Rector’s Note: An exercise in mutuality-4.16.26

As our rummage sale enters its first day with the jewelry sale this evening ( 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the library) I’m struck by the proximity it has with our food cupboard and community fridge, and how all three engage mutuality in our wider community.  What I love about these outreaches is that they make a way for people both to give and to receive at the same time.

On more than one occasion, I have heard from people who have received support from St Peter’s or the Community Fridge in some way and want to give as well. Someone might need assistance or support in some way and also have clothes to donate. Someone else may have benefitted from help with food and now has a surplus to contribute. Sometimes the need and the gift occur at the same time.

What’s important here is not that every act of care be paid back in some way, but that we create a system in which giving and receiving are part of the machinery of loving community. It’s actually essential to human dignity that both our capabilities and our vulnerabilities are welcome in that system.

And I think it’s working.

I’ve always felt that one of the functions of a parish is to have soft edges where people can experience the love of Christ without having to come all the way into the Sunday service if that’s not comfortable for them. We want them to associate this place with the love we profess to believe, and when people are treated with compassion and gratitude when they are in our spaces that’s a good sign. And that might be community members, tenants, visitors, or people using our ministries, or someone just wandering in looking for a place to cool off for bit. And sometimes it’s someone who wants to pray in our holy spaces then quietly slip away.

A few weeks ago at a recent Confirmation class, we had our Confirmation students pretend that they were visitors from an intergalactic religion team looking for signs of religious life on earth. We sent them out to look at our buildings and bulletin boards and to talk to the people they encountered. Several came back with stories about the food cupboard, the Community Fridge and the warmth we share at Fellowship.

Our visitors likely won’t be from outer space. But they will be from outside our walls and we want that experience of St Peter’s to be one that reflects the love of Christ.

The rummage sale, the Food Cupboard and the Community Fridge are such places. There are many more, and lots of ways that we can continue to live into our call to bring the love of this community even farther afield.