“Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

I wonder if you feel a bit like I do as we continue to wade through the moment we are inhabiting. For over two years, we have been responding to the presence of a virus in our midst, and we have done so in ways that make sense according to the scientific information being provided by dedicated healthcare professionals. Though we have a few more weeks until we reach the two year mark of changing our worship patterns because of the pandemic, it has been over two years since the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed in Arizona, and in those two years, we have been separated. 

Separation from things that cause pain or hurt to our being is a good thing. In the case of the pandemic, society responded to the widespread circulation of the virus by asking people to stay away from others and to only leave your home when it was absolutely necessary - for things like groceries or medications. Otherwise, we were being asked to separate from one another in an effort to separate the preponderance of people from the risk of getting COVID-19, which was causing serious illness and death prior to the widespread availability of vaccines. 

Separation from things that bring us joy and connect us to a sense of hope, however, can be a harmful thing for human beings. After all, we are created in such a way that being in community with one another is a natural inclination. As we each have different gifts, we need one another in order to benefit from the full giftedness of humanity as we are spoken into existence by God. The separation we have felt from one another has caused deep feelings of isolation and loneliness, and people are terribly hungry for communities in which they are able to establish relationship and are able to share in the goodness of communal belonging. 

We are in a new moment today. We are not at the start of the pandemic when we hoped that the separation we were going through was going to be short lived. We also are no longer in a moment in which complete separation from one another is required for our collective safety. With the presence of vaccines and the continued practice of common sense measures like wearing masks whilst inside buildings and public spaces, we are able to come back together and celebrate community together. 

In case you have missed the latest bright spot in the news cycle, the rapid increase in omicron cases is beginning to decline. Just a few weeks ago, we were seeing more than 25,000 new cases a day. For the bulk of this week, we have seen fewer than 10,000 cases a day in Maricopa county. We clearly are not out of the woods yet, but I do think there is a little light at the end of the tunnel for this particular surge of COVID infections. 

The question that I am wrestling with as I see the headlines is how we, as a faith community, can respond to God’s call to be a place in which people can find a sense of relief from the isolation and loneliness. How will we respond to people being hungry for communal belonging? How will we welcome people into our parish, and how will we seek to form long lasting friendships with people new to our parish community?

In a sense, the questions that are on the front of my mind are questions of a spiritual nature. The ways that we welcome people are, of course, part and parcel of how we do evangelism, but they also need to flow out of our faithfulness to God through Christ. In other words, hospitality and welcome are not simply things we need to do in order to grow the number of people attending worship at Epiphany. They are, first and foremost, ways that we participate in what God is already doing in our community.

Invitation is an important part of how we do evangelism well, but an invitation is meaningless if the welcome on the other side of that invitation - when that invitation is accepted - is paltry or missing altogether. Here, we might reflect on the ways that having a simple coffee hour gives us the opportunity to invite visitors and newcomers into a deeper relationship with people they have just worshipped with. It is not simply that we want a cup of coffee after worship - though that may be true. The way that we practice hospitality is how we grow in relationship with people new to our parish, and our hospitality is one way that we join up with what God is already doing in the lives of our neighbors. 

Separation from hurtful things is a good thing. Isolation and loneliness cause pain and hurt to the human spirit. Perhaps the thing that we need to be separated from the most in this moment is the feeling of isolation and loneliness. 

In Christ,

Hunter+