Reflecting on the Past While We Walk Into the Future

Last Sunday was our final time sharing worship space with Spirit of Joy Church, where we had been for four years, our longest season of location stability ever.

As I mentioned in my sermon, we’ve been through these kinds of shifts before. We started The Table six and a half years ago, late in the summer of 2015, sharing meals in our home and calling people into intentional discipleship. After 18 months of that, we began worshiping together, a few times in a brewery, then weekly in a tiny prayer room, then in an even tinier food pantry (true story), and in February of 2018 we landed at Spirit of Joy.

Now, after four years (two of them in a global pandemic!), we are moving to a new space a few miles down the road, worshiping in the Chapel at Broadway UMC (609 E 29th St – 10:30am this Sunday).

In the midst of all this change, I’m grateful that what binds us together as a community is not an amazing show on Sunday mornings, or one person’s preaching gift, or charisma or charm or entrepreneurial energy. Instead, what has held us together is love.

And in the midst of the anxiety and excitement of our community moving into a new context this week, love abides among us, and love will hold us together. Because God’s love has been poured out among us, love isn’t an individual virtue to try harder at, but a communal reality to consent to and participate in.

As we walk forward into the future, let us consent to the love that abides among us,

• by continuing to encounter this love in the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist,
• by continuing to embody this love with one another, mutually submitting to one another, and
• by learning to extend this love outward, allowing love to send us out vulnerable and permeable, eager to join with others in new places, allowing new life to take whatever shape the Spirit creates.

I’m eagerly anticipating worshiping with you this Sunday (and Wednesday night for Candlemas, if the weather allows! We’ll send an email and group chat message by Wednesday afternoon if we have to cancel).

In Christ,
Fr. Ben