“To reveal God’s love by nourishing the community through worship, acceptance, and service.”  --St. Andrew’s Mission Statement--

A mission statement encapsulates, and reminds us, of our values as a community. The values we identified as core to who we are as a parish include:

• We are an open and welcoming community.
• We love and serve our neighbors together.
• We care for each other as family.
• We joyfully live out our faith, grounded in the Gospel.
• And, we celebrate the journey!

I had been thinking about our core values in relation to Pentecost ever since I read an article from a podcast called “Can These Bones.” I can’t remember where I came across the report, but, of course, with a title like “Can These Bones” it caught my attention because I knew we’d be reading about “dem bones” in the Ezekiel passage on Pentecost Sunday.

As I read the interview with the Executive Vice President of Jet Blue Airlines, I got really excited about how the mission statement of a company in the for-profit world was so similar to ours in the not-for-profit world. Both statements are about making a difference in the world.

The Jet Blue mission statement can be boiled down to two words: Inspiring Humanity.  And the airlines very consciously intend the double meaning: both “inspiring humanity,” as in their actions inspire the rest of the world, and also “inspiring humanity” in terms of taking actions that inspire others to do things that are humane, just, true, and respectful—“inspiring humanity.”

In that article, the Jet Blue executive talked about how not only do all the employees—from the cleaning crew to the cabin crew—have the company’s core values memorized, they are empowered to take actions that might go against protocol, if those actions would better live into the company’s values. So, for instance, after the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando a few years back, Jet Blue offered free travel for families of victims, back and forth from Puerto Rico to Orlando. So while increasing the company’s bottom-line is surely a desired outcome, it is not one of their core values.

When we identified the core values of St. Andrew’s, we were coached to think about what we would keep doing as a parish—as the body of Christ—even if we received negative criticism for doing so. Jesus might not have ever mentioned the words “core values,” but he certainly embodied and modeled for us the kinds of risks one ought to take when living into “kingdom values.”

Even though his actions did not win Jesus popularity contests with those in charge, he healed people on the Sabbath, he sat with the other, he insisted that people in his company care for each other—even if they were strangers to each other, because, like Jet Blue employees, Jesus had been empowered to take risks in order to better live into the values of God that would inspire humanity.

The Ezekiel story we read on Pentecost reminds us that sometimes—although the values were there all along, we require new life to be breathed into us. So that breath might be a reclaiming of sorts. It’s not that we’ve been doing church wrong, but the fabric of our culture continues to change, so we dig down deep and we find the points at which more people can access Christ’s message, and we breathe new life into the bones of our parish.
Lately life is being breathed into a national movement called “Reclaiming Jesus.” The founding group is a couple dozen clergy from a number of different denominations—from Baptists to Methodists to Episcopalians—including Michael Curry, our current Presiding Bishop. The preamble to the joint statement of faith they created on Ash Wednesday quotes Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.”

The statement includes six affirmations, each of which is counterbalanced by a rejection. I’ll highlight a couple of them that follow the thread of our core values:

• We believe each human being is made in God’s image and likeness. Therefore, we reject the resurgence of white nationalism and racism in our nation.
• We believe how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner is how we treat Christ himself. Therefore, we reject the language and policies of political leaders who would debase and abandon the most vulnerable children of God.
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One of our vestry members was so moved by the statement that she traveled to D.C. to be a part of a prayer vigil the Reclaiming Jesus group held outside the White House this week!

I think that sort of stirring—that feeling that “I have to be a part of this!”—is what the sense of “astonishment” must have been for the people gathered on that day of Pentecost. It’s way more than that they heard their own language being spoken. That kind of astonishment comes in the recognition that the thing that’s happening is so much larger than us, and that we are included in it. That’s the whole point of Pentecost—to alert us, to remind us, to blow through us with a Holy wind that God’s values—God’s love—is for everyone…no matter the language they speak!

This is included in a couple of our core values:

• We are an open and welcoming community.
• We love and serve our neighbors together.

Just as Jet Blue has claimed they are about more than simply airplanes, they’re about making a difference in the world, we are not just about this building, we are BEING church out in the world—sharing kingdom values with all we encounter.

by Paula M. Fitzgibbons

Many years ago, I was part of a young adults’ discussion group.  This was a great group of people – passionate about their faith, eager to be in relationship with God and one another, and not afraid to ask ourselves difficult questions – much like the groups I’ve been blessed to find at St. Andrew’s.  When it was announced one evening that the topic for next month would be the parable of the prodigal son, I remember thinking “Oh, that will be easy.  I know that story.”

I did know the story, and had known it all my life.  In kindergarten, I had colored in simple line illustrations of the muddy prodigal son surrounded by pigs; I had been to youth retreats where I was encouraged to think of the ways in which I needed to spiritually turn around and go back home; I had heard sermons discussing how damaging we are to others when we behave like the older brother.  I knew the story, and I knew what it meant.  So I arrived at that month’s meeting, looking forward to a pleasant evening with some good friends going over some familiar ideas.

We sat there, discussing the story, sharing our faith journeys.  Sometimes we were the prodigal, sometimes we were the older brother.  The evening was pretty much going as expected.  But then, something surprising happened.  During one of those occasional lulls in conversation, one of the members asked off-handedly, “How come we’re never the father?”  A short silence followed.  People sat up a little straighter, leaned in towards one another, and there was a new sense of energy in the room.  Together, we realized that, while eagerly discussing who we are, we had missed what we are called to become.  That evening, the story we had known all our lives was suddenly unfamiliar, something new, something fresh.

We are the prodigals, we are the “good children” – often simultaneously.  The call of the Gospel, though, asks us to transcend both those roles.  Jesus wants us to be the father – loving, forgiving, and deeply hospitable.  The father doesn’t make the son apologize, doesn’t wait in the living room for his child to come to him, stammering out his repentance.  No, the father runs out to embrace his son before his son has even spoken.  “How come we’re never the father?”  What a difference that question made!  A story that had been a call to introspection, to self-examination, had suddenly become a call to action, a reminder of our purpose in the world.  We left the discussion group that night revitalized.  Our little community learned a new story.

Since that evening, I try to resist the temptation of think of the Bible as “something I’ve read,” or “a story I know.”  I discovered then, and continue to discover, that God always has new stories for us, and I need to pay attention.  For me, the St. Andrew’s community is essential to that attentiveness.  Someone will ask a question or make a comment, and I’m given a new idea to explore.  Whether it’s watching a little girl bouncing up to receive the Eucharist in a princess dress, an unexpected question at the adult forum, or a casual conversation at coffee hour, something happens to remind me there is always something new.  God has a lot more to say to me, to all of us.  I may have “been there, read that” many times, but something exciting is waiting if I’m willing to let go of the story I’m so sure I know.

In Revelation, we see Jesus, sitting enthroned in glory, saying “Behold, I make all things new.”  We take great comfort in this assurance of things to come.  We know and love that story.  But…….what happens if “behold, I make all things new” is also an invitation to find the fresh and new dwelling within the old and familiar?  What if Jesus is telling us to “behold” right this minute?  What new stories might the Spirit be waiting to tell us? 
​~ Catherine Campbell

​In his Washington State Cougars baseball cap and jeans, Jim Temples doesn’t look like an artist. He looks more like a track coach, which is what he was for many years, first at San Dieguito High School and later at Torrey Pines. He grew up in a household that encouraged creativity, but it wasn’t until after he and his late wife Carol visited Rome in the mid-eighties that he started seriously pursuing the craft of wood carving. He lights up when he describes the experience he had there, as he touched the hem of Michelangelo’s Pieta. “My eyes said fabric, my fingers said cold stone. And Jesus said, “Start carving, Jimmy!”
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And start carving he did, finding that he had a talent for making the wood come to life. Still, when he was approached by a group led by parishioner Nancy Aldridge to consider creating a series of carvings to mark the Stations of the Cross, he wasn’t sure he was up to the task. There were trained artists in the congregation who he thought would be better choices. Amazed that he was allowed to try to create them, he accepted the challenge and began to study.

Learning about the tradition of the Stations of the Cross was the first step. He read extensively, visited other churches, and looked at examples of the art that was used in churches in Europe. He began to form a plan: there would be 14 stations, and each one would focus clearly on the central action of that scene from the day of Jesus’s crucifixion. “A lot of the images I looked at were so complex and had so many things going on that you couldn’t tell what was really happening.”