“It is right and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.”
Sometimes, when you participate in or witness unquestionably good acts, you are warmed by a deep-in-your-core joy. I think that is the abundant life our scriptures describe, the life we celebrate in the Eucharist. Maybe you’ve felt this joy when you created something beautiful or finished running a race you had been training for. Maybe you felt it when your child was born, when you served dinner to your neighbors, or when you first held the hand of someone you love. That deep-in-my-core joy is what I have experienced this past month as I have begun dating Hana, who many of you know as a member of our altar guild and one of our crucifers. I can’t seem to stop smiling.
But I didn’t always think this love was good or right or joyful. Growing up in southern evangelicalism, I was told this love was evil. Terrified of being wrong, I had resigned myself to being single or to empty relationships where I would just try very hard. Yet the longer I have walked with God, the more I am convinced that this particular striving is not the abundant life found in God’s kingdom.
“It is right and a good and joyful thing…” This is what I felt as I marched down Hennepin with the woman I love, behind the banner of a church that loves us in the Pride parade this past Sunday. Hana and I marched, because, like breathing or eating or drinking, the love we share brings life. This Sunday’s march was a celebration of that life-bringing love, a march to the table of thanksgiving, led by those just past the edges of polite society. After all, aren’t these the ones Christ has invited to his feast? Is he not among them?
“It is right and a good and joyful thing…” So the holy celebration march goes on each Sunday at God’s table. May God grant us courage to walk alongside Jesus and his band of faithful outcasts, filled with the breath of abundant life, until our feet pound level the highway that brings the kingdom of heaven to earth.
Abbey Thomas
