Salt and Light — Rector’s Address for the 2019 Annual Meeting of St. Paul’s Brookline
2019 Annual Meeting Rector’s Annual Address
February 9, 2020
Good morning, church! And welcome to the one hundred and seventy-first annual meeting of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline.
This is my 11th Annual Address as your rector. And, as is my practice each year, I want to start by reminding you how much I love you, and how much I love being your rector. Let me state, once again, that it is a privilege to walk your journeys of faith with you and I am humbled by your faithfulness and your trust.
I do not wish to subject you to a reading of the Annual Report. I hope you read the digital version emailed to you this week. If you didn’t get a chance to, please do. You will be amazed -- even those of you who have been here for years will be amazed -- at the breadth and the depth of ministry happening in and from this place.
I do want to take this opportunity to make sure you know who our ministry leadership team is. These are the people with whom you should talk if you are curious about what God might be needing you to do next in this place. If my math is correct, though I’m sure my count is incomplete, we are blessed with over 26 ministries at St. Paul’s led by over 30 members of the community.
As I read your name, please stand and wave. Let’s hold our thunderous applause until the end.
Personnel Committee Ouida Foster
Altar Guild Sharlene Wing and John Ferguson
Chalice Bearers Maryann Kurkjian
Flower Guild Maureen Carter
Healing Prayer Steve Morrissey
Lectors Michael Scheffler
Ushers Sam Scott
Eucharistic Visitors Maryann Kurkjian
Pastoral Care Team Maryann Kurkjian and Kate Kelley
Stewardship Stephen Morrissey and Leah Rugen
Yard Sale Steve Estes-Smargiassi
Be an Angel Paul Daigneault
B-Safe/B-Ready Piper Trelstad and Kate Kelley
Ministry Outside the Parish Matshai Motimele and Tim Hintz
Mission Sundays Melissa Dulla
Prison Ministry Leahanne Sarlo
Gardens Julie Starr
Archives Pat Dunbar
Education for Ministry Leah Rugen and Linda Sanches
Scripture Group Leah Rugen
Church School Teachers Julie Starr, Janet Rankin,
Andrea Brue, Jason Fairchild,
Chris Dulla, Maria O’Meara
Hospitality Alan Fried
Knitting Group Maureen Carter
Greeters and Newcomers Melissa Dulla, Leah Rugen, and Ayanna McPhail
Yoga Martha Curtis
Centering Prayer Ann Colageo
Thank you to our ministry leaders.
And our Vestry, led this past year by our Wardens Julie House and Brett Foster. If you were on the Vestry this past year, please stand and accept our gratitude.
And, finally, our staff. This group of people we ask to work miracles each and every day. Our nursery staff, our section leaders, our finance administrator Christine, our sexton James, our Parish Administrator Jill, our Director of Music and Organist Andy, and the best clergy team a rector could ask for; our Deacon Pat, our Curate Isaac and our Associate Rector Elise. Let’s hear it for our staff.
So many people to thank, and so many more of you who showed up and made 2019 at St. Paul’s another year to remember.
2019 was yet another year in which God stretched us, stretched me, in new and unexpected ways.
The budget certainly captured our attention. Three years ago we made the decision to use a chunk of our endowment to match funds raised from the congregation for the renovation of the lower level, parish offices and backyard. This might just be the year that work is completed!
This decision was made carefully and with the understanding that the increased income from a lower level tenant would exceed the draw we would have taken on that amount. And then our grand tower proved jealous of the attention our lower level was getting and required urgent repair to the tune of $700k. Rather than shrinking before the challenge, we decided to meet it; and meet it we have.
Over the past three years, our deficit at the end of the year has ranged from 48K in 2017, to 72K in 2018 and 33K in 2019. This year, we are projecting to cut that by 2/3rds with a projected deficit of about 10K.
I am so proud of the work the budget committee has done to get us here, under Brett Foster’s rigorous leadership. It hasn’t been easy and tough conversations needed to be had, but I stand before you this morning feeling like I can look each one of you in the eye and promise you that each and every dollar you have entrusted to us for the work of God in this place is being stretched to its limits and not a penny is wasted.
Transparency and trust has always been at the core of our financial leadership. If you want to know more about how your finances are being managed, please speak to Brett. He’d be more than happy to talk with you. I mean, way more than happy to talk with you.
And the even better news in all of this is that we have the power and the opportunity to erase that projected 10K budget gap before we’ve even closed the books on February. If you haven’t yet submitted a pledge card, I ask you to seriously consider it. More than a financial commitment to the work of the parish, it is one way of saying “I’m in” to the values we hold and the ministry we share. No pledge amount is too small or not needed. And if you have submitted a pledge form, I ask you to have a real conversation and spend time in real prayer about whether there might be room to stretch your pledge.
Why would I ask you to do such a thing? Because I believe we are making a difference. I have proof. And because I believe there has never been a better time to be the church, or to be St. Paul’s Brookline.
There is a scripture passage that has been on my mind and in my heart these past few months, and it keeps popping up, which is usually God’s way of getting my attention.
It comes from the book of Esther. It’s a great story, and tells the story behind the Jewish festival of Purim. But, in brief, Esther is queen and secretly Jewish. Her uncle Mordacai discovers a plan made by the king’s right hand man to kill anyone who is Jewish and begs Esther to intercede on her people’s behalf.
Esther is afraid. She is not supposed to take audience with the king unless summoned, an offense punishable by death, and she is afraid to tell the king that she is Jewish.
Her uncle Mordacai pleads with her and asks her this question:
Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for a time such as this?
That’s a great question for the church. Maybe it is exactly a time such as this that the church is needed most.
And it’s a great question for St. Paul’s. I have every reason to believe it is for a time exactly like the times in which we live for which St. Paul’s might exist.
And it’s a great question for each one of you. Maybe this is exactly the time in our community’s life for which you are needed the most, maybe now is the time for which God brought you here.
This is the time. As Jesus reminds us in this morning’s Gospel, we have a calling to be salt and light in a world losing both its flavor and its vision.
St. Paul’s continues to be salt and light.
As racism and oppression continue to stain our national life, our Anti-Racism Group is choosing to go deeper in unpacking racism and white supremacy through their participation in Sacred Ground. Salt.
This fall, Elise, Pat, Jocelyn Collen and Leahanne Sarlo brought the sacrament of the body of Christ to women at the South Bay correctional facility. It was the first time most of them had seen a woman preside at the altar. Light.
As anti-semitic and anti-muslim rhetoric and violence feels increasingly common, we invited our Muslim neighbors to come and share their story with us. Light.
We participated in the first ever Brookline Interfaith Service in celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Temple Sinai. Salt.
These are not small things. As individual acts they might not change the world, but they go along way to make sure the world does not change us.
Our longing to be in closer relationship with God continues to grow. This past year we started three new ministries meant to feed our Spirits; to keep us salty and burning bright.
We experimented with “Eat, Pray, Work” during lent, offering a daytime monastic-like co-working space.
Our first Education for Ministry class began in the fall with 11 participants and two co-mentors. Ann Colageo and Isaac began our new Wednesday morning Contemplative Prayer Group.
2019 was a year that St. Paul’s continued to live into Frederick Buechner’s concept of vocation, or calling. He writes, “Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need.”
How blessed are we that our greatest joys as a community is exactly what the world needs right now.
When we committed to repairing the tower, one of the most convincing arguments I heard was from a long time parishioner who reminded me, reminded us, that this place; the buildings, the ministries, the spirit of this place, we are the stewards of all of it.
Those who have come before us, those whose names surround us etched in granite, they have passed it on to us for a time. And we will, one day, pass it on to those who will come after us. It is our job to care for it and all it represents with all the love and courage that it demands.
But we are not meant to leave it just as we found it. God needs us to leave this place better than we found it; healthier than we found it, more robust than it was when it was given to us. We are meant to leave it saltier and more filled with light than it ever has been.
God needs us to push this place and the people in it to be no less than a glimpse of Kingdom that God dreams for us to be.
And that is what this next year is for. Each year, a new gift, a new opportunity for us to ask, as a community and individuals where God needs us next, where God needs you next.
This will be a year that tries the fabric of our country. This will be a year that demands we remember who we are, whose we are and who God needs us to be. We will not all vote for the same candidate, we will not all vote for the same party.
We can, however, show the world, show each other that we can love one another as fiercely as we disagree with each other. We can show the world, in ways big and small, what it means to be a people who can most easily be described for the love we have for one another, and for the ways we love and care for the least, the lost and the lonely.
We can be salt in a world losing its flavor and we can be light in a world losing its vision.
People of St. Paul’s, may 2020 be exactly the time for which we were made.
AMEN.
© 2020 The Rev’d Jeffrey W. Mello