Dear Friends,

As some of you know, I spent last week in California for a family event and was grateful for the time to reconnect with loved ones, enjoy the cooler climate of the San Francisco Bay, and even see a movie or two. If you haven’t seen Barbie or Oppenheimer, I recommend that you do! (One of my colleagues calls the duo “Barbenheimer” because both movies deal with issues of identity, agency, and legacy, all of which I pondered during my time with family!)

One of the most important things that happens when I take time away from home and from our shared life as a congregation is that I enter a place of honest reflection and begin to see things from a different perspective, one that almost always brings me to a place of greater clarity and gratitude. And during this trip, the thing that I saw most clearly was the image of our community as a body. A body with many members of different functions, each of great value and each one belonging to the other. In “church” words, we call this the Body of Christ, which the Apostle Paul so beautifully describes in his letter to the Romans that we read today. 

“For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.” (Romans12:4-8)

Today, we are honoring two members of the Body of Christ, each of them called to the ministry of the diaconate, a servant ministry that incorporates many of the qualities described by Paul, but also one that every baptized Christian embodies in their own unique way, whether lay or ordained. Diaconal postulant Florian Stamm, who has been a member of St. John’s since the Covid pandemic, is being sent with our blessing to begin his internship at Church of the Epiphany, Henrico County.  John, “JD” Dickenson, who was recently ordained, is being welcomed by us as the new deacon of St. John’s. I cannot think of a better way to symbolize how God calls us out and brings us home as members of his body, according to the grace which has been given to us.

I hope you will join me in reflecting on what this body has meant to you, and how you see yourself as one of its members.  Where are you most generous, diligent, compassionate, cheerful? What actions, relationships, ministries bring out the best in you and those around you? Please think about this in the days and weeks ahead as the fall approaches and our program year begins. You and I are members of this body with abundant gifts to offer and to receive. When you thrive, so do I. When I thrive, so do you. We are, as Paul says, members of one another.

In Christ,

Amelie+