The Oasis - April 30, 2025

     This coming Sunday is a communion Sunday. Whenever we celebrate communion, I imagine the sacrament connecting us to the people of faith of the past and to those who will come after us. I think of my parents. I think of church members whom I knew and loved and that have gone onto glory. I imagine them smiling down on us as though they’re sitting in a heavenly balcony.  
     In the book Love & Profit, James Autry describes an interesting perspective on communion. He writes, “In the old-time religion of my youth, we believed that through the ritual of what we called “the Lord’s Supper,” we communed with the saints, with all those who had gone before. I was struck with this old image at a retirement dinner as the retiree invoked the names of company people long dead and spoke of them as if they were just on some kind of sabbatical. He talked of what they had taught the people who had taught him, and how he had tried to teach others who were now teaching the beginners. As he spoke, we realized that a true community has no limit in time. He made us feel the extension of our community of work, into a time long before us and into a time yet to come. As if the work exists in and of itself, and we come and go from it in a kind of continuum of endeavor, in a kind of communion. “
     You and I are part of a “continuum of endeavor.” The work of ministry, the work of witnessing to the risen Christ, did not begin with us and it won’t end with us. It is an honor for me to be a part of that work alongside each of you. We are truly part of something larger than ourselves. And we are not alone.

Blessings,
Eric