Inclusivity and hospitality are the hallmarks of the Gospel at St. Thomas' Parish, as seen in the work of your parish leaders, including your Senior Warden, John Carter, and your Junior Warden, Barbara Hays.  Our ministry of hospitality is shared to the larger metropolitan community through the ministry of our Communications team, through our web site, and the Phoenix. Hospitality is the goal of our altar guild, our musicians, and our worship team each Sunday.  Hospitality to those who are sick or who mourn is another way of naming the gracious work of our pastoral care team; hospitality to the stranger is the work of our outreach committee.  It's why the Buildings and Grounds committee works so hard.  Hospitality is the very fabric of who we are when we embody the love of the living Christ.

Each year that I'm your Rector, I try to claim with more courage and boldness the words that began my service of ordination ten years ago this June, words claiming that through God's love for us, and our inclusive, and radical, and prophetic hospitality for one another, "things which were being cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new". Each year that I'm a priest, and each year I'm your Rector, I am even more passionately committed to our spiritual growth; more deeply convinced of the need for corporate and individual spiritual formation; more willing to risk living a life committed to the gritty work of reconciliation. 

The Year of Our Lord 2007 has brought St. Thomas' Parish to a moment of decision about who we're being called to become in 2008 and beyond, and what resources we need to get there.  With each passing year I'm less inclined to think people will support the cost of our day-to-day mission and ministry for St. Thomas' just because they feel that they should -though we all should! I think people are mostly motivated to give to the church because they know, and they have seen, that the church changes lives.  Let me share a brief story. 

A while back, I was attending a conference at the Episcopal conference center, Kanuga, in Hendersonville, NC, to make a presentation about gay and lesbian teen suicide.  Afterwards I was sitting on the deck overlooking the lake with one of the other presenters, a professional fund-raiser. He told me a story about conducting a campaign for a civic organization-not a church.  And during this campaign a couple gave one of the largest gifts they had ever received -- $1 million dollars.  He went on to develop a friendship with this donor, and one day asked him, "Have you ever given a gift that size to your own parish?" "Of course not!"  The donor replied. I would never leave that size of a gift to any organization that was not changing and transforming lives". 

I have grown to agree with this audacious, prophetically honest donor.  We shouldn't be generous in our pledges because we have a vague hope that St. Thomas' Parish may have the potential to change and transform lives, but because we have seen Christ at work in our midst and we now want to do whatever we can to have this continue and grow.  Because we see God at work in the present, we give so that tomorrow's cast-aways, too, can be raised up, and so that those who tomorrow grow old and weary with the challenges and disappointments of the world can be made new.  Generosity emerges because we have seen transformation already with our own eyes; perhaps we have known it in our own lives.

As your Rector, when I look at the ministries that you do, I know without a doubt that St. Thomas' Parish IS already transforming and changing lives!  I know because your ministries, with God's grace, are transforming my own life.  And I believe that we, together, are transforming not just one another's lives - through the mystery of life in community with God at the center - but also live outside our own boundaries.  People keep coming and coming because the word is out that there is something going on here that's beyond the limited vision of individual experience and ordinary day to day Washingtonian life. You have been drawn here for an experience of the mystery present during our worship, the mystery that is guiding the dreams and hopes of our vestry and staff and committees.  You are here for spiritual growth, for community, and for the sake of the world that waits in longing for God's light to shine in darkness.