Dear Friends:

This coming Sunday, we will join with many of the parishes in the Diocese of Virginia to worship online with our bishops for a service of Morning Prayer. This is a gift from the diocesan staff to us, and a way to unite our 129 parishes over Labor Day weekend. 

This reminder of our ongoing communion with one another is especially important during a time when all of us are impacted by the pandemic, our country is reeling in the wake of natural disasters, and we continue to wrestle with past and ongoing racial injustice. We need to remember that we are not alone in this, but that God puts us together to steward our communities, nurture those relationships, and understand that our future is tied to that of others. God puts us together, because God knows we can do far more with even two or three others than we can on our own.

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus says in this Sunday’s Gospel, “if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” In other words, where we find a place of connection amid challenge and conflict, where we gather in the name of the one who calls us to be his body, where we give ourselves to knowing one another: that not only feels wonderful, it is where work of holy transformation begins.

In the words of a recent blogger, “Engaging one another around the most difficult challenges of living together means that we have to know each other. It compels us to see one another with a clarity by which we not only recognize one another’s shortcomings, but also know each other’s stories,” and be changed by them.

As we near the end of the summer and look ahead to a new program year at St. John’s – one in which our traditional ways of staying engaged in community will require creativity and energy to maintain, I would like us all to consider a few questions:

• What holds you together with others? What do you long for in your relationships? What are you willing to do to find or create it? Who can help?

• Are you conscious of Jesus’ presence with you when you are gathered with others? What about during this time of virtual gatherings? How do you sense Jesus among you in those spaces?

• How is it that you have and can continue to join with others to do more together than you could alone?

With gratitude for our continued gathering,

Amelie+