The Celebration Begins

This is a picture of the wonderful group of people from St. Stephen's who put together the celebration yesterday. We had it at The Granary in New Harmony - it's a wonderful place for this sort of community reception. The upstairs is a performance / lecture space and downstairs is an open area with small kitchen. A restuarant in Evansville did the food and they chose foods that reflected the various parts of my sabbatical journey - roasted eggplant pieces wrapped around cream cheese with herbs and garlic, small biscuits with ham (spicy!) and a wonderful humus on crisp pitas. Those were just a few of the dishes and they were all yummy. A lot of our parishioners came and some folks from the community as well.


It was good to share information about my sabbatical with folks. I had a display about the the various parts of the sabbatical and of the events that will be happening at St. Stephen's. And I had made stars out of translucent paper to geive to each person. They had a few beads strung on each one and a paper with the Prayer of St. Francis and a reminder to pray for peace and reconciliation in all the situations of our lives.


Here's a picture of the stars:

I am hoping that these stars will help people think about their relationships and situations where there is a need to make peace and work on reconciliation. A woman at the reception yesterday asked me "What does reconcilation mean?" I thought it was a wonderful question. It is a hard concept to define clearly. We know when we are reconciled with someone or something, but how do we get there? What are the steps that lead someone from unreconciled to reconciled? We can forgive someone for a hurt but does that mean we are reconciled?


In 2 Corinthians Paul says, "All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation." (2 Corinthians 5:18) He continues in verse 19 by saying: "that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us." So we have been given both the ministry and the message of reconciliation and it is supposed to look and feel something like the peace we have in knowing that God loves us in our sinfulness. We are "put right" with God. And if we have been entrusted with this ministry and message of reconciliation it must have something to do with enabling others to be put right with God and with others. This is a full time ministry! And it is work inside of ourselves as well as a ministry with others. I have a lot to learn.