Atlantic District Publications

Letters from the President - The Trinitarian Bounce

June 2, 2009 at 7:48 PM


There’s a bounce in my step every year when spring finally turns that corner toward summer.  Not only will the great out-of-doors become a playground again, but the Church conducts its life in what is called “Ordinary” time.

Sure, by the time we get to October, up there in the 27th Sunday after Pentecost, it can get a little TOO ordinary.  But the non-festival seasons of the Church year are a great time for us to explore what it means to us to be alive in the Christ who has come with the Father in the power of the Spirit to make God’s home in us.  That means all options are open.

Do you want to hold a VBS?  Go for it.  Want to host a visiting parish from the far precincts of the Midwest?  Give it a try.  Taking the youth group to a Sunday morning beach-front service of Holy Communion?  Now’s your chance.  Hit the streets with flyers inviting folks to your parish?  Pound that shoe leather.  Backyard barbeque with the choir followed by a dynamic sing-along?  Four part harmony ‘r us.  Witness on the golf course?  Follow the bouncing ball!

Too often we overlook the beauty that God gives in the ordinary times of the year.  We’re all for Advent, all over Christmas, all around Epiphany, all caught up in Lent, and all ready for Holy Week.  But here, in the summer season, we find our pace out in the streets and on the highways, engaging the world with the Gospel of hope.

Think of the ministry of Jesus.  You don’t have to – you’ll find it in every Sunday’s Gospel lesson.  Jesus NOT involved only in high holy season, but Jesus getting stopped on the way to raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead, healing on the move.  That, my good friends, is US.  We are the power of God’s healing, through His Word and fortified by His Meal, for our world, our neighborhood, our present realities.  It’s about our baptism – it’s about the reality of the Holy Trinity in the flesh and bones called me.  It’s about the new-born children, which we once were and ever are, being sealed forever with the love of God in the sign of the cross on forehead and heart.

Judy and I are going to trundle down to the hills of North Carolina to spend some time in celebration with Ron and Millie Fink on Ron’s 45th anniversary of ordination.  I look forward to that as an opportunity to take a road I’ve never travelled.  Please join me in your way, from your parish locale, and take God’s summer road in ordinary time with Jesus, our Light and Hope!