Episode 5: Go! Be Evangelists of Hope!

Episode Description: In this episode, the Rt. Rev. Rob Wright (Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta), Jerusalem Greer (The Episcopal Church), and Debbie Phillips (Grace Episcopal Church, Salem, Massachusetts) will talk about what it means to be an evangelist of “hope with cleats.”

Transcripts are in order of appearance.

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Rt. Rev. Rob Wright Melissa Rau:

Hi, I'm Melissa Rau, the host of For People with Bishop Rob Wright, a weekly podcast produced by the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta that drops every Friday. For People is a conversation with Bishop Rob, based on his weekly devotion called For Faith, which is highlighted in each week's episode description. You can subscribe to For People with Bishop Rob Wright anywhere you can listen to podcasts.

Melissa Rau:

Bishop, today we're talking about the why behind hope. So my first question is why is hope a gospel principle?

Bishop Rob Wright:

Well, thanks. Hope is a gospel principle because there's no such thing as hope without God. And so, as long as God is alive, there's hope, and that's the good news. We see this dramatically in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

You know, when the tomb is closed off with a stone, and we think that the chapter is over and some people are despairing and some people are hoping. And because again, because God has this wonderful genius way of surprising us by accomplishing God's purposes in scripture and in our lives, we ought to continue to have hope, because God is still alive.

Melissa Rau:

So why do Episcopal evangelists need hope and why do we need to share it?

Bishop Rob Wright: Well, first of all, again, without God, all we have is optimism and optimism is fine, but you know, it cracks. You know, as they say, the average optimist is only three consecutive disappointments away from becoming a cynic. So we need a lot more than optimism and the world needs a lot more than optimism. And so what we have as a durable hope. And so the thing about hoping God is, is that it's so overtakes you. It so thoroughly animates you that if you have hope in God, you actually can't keep it to yourself, it's impossible.

It's like the love of a good song when you hear it come on the radio, you've got to give it voice, you've got to move your body, you've got to swing and sway. And that's the way it is with hope. If we've hoped in God and had that hope realized ever in our life with God, then we can't help but commend it.

And so it really is a privilege to commend hope in God. I mean, because you know, what we believe and what scripture teaches us is that God has more answers than you and I can produce. God has more solutions than you and I can solve. And so what we want to do is we want to give the world the very best and the very best we have to give is God, to point to God, and to invite people into a deeper relationship with God so they can ultimately know the joy that comes uniquely from hope.

Melissa Rau:

So our friend, Barbara Brown Taylor, has a quote. She says, "I want hope with cleats on it."

Bishop Rob Wright:

Yeah.

Melissa Rau:

And when I think of that, like I think of grit, I think of gumption and determination, a messiness, and all of those things. And so I'm wondering if you can just unpack that a little bit and why that's so important.

Bishop Rob Wright:

Well, Barbara is such a gifted giver of images, isn't she? I want hope with cleats in it, right? So we want something that's going to stick to the turf when stuff starts to happen.

You know, another way to say that is, I want hope with nail holes and its wrist and in its ankles. I want hope with thorn holes, punctures in its forehead, right? I mean, I think that goes back to the distinction between optimism and hope. The world needs real hope, something solid, resilient, durable. And to give a platitude when something genuine is necessary is a sad state of affairs. The good news that we have to give is that we have a hope that is bigger than any trial we can face. I mean, we don't know all the details, that's why they call it faith, but we know we we're right to hope in God. And so when we read 66 books of the Bible, we find men and women who have hoped in God, in real life situations, trials, circumstances, even unto death, and they commend hope to us in our present circumstances now.

So yeah, I want something durable, I want something that I can give my children and my grandchildren that they know that they can rely on a bank account that's always full of resources. That's what our Christian hope is. And so I love the way that Barbara has said it, as a proper southerner thinking of SEC images, right, football images. But yeah, I mean, this is the genius of God in resurrecting Jesus Christ from the grave. Not pristine, he did not come to us pristine after that ordeal, he came with the marks of the world and to say, ” I have overcome this, and so hope in me.”

Melissa Rau:

Okay, so I'm curious what your thoughts are about hope and what we've just gone through and what we're still going through. So we've been through the pandemic and it's kind of like we're in this holding pattern, waiting for something new, waiting for something to emerge.

And yet I can't help but wonder if many of us are hoping for the wrong thing. Like why again, and I'm not going to ask you, you know, say, "Hey, Hey Bishop, why do we hope for what has been?" So what I'm asking is why shouldn't we be hoping for what we had?

Bishop Rob Wright:

Yeah, well, perhaps we should, at least to some degree, we should be hoping for some of the familiarity and some of the great features of all that we've lost over the last 12 months because of COVID. So, you know, I don't think it's a zero sum here.

But what's so dynamic about hope is, is that as Saint Paul points to in Ephesians three, God can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine according to the faith at work in us. And so if God can do more than we can ask or imagine, then perhaps we shouldn't only hope for what we used to have, we should have some openness in our spirit and in our life and in our calendar and in our checkbook for what new thing God would want to do with us.

I think the hard thing about COVID is, is that there's a lot of loss and legitimate lament and tears and sorrow that come along with it, I've experienced it personally. And simultaneously beside all of that pain and hurt and sorrow is what new possibility is God up to. And so, we have to be a lot more nimble than normally we are. Many of us just want to return to the cruising altitude of our life before just what's familiar.

But I think that God can do more than that, I know that God can do more than that. As I have said in lots of places, God didn't cause COVID, but God can use COVID. And so if we believe that God can use even a global pandemic, we have to begin to wonder for what, for God's righteous purposes.

And so we should hope in that, and not only hope in that, we should become our hope. In other words, we might want to ask God, how can I assist you God, in the new things that you want to do in this new season?

I think we have to harvest what we've learned in COVID. Some of us have learned that we can do without some things, that we thought more essential. And some of us have had to sort of get re-centered on things that we said were our center, but have drifted to the sides of our life. That's gotten rescinded for us in COVID, and so, while I acknowledged the sadness and pain of the last 12 months, I'm also optimistic, and more than that, about what God will do, can do, with some willing participants in this new season.

Melissa Rau:

Bishop, I'm curious about what you think should come next and, you know, I hate using that word should.

Bishop Rob Wright:

Sure.

Melissa Rau:

I also hate the word hate. I'm wondering if you could predict what could come next as an Episcopal evangelist, and why do we need it?

Bishop Rob Wright:

What I'm hoping for in this season, in this next new thing, is more faithfulness from us, myself, and others. What I'm hoping for is more discipleship and less church membership. What I'm hoping for is less form and more substance. What I'm hoping for is a new responsiveness to scripture in our real lives. What I'm hoping for is more Christian maturity through all of us, in all of us, as we encounter a world that wants to meet something different than it sees on the six o'clock news everywhere.

What I'm hoping for is the church to realize that if she doesn't commit herself to the mission of Jesus Christ, then she will continue to become an irrelevant social club and die.

Melissa Rau:

Why does that matter?

Bishop Rob Wright:

Oh, it matters because God has hopes, too.

Melissa Rau:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Bishop Rob Wright:

And God is hoping for partners. God has a mission and God hopes that God's church will join God in God's mission. Right?

And so God has hopes in this season as well. God hopes that we would partner with God, God hopes that we would close the gap between what we say on Sunday and what we do on Monday. God has hopes.

God has hopes that like Isaiah, who sat in the temple for years and years, and years, and one day we might actually see, and we might actually say, "Okay, God, I'll join you." So, it's not only that we hope, it's that God hopes.

And you know, we also talk in terms of the great cloud of witnesses. And there are men and women who have gone before us who have hoped in God and seen that hope mature and blossom. And they're hoping as well, if we believe in the spiritual communion of this world and the other world, the next world, the saints, then we've got to know that there are saints on the other side, who are hoping that you and I would catch fire for what really matters and bear witness in this generation.

And I wonder about our children. I've got five children, lots of people have got children. I wonder if they aren't actually hoping too. I mean, I think some of them have taken up cynicism to protect them from disappointment, protect themselves from disappointment. But I think they're probably hoping too that somehow these words become flesh, that we're always talking about, more and more and more in this season of disruption because of COVID.

Melissa Rau:

Great. Bishop, do you have any final thoughts for our listeners?

Bishop Rob Wright:

No, I just want to commend and congratulate anybody who would call themselves an Episcopal evangelist. I would want to say, “Aren't we all? Shouldn't we all be?” But if you've got this special gift, a special charism, I would just say, let it fly full and free.

You know, Jesus had a friend making campaign and that you and I are supposed to join in that friend making campaign. And when we do that, we can know the joy that comes uniquely from hope.

Melissa Rau:

Amen.

Well, thank you, evangelists for listening. We'd love for you to tune in each week to For People with Bishop Rob Wright for a dose of practical, uplifting, and straight up talk about faith in life.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wright, and go do your thing and make friends for Jesus.

*** Jerusalem Greer:

Hi, my name is Jerusalem Greer. I'm the Staff Officer for Evangelism for the Episcopal Church in the Office of the Presiding Bishop. It's my great honor to be with you today to talk about hope and being an evangelist of hope.

Recently, my colleague, Marcus Halley, and I had a guest on our show, Tell Me Something Good. Our guest was Aaron Jenkyn, who is a Missioner in the Diocese of New Hampshire. Aaron came on the show to talk with us about some good things that are happening in her work, especially with families during the time of COVID, and the struggles and the gifts of ministry during the past year.

Aaron made one statement that really stuck with both Marcus and I, so much so that we've talked about it since then. She said, "Right now, people don't need to learn more about God, people need to get to know God. People don't need to know more about Jesus, people need to know Jesus."

In that one statement, Aaron reminded us that our faith is not supposed to be just an intellectual exercise, but that it's also meant to be embodied. It is meant to be lived and breathed. It is meant to be experienced, tasted, felt, seen and heard. It is meant to be known in the deepest part of our being.

I live on a small farm in Arkansas, and here we have chickens, pigs, goats, three large garden areas that include a pumpkin patch. Just a few months ago, deep in the darkness of winter, seed catalogs began to arrive on our doorstep. One after the other, they piled up and one by one, their pages were marked up by my husband and I as we circled and highlighted all the varieties of veggies, fruits, and flowers, we were eager to plant and grow over the next seven to nine months.

Last summer, we had our best garden ever, partially because we were both working from home and we didn't have any travel interrupting our daily rhythms of tending to our plants and our livestock, but also partially because we have been at this long enough now to know some of the pitfalls to avoid.

Our pumpkin patch was probably our favorite garden of the season. It was so abundant and we had a lot of fun offering our patch as a safe and socially distant compliant option for our neighbors and friends to visit and pick their pumpkin's. One thing that made our patch particularly appealing, I think, to our friends and to us was the wide variety of pumpkins that we had planted, big ones, little ones, green ones, white ones, flat ones, tall ones.

[Toward] the end of the season, I nabbed a few of these different varieties that we had never grown before to do a taste test. Believe it or not, not all pumpkins taste the same. Cutting into them and then them in a hot oven revealed their different textures and flavors. We immediately knew which ones would be good for pies and which one would be good for whipping up like sweet potatoes.

We knew which ones weren't worth the trouble, just too little meat, and which ones would freeze well. They weren't as watery as some of the others. We knew which ones we would grow again. Through planting, tending, harvesting, cutting, cooking, smelling, and tasting, you might say that we had an embodied experience of our pumpkins.

This year, looking through our seed catalogs, we knew which pumpkins to reorder and which ones to leave in the catalog and, of course, we found some new ones to try. We chose some new pumpkins that we want to get to know better. We knew which ones we wanted to say yes to because we knew what we were ordering.

We had an embodied experience. We knew what was coming and we said yes to some new things because we also have experience with the process. Do you hear my metaphor coming? Reading the seed catalog and any host of books about pumpkins, but never growing, or cooking, or eating a pumpkin is a little bit just like just knowing about God or learning about God, but planting, raising, harvesting, cooking, and eating an actual pumpkin, embracing and knowing the fullness of the pumpkin, well, that's a little bit, I think, of what it's like to know God.

In 1st Peter, Chapter One, Peter writes, "We have born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." In our Catechism in The Book of Common Prayer, we read this question and answer: What is the Christian hope?

The Christian hope is to live with confidence, and newness, and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory and the completion of God's purpose for the world.

I love these phrases, living hope, fullness of life, completion of God's purpose. Also, I want to know how they are embodied. If I'm going to be an evangelist of hope, part of my call is to share the hope we have in Jesus. A hope that is living hope. A hope that is all about new life. I don't want to just know about it, I want to know it in my whole being.

I can't tell you the difference in pumpkin textures until I taste them for myself. We can try and learn all the evangelism techniques we want, but if we're never clear on what it is we are sharing, if we are never clear on what it is we are inviting folks to say yes to, what we are recommending, what we are sharing, we might as well just be handing out seed catalogs.

Let's talk about the bounty for a minute. Let's talk about the fullness of the pumpkin. How is a living hope, a life in Christ actually embodied? What is the bounty that we ourselves have said yes to as Christians and as Episcopal followers of Jesus, and that we are inviting others to say yes to?

Well, to keep the agri theme going, I propose this, let's think of a life in Christ through the Episcopal lens, as a farmer's co-op basket. You know those baskets you can sign up for that are filled with locally grown bounty? Imagine, with me, that the gifts of a living hope and a new life that we have in Jesus arrives on your porch one day in a basket, and not just any basket, but the Episcopal basket because the co-op we have joined is the Episcopal one. In this basket, is the abundance of a life in Christ.

What is in that basket?

Well, to answer that question, I decided to look at our Baptismal Covenant and then flip it a bit, reading all those promises that we make as promises that God also makes to us.

Here's what I saw, in our co-op basket of faith are the following, new life. We get to turn from selfishness and fear to love and hope through Jesus, meaning we get to learn and experience that life is not a long march of perfunctory tasks in a dog-eat-dog world, but instead we are part of a larger purpose, a fullness of love, a completion of God's dream for the world. Belovedness: we get the knowledge and the experience that we are loved and wanted just as we are simply because we are, not because of anything we do. We cannot lose God's love. We don't have to earn God's love, we are just loved.

We get healing through Jesus. In the Greek , the word salvation has a lot to do with healing, so Jesus as savior can be understood as Jesus, as a healer. Community and fellowship, often around a table. We do not have to figure out life alone. We get the wisdom of scripture. We get lifelong connection to the Divine, which includes gifts and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We get access to God's bottomless and ongoing forgiveness, and God's invitation to always try, try again.

We get good news of great love that's so abundant that we have so much that we can just share it with others infinitely. It never ends. We get love for our neighbors. Yes, even those neighbors, and the ability to see the divine in others, to see the God Spark in other people. We get the dignity of self and the ability to choose to honor the dignity of all others through just a host of decisions that we make on a daily basis. We get a passion for justice and peace. We get a desire to see Beloved Community become reality, to see Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Most of all, through all of this, we get God's help at all times. I don't know about you, but I think that's a pretty amazing, beautiful, overflowing basket.

I want to say yes to that basket, to that way of life, over and over, and over. I want to embody each of those things. I want to know each of those things in my core. Then I want to share that goodness with others. I want to share with others, and invite others into the confidence of a new life in Jesus and his way of life that is filled with this kind of amazing way of living, moving and having our being in the world.

Now more than ever, I believe that people are looking to say yes. After a year of saying no, I think people are just ready to say yes. But if the past year taught us anything, I think it helped us separate what really matters from what doesn't--and people, they want to say yes to something that matters. They don't want to say yes to another, to-do item or a gimmick, they want to say yes to hope, but they want that hope to be embodied. They want to say yes to something that lasts, something that has meaning. They want to know that what they're saying yes to matters, not just in an intellectual way, but in a tactile way for their lives, for their communities, for the world. They want to know how their yes is going to matter.

Here's an example of someone who asked people to say yes and gave them tactile ways and examples of how their yes mattered.

I don't know if you know about Fannie Lou Hamer. I, unfortunately, did not know nearly enough about her until this past year. Fannie Lou Hamer was a Civil Rights activist in the 60s and 70s. She was born in Mississippi to sharecropper parents and she was picking cotton by age six.

By age 12, she had to leave school in order to keep working. Then in 1961, as a young bride, she went underwent surgery for a uterine tumor. The white male surgeon who performed the surgery, also performed a forced hysterectomy, which was an evil form of sterilization of the Black community in the South in those days. That summer, the summer of 1961, Fannie Lou became involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

By 1964, she was one of the key leaders that helped organize the Freedom Summer, which brought hundreds of college students, black and white, to help with black voter registration in the segregated South. However, due to both the continued discrimination of her around both her gender and her race, the political process just became incredibly frustrating.

In 1968, Fannie Lou turned to economics as a strategy for greater racial equality. That year, she began a pig bank to provide free pigs for Black farmers to breed, raise, and harvest. A year later, she launched what was called the Freedom Farm Cooperative, the FFC, buying up land that Blacks could own and farm collectively. With the assistance of donors, she purchased 640 acres and launched a co-op store, a boutique, and sewing enterprise. Through her efforts, she ensured that 200 units of low-income housing were built and many still exist in Ruleville, Mississippi today. The FFC lasted until the late 1970s and at its heyday, it was among the largest employers in Sunflower County.

Fannie died of breast cancer in 1977, but her legacy lives on.

In fact, one of her most famous quotes was seen around, especially a lot this past year. You might have seen it on a meme or heard someone refer to it. She said this, "Nobody's free until everybody's free." A charge that I know still rings true now.

I'm sharing Miss Hamer's story because I think she's a wonderful example of someone who believed in embodied hope. She believed in the word she said. She believed in the ideals she set forth, that nobody's free until everybody's free, but in addition to saying these words, she also embodied them. She went beyond knowing about political and economic liberation for the Black community, to living and fighting for liberation.

Then she went further. She offered paths for others to live and know this embodied hope and liberation in their own lives. She offered the Black community in southern Mississippi the opportunity to say yes to a very specific kind of hope, a hope that they could know in their very being for themselves. Fannie Lou offered embodied opportunities for economic liberation through her farmers’ co-op and pig bank and other opportunities.

The living hope of a life following Jesus in his Way of Love is meant to be embodied. It is meant to be known about and known in our being.

Fannie Lou knew what her ideals were, but she also knew that they needed to be embodied, that she needed to offer invitations for others to embody them as well. She knew what kind of hope she was asking people to say yes to. She knew what that hope looked like, taste like, smelled like, felt like. My question for us, as we end this segment is: Do we know the living hope? Do we know it in the core of our being? Do we know that we have access to all of those wonderful things in our co-op basket? Do we know how to take them in and then live them out so that we can share and invite others into the fullness of the love of Jesus and a life on his Way of Love?

*** The Rev. Debbie Phillips:

Hi, I'm the Reverend Debbie Phillips. And I'm here to tell you a story.

This story is about hope, evangelism, and how an everyday parish like mine does hope on the ground. It's not a template or a new program and it certainly isn't the only way. But it is a story of how hope leads us to seek, name, and celebrate the ways that God’s love prevails. I begin the story with my dog, Dublin.

Dublin's our lab hound mix and he's red and handsome and full of love. He's also full of hope. Every time we go into the kitchen or open the package or reach into a pocket, Dublin comes running tail wagging and then sits at attention in expectation of a treat. You see, Dublin has gotten treats before when we've gone into the kitchen or reached into our pockets. Now, not every time, but often enough to have hope that this time he'll get one too. Dublin is not only my dog, he is one of my mentors because Dublin teaches me the importance of a persistent hope.

There are many things today that get in the way of a persistent hope. And this pandemic is certainly one of them. And there are many things that support a persistent hope to like relationships and loving our neighbors. And that's where the story begins.

When I first got to Grace Church, about 20 years ago, many of the worshiping communities in the region were involved in community organizing. There was enough interest in it at Grace Church that about 20 people committed to a one-to-one campaign. So we called someone up each week and set aside a half an hour to meet. We met in coffee shops, around kitchen tables and in work offices. We were usually given a specific question to answer like, "What is something you love to do?" Or "What is one thing you'd like to change?" Each person spent about 15 minutes sharing their response while the other listened. Through these conversations, we were building power by building relationships--which is a tagline of sorts for community organizing.

We met with other institutions and these relationships led us to actions around living wage jobs and affordable housing. These conversations taught us much about the passions of people from many walks of life. Now, although the parish was too small to sustain this work, even with others. We fell in love with the stories.

Now about this time, The Episcopal Network for Stewardship, TENS, developed a program where each week during pledge season a person in the parish gave an epistle on giving. We gave it a try, figuring if St. Paul could send the epistles from prison and be encouraging, we could read them from the comfort of our pews and now with live streaming from our living room sofas. The stewardship chair invited six individuals to share a personal story about giving. A few talked about what the parish meant to them.

Another talked about how her family of eight gave up using the clothes dryer for three months and added the savings to their pledge. The image of all that laundry hanging off radiators all over the house, really brought home the idea of sacrifice.

And then, there were others such as this one from Jonathan. Jonathan said, "I have always used the phrase I have to as a child, I have to go to school. I have to mow the lawn. I have to eat my vegetables. And as an adult, I have to go to work, pick up my kids and give to my church." During an AA meeting, a former colleague related how close to rock bottom he was and how much he had lost along the way. I had a bare before the grace of God moment and realized that instead of I have to, I get to.

I get to go to work. I get to pick up my beautiful, healthy kids. I get to support my church and help others. My life is now filled with deep gratitude and awe. And I invite you to join me and saying, "I get to." I got to say, we ate up these unique and sacred accounts of the prevailing love of God coming from our members. As our evangelism definition says, "We wanted more." We found that hope was leading us to find, name, and celebrate God's abiding love in the people living around us.

Many single, younger people were moving into apartments and condos around our church. They came from a variety of backgrounds. They desired a different kind of experience though, than what we offered on Sunday mornings. We started a Sunday evening Celtic service, where instead of a sermon, a personal reflection was offered each week. We've now heard over 300 reflections from all sorts of perspectives. And each of them, we are given a vision of God's prevailing love in the world. In each of them, we hear how that sacred love always succeeds.

Well, so far, you've heard how we evangelize amongst ourselves and invited others in to tell their stories of faith but hope didn't stop there. Hope drew us out the door and walked us into the neighborhood public school. We thought about all these stories we'd heard over the years. We were pretty sure we hadn't heard anything telling us to have a program. Instead, it was the constancy of God, the abiding presence of God that redeemed every situation.

Well, it turned out consistency was one of the greatest needs for this school. Annual turnover was horrific and the atmosphere was chaotic. After discussion with the school system, our parish of mostly white church folk partnered with 72, mostly Latinex fourth graders, and committed to consistently show up for the next five years: at school plays, in science fairs, award ceremonies and school board meetings, and regularly in the classroom.

One of our activities was a service project, right before Christmas. Together with the teachers, we collaborated with the senior center who asked us to provide Christmas cookies to include with the meals they delivered to shut-ins.

First, we enlisted volunteers from Grace Church who couldn't be with the kids the day of the decorating to bake the naked cookies that we'd bring to the classroom. Then 15 other members committed to coming to school to be with the kids. We arrived in the classrooms with close to 400 cookies. We explained to the kids that some older adults are unable to cook or shop for Christmas. And so we were going to make decorated cookies for their Christmas meal. Each scholar got five cookies, three to keep and two that they would give away.

I was decorating with a little nine-year-old. He was diligently spreading a thick layer of icing on his cookies. I mean like half an inch thick. He asked me to please pass him the sprinkles.

As I handed him the bowl, he looked up at me with these big, beautiful eyes and asked, "Why do you all keep showing up to be with us?" I swallowed hard fighting back tears because I remembered all the times that I have asked God why God bothers with us. I looked him straight in the eyes and I said, "Because you matter, you matter to us. And you matter to God." This is how easy evangelism is when it arises out of hope. He went back to spreading an even thicker layer of icing on his cookies.

I read that an Epiiscopal parish in Texas had partnered with a school by becoming pen pals with the students. I thought, “Wow, even our members who can't physically be present with the scholars can still share stories and have a relationship with one.”

So we became notebook buddies with our class. About eight times a year, each scholar exchanged a notebook containing their thoughts, hopes, and dreams with their own member of Grace Church. As they didn't actually meet their buddy face to face, the kids thought of it as a diary that writes back. As such, they were very open about their feelings.

After the national election in 2016, the students started writing about their fears of being children of color in the United States, I had a parishioner come to me saying, "I had no idea how this was impacting my notebook buddy." He wrote that his brother was stopped at the border coming home and was not let back in. This just isn’t right...there must be something we can do.

Over time, this frustration and anger has led the white members of our parish to strive to liberate ourselves from racism. As in the past, this has started with stories: Stories of our upbringing, our biases, our privilege of the ways being a product of white supremacy kills our souls. Hope on the ground currently means doing the really hard work of becoming an anti-racist. And learning how to cultivate those moments when we can bring this work to our jobs, families and friends, and throughout the church.

Evangelism has led to seeking a more just reality. This is understood to be a lifelong endeavor. We believe that hope will show us the way.

The pandemic has changed how everyone views church. We know that there are and will be many things to consider and reconsider as time goes on that parochial life in particular will be different. Technology has opened up new modes of evangelism. Live streaming our stories of God's love in our lives is one way that we stay connected while apart. Hearing how God’s love prevails, even in times such as these, keeps hope alive.

Like many of you, we have formed every gathering team at Grace Church during the pandemic. They set out to find ways to keep us connected while we must keep our distance. Now, we all know that prayer rocks, but this group started talking about prayer rocks. They placed a box with about a hundred rocks, Sharpies and hand sanitizer at the front door of the church and invited passers by to write a prayer on a rock and leave it on the stoop. This was in June while the pandemic was raging, the presidential campaign was in full swing and the Black Lives Matter movement was growing.

The first day, all 100 rocks with prayers were piled at the door with words of hope and solidarity. Every single prayer was of trust in God's prevailing love. So we quickly brought more rocks, and by the end of the summer, there were well over a thousand prayers. The good news of hope in troubled times was shared by those unknown to us who passed by. These strangers brought the love of God to the church door.

After I agreed to this podcast, I decided that having a discipline of hope during Lent might be a good idea. Well, here's an excerpt from one given two weeks ago by Brian. He says, "Saint Augustine is attributed with saying hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage. Anger, that things are the way they are. Courage, to make them the way they are to be."

Fond about the litany of experiences that gives me hope, I decided to share something with you that is a little more honest. I'm angry. It makes me uncomfortable to say it to you, but I'm angry that my six year old daughter, Eady, who is Black, already gets labeled and watched and treated suspiciously.

For the first time in my life, I feel comfortable and called to be angry. This anger is based on the hope of Jesus in his promise of salvation and the just reign of God. So I choose to explore our redemptive anger that thirsts for and works for the just reign of God. Love makes me angry. Hope makes me angry. I prayed that they lead Eady and me to courage. I pray that we move toward hope, transformation, and Easter.

The following week, Lisa shared these thoughts on Daughter Courage. “I see courage every day and many of the people that show it are doing so with great love. I see young people like two of my own making choices to get married. One pair decided to check the big party and get married sooner because they want to have babies. And for my beautiful daughter and daughter-in-law to be, that will take some doing and loads of love and faith and courage.” Yes, we need to be angry at the way things are, but we must be brave and have enough faith to move forward in small or enormous ways to bring our world to a better future.

So this is my story of hope on the ground. It is a story of an average parish with the help of those who courageously shared their personal stories and dongs is being transformed by seeking, naming, and celebrating a life that is confident in the redeeming power of God's love.

I hope that this story inspires you to write your own for it will stir up within you a persistent hope to bring in the just reign of God. This is a transformative power of evangelism and hope and using this power, we can all be agents of God's redeeming love.