Message – Sunday, October 17, 2021

My Brothers and Sisters,

Today in our Cure we join with the rest of the nation in celebrating our heritage as a people.  Today at the Transfiguration the annual harvest and rally take place.  Both events will be online for a second year running as we continue to struggle with the pandemic and meeting the restrictions it has placed on our lives both as individuals and in community.  A question that continues is, when will this all end, and what will life be when this ends.  The answer to this question will be known when that time comes.  As such, we continue to pray in faith that we will be able to deal with this reality.  I suggest however that this context provides us with an opportunity to explore how we define Church. 

In the absence of much of what we normally understand Church to be, I suggest that we are being given an opportunity,  make the Church more and more integrated into the day to day activities of our lives.  Streaming means we can participate in church from our homes, be it the Sunday eucharist, morning prayer, bible study, Sunday school, youth fellowship, fellowship group meetings of organizations, and various committees. 

While this has had varying effects, the intention is that we begin in an intentional way to be the Church in our family gatherings, workplaces, social groups.  May I suggest that the Church be expanded on the formal definitions, to become who we are, we are indeed the Church, the Body of Christ wherever we are, and in whatever we are doing.  I remind us that Christianity is more than a belief system.  It is who we are.  Our liturgy puts it very powerfully in one of the instructions to the peace.  “We are the Body of Christ, by the one Spirit we were baptized into one Body, and have been made to drink of the one Spirit.”

The heritage we celebrate today, the harvest and rally form part of the many and various ways in which we express that we are in fact the Body of Christ,  and affirm God’s work of salvation in the events of history.

In harvest, we offer thanksgiving, while in our rally, we contribute in a tangible way to the ongoing mission and ministry of the Church.

Love & Blessings profound,

Fr. Eddie