Dear sisters and brothers,
As a community, we have from the beginning sought to embody four core practices: Welcoming, Listening, Gospeling, and Going (or Joining). We are in a series of sharing briefly about each of these core practices. First Fr. Spencer reflected on Welcoming, then I reflected on Listening, then Fr. Matt reflected on Gospeling, and finally today we’ll focus on Going/Joining.
We seek to becoming a “going” and “joining” people. Like Jesus, we want to actively look for and move toward the marginalized, to be present among them, join with them in solidarity, and discern what God is doing in the midst of that joining.
We seek to always be looking for where God’s grace is taking us out of our comfort zone and into new realms of mission. We seek to discern and participate in the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray, for God’s kingdom to come among us, for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
God is calling us to join with those we’d never imagine being with, entering into their language and their life, becoming one with them, becoming lovers of those outside our experience, announcing in and through life together God’s desire for joining and communion.
As I said in a Lenten sermon last year: In Christ, God’s boundary-transgressing desire for intimacy is placed within us, and as we yield to the Holy Spirit by stepping across boundaries of purity or protection or practicality in order to join in communion with those we find ourselves surprised to be with, new creation springs up in our midst.
Our going to practice justice must always lead to joining in solidarity with those we move toward. Let’s allow ourselves to feel God’s desire for intimacy, and as we hunger for God’s presence, let us allow our communion as Christ’s Body to stir hunger for communion with others… and then let us step across boundaries with a posture of listening and learning, so that new creation could spring up in our midst as God draws us together into divine life.
What boundary is God inviting you to transgress for the sake of intimacy today?
Grace and peace,
Fr. Ben
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