Over the weekend, I had the privilege of presiding at the wedding of Kristen Barker and Rustin Feller. Rustin is a college friend (we played tuba together) and his bride is a true blessing.
After the service, I had many friends, family, and others approach me to thank me for presiding. At first, the conversation went like this:
Guest: “Thank you so much for presiding. Your presence made it special for all of us. The service was very beautiful.”
Jimmy: “Thank you. It was my pleasure.”
After enough of these comments, I started to get a little hot under the collar. (The homonym “choler” is no coincidence.) So the conversation went like this:
Guest: “Thank you so much for presiding. Your presence made it special for all of us. The service was very beautiful.”
Jimmy: “Thank you. If you want to experience that beauty every week, then you should start going to your local Episcopal church.”
Maggie was even more snarky than I was; she would say, “Of course it was beautiful. We just met God there.”
All of this is to say that we, as Episcopalians, have the blessing of dwelling in beauty. Our liturgy, sermons, creeds, hymns, anthems, and sacraments should draw us up into the beautiful radiance of our Lord’s very throne room. So much of our world is ugly, crude, and utilitarian. Living in this gray world can be drudgery, leading to despair and a desire to drown ourselves in drink, entertainment, or falsity.
Would you like to experience beauty week in and week out? Would you like to visit the very throne room of God and drown in the radiance of our Lord’s beauty? Then visit your local Episcopal church…
the rev. jimmy abbott 