Disciple: The Present of Presence

By The Right Reverend Anne E. Hodges-Copple

I am a summer person. I love lots of sunshine. For me, hot equals fun. My childhood summers were spent playing outside in the Texas heat, where Dallas was hot, visiting Grandmother in West Texas was hotter, and summers were carefree and barefoot.

I am not a winter person. My energy drops with the setting of the sun. A gray day just pushes up my grumpy factor. Sometimes I even believe I am one of those people with seasonal affective disorder, at least a light case. While “snow day” means endless outdoor fun to many, to me, it means staying indoors wrapped in wool blankets.

So you might understand why I am so enamored with the liturgical cycle of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. I need these consecutive seasons of light to cast out the outer darkness and my inner gloom. The contrast between a bleak midwinter’s night and a refuge of sorts built in the warmth of a barn or a cave or a humble house in Bethlehem is compelling for me. I’d be in real homiletic trouble if I had been born in the Southern Hemisphere and had to find the theological parallel between a warm winter and the Sundays after Pentecost.

As you receive this edition of the Disciple, we are entering the season of Epiphany. Epiphany, the grand finale to Christmas, is easy to overlook. And yet, it bestows the final gift of the Feast of the Incarnation: Jesus as not only the Messiah of the Jews but also the Light for the whole world. The gifts of the Magi pale next to God’s gift to the world.

Yet, somehow, the Feast of Epiphany gets lost. For many of us, as we return to work on January 2, the tree will have been kicked to the curb. Guests – if they are proper guests – will have gone home. Most Christian households will have overdosed on Christmas music long before the Twelfth Night of Christmas on January 5. A few of us old fogies will insist upon keeping our Christmas lights burning until January 6 and then self-righteously (but with great liturgical appropriateness) take down the last vestiges of our holiday decorations that day. Some strategic thinkers even use the Twelfth Night celebration to draw naïve parishioners back to church with the lure of a party which is really a ruse to recruit help in taking down church decorations to prepare for the Baptism of our Lord.

But please, please, don’t let the Feast of Epiphany slip by you because, if you do, you will miss a particularly special gift of the Christmas season: the present of presence! The wise men arrived in person. God came in the flesh.

In our modern age of digital communication and virtual reality, taking the time to be fully present to God and to one another is both a gift and a necessity. Think of the intense stare between a parent and the newborn child in his arms. Think of the melodic silence between a couple falling in love. Think of the prayers of a priest over a dying parishioner. Think of the times your friend didn’t need your comments, criticism or feedback but just needed you to be there to listen or to share the silence. There is no greater gift than being truly and fully present to one another.

It takes practice and real intentionality to be present to God and to one another. You know when someone is nodding her head but not really listening. You know when someone is physically present but mentally miles away. We all know what it is like to be so busy doing for others that we are not really being with others. Being fully present to another person is not the same thing as getting caught up trying to impress or please someone. Being fully present is liberating, not restrictive. The more I learn to be present to you, to God and to my neighbor, the more I can let go of my own worries, ego, self-consciousness and preoccupations.

The theme of Diocesan Convention that extends throughout this coming year is Equipping the Saints. You will read in this edition of the Disciple several ways to prepare ourselves to be better messengers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and instruments of God’s reconciling love. We have a lot to do to make our current worship communities stronger and more faithful while also creating new avenues for outreach. In terms of the economy, parts of North Carolina are booming, and parts are struggling. This means we must learn how to adapt our stewardship strategies and expand our measures of healthy and vital church life. Growth and health are not always identical!

In the pages that follow and throughout the year, you will encounter all sorts of opportunities to equip yourself for ministry: Invite Welcome Connect, Seeing the Face of God in Each Other, Project Resource, Go Speak: Sharing our Faith, Lift Every Voice and opportunities in our individual churches and communities. But let’s not allow all of this “doing” to overshadow the importance of “being.” It is never, never out of season for us to, like wise men and women of old, go any distance necessary to kneel and pray in the presence of God – every day! - and then find a way to be fully present one to another.

The Rt. Rev. Anne E. Hodges-Copple is the bishop diocesan pro tempore of the Diocese of North Carolina.