What do I think I am living for? Just that: to live so that my life can become more transparent to God’s life in me and through me, in the midst of a community that also longs Godward.Īnd isn’t that the pattern we hear in the Scriptures today? Moses spoke with God and conversed with God with an unveiled face, and he shone with the very glory of God. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory into another.” What am I living for? I am someone who, in the cornfields of Iowa, in the joys of making music, in the midst of intense academic study, and in the struggle to be good and to foster a common good, has longed to live before God with an unveiled face, and to find myself wrapped up in the freedom of the Spirit, as I am transformed from glory into glory. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
As I was reflecting on some of this while meditating on this week’s Scriptures, I realized one passage for today has wound its way through my pilgrim life and shown up time and again, from St. It was my love of tradition and the discovery of my Great Aunt’s Prayer Book that brought me to the Episcopal Church.
I grew up in a United Methodist Church that taught me to sing my prayers, and I was surrounded by evangelicals right through college, who ensured that I was soaked in the Scriptures. Augustine’s line, that to sing is to pray twice.
Through my Dad and especially in church I learned the truth of St. I grew up in a small town, which means I grew up with several sorts of family: nuclear, extended, school, church. And so, let me try to answer them a little. These are questions that get to the heart of who we are. Thomas Merton, one of the spiritual masters of the twentieth century once said, “If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.” They don’t tell you why I have always sought out beauty, or been an acolyte of honesty, or always longed to be good and do better. They don’t tell you that my heart comes alive when I see stretches of field-lands (especially corn fields) laid out before me, with the sound of the wind conversing with the corn. They tell you something about me, but not enough of what matters. That I was ordained a deacon and priest in God’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, through the Diocese of Virginia.īut these sorts of answers may not get us very far. I could go on to tell you that I earned my Master of Divinity degree from Candler School of Theology at Emory University, my Master of Theology degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, my Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia, or, as we say, Mr. That I went to a small liberal arts college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I’m sure you’d like to know more about me, wouldn’t you? And what should I tell you? I could tell you that I was born and raised in a small town in Southeast Iowa. God is weaving your stories and my story into something new and beautiful, and what else should we do, then, but rejoice and be glad in it.īut what is my story. It is the day the Lord has made, because it is God who has brought us together at this time and in this place, and gives us the blessing of living out our days, for the next few years at least, together. This is the day that the Lord has made Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Thank you all for your faithful service to the body of Christ here at St. Thank you to the wardens and vestry, and most especially to the search committee, who prayed and listened and questioned. And here we are.Īnd I have been waiting, and praying, and hoping, and waiting some more, and here we are.Īnd before we go any further, I want to take just a moment to say thank you. Mary’s In-The-Hills! You have been waiting, and praying, and hoping, and waiting some more. Andy Guffey, and I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to have accepted the call to come alongside you as Priest-in-Charge of St. In the Name of the One, Holy, and Everlasting God.
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