From your Pastor's Pen...
Summer is more than half gone, and the fall season, with the resumption of all church activities and commitments, is around the corner. So no matter how you describe this past summer as a season in your life - wonderful, nice, different, so-so, busy, hectic, blah or refreshing - it is time to join the rest of the congregation on a new church-year adventure unlike any other we’ve seen before.
One of the differences this church-year is that we are anticipating a change in leadership, a new pastor in the person of the Rev. Vatche Ekmekjian, who, God willing, will be with us early 2009 to guide this flock for years to come! The fall season will see us as a congregation busy, honing our gifts of Christian hospitality to welcome in our midst the Ekmekjian family, and to make sure that their transition from Aleppo, Syria, to the United States of America and to Southern California, is as smooth as ever, smoother than some of us experienced when we came to this beautiful land of freedom and opportunity some decades back! In his first letter, the apostle Peter urges the early Christians to “offer hospitality to one another . . .” And the apostle Paul does the same in his letters to the Romans, as well as Timothy and Titus, urging them to show hospitality to strangers. Through the centuries, people of different nationalities and geographic regions, were identified as a people with their hospitality, making sure that the strangers did not remain strangers in their midst, but found the warm welcome to make them feel at home! “I was a stranger and you invited me in . . . “ says Jesus in his parable of the last judgment in Matthew 25:35. For religious communities, hospitality was offered with the understanding that one might be entertaining “angels unawares,” or perhaps, the Christ who comes to us incognito as one of the least of those who are members of Christ’s family! Already, some of the leadership and auxiliary groups are busy planning that warm welcome, and we will keep you informed of the ways and means you may bring your contribution to this ministry.
We will start the new church-year on Rally Sunday, September 7, with a Service of Renewal and Rededication. The Women’s Fellowship is planning a special luncheon on that day to create a spirit of support and cooperation among our people. That day will usher in the resumption of all church activities and endeavors that make us the body of Christ here on earth.
The month of October begins with World Communion Sunday, October 5, when from sunrise to sunset Christians approach the Lord’s table and celebrate their oneness in Christ. It is a most meaningful Sunday for me, because it gives me a sense of the universality of the church, and I approach the Table of the Lord with a sense of awe that there are Christians of different nationalities, races and tongues, who worship the God I worship in Christ!
On my desk calendar, the month of October also includes Access Sunday and Disabilities Awareness Week, Indigenous People’s Day, Children’s Sabbath, United Nations Day, and ends with Reformation-Reconciliation Day. It is indeed a full month if one is to observe all these important days. But there is no question that, liturgically speaking, the month begins and ends with two meaningful days that celebrate the church’s life throughout history. Reformation is not only a particular historical event - be it in the 16th or 19th centuries - but a dynamic, continuing reality in the life of Christ’s church that leads to reconciliation and the oneness for which our Lord prayed. JMS