Renew

Every year during Holy Week, the clergy of our Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic gather to share in the Eucharist and to renew our ordination vows.  It is a costly pause in the middle of a full week.

And I am glad that we do it.

It’s good to be with brothers and sisters who are all praying and writing sermons and planning liturgy with a focus on the same thing.  It is good to be reminded of the calling God has given us.  And for me in particular, it is good to receive the Eucharist as nourishment (for me!) for the spiritual, emotional, and physical toll that is ‘Holy Week’.

My favorite line from our ordination service…

In all that you do, you are to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen to glorify God in this life and in the life to come.

Christ’s people who call Restoration their church home do so much of Christ’s work in their neighborhoods and vocation.  Resto peeps are seeking to do their work with integrity and to the glory of God.  They are trying to love their neighbors and forgive their family members.  They are creatively thinking about this Kingdom that has already begun but is not yet finished.

So I, and the other ministers on our team, nourish our people from the riches of God’s grace so that they can do the work to which God has called them.  This ‘nourishment’ is not something we muster up with a clever sermon or a perfect plan (although they are nice).  We nourish with grace from the grace we have received.  And you can do the same.  It’s all grace.

My prayer is that Holy Week is a surprising grace for you–  that you would carve out space to join us on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for the special services in the evening.  And that you would come sit at the cross and walk through the stations on Friday afternoon between 12 and 3.  These services are a costly pause in the middle of Spring Break and full weeks.  Yet, out of all that we do, Holy Week is one of the most tangible demonstrations of how Restoration offers nourishment for Christ’s people from the riches of his grace.

Eat up!  Be full!

-David