The Grace of Connection
“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep”
-Romans 12:15
During the last week of my renewal leave, I spent 3 days with my clergy covenant sisters in St. Augustine. It was the first time we had been on retreat together since the Fall of 2019. Since that time, two of our group retired from formal ministry and one of us got married. We had so much to celebrate together!
Many of you may remember Pastor Terri Hill talking about this group in the past. The 5 of us, all clergywomen in the Florida Conference of the UMC, have been sharing life, ministry, and relationship for at least 27 years. I say at least because several of them started meeting before I joined the group. When we began meeting, we all had young children. Now, all our children are grown, and several have grandchildren.
Throughout these years, we have met for an in-person retreat at least twice a year, as well as gathering whenever we could at various conference events throughout the year. Our goal was to love, care for, and support one another in every facet of our lives, especially ministry, and we have certainly achieved that goal.
It’s hard to believe all that we have shared over the years. Life and love. Parenting and grandparenting. Now we are all in the stage of caring for aging parents. Through it all, we have always been united in our passion and love for the church of Jesus Christ. We have learned together and from one another. We have challenged one another and consoled each other. We have wept together and sometimes laughed so hard that we cried. We have experienced seasons of joy, excitement, growth, and abundance. And we have been through seasons of pain, disappointment, struggle, and heartbreak. The gift of all of it has been that we have never been alone. Again and again, we have been the compassionate heart of Jesus for one another. In short, we have put into practice the words of Paul in Romans 12, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”
These relationships have blessed me more than I can ever put into words. They have given me strength and hope when, at times, those things felt in short supply. I can honestly say that for all these years, every time I’ve left one of our gatherings, I’ve driven away with a renewed sense of joy, peace, hope, and gratitude for the life I get to live and to share with these sisters in Christ. They are my people.
We all need people! We need the grace of living in connection with others, in deep, strong bonds of relationship where we know we are loved, cared for, supported, and encouraged. We are not created to live in isolation. All of us need that human-to-human, soul-to-soul connection of relationships and all of us need to be rooted in a community that we can trust will care for us when we need it most.
All of which is why our Connect & Care mission-essential at Suntree UMC is so important. It is a mission-essential that emerges out of the loving, caring heart of Christ, who truly “saw” people, and in seeing them, responded with a heart of deep compassion. Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, and gave hope to the hopeless. His deep compassion moved him, again and again, to respond to human suffering and need.
This week in worship, we will be reflecting on the compassion of Christ that we see reflected throughout scripture but particularly in Matthew 9:18-26, 35-38. We will be asking ourselves how we, the church, as Christ’s body on earth, reflect the compassionate heart and love of Christ to our neighbors? What are the ways we are called to offer relational connection, care, support, and encouragement to one another and to folks in our community, as a reflection of the compassion of Christ? Are our hearts moved by the suffering of others, whether they are in our local hospitals suffering from COVID-19, or healthcare workers laboring under the strain of this ongoing pandemic, or across the globe, in Haiti or Afghanistan? And if we are moved with such compassion, how can we respond with loving action?
Who are your people? How have you experienced connection and care through the ministry of Suntree UMC? How is Christ calling us to deepen our empathy and compassion for the people around us every day? I pray you will begin now to ponder and pray over these questions and that you will join us for worship this Sunday, in-person or online, where we will invite the Holy Spirit to empower us to live as people moved by the compassion of Christ to connect and care for one another.