A LETTER FROM OUR PRIEST

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. As the priest serving The Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Rainbow City, AL, I invite you to join our journey.

Even if you have never been to the Sistine Chapel, most Christians know the iconic painting on the ceiling of God’s finger stretching towards the hand of Adam. In Michelangelo’s masterpiece, the separation between the two hands is both minuscule as well as eternal.

There remains the gap. There remains the limitation on our reach, our ability, on our connectedness to the divine. We are all in search of a center in which we can ground our selves.

I am a husband to Jan, the father of five, and the grandfather of three. I am also a searcher, a pilgrim, another child in the gap.

It is a fundamental belief of Christendom. We know God because we know Christ. Christ fills that gap, that limit.

The question then is one of how do we know Christ. Martin Luther, for one, wrote about seeing Christ in the faces of one another.

Another poet, not necessarily a theologian by training, but by spirit, perhaps, is a lyricist. You may even know some of his music.

The other day a friend sent me a clip of Jackson Browne. The song is “A Human Touch”.

And there will always be suffering

And there will always be pain

But because of it there will always be love

And love, we know, it will remain

Everybody gets lonely

Feels like it is all too much

Reaching out for some connection

Or maybe just their own reflection

Not everybody finds it

Sometimes all any body needs

Is a human touch

Maybe that gap between God and someone who is lonely or in pain or suffering or feeling unloved can be filled. Maybe you or I can step into the breach and reach out.

Maybe we can offer the hand of God... for surely the touch of another’s hand in love is just that.

At Resurrection we do not offer dogma or demand. We do not offer judgement or guilt.

We offer our hand, our arms, our embrace, our touch.

We offer grace.

The human touch is the hand of God. Offer your’s.

We offer our’s. Reach out.

Peace,

Massey +