Letter from Amy: May 21, 2025

Dear Incarnation,

A few years ago during Lent, we preached a sermon series called Hearing God. Each Sunday, we read the normally assigned texts (i.e., the Sunday lectionary), but through a particular lens, asking: “What do these scriptures reveal about the experience of hearing God? About what God’s voice sounds like?”

I haven’t gone back and listened to those sermons, and to be honest, I barely remember their content (I have sermon amnesia after I’ve preached!). But I do remember what I learned through my study and preparation, because it wasn’t what I expected to learn. What struck me most at the time is that God’s voice sounds like newness. The experience of hearing God’s voice — as it is portrayed throughout scripture — is often surprising, disruptive, interrupting, arresting, new.

I was accustomed to thinking of God’s voice as gentle, convicting, reassuring, silent, or powerful. But in the scriptures assigned to me during that series, again and again, God’s voice always sounded new, calling people to an unexpected future and a yet-unseen vision. I began to appreciate just how often the voice of God comes from outside ourselves to pierce our perception of things with a word of sudden, arresting newness.

That is certainly how I’m experiencing God’s voice this week. Hopefully by now you have read the news that our church will be moving — again — in 2 weeks. This massive change comes alongside goodbyes to beloved members (a sad constant in the DC area), my sabbatical, and laying the groundwork for a church plant in Maryland. It’s a lot. Newness.

Sunday is also Rogation Sunday, another reminder of the newness that will come to all the work of our hands and all of creation in God’s coming kingdom. We see glimpses of that newness now, and we will pray on Sunday for eyes to see more and more in our neighborhoods, homes, workplaces, gardens, schools, everywhere.

So. Newness. God’s voice often sounds like newness. It certainly does now. We join the communion of surprised, disoriented, confused, and faithful saints who have been called forward by the Voice that is making all things (including us) new.

We will hold a Q&A on Sunday after church to answer questions, as best as we can at that moment. We are still learning a lot each day about what we will do next. I ask for your prayers. And if, as you pray, you have words, dreams, visions, scriptures that God brings to mind, please share them. These are a great encouragement to me.

On Sunday, we will also pray God’s blessing over Drew as we say goodbye to this property that has held and nourished our congregation. We will pray for the school's continued flourishing, for the seeds of our praise in this place to one day bear fruit. Buz, our vestry poet-laureate, was inspired to write this poem:

Farewell to Drew

The Incarnation pioneers came here, for a few years,

We worshipped God, and shared a lot.

But then the curtain fell

Like the clap of a solemn bell

Now, with a heavy shrug

We give Drew a final hug

We pack up our van

And turn our caravan

We lift our eyes to the Hills of Beverley

Whence cometh our help, foreverly.

A welcoming space, provided by God’s grace

Where we again, our destiny, face.

I’ll close with this prayer that we prayed at our last parish meeting, which has felt more poignant and true with each passing week. “God, it is exhilarating to be your people” has been ringing in my ears ever since. Newness!

God of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Ruth and Mary, you have called us through your Son, Jesus Christ. You lead us on our way by the fiery cloud of your Spirit. We ask you, "Do we really have to make this trip?" We are just beginning to get the hang of this "worship-of-God business," and then you tell us we have to go and we are not even sure there is anywhere to go to. Help us remember, as Hugo of St. Victor put it, "the man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the world is a foreign place." So we will go to travel the world. Help us remember we do not and cannot go alone. You have made us your friends and friends of one another. Help us trust in that friendship, knowing we will need it as you encounter us in the unknown. God, it is exhilarating to be your people. We praise you for giving us such wonderful work. Amen.

With love,

Amy