Dear Friends,
This Sunday, we worship with our youth in charge! On Youth Sunday, our church school children will usher, offer the readings, and lead us in prayer. Some of our graduating seniors will offer reflections on what growing up at All Saints has meant to them. Our choir will be inter-generational. After the 9:00 and 11:00am services, we’ll gather for ice cream socials.
Children are central to who we are at All Saints. I think the reason joy is at our core is because children are at our core. We take children seriously enough to have a serious and creative Sunday school with Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. We take ourselves lightly enough to allow our children to lead us in a Christmas pageant exuberant, holy, and with up-to-the moment jokes and music. Our children have a role at our baptisms, and we ensure that they don’t just observe the milestones and mysteries of our faith—the Feast of the Epiphany, Holy Week, the Eucharist—but are deeply soaked in them with rites and rituals appropriate to their age and stage.
For all of this, we give great thanks to our church school teachers, parents, and children!
On a side note, this Sunday also happens to be a major feast of the church: Trinity Sunday.
In the Athanasian Creed, one of the lines reads “The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.” An old joke says after proclaiming that one Sunday, two parishioners were walking out of church, and one was overheard to say, “The whole damn thing’s incomprehensible to me!”
I prefer to say that the Trinity (like so much) is a mystery, and I don’t expect our youth preachers to dissect or explain it this Sunday. But I do know that the Trinity is about relationship, about abundant love spilling over, between, and among the persons of the Trinity, and that kind of love is what we get to see every Sunday at All Saints.
See you in church!
Faithfully, Suzanne+