As we enjoy the beauty of summer and its many opportunities to engage in fellowship and recreation, my thoughts are brought back time and again to the place our little parish has in God’s plan. Fellowship and recreation help us get to know one another as brothers and sisters in Christ and to be renewed in joy. The fun we have together as a church family strengthens our bonds and can help us renew our commitment to the ministry to which God has called us. But what is our ministry? What is the purpose for which God has called us together at this time in Saginaw? What is that purpose that unites us and makes all that we do, including the fun of fellowship, an expression of God’s will for the world?
The scriptures call the Church the Body of Christ… or as I would describe it, the hands and feet of God embodied in the world. When we ask ourselves what our purpose is, what we are really asking is what is God’s purpose. How does God want to be embodied among the people of Saginaw. Everything that we do as a church, the way we treat one another and those around us, is an expression of how we embody God incarnate to the world around us. The church father Saint Athanasios said that “God became a human being [Jesus] so that human beings might become God.” What does it mean to become the hands and feet of God? How do we love with the love of God? How do we care with the caring of God? How do we speak with the words of God and act with the deeds of God? This is the mission of the Church: To remember that God is with us; God is in us; God is in the people that we meet day to day. If we remember this, then all we do will be a ministry to God. If we forget this, nothing we do will achieve that most sacred purpose of being Church, the Body of Christ, given as a gift to the world.
Peace,
Fr. Daniel