02 Nov Community of Saints

Dear Westwood Community,

As our holy scriptures tell the story, from its very beginning, our earth has been home to life abundant–to creation that lives and thrives in community. Flocks and herds and schools and packs, and groups of human beings, too. Our Westwood United Methodist Church stands in continuity with this beginning–as a community of continuing creation and relationship.

I like to imagine God saying, “Let there be Westwood United Methodist Church, and let it be a community of compassion, justice, and love.” We are meant to be a refuge of rest and a beacon of hope, a place to heal, and a place from which we set out to help the world to heal. We are a house of prayer and song of praise.

Today is All Saints’ Day in our Christian calendar, an occasion to remember those who have gone before us. We have such poetic traditions for naming these ancestors: the Church Triumphant. The Communion of Saints. The Cloud of Witnesses. I like to imagine an endless procession–part holy vigil, part protest march, part parade–that we are invited to join. Our lives here, now, joined to the lessons and legacies of those who went ahead on the way.

I think of the particular saints whose lives we remember this year, members and friends of our community who we have lost since last All Saints Day. I am mindful, also, of so many others whose faithfulness shaped the character of our congregation. I encourage you to remember others who have been important to you, who set an example by the love they shared. May their memory form us still, toward lives lived in the fullness of Christ-like love.

Our community has been formed by the faithfulness of those in generations before us, and is now possible because of the generosity of our community. In the next week, you’ll receive an invitation to make a pledge of financial giving to the church for 2024. I encourage you to reflect on the ways that you have experienced and given of yourself in community through this church, as you consider what you might have to offer.

Celebrating the many ways it’s already true, I pray that we will be a community of abundance in which we can all invest, so that it might be vibrant, so that it might thrive, for the love of God, and for the life of God’s world.

I thank God for the joy of participating in holy, Beloved Community. I offer gratitude for abundant life in this world God loves so deeply.

grace and peace,
Pastor Molly