’, Christ told his disciples at the Last Supper: and he added, ‘I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of truth’ (John 14: 6, 16). Christ is the agent through whom the Triune God restores grace and peace to a lost human-kind. This is the true focus of the Christian Pentecost.

It was by the command of Christ that the apostles waited in Jerusalem when the Jewish Church was celebrating its feast of Pentecost. Pentecost means ‘fiftieth’, for it was seven weeks (or, by Jewish reckoning the fiftieth day) after the time of Passover that they kept the feast. The different titles by which the day was known indicates its meaning for the Jews. It was the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Harvest, the Day of the First Fruits—a day of thanksgiving to God for the wheat harvest just then being gathered in.

So, fifty days after Easter, the Christian Church keeps its own Pentecost or harvest thanksgiving. The seed had been planted thirty-three years before, when the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and the New Man Jesus was born into the world. At Pentecost, the Church celebrates its own birthday, when the Holy Spirit came in Christ’s name upon the first fruit of new and redeemed humanity. God alone knows the day of the final harvest when all, tares and wheat alike, will be gathered in. Meanwhile, the Word of God who became flesh in Mary gives to those who believe in his Name the power to become children of God after his likeness.

Happy birthday, church

Pax et Bonum

Noble+