Episcopal

In my message Sunday I wrapped up a three week continuous story of God’s plan for us, our job to activate the plan and our need to ‘do something’ in the face of the state of the world.  I reflected on week one being a Lord’s Prayer primer showing how each line of that prayer is a prayer unto itself and that it is in the present tense.  It’s not designed to exclusively relate to the past or the future:  it’s a prayer for us, today.

In week two we reflected on the man who tore down his barns because he had become rich only to find himself not living another day.  Live for this day, Jesus tells us.

Yesterday I started by saying I was hopefully going to disturb every person in the congregation with my message.  The Gospel was Jesus saying ‘don’t store up treasurers here on earth…’  I spoke longer than usual about how in my mind we are storing up treasures like never before and they are a clear indication that as a people, a nation, a world, we have lost our minds.

We are putting children in cages…our sovereignty has become a treasure here on earth.

We are preventing basic gun control because we have made a god of the Second Amendment…the amendment has become a treasure here on earth.

The world is burning yet we are about to relax more rules that fight climate change…industry and money have become a treasure here on earth.

We have lost our minds.  And we have lost our souls.

We used to take care of each other.  We used to see issues in light of truth.  We used to welcome people to our shores, pass reasonable laws, see truth for truth. Today everything we do, every law we pass, every decision we make are grounded in three poisons that are the opposite of that way of life:  individualism, excess personal freedom, economic development.

Me, me, me

Mine, mine, mine

More, more, more

This can summarize what we have become today.  I want it for me and it is mine and I want more of it.  We have lost our minds;  we have lost our souls.

What can we do about it?  Can we change Washington?  Can we change the world that doesn’t believe truth matters anymore?

Probably not.  But we can change ourselves, our families and our faith community.  We can do something…we can do something.

In the days and weeks ahead our parish is going to do a deep dive into who we are, what we believe, what we want our priest, who we are about to call, to know about us.  We’re going to start talking more about issues and we’re going to decide what we can do, right here, in Lucketts.

Look for more information soon about how we are going to go about this discernment process.  It will start with Vestry next week, then a full parish meeting where we will begin to identify the characteristics of our parish. Then small groups will talk about these in more detail resulting, eventually, in a parish-wide plan for doing something.

The world has lost its mind and its soul.  We at Christ Church intend to prevent that from happening to us.

peace,

Kurt+