Rector's Message

Message from the Rector
(printed monthly in Trinity Times)

My Dear Friends,

I want to begin by extending my sincere gratitude for the wonderful celebration that marked my fifteen years with you, my thirty years of priestly ministry, and my sixtieth birthday. It was a grand evening punctuated by lovely tenderness. It had all the earmarks of a retirement celebration—only I didn’t have to retire to receive it! But for me the celebration and the sentiments expressed on the occasion bring up the issues of receiving and giving—the twin bookends that hold up my life with you at Trinity.
Actually, I would like to use this monthly greeting to you as a mediation that might more fully explore the depths of giving and receiving, because these themes don’t just dominate my life with you here at Trinity—they also are the sum and substance of your life in this parish family as well. I would greatly appreciate it if you would separate it from the rest of the mail and set it aside to read in a time of quiet reflection.
We have been talking a great deal this fall about giving. Of course we have, for we are getting ready for our annual fall canvass. This year—as you have been reminded ad infinitem—we are doing something different. Rather than focus on our giving as a response to the needs of the church’s ministries and the costs of maintaining our salaries and our buildings, we have been exploring the importance of giving in the development of our own spiritual lives. So it’s not, then, just that the church needs our financial support. That much we hear pretty much every year. It’s also that giving itself—that sacrificial act of generosity—is one of the tools that deepens our spiritual lives. In other words, we need to give; it is important in our own growth in God.
(By the way, I have been preaching this fall about giving in the context of our current economic downturn. These sermons can be accessed via the Trinity website, www.trinityfayetteville.org.)
I recently heard a sermon by The Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows on the occasion of the Reception of Peter Williams, a long time Catholic priest, into the Episcopal Priesthood. Setting “receiving” along side of “giving,” Jennifer skillfully developed how important “receiving” is in the life of faith.
When in our service we confess that we have fallen short of the mark, we receive the forgiveness of the church and the fresh possibility of a new start. The priest says, “Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.”
Think of how we extend our hands to receive the bread at the Communion rail. It is gesture that says
that, even though we are trying our level best to do live a life of goodness, we always seem to come up short. We need something else that cannot be self-generated. We need to receive the gift of life and sustenance from God. It is a gesture of eloquent vulnerability and substantive need.
Think also of the prayer that we say together just after the baptismal candidate has been bathed in the waters of initiation and marked with the chrism of sanctification: “We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood.”
And when one is received into the Episcopal Church from another tradition the bishop lays hands on them and says: “We recognize you as a member of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, and we receive you into the fellowship of this Communion. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless, preserve, and keep you.”
All of these treasured moments are unambiguously real, necessary, and, ultimately, good. In Jennifer’s remarks I was reminded of Aristotle’s striking image of receiving and how it intimately and substantially forms us. He likened receiving to the way that wax receives the image imparted by a signet ring. The warm wax yields under the weight of the ring as it makes its imprint—changing the wax forever. Can we dare to imagine how all that we receive through our faith and our life at Trinity has changed us—and continues to change us?

Our church and its richly textured tradition have received us in exquisite hospitality and generosity. Like the generations that have preceded us, we have been graciously received and held in love. All of our gifts, all of our shortcomings, all of our brokenness, all of our hopes, and all of our dreams have been received, held, and deeply cherished. Each and every part of each and every one of us has been received as a precious gift. This thought is almost too bright and too immense for us to bear. And yet, there it is—one of the fundamental realities of our life in God.
Giving, then, is best understood in light of this receiving. It is our humble gesture in response to bearing these beams of love. And it brings into fulfillment a wonderful reciprocity of divine energy. Life and its goodness, then, flow through us. As divine vessels we receive and we give back in joyful response. There is no need to cling or to horde, for rather than giving us more, these actions actually reduce the flow of life and love through us.
At least in part, then, this is why giving is so important to us. It is one of the essential parts—along with receiving—of living fully in this flow of divine energy and goodness. Thank God, then, for the graced opportunity to give.

Love,
Father Bill