Happy new school year! Your kids and grandkids are back on the school bus, the ones that are home for the summer are almost certainly back at college already, and Mary Wash has been in move in and orientation or the last week, classes start tomorrow, and you can't find parking anywhere!
A new school year represents potential -- new classes, new schedule, a declared major, new research groups or leadership positions, the opportunity for new clubs or organizations, maybe even a new church. A new school year represents the possibility of what could be, who we see ourselves becoming and taking the steps to start to get there. This is true for students, it's true for a campus ministry, it's true for a church! The start of a new year is a time to ask: who are we today and who do we see ourselves becoming? Who do we want to become? Who is God calling us to become?
So Trinity, I would invite you to consider these questions as you enter into a new school year -- there really is no better time than now to ask:
Who is Trinity? and who is God calling Trinity to become?
What are the ways that Trinity makes community well? and how could Trinity be making community better?
How do you want to see the different generations of Trinity interacting?
What is Trinity's role in this neighborhood? What is Trinity's role in Fredericksburg?
What do you want to see as Trinity's relationship to the university?
A priest cannot tell you the answers to these questions, so I wouldn't dare to try but
let me tell you what, Trinity has something going for it that no other church in this town has going for it -- you are across the street from the college. You drive into town, you come down William St., and here's the UMW sign and the Trinity sign. You have the opportunity not just to hope people come into the front doors of the church, but you have the billboard space to tell every person who drives into this town: who Trinity is, what you belief, and what you'll find if you come here.
A church also has something going for it that a campus ministry doesn't, which is you have kids and grown-ups. Inter-generational friendships are what make a church a church, and there are really quite few places in this day and age - besides a family reunion - where people of all ages can gather with the goal of knowing and supporting one another. I remember back to my days in campus ministry at William & Mary and it really evened me out to know and regularly spend time with people who were not taking exams, who were not staying up until midnight studying, who had gotten to the other side of this time of their lives and who knew everything would be okay.
I say all this to say that church has a role to play in our day and age. We live in tricky times -- politically uncertain, rife with violence, people are lonely and tired and overwhelmed and burned out, people are overstimulated and undersocialized, and yet what God calls us to is community. What God calls us to is hope and service and care, friendship, patience, courage, forgiveness.
Church is a place not only where we can find these values, but where we can, if we need to, make them from scratch. It takes a little bit of hope to make more hope, it takes a little bit of courage to make more courage, it takes a little bit of forgiveness to learn forgiveness, it takes a small gesture of friendship to catalyze a friendship, or a culture of friendship, and church is a place where we can figure out how to do it, together. With the armor of God equipped and a community around us, the world probably will not seem quite as bad as if we were going it alone.
So again, the question is this: Trinity who do you want to be and become this year? How will we employ our effort and our time to the building up of God's kingdom in this town? How will we seek friendship with the University of Mary Washington? How will we seek camaraderie with St. George's and Christ Lutheran? How will we seek to know and be known in this neighborhood? Do we feel ready to declare a major, or redeclare a new major? What clubs should we join? What leadership positions should we seek, what study habits should we practice? What armor should we don? Who do we want to be? We can be it. Amen.
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