HARKA?

Dear Friends in Christ:

A few days before Christmas there was a message on the answering from my friend Bibs. He was my junior choir director fifty years ago and twenty years later we worked together at the summer camp of the Diocese of Massachusetts. He called to tell me that he had thought of me when they had sung “Harka” in church that Sunday. “Harka”? I couldn’t make out the word at first and then remembered that Bibs had the habit of naming hymns after the first few syllables in the hymn text. “Harka” was his name for the Advent hymn that begins, “Hark a thrilling voice is sounding.”

As I played and replayed that voice mail message, I not only figured out what “Harka” meant. I also remembered how important are the friendships that God has blessed me with over the years. Many, though certainly not all, of those friendships have been with other Episcopalians, and with brothers and sisters in other branches of the Church. These friendships are one of the most important baptismal gifts that I have received, and have certainly been more enduring than any physical gifts that I was given when I was baptized on Pentecost in 1950.

As has, I hope, become very evident in celebrations of Holy Baptism in recent years, this sacrament is not only about our relationship with God, but also about our relationships with one another. In Baptism we are adopted as God’s children, incorporated into the Church, and made worthy to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. (The Book of Common Prayer, page 311) In Baptism, God gives us new sisters and brothers and says, “I hope you like them and I hope you become friends.”

Friendship with God and friendship with one another: the Christian life is all about growing in those friendships, about loving and trusting God and one another, about becoming friends whom others can trust. Growing in friendship with one another does not mean that we will always agree, that we will always think the same way, or that we might not once in a while fight with one another. At times we may think that we have nothing in common but Jesus, but that is certainly enough, that is certainly the sure foundation upon which to build any friendship with a sister or brother in Christ.

As we begin 2008, I hope that we will make the nurturing of our friendships a priority. The year ahead promises to be one in which there will be disagreements. Some of those disagreements may be about the candidates in the election in November. Some may be about the decisions made, or not made, by the Bishops of the Anglican Communion at the Lambeth Conference. Whatever disagreements there may be, I pray that we will not allow them to damage our friendships with one another.

Your brother and priest,
Daniel