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I want to begin this blog post
with something personal, because the readings this Sunday landed personally,
and I think you deserve to know why.
Sunday, June 21, is my birthday.
It is also the birthday of my wife, Deacon Dana Godsey. Dana and I share this
day, which has always seemed to me like one of the less random facts about our
life together.
Sunday is also, as of this year,
the beginning of my twenty-eighth year as a bishop in the Old Catholic
tradition. On June 21, 1999, I was consecrated to the episcopate. Twenty-seven
years ago today. I was a much younger person in a much simpler situation, and I
had very little idea of what twenty-seven years of this work would actually ask
of me.
I tell you this because this
Sunday’s series word is SPEAK. And after twenty-seven years of speaking from
the bishop’s chair, the question the readings raise is not abstract for me. It
is the question that comes back, again and again, in every season of this work:
what gives you the ground to keep speaking when the cost is real, when the room
is not always friendly, when the years accumulate with their losses as well as
their joys?
The readings this Sunday answer
that question. And I want to walk you through them before you come to Mass.
Jeremiah:
The Long-Haul Speaker
Jeremiah was not a one-sermon
prophet. His ministry stretched across approximately forty years, through the
reigns of five Judean kings, ending with the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in
586 BCE. Forty years of saying things that the establishment did not want to
hear. Forty years of being called a troublemaker.
The passage assigned for this
Sunday is from what scholars call the confessions of Jeremiah, a series of
intimate laments scattered through chapters eleven through twenty. Just before
our reading, Jeremiah says something devastating: he says that when he tries to
stay quiet, there is something burning in his bones and he cannot contain it.
If he speaks, he is a target. If he stays silent, he burns from the inside.
That is the texture of long-haul
prophetic work. Not triumph. Not clarity. A fire in the bones and no
comfortable option.
And then, in the middle of all
of it, this:
“But the
Lord is with me, like a strong warrior. For this reason, those who persecute me
will fall, and they will be ineffective.”
(Jeremiah 20:11, CPDV)
Not vindication in his lifetime.
Not the persecution stopping. Simply: the Lord is with me. That is enough to
keep speaking one more day.
After twenty-seven years, I
understand that sentence from the inside in a way I did not when I was younger.
The
Kingdom Worth Everything: SPEAK
This Sunday is week two of our
new series, The Kingdom Worth Everything: Costly Discipleship in Ordinary Time.
Last week the word was CALLED. This week the word is SPEAK.
Jesus is telling the disciples
what to do when the going gets hard. And his answer is not to retreat into
private faith. It is:
“What I
tell you in darkness, speak in the light. And what you hear whispered in the
ear, preach above the rooftops.”
(Matthew 10:27, CPDV)
The darkness is not the enemy in
that sentence. The darkness is where the teaching happens. What is received in
private is meant to travel to the most public place available. And the reason
to speak despite the cost is not confidence in the outcome. It is the sparrow.
Jesus says: not one sparrow
falls to the ground without your Father. The hairs of your head have all been
numbered. You are worth more than many sparrows.
That is the theological ground
for speaking at cost. The God who sees every sparrow fall sees you when you
open your mouth and pay the price for what comes out. That divine attention is
not a guarantee of safety. It is something more durable: the knowledge that the
one who sent you knows exactly what the sending costs.
On my twenty-seventh anniversary
in this work, that is the word I most needed this week. I suspect some of you
needed it too.
Come
to Augusta Pride on June 27
One week from today, Saturday
June 27, Saint Francis Parish and Outreach will have a booth at Augusta Pride
2026.
This is what SPEAK looks like
outside the sanctuary walls. We will stand in a public place, with our name on
a sign, and say to every queer person who walks by what this community has been
saying from this pulpit for years: there is a church that means it when it says
all are welcome. The Father has numbered the hairs on your head. You are worth
more than many sparrows.
We want you to come. If you are
part of this community, come and stand with us. If you know someone who has
been told by the Church that God does not want them, tell them we will be
there.
The kingdom worth everything
begins with a call. Then it asks you to speak. Then it asks you to show up in
the places that matter with your face and your name attached to what you
believe.
Augusta Pride is one of those
places for us.
Happy birthday to Dana. Happy
Father’s Day to all who carry that role. And thank you, from the bottom of
twenty-seven years of this work, for being the community that makes the
speaking worth it.
Pax
et Bonum, Bishop Greer
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Join us every Sunday at 3:00 PM at 557 Greene Street in Augusta, Georgia in the sanctuary of the MCC of Our Redeemer. Rosary starts at 2:25 PM every Sunday.
For the St. George family; Dana Godsey, Fr. Bryan Wolf; Mary Nehls; James (Cancer); Jacob (Cancer); James Long (Cancer); Mickey; Jacob Williams; Brittney (Cancer); Jennifer (DV Survivor, Homeless); Bishop James Long; David; John; Bishop Ben and Darlene Williams; Ralph Wilkins; Dillan; Wolfie; Misa; Kellsie; Ember; Chris Thompson; Killa Nova (Cancer); Helena; Beth; Thomas; Katelyn McConnell; Guillaumette's mother; Katerina; Mcam; Antonio; Edmah Osoro; Ethan Wolf; David Lawrence; Dustin; Malachi (Cancer); Janelle (Cancer); Ashley; Christy Ann (Tendons); Barb (Cancer); growth for our parish family; all those in the path of severe weather, end of hostilities in Ukraine and the Middle East; for an end to gun violence.
