Welcome...St. David's is a warm and friendly island church, embracing the visitor, the seasonal resident and the permanent citizen of our community with equal warmth and acceptance. We live with compassionate love for all of God's creation: the earth, creatures of the land, sea and air and all our brothers and sisters. We welcome believers, seekers, skeptics, and doubters. Permanent residents or visitors, all are sojourners on a pilgrimage through life and we invite you to walk with us. Come and visit. Stay a while.

saintdavid@rockisland.com

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Seeking - Finding

 Homily delived by Pastor Nancy Tiederman on 19 Jan 2003.

St. David's proclaims to the world: we are a congregation for seekers. What are the people who come here seeking?

- Community - friends, people who expect to see you, look for you,rejoice in your presence as you do in theirs

- Solace - this, like all times in history, is a frightening time as we become more aware of wars being fought around the globe and seem to be about to be involved in one ourselves

- Strength to survive hardship - because jobs are tenuous - non-existent and we don't know what to do.

We seek. . .

- A Place to Grieve - families break up, relationships dissolve, people die -- and church is a safe place to grieve, a place where grief is acceptable.

- Support - life overwhelms us; we feel sad or depressed; we struggle and we need a place where people care about us.

We seek

- Healing - the ways in which we are injured and ill are too numerous to list...we all seek healing.

- Prayer - we seek a place to say our prayers, either privately or corporately in community.

- Education - some of us seek to learn more about the Bible, about our tradition, about how to be Christians in a post-modern world.

- Beauty - some of us seek the beauty of the music, the beauty of the morning sun coming in the windows, the beauty of the faces we encounter, the beauty of the silver chalices and patens which remind us of all the ways God brings beauty into the world -- we are seekers of an aesthetic.

- Intellectual stimulation and challenge - we seek a group of people who like to think and who help us, encourage us, challenge us - to think.

- The Sacraments - we seek and believe we meet God in the gifts of bread and wine; we believe God feeds us and we seek nourishment at the communion table, at the supper of the Lamb.

We seek as many different things as there are people; and when we let God. the Holy Spirit, move in the people and in the actions of the people, we find Our Lord.

Christians like to say we are called to live together in "unity".

How can we do that? We are so different. We seek different things. Sometimes we seek a completely different church where we presume our needs can be met.

Church is not about meeting our needs, though that feels good. Church is about seeking and finding revelation, The Revelation of God, of the creator and source of life.

Church is about being Christ in the world today - being the incarnation of a God who is both creating and reconciling, both judging and saving.

Our Unity is our relationship to one another in Christ. This is a religious concept - not psychological - not economic and not political. We are one in the Body because we are One in the Lord.

We have an awesome source from which we derive our unity and our strength. We call that source God. From that source, we go out into the world, responding to the world however we discern God calling us to action. God,s call to action will be different for different people because we ARE different people - but we are all called to some kind of action

I, too, have a sense of my call as an individual. That is different from my call as priest. I am called as priest to preach the word, to administer the sacraments and to help the people of a parish discern God,s call to them. As your priest, my responsibility is to help you test your call, against the scriptures and the tradition of our faith, using reason, using the best intellectual sources of our times. I will tell you to think; but I will not tell you what to think. I can help you evaluate; I can not tell you what to do. I can tell you the gifts I see in you; I can not tell you how to use those gifts. I will support members of the parish who are trying to live out their faith in this community. You and I may or may not agree with the direction an individual chooses, but we will support everyone whose choice grows out of their Christian faith.

Therefore, St. David's may end up doing a variety of things in the days ahead, a variety that may look contradictory.

The first example will be our support for peace. Who doesn't want Peace? We all do. We long for peace in our hearts, in our homes, in our schools, on our island, on our interstate highways and, most of all; we long for peace between nations.

Good Christian men and women have always disagreed on the best ways to achieve peace. That is why we have both instructions for pacifism and rules for just war.

We can live together in the face of those disagreements because we recognize it is Christ who unites us and not our political parties or political choices or anything else...it is not even being members of this great nation that unites us. Here at St. David's, our love for the God who loves us and who we affirm loves each and all - that fundamental loving relationship is what unites us. Our covenantal vow in which we promise to "respect the dignity of every human being is the discipline of that unity.

We will live by that discipline. We must. We will, with God,s help.

We are here today because we sought the love and acceptance of a wonderful little community in a church building nestled in the fir trees. If we pull apart and break apart, we will deny that support both to others and to ourselves. We must stand firm in God's love for each and all, facing the uncertainties of the times in which we live.

Let the seekers seek. Let the doubters doubt - for only in seeking and doubting will we find true faith.

The church buildings will be available as meeting places for people who are sincerely trying to work for peace and justice with respect for the dignity of every human being. The buildings will not be available for political party meetings or for gatherings of rage and rancor - from either Christian left or Christian right. Meeting space is not available for left wing or right wing authoritarian groups who dare to believe they have the only correct or right, answer. This church is a place for prayer, for discernment and for worship of the God who is both beyond us and among us.

This is the God we seek. This is the God who seeks us. This is the God who will be found here. Here will be found The King of Israel, the Messiah, the oily head or anointed one, the Son of God. Here will be found acceptance and love.
 

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