Watch the service (on YouTube) here.
Good morning, Trinity!
It is so good to be here with you! My official first day was last Monday, and it’s been a full week of meeting new people, starting to learn about Trinity, and figuring out how to use new technologies. Thank you to all of you for your patience as I assimilate a lot of new information. I am so very excited to already be in the midst of figuring out what God has in mind for us to do together.
Some of you may not know much about me, so here are three quick things to get us started:
Without Trinity, I probably wouldn’t exist. My parents met here as college students and were married here.
I love the Episcopal Church, and I love hearing all the different reasons that other people love it too.
I am a visual learner. I remember names best when I can see your names and faces right next to each other. So, while it can be hard to connect on video calls, I hope to learn your names quickly.
I am looking forward to getting to know each and every one of you. I hope we can connect through phone calls and video small groups in the coming weeks and months. I would love to know what you love about The Episcopal Church. And I know that getting to know one another takes time. Let’s work together to know and love one another as we create a little bit of God’s kingdom.
This is a strange time to begin leadership in a congregation. Our world is not in the order we would like it. We cannot gather in person for worship or coffee hour or meetings without endangering the health of those we love. In the same act of loving one another, we cannot share the Eucharist or sing together. It’s a difficult tension that loving one another means staying apart.
We have moved from the immediate crisis response of the stay at home order in the spring, through a summer of deep restlessness. Six months into wearing masks, staying home, and washing our hands constantly, we are moving into the fall cycle of life. School has started with remote instruction. Book groups have figured out how to meet online. People have built COVID decks so they can visit with friends outdoors. And church is continuing to adjust as well.
We continue with necessary connections, like worship and pastoral care. Our buildings are cared for. WHEEL continues to use our space to meet the shelter needs of a vulnerable and growing unhoused population. Our staff continue to be remarkably flexible as technology and needs change. Trinity’s physical presence continues to be a huge resource and landmark for Seattle, even while the worshipping community gathers remotely.
With the initial shock of the pandemic crises past, we are beginning to be able to plan rather than react. We are looking for the graces of this time, and how to see challenges as gifts for new ministries we might not have considered before. It’s like I told my kids this week - This year will be hard because it will be different than what we have known before, AND we need to be open to being surprised by the gifts we may discover.
All that is to say that we are in this discovery together. While I bring nearly 14 years of experience as a priest in 5 different congregations, this is a new world for me too. As we live into a new reality we are going to try some things that work, and some that we decide are good learning experiences. AND we are going to continue to be the steady foundation of worship and community that defines Trinity and welcomes people looking for a place to belong.
On top of all the uncertainty and stress of pandemics, health, and politics, we are also navigating a clergy transition. Father Jeff retired as planned. The farewell was not ideal, and may feel incomplete. Some of us may feel disconnected. Some of us may feel resentful, or glad. Some of us may not be sure what we’re feeling about this clergy transition.
These are real concerns and real feelings. In the midst of uncertainty and change, one thing remains constant: God’s abiding love for us. We know and share that love with and through one another, as we gather in worship (even virtually), as we connect with one another in coffee hour and ministry groups, as we care for one another and our neighbors. We are blessed to have all that we need to bear witness to God’s love.
God’s abiding and generous love is the focus of the parable in today’s Gospel reading. The kingdom of God is like the landowner who pays every worker the same wage, whether they worked one hour or all day.
According to the workers who toiled all day in the hot sun, perhaps enduring choking smoke of wildfires, it’s not fair for the latecomers to earn the same amount. That sense of fairness is ingrained in us. “I worked more or harder so I earned more” of whatever reward we think is in limited supply. More money, more respect, more success.
Some of us have known injustice when that economy of reward fails. When we work hard, and we don’t earn a living wage with benefits. Or we want to work but can’t find a job. When the color of our skin, our gender, or who we love affects how worthy we are considered by others. When it feels like we have to work twice as hard and fit a particular mold to be seen and respected.
God’s wages of love and grace are not in limited supply. In God’s vineyard, there is no need to worry about who ‘deserves’ more. We ALL deserve the most, and the most love and grace and forgiveness are given in proportion to how God loves every one of us. They are given equally, because in God’s eyes, we are each equally beautiful, equally amazing, equally worthy.
The challenge for us is translating God’s economy of deep generosity into our world which thrives on competition and scarcity. How will we know who ‘wins’ if there is enough love, enough justice, enough food, for everyone? What if we all ‘win’? What would that world look like?
How do we live our lives and structure our ministries in ways that all people are seen and valued and nourished equally? How do we open our eyes to the ways our current systems of reward and power, even in church, continue to discount some people and privilege others?
The Good News for today is that, as with all things in our journey to be disciples of Jesus, this is a process. Discipleship means seeking to deepen our faith and our faithful living. We do that by engaging the questions, by examining our own hearts for difficult truths, by consciously using our words and actions to break down constructs that perpetuate ideas that the world is full of winners and losers.
In God’s world, the one we are co-creating this very moment because of our faith, there are only winners. Because there is no end to God’s love and grace and forgiveness. In God’s eyes, no one is less or more. We are beloved - and, knowing ourselves beloved means working for a world where all people are seen and treated as God’s beloved.
I am so glad to be on this journey of faith and life and discovery with you all. It’s hard work. Some days are amazing and joyous - and others it’s hard to keep on. We are in this together, to love and care for one another, to hold each other in prayer, to wonder together and live into how God calls us to be a force for love in this world. I am looking forward to our conversations and ministry together.
Let us end with prayer.
Generous God, whose gift defies the balance sheet of ownership and just reward: free our hearts and minds from the envy which enslaves us; shape our lives to show your self-forgetting love; through Jesus Christ, the free gift of grace. Amen. [1]
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[1] Collect for Proper 20, Year A, in Prayers for an Inclusive Church, by Steven Shakespeare (New York: Church Publishing, 2009).
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