Doubters are welcome - sermon from Sunday

Here is an excerpt from the sermon this past Sunday, August 26, by The Rev. Joe Hensley, Assistant to the Rector. Read the entire sermon via our website by clicking here.

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We have called this Sunday “gathering Sunday,” because we are coming back together again after summer travels and absences. But every Sunday is a gathering Sunday, a day to re-form this body of faith in Christ. All are welcome here, no matter how much faith you have been given. Our task is not to boast about our belief in God, not to congratulate ourselves on having been admitted to some special club of faith. Our task here is not to say to the world, "come and be like us." Our task here is one of scratching and tapping the dividing walls. And we do that by hearing sacred, often confounding words. We do that by offering prayers for those we care about but without knowing for sure where those prayers go. We scratch and tap by eating a sacramental and often inscrutable meal of bread and wine, mysterious flesh and blood. Our task here is to gather in a community of hospitality where even unbelievers, especially unbelievers, are welcomed, not as lost souls in need of saving but as kindred spirits on a path of wondering. It may be that those who have wandered in the wilderness of unbelief will teach those of us who claim to believe how to be hungry for God.