|
This Sunday we reach the end of the road.
Fifteen weeks ago, on Ash Wednesday, we began a journey with one word: "See." We were asking the congregation to see the immigrant family, the displaced person, the one the world was walking past. We did not know then exactly where the road would go. We knew it would end at Pentecost. We did not fully know what the road would cost.
We know a little more now.
This Sunday is Pentecost. The last word of the series is BURN. And before I tell you what Sunday’s Mass will hold, I want to be honest with you about what it has taken to get here and about what I believe this community is becoming.
What the Church Is Up Against
The Church in 2026 is navigating a set of pressures that would have seemed extreme even a decade ago. I am not talking about the theological disputes that have occupied Christian communities for generations. I am talking about something more structural.
The broader culture has largely stopped trusting religious institutions. That distrust is not irrational. It has been earned, in too many places, by decades of abuse scandals; by the use of religious authority to harm the vulnerable rather than protect them; and by the alignment of too many pulpits with political power rather than prophetic witness. People who have been hurt by the Church — and there are millions of them — have good reasons for the distance they keep.
At the same time, the political environment has created specific new pressures for communities like ours. Congregations that stand publicly with immigrants, that affirm the full dignity of LGBTQIA+ people, and that refuse to reduce the Gospel to a blessing of the status quo are increasingly finding themselves the target of organized hostility. This is not paranoia. It is the documented experience of progressive and inclusive faith communities across the country.
And then there are the ordinary pressures that face every small community of faith: the financial precarity of operating without an endowment or a large donor base, the difficulty of sustaining programming with a small staff and a volunteer core, the challenge of maintaining a digital presence and a physical presence simultaneously, the weight that falls on pastoral leadership when the community is growing but the resources have not yet grown with it.
I am naming all of this because I think honesty is a form of respect. You deserve to know what we are navigating. You deserve a pastor who does not pretend the road is easier than it is.
“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And they began to speak in various languages, just as the Holy Spirit bestowed eloquence to them.” (Acts 2:4, CPDV)
What We Have Been Doing About It
When I look at what Saint Francis Parish and Outreach has done in the fifteen weeks since Ash Wednesday, I find myself genuinely moved. Not because everything has gone smoothly. Because the community has kept showing up.
We have delivered Blessing Bags to our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness. We have maintained a consistent liturgical life, week after week, with full readings and sermons and prayers and music, in person and online. We have launched a book study on Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship at a moment when the question Bonhoeffer was asking is, "What does it cost to follow Christ when the culture demands your compliance?" — has never been more urgent. We have raised money for a booth at Augusta Pride so that we can stand in that space and say with our physical presence: you are welcome here; the Church has room for you.
We have preached fifteen sermons in a row that refuse to look away from the world as it is. We have prayed, week after week, for the immigrant families in this city and in this country who are living in fear. We have named fascism by name from the pulpit. We have held the door open for people who had been told by other churches that there was no room for them.
None of this has been without cost. I will not pretend it has. There have been weeks when the weight of the pastoral work has been heavy and the resources for carrying it have felt thin. There have been personal costs that I will not detail here but that are real and that this community has helped me carry.
And we have kept going.
What Pentecost Says to All of This
The original Pentecost happened to a community that had been through something. The disciples had watched their teacher executed. They had hidden behind a locked door out of fear. They had waited for ten days in an upper room, not knowing exactly what they were waiting for, just knowing they had been told to wait and that the promise was real.
And then the fire came. Not to a triumphant community. Not to a community that had won. To a community that had survived and kept showing up and held together through the difficult weeks and was all together in the same place when the Spirit decided it was time.
That is this community. Right now. Not triumphant. Not without wounds. But all together in the same place. And the fire is coming.
On Sunday I am going to preach on what it means to BURN. Not the burning of exhaustion or depletion, though I know some of you know that burning too. The burning of the Spirit. The fire that settles on each one individually and on the community collectively. The fire that does not destroy but illuminates. The fire that makes the Church speak in every language, to every person, without borders and without exception.
And I am going to speak all fifteen words of the series arc, for the first time, together. From Ash Wednesday to Pentecost. From SEE to BURN. Because I want you to feel what this community has walked through and what it has become in the walking.
I want to close this post with two things.
The first is an invitation. Come Sunday. Whether you have been here every week since Ash Wednesday or this is the first time you have ever heard of Saint Francis Parish and Outreach, come. Pentecost is the day the Church was born, and it was born as an inclusive, multilingual, borderless community of people who had been through something and were set on fire for what came next. That is the Church we are trying to be. Come and be part of it.
The second is a need. We are still raising money for our booth at Augusta Pride. We need $875 by June 1. That is next week. If you have been following this series and you believe in what this community is doing, this is one of the most concrete ways you can put that belief into action. A booth at Pride is not a gesture. It is a statement of presence to people who have been told the Church does not want them. Help us get there.
Venmo: @saintfrancisparish
PayPal: paypal.me/saintfrancisparish
Cash App: $saintfrancisparish
The Spirit does not wait for perfect conditions. It fills the house where the people are gathered. We are gathered. The fire is coming.
Come and be part of what it builds.
Pax et Bonum,
Bishop Greer
|
