By the Rev. Lindsey Ardrey
I’m writing this on the heels of the final worship for the Black Clergy Women Gathering—a historic offering curated by six of our church’s Black women bishops. It has been a time full of laughter and prayer, tears and meals, vulnerability and gathering of wisdom. It has been nourishing and full of promise about who our church is and what we can collectively become.
It is with this fullness of heart that I invite you into this storytelling medium we call a blog. Welcome to a space for collecting our histories, speaking truths, probing our curiosities and celebrating legacies. It is an invitational space for wrestling and reckoning with our diocese’s racialized history and the tales of those who endured and continue to practice joy and love.
Right now, the ministry of reparations and restitution is in its “Come and See” season, inspired by Jesus’ call of discipleship. In the gospel of John, Andrew is curious about Jesus and asks him where he’s staying. Jesus simply responds, “Come and see.”
Later, Philip tells his friend Nathaneal about meeting Jesus of Nazareth, the man all their Scriptures have been pointing to. Nathaneal asks if anything good can come out of that city, and Philip does not try to persuade but instead says, “Come and see.” Even later in John’s gospel, an outside woman of Samaria meets Jesus, the Messiah, at Jacob’s well and then runs all over town telling folks to “come and see” this man who knew everything about her.
And so, I am inviting you too. Come and see. Open your ears, eyes and heart to Jesus calling us into this ministry full of truth-telling, reckoning, repair, healing, and glimpses of what true freedom looks and feels like.
When you enter this place, it is okay to lay your guilt, shame, trepidation or whatever binding emotion paralyzes you, at the threshold. Take off your shoes and prepare yourself to walk upon holy ground. These are the stories of who we are, spoken in the language of love and empowered by the resurrected Christ.
Come and see.
