It will be 15 years this month since I first arrived at St. Paul’s. My contract was initially only for 2 years because there wasn’t a great deal of certainty about this congregation. Some of you may recall we had some very serious conversations in the beginning about our future. We even talked about closing and merging with another church. In consultation with Archdeacons Richard Salt and Kim Van Allen we decided against that plan. As a sign of our commitment to move forward in faith, we opened the clothing cupboard.
Here we are, more than a decade later. Faith has a lot to do with us being where we are at this moment. Reflecting on this journey, it seems appropriate to ask: What is faith?
According to Mirriam Webster: faith represents a deep belief, trust, and loyalty to a higher power that shapes and forms a person’s worldview, in our case, that worldview is Christianity as expressed through Anglicanism. We have faith in God working in and through us. We trusted that God is present in among us here at St. Paul’s and that, through the gifts God has given us, we can make a difference in the community, we can do God’s work. Year’s ago, we chose to manifest that through the clothing cupboard and have served thousands of individuals and families since just in that ministry alone. There is other ministries we have engaged in individually and collectively because we have faith, because we trust God is working in and through us giving us what we need to persist.
Notice faith isn’t just about faith in God, it also is about faith in the gifts God gives us, so it includes faith in us. We see the same pattern in the story of Abraham. As we heard in the reading from Genesis today:
The Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you…" So Abram went, as the Lord had told him;
Abraham doesn’t simply trust God’s promises will magically happen to him – he goes into the world, taking his family and travelling to the land he was promised. He participates in the journey. Faith involves action.
We acted when we opened the clothing cupboard as a sign of our faith that God works in and through us. We continue to embody our faith in every act of engagement, every opportunity we embrace to reach out to the community, including, most recently, embracing the Alzheimer’s society and welcoming them to our space.
Does this mean everything works out beautifully? Of course not. There were challenges for Abraham and Sarah as we will continue to read over the next few weeks. There have been challenges for us over the years and we know life continues to be a struggle. We continue to plan and fundraise and worry and trust that somehow God working in and through us will continue to enable us to be present and do God’s work in this community.
Faith is about trust, belief, courage, persistence, patience, understanding, compassion, and so much more. Faith has carried us this far. May we continue in faith trusting that God is with us every step of the way. This we pray as we sing: 86 More than we Can Ask or Imagine