Bishop Hughes describes how she experienced God’s grace and generosity at the 150th Convention, remembering how we are united, not by political party or election outcomes, but because we follow Jesus Christ, and how she saw that manifest. (Time: 4:46.)
Video Transcript
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark. Just over 10 days ago, we gathered for our 150th Convention of the diocese. My goodness, what a milestone that is. One hundred fifty years that the Diocese of Newark has been serving people in northern New Jersey. There was much to celebrate, and quite a bit of our time was talking about the future, as much as we spent time honoring the past, we were busy thinking about what comes next. A hundred fifty years and we are going strong and looking ahead. There’s many things that you can hear about Convention, either from the deputies that are in your parish, but also in our newsletter, The VOICE.
Two things about Convention that really struck me and have stayed with me, and those are things that are just about who God is. That I experienced God’s grace, I think we all did during Convention, that free gift that God gives us something that we need. We may not deserve it. We may not even ask for it. We may not even know how to ask for it, but God gives it anyway. And the other thing that we experienced in Convention was God’s generosity, and acknowledging God’s generosity made us more generous with each other and with people beyond the diocese.
I talked with several people on my way into Convention, and as they were registering for Convention, that said that they had second thoughts about coming. They almost didn’t come. They were worried about dealing with the variety of reactions that there was going to be to the election. They were worried about feeling too vulnerable. They were worried about saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, not knowing how to handle all of that. And one of the things that we discovered is that all of us have the same worry, but we are the same people. We’re the people that we were before election. We’re the same people that we will be three months from now, three years from now, 30 years from now – that we are united, not by political party or the outcome of an election. We are united because we are following Jesus Christ. That we are following the one who always took care of the marginalized, who always had an eye out for those who were outcast, who was always seeking the justice of the least among us, and who was bringing healing and transformation everywhere he went. That’s who are we are following. When we remembered that, we remembered how much we had in common and we were able to show with great generosity and care, love of each other and love for our neighbor, God’s grace and God’s generosity.
I’ll take it a step further. We talked about what we could do to help people in North Carolina and the areas that were so affected by floods earlier this year. We also talked about what we could do to help the Diocese of Jerusalem, who has been standing in the gap for people who are without food and without shelter as the ongoing tension continues between Palestine and Israel, and has always operated with hospitals and food programs and childcare and orphanages, etc. We looked at both Episcopal Relief & Development and the work that it does, and the Diocese of Jerusalem, and I asked Convention to be generous, and at the Eucharist at Convention, close to $10,000 was raised that morning by the 400 people who were in attendance. They just put cash in the offertory plate, every bit of cash that they had, and they also made generous gifts using QR codes.
All of these things, our care of each other, our care of our neighbors who are far away from us. All of those things are things that unite us. In the coming weeks and months and years, we can count on the fact that we’re going to keep hearing the message about how divided we are as a nation, and I want us to stand fully in our truth as faithful people, that in this diocese, we are strong, we are courageous, we are faithful, and we change things, because we are following Jesus Christ. There’s nothing for us to be afraid of when we gather, because when we gather, God gives us the gift of each other, and gives us the gift of God’s generosity.
