“Friendship is genuine only when you bind fast together people who cleave to you through the charity poured abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.” - St. Augustine, Confessions, Book V
This has been a difficult week for me. We are approaching the first anniversary of our beloved Sonia Waters’ death. Then, my dear friend Fr. Everett Lees of the Diocese of Oklahoma died, only a couple of weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Everett leaves behind his wife Kristin and three young children, and I ask your prayers for them all. He was a loving husband and father, but I knew him as the kind of friend who helps everyone around him be a better Christian. It was true for his parishioners at Christ Church Tulsa, it was true in the Diocese of Oklahoma, and it was true in the Episcopal Church where he was a tireless advocate for evangelism. Christ Church has been one of the fastest-growing congregations in the Episcopal Church, in no small part because of Everett’s relentless focus on what Good News it is to be made a new creation in Christ.
St. Augustine tells us that true friendship is found not when we love our friends for worldly reasons, to gain some kind of advantage or favor. Friendship, by which he means Christian friendship, is a model of the friendship between humans and God. We love our friends because we love God in them, and because we love each other towards God. Sonia and Everett were both the kind of priests, and the kind of friends, who loved people towards God - who drew out the best in everyone around them.
This isn’t a grace that comes only to members of the clergy - far from it! I suspect that each one of us can name people in our lives who have loved us towards God. But it can take intentional action as well as prayer on our part to be that kind of friend to others. I hope that in the year ahead, Trinity Church will grow not only numerically (which, praise God, it is!), but in the kind of friendship that helps us grow in holiness, and in the love of God. It may not be the only way we can experience the truth of the Gospel, but it is one way. As Stanley Hauerwas writes,
“I do not think that questions concerning the truth of Christian convictions can be isolated from what is necessary to sustain friendships that are truthful. I am not suggesting that Christians can be friends only with other Christians. Some of my most cherished friends are with non-Christians. Rather I am suggesting that if what it means to be a Christian is compelling and true, then such truthfulness will be manifest and tested through friendship.”
Your friend in Christ,
Kara
P.S. This interview with Fr. Everett on what makes a good church is outstanding and I commend it to you:
https://bencrosby.substack.com/p/church-growth-discipleship-and-the.