Rector's Note: Just a closer walk with Jesus-5.8.25

I’ve heard our bishop, the Rt. Rev. Daniel Gutiérrez, preach and speak several times in the last few weeks about his vision for the diocese: at the Easter Vigil, at meetings with clergy and at the dedication of Trinity Church in Bluebell. In all of these encounters, he repeatedly has stressed two priorities that he has for churches, and for us in pastoral leadership: help people to read and understand the Bible more deeply and develop a personal relationship with Jesus.

I’ve been thinking a lot about those priorities of late. Bible study isn’t too hard to make happen, though I do miss Larry Sibley’s wonderful expertise on this and his many years of leading St. Peter’s in lectionary discussions. Education for Ministry (EfM) classes that we offer in conjunction with St. Martin-in-the-Fields provide an in-depth scholarly study of the Old and New Testaments. There is lots of room to set up new opportunities for different kinds of study in the new program year.

But a personal relationship with Jesus is another thing. For the most part, I tend to leave this up to Jesus, himself, as he makes himself known to us in so many ways: in scripture study, in liturgy, in community, in prayer and in deeply personal encounter.

At the same time, the idea of relating personally to Christ can be hard for some to even imagine, let alone put into practice. For some, Jesus is a warm and intimate friend, open to a chat at any time of day. For others, the second person of the Trinity can feel hard to relate to at all, intellectually or spiritually, especially if they wrestle with scripture or have doubts about the historical or factual details of the New Testament texts. Other members of the Trinity may be easier to grasp for some: a loving Father who made all of creation or a Holy Spirit that seems to subtly lead and guide us through life. God reveals the divine self quite obviously to some folks when they walk in the woods or pick up shells on the beach. Finally, the powerful pull of community love can be all the evidence of the divine that some need.

The early church had to travel this tricky ground as well, once Jesus’ Easter appearances were over, and he had ascended into heaven. The ones “who did not see and still believed” depended largely on witness, the stories of personal encounter with Christ that they shared with one another, as well as the power of their gatherings for prayer and Eucharist. It helped that there was a strong feeling that Jesus would be returning soon, and that the threats of Rome and synagogue could not overcome that hope.

Today, we still have the power of our gatherings as people of faith, as well as the witness of our Scriptures, and the depth of our personal prayer lives. But sharing our personal encounters with Jesus, well, that’s … personal. And yet, those stories can also be incredibly powerful, the very platform that Jesus uses to introduce himself to others. I know this was the case for me, as I think about my own experiences of meeting Jesus, and the many ways over time that he has become intimately present to me.

While everyone’s encounter with Jesus is different, I’ve found that there are particular paths he seems to take to get to me, places I will find him if I look. On this afternoon, when white smoke has signaled that the Roman Catholic Church has a new pope named Leo XIV, I’m reminded that it was in this church and its members that I first met Jesus. And even though I left that church, so much came with me. No matter where I’ve gone in my life, it seems that Jesus was always waiting for me when I arrived.

My earliest encounters with him were through the faith of my family members, especially my sisters, who were several years older than me. As they sang in the cool contemporary church choir at Sunday Mass and made youth retreats with other teenagers, I wanted to be like them. It helped that our family was involved in liturgy Sunday to Sunday. It was a family value that I could choose to accept or reject. But it was an experience I could work with.

When I was a teenager, retreats and youth gatherings helped me to see Jesus as someone who cared about me as a young person, and I thrived on the excitement of shared experience with peers. There was a really big focus on large youth retreats and ministry programs during my youth in the 1980s. I have heard many others of my generation speak of the power of similar encounters in their lives. In the Catholic Church, it went under the name Search for Christian Maturity; in the Episcopal Church, it took the form of Happening and EYE (Episcopal Youth Event). Perhaps you or your kids experienced something like this. I still remember the stories that teens and adults shared on the retreats I attended, stories of how they encountered Jesus in pretty ordinary lives that seemed quite extraordinary to me at the time.

When I was a teenager, my sister Anna took me to an Episcopal charismatic prayer service that had a huge impact on our Catholic lives for many years, and my family became very active in Life in the Spirit seminars that opened us to deep personal experiences of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and in worship. My college friends were deeply engaged in their faith in similar ways, leading to long conversations about what this meant to us. Even conversations with those who did not believe as I did, or had no faith at all, shaped my own understanding of how Jesus worked in my life.

As I look back at the ways I encountered Christ over the years, it was a conversation with Jesus that happened person to person, faith community to faith community, job to job, friend to friend. The ways that I worshiped, my understanding of church, my take on scripture, the people I have known, have all changed profoundly over the years. None of those things are in place for me in the same way that they were. I’ve rejected some ideas completely, some dear friends have died or moved out of my life, and my church is not the one that originally formed me. And yet, they have all, in one way or another, been the avenues that Jesus chose to speak with me, take up residence in my imagination, and burn in my heart.

Jesus continues to make himself very apparent in the people of St. Peter’s and in the way you tell your stories and witness with your lives. In the end, I am convinced that all it takes to meet the divine in this way is a desire to do so and a will to listen for God wherever you are. I am convinced that God will show up where we look for the divine, and will speak where we listen, if we do so with earnest intention. And that encounter might look vastly different than the usual reports because it is yours.

For some, it may look mostly like seeking something a bit elusive. For others, it may take the shape of remarkable findings. Together, we hold those personal stories against the ones we tell as a community of faith, and we do our best to pass on the love that encounters with the divine release into the world. As your priest, that’s all I can ask.