Warden Report

June 27, 2011

Dear Messiah Parishioners,

As you know, Father Brad will retire October 2, 2011. The Vestry has been in transition planning since the announcement. The Profile Committee has completed their work under the awesome leadership of Kitty Crary. Mark Hendrickson has taken all your words, ideas, and pictures and created a beautiful document. The profile is basically a marketing tool for priests who might want to apply to work here. Yet, it is much more
– it is a living history of where we have been and testifies to the dynamic diversity and programs of the present and our visions for the future. As soon as the profile is reviewed by the Diocese copies will be available, both in print and on our website. You will be proud!

The Discernment Committee was commissioned June 5th.  Nancy Whitehead is chair. Other members are Biff Baker, Kitty Crary, Carol Harvey, Len Hightower, Lamar Hill, Jean Hollingshead, Janet Hryniewicki, Janette Lange, Larry Reddel, Bill Turpit, and Leonora Will. We have decided to use the term “Discernment Committee” rather than “Search” as we believe God knows who our next rector will be and it will be the job of that committee and the Vestry to discern God’s choice for Messiah once we have received our list of candidates from the Diocese, probably in December or January.

The Vestry and Discernment Committee had a very productive weekend retreat in early June at which we studied the search process and envisioned our future. Bishop Diane Bruce joined us Friday night. Here are some comments from members of the Discernment Committee:

“The retreat was very fruitful in preparing us for this journey. I gained a new way of looking at what’s to come: That Father Brad fostered strong lay leadership in the parish, and led us to this point well-prepared. And that the interim [period] is a critical time of growth and discernment, where God will reveal to us new possibilities of who we can be in the future. I left the retreat believing in the process and filled with anticipation of the good things that lie ahead for Messiah.” –Janet Hryniewicki


“An awesome group who all have the best interest of Messiah and the entire congregation (both English and Spanish) in mind as we take this responsibility seriously and spiritually… We are honored to be chosen to participate in this discernment…and will focus on the mission of Messiah at all times as we move forward in the months ahead.” –Carol Harvey


“Our retreat was educational and inspirational. I left with a sense of confidence that we will go through this process with open minds and open hearts. God is calling Messiah to new and exciting possibilities.” –Leonora Will

During the time between Father Brad and a new rector, we will have an interim rector, Father Mark Stuart. We think you will find him warm, open, and flexible. Father Mark is just finishing an interim appointment to St Augustine’s by-the-Sea, Santa Monica. The senior warden there, Darrel Menthe, e-mailed us, “Glad to hear you're getting Father Mark. He's been a very non-anxious presence who has helped avoid division in the church. [With the Vestry’s unanimous choice of our permanent rector] we have all gone from being anxious to almost giddy with excitement at our new future.”

Your wardens went to St Augustine’s to hear Father Mark preach, see him with his congregation, and visit with him; the Vestry met with him and liked him; and Glenn Howard, your finance chair, and the wardens have worked out a contract with him. Father Mark will start October 3, 2011.

It is important that everyone understand the position of our interim.

• Father Mark Stuart will be at Messiah only during the transition. He will stay until we have chosen a permanent successor to Father Brad.
• Father Mark is an “intentional interim” whose calling is to help parishes stay stable, build lay leadership. and deal with grief after the departure of a beloved rector.
• As an intentional interim Father Mark will not be eligible for consideration as our permanent rector. He will be able to advise us on the relationship between the Diocese and a parish during the discernment process, but he will have no part in the actual search and will not even know the names of our  candidates.
• His main functions will be liturgical and pastoral. He will be work closely with Carolyn Estrada at the noon service as well as at the 8 am and 10:15 am services. Father Mark has started learning the liturgy in Spanish and will be studying basic conversational Spanish. He has made it clear that he wants the Hispanic congregation to continue to feel an integral part of our parish.
• Father Mark will be commuting, sometimes by train, from his home in Hollywood but will keep regular office hours here and will be available for evening meetings and special functions.

Inevitably there will be changes, but with the stabilizing presence of an interim rector and the continued inspired ministry of Carolyn Estrada, our Associate Rector, Messiah’s going to be OK! There are exciting times ahead! Please continue to pray for Messiah’s future, and mark your calendar for the grand celebration of Father Brad’s 30-year ministry, which will be held at The Hacienda on October 2, 2011, following our services.

Yours in Christ,
          Dee Tucker, Sr. Warden
          Lorna Adkins, Jr. Warden

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If you make any Amazon.com purchases through the icon on the Messiah Parish website, the church receives a donation of 4% of your purchase. If seven items are purchased in a month, the donation goes up to 7%. But you must access Amazon through the icon on the church webpage, or by following this link directly to Amazon.com.

Great American Hot Dog Feast - Sunday, July 3

Join us after the 10:15 and Noon services.

Sing in the Summer Choir

The warm weather months of June, July and August are when we settle in to our tradition of Summer Choir: rehearsals on Sunday mornings at 9:00 am in the Chancel, easy anthems, a hymn sing after the prelude, and the big draw, no choir robes! The Parish Choir welcomes you to sing with them and enjoy their hospitality and good cheer. Plus, it's a great way to warm up a voice that hasn't sung in a few years! We hear from you often that your voice is a bit rusty, well, here's just the right setting for you to get back in vocal shape, join us in the Summer Choir!

-Jim Gilliam, Choir Director

Save the Date: Bilingual Mass & Celebration - Sunday, October 2, 2011

Bishop Jon Bruno will celebrate with Father Brad on his last Sunday at Messiah. When a rector leaves a parish there are prescribed steps required by canon law. Everyone should plan to attend the bilingual service to demonstrate our love and passion for this man that has served for 30 years.

Immediately following we will ‘party’ at the Hacienda Restaurant on 17th and College Avenue in Santa Ana.

More details will follow.  If you have any ideas or suggestions please contact Lorna Adkins or Dee Tucker.

June 19, 2011, Trinity Sunday - The Reverend Canon Brad Karelius

St. Augustine was strolling along a sandy beach on the coast of North Africa in deep contemplation about the mystery of the Holy Trinity. As he walked with his head in the clouds, he almost stumbled over a boy with a little pail. The boy was running back and forth, empting bucket after bucket into a hole in the beach sand. When Augustine asked the little boy what he was doing, the child answered that he was putting the ocean back into that hole. When Augustine told him that was impossible, the boy responded that it was just as impossible for Augustine to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity.

On this Trinity Sunday many clergy throughout the world will attempt the impossible, to explain in some way the nature of the Trinity. Augustine wrote some where that if we ever think we finally have understood God, then what we understand is not God. I think this is true, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t know something about the triune God. We can work at expressing in words and images and symbols what we have personally experienced of God, knowing that we only have a brief glimpse of God’s mystery.

I am sitting on the remains of a huge old cottonwood tree that fell during a horrific windstorm that recently blew through the Owens Valley, near Olancha. I sit on the tree and contemplate another living cottonwood tree standing majestically in a rocky field strewn with sage brush, Angus cattle munching tender green grass near by. The leaves on the cottonwood twirl and flutter. Sitting with me in my imagination of this scene is the Hassidic Jewish mystic Martin Buber. He tells me: “Look at that tree, Brad. We can give it a name in the Linnaean system. We can describe it’s height, color, texture, and how it’s root system goes very deep searching for water. We can make a complete, informed description of the nature of this Freemont Cottonwood. And we think we know it.”

Martin Buber continues, “But let me tell you about one day when I sat like this contemplating another tree. I first saw it as another tree. But as I was captivated by the rhythmic movement of the branches swaying in the wind, back and forth, back and forth, time stopped. I forgot where I was. And I had this weird feeling that the tree was moving toward me and I was moving toward the tree and then we were one. The tree was no longer an it, object, thing, but had become a Thou.”

“Stay with me a little more, Brad. There is more. Some time later I was sitting back on the tree truck, reflecting on that surprising encounter, thinking that maybe I was hallucinating and it came to me: This is how God is.”

“I can be reading Torah or arguing with the Rabbi about some theological question. But that tree embraced me, reminding me that God is not an it to be dissected or fixed in some static theological place. God is a Thou and I am a Thou to God. God deeply desires relationship with me.”

I imagine this encounter with Buber, based on his book, I and Thou, I believe that our encounters with creation can be similar invitations to relationship with God.

As Karl Rahner wrote, “Knowing God is more important than knowing about God.”

Our celebration of the Holy Trinity today is another encounter with God’s deep desire for relationship with you and me.

The Trinity is not a monad. Our God is a tissue of relationships. Therefore in all of our relationships we are who we are and God is implanted there. Katie and Erik and my marriage are thous to me and God is revealed as Thou in relationships and you are Thou to me and I to you. God, the Trinity, is within the tissues of all those relationships.

The icon of the Trinity painted in 1410 by Andrei Rublev depicts the Holy Trinity. Three angelic figures are seated at a table on three sides, the front is open to you and me as we look at the icon. The faces look toward us. On the table is the Eucharistic Bread. The Trinity invites us to come close in intimate relationship.

If you have participated in Greek folk dancing, you have been arm and arm dancing in an open circle. The Greek Orthodox Church has a term they use to describe the relationship of God as Trinity as perichoesis. It means literally “going around.” It suggests a dance where each person circles, interweaving, whirling in vibrant interaction with others. The dance is an open circle that invites all onto the dance floor, drawing them right into the midst of the energetic flow of divine light. If some hesitate, preferring to sit on the sidelines, the Three in One circles back again and again, extends the invitation over and over to each and to all, changing the pace and the rhythms so that even the most introverted or clumsy of us can learn the steps in this divine dance of love.

The Trinity is then:

• The open table inviting you to draw close to the circle of relationship.
• The dance encircling around you, enticing you to join the circle
• The precious relationships of Thous in your life.
• All giving you and me eyes of the heart to see the mystery of God.

Amen.

Resource used: America, “A Dance of Love”, Barbara Reid, June 6, 2011.

June 12, 2011 - The Reverend Carolyn Estrada

Numbers 11:24 – 30 Psalm 104:25 – 35, 37b Acts 2:1 – 21 John 20:19 – 23

“…behind locked doors….” we hear again today.
Again?
Still?

Several weeks ago we saw how the appearance of the Risen Christ had transformed Jesus’ disciples, their fear and despair, palpable behind the closed doors of the room in which they were gathered, turning to a feeling of peace and hopefulness:

• We weren’t deceived!
• Jesus was the Messiah, after all!
• He really did rise from the dead!
• Things are going to be okay!

So why, fifty days later, does it seem as though everything has changed – and nothing has changed? Their angst has been soothed, certainly – but today we find them once again gathered together in a room. Although they are no longer anxious and fear-ridden – their faith and confidence has been restored, knowing that their friend Jesus really is Jesus the Christ – they aren’t yet the disciples we meet post-Pentecost.

I’m wondering if the atmosphere in the room today isn’t almost “clubby” – a fraternity of followers with a shared experience, each having personally witnessed the resurrection. I can imagine the feel-good atmosphere in that room as they tell stories and laugh and reminisce about “the good old days” when their buddy Jesus walked the earth among them:

• Hey, Peter – remember that time when you decided to walk on water with Jesus?
• You should have seen the steward’s face when that water was turned to fine wine!
• How about the time he exorcised all those demons and they went into the pigs and the pigs jumped into the water?!!

So here they are.

The Holy Spirit has been a personal gift to each of them, bringing them peace and comfort after the emotional roller coaster they have been on...

But today, on the day of Pentecost, all that private, shared experience changes abruptly when the Holy Spirit descends!

They’ve been having a good time, when whammo!

This is a different kind of visitation of the Spirit: not one which is received on a gentle breath, as before – but one which seems to come out of nowhere, with a force that is overpowering!

With the sound of rushing wind come divided tongues, as of fire, filling them, moving them from their healing sanctuary into the wider and infinitely more dangerous world!

How frightening that must have been for them! To experience the unexpected, to feel so suddenly out of control! To have their peace shattered in such a way, their lives disrupted like that!

• Whoa! What is happening to me?!!
• Where did this come from?!!
• I don’t understand…

And yet, as quickly as the force and the abruptness frightens them, just as quickly they must have become aware that this is a benign presence – not something threatening, but something empowering, and their terror-fear is transformed into the fear that is awe.

They realize that they have received a gift.

They now have a mandate to speak what they know – not coming from without, as a rule to follow, but welling from within and empowering them, moving them almost involuntarily beyond their comfort zone…

Prophesy they must.

It becomes something they can’t not do.

Thomas Merton tells us that a prophet is “one whose life God has disrupted and through whose life God disrupts the lives of others.”

And thank goodness for that, for WE are the products of that disruption in their lives – the result of those prophets those Jesus-followers became on this day of Pentecost, as the ripple effect of their transformation is felt across time and geography.

I feel the trajectory of these fifty days, the days from the resurrection to Pentecost, as a shape of our own lives in Christ.

Often our life in Christ contains times of healing, renewal or refreshment.

We find ourselves in a gathering of like-minded believers, in a “feel-good” place with our faith, finding in it an assurance, a peacefulness and a comfort – something reliable, yet undemanding, that we can draw on…

It is very personal: it belongs to us. It makes us feel better.

• Yes, I know Jesus is the Messiah.
• Yes, he lives!
• Wherever two or three are gathered together in his name…
• Yes, there is resurrection on the last day…

It can lull us into a kind of complacency.

And at some point there is Pentecost!
We NEED Pentecost, because, as important as those times of healing or refreshment are, they are not enough; in and of themselves they do not make us disciples of Christ, followers of the Way.
We need that realization that our faith is more than just “make-me-feel-good.”
We need to be propelled beyond ourselves and into the community, the world beyond our doors.

Pentecost demands that we, too, begin to prophesy, each one in his or her own language, using his or her own gifts, in ways that others might understand.

Most of us take the old adage of St. Francis seriously: “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.”

• We open day care centers for the working poor, and support after-school tutoring programs.
• We feed the homeless.
• We take stands on immigration or peace or discrimination of all sorts.
• We donate time and money.
• We go on mission trips and tear down houses, as we did in New Orleans, or repair damaged ones, as we did in Mississippi.

The “using words” part of prophesying, or preaching the Gospel, is a bit more of a challenge for many of us: it’s often hard to articulate the source of our Christian living, what it is that inspires – and empowers! – us to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world.

Something to think about on this word-drenched day of Pentecost!
What is the “language” you/we speak?
How is it that YOU/WE prophesy?

Unlike the disciples on that day of Pentecost, we are not surprised by the Spirit this morning – after all, Pentecost does show up on a regular basis in the course of our liturgical year! Nevertheless, it is a day that reminds us of the importance of being more than the Social Club of Jesus-Followers, and it challenges us to be open to allow the Spirit to work in and through us, to propel us, too, into the streets to prophesy and to preach the Good News of the Gospel.

The poet Rilke (Ninth Elegy) has written:

Maybe we’re here only to say,
bridge, well, gate, jug, olive tree, window –
at most, pillar, tower… but to say them, remember,
oh, to say them in a way that the things themselves
never dreamed of existing so intensely.

This Pentecost may we say the old familiar words so that they exist with a here-to-fore undreamed-of intensity:

• Jesus
• Resurrection
• Disciple
• Hope
• Presence
• Love.

Amen.