From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

Our guest speaker this Sunday, February 12, at the 10:30am forum will be the Rev’d Fleming Rutledge. She was one of the first women to be ordained in the U.S. Episcopal Church, and she has been called one of America’s best preachers. A popular Holy Week speaker, she has written widely about crucifixion and resurrection themes and her most recent book about Advent has become an instant classic.

In an interview she did with PBS a number of years ago, she says this about Easter, “Jesus is alive. There’s never a possibility of the event fading into the mists of the past because this is about a living God who acts and speaks in our own time and will continue to do so.” She goes on to say, “If you’re not a believer, it’s a cultural phenomenon of some sort. It’s related to the history of art and the history of warfare. But if one is a believer, then this is the story that never dies, because this is the story of God’s decisive, once-for-all intervention, on behalf of his creation, to save it.”

As we enter Lent, this truth which she articulates so well should be at the center of our Lenten discipline.

Lent is a time when we re-center our spiritual lives on the central truth not only of our faith, but of the way we understand the cosmos and time itself. If God can do this, then what have we to fear? If death itself is undone, then how shall we live? If God has done this for us, then what will be our lived way of showing our thanks and praise?

Lent is the path, the way of the cross, which we walk with Christ. The human experience is so often itself a shadow of that way. We walk a path of love and loss, joy and shame, heroism and cowardice—the whole story of betrayal, suffering, and grief is ours.

And the whole story of the resurrection is ours, too. If our experience is so often a shadow of the way, then that shadow is cast, made more starkly contrasted, by the living light of the Resurrection.

So we enter this time of re-centering, seeking not a clearer remembrance of an event that is passed, but a deeper relationship with a God who is living—a God who creates, sustains, and redeems us and our days. We seek our place in the story that never dies. If God acts and speaks in our own time, then what is he saying? That is the work of Lent: to listen more deeply and to live more faithfully as a people with ears to hear and hearts to follow.

I hope you’ll be able to join us this Sunday for time with Mtr Rutledge as she joins us in the Murphey Gallery via Zoom—and I hope you’ll approach the conversation as the beginning of our Lenten preparations as we once again let ourselves clear our hearts and minds so that the story of Holy Week becomes freshly ours and his way becomes our way again, too.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert