On January 27 — Presentation Sunday — we did something different. As we were able, and with each other’s help, we physically came to the front of the church and laid the gifts of our pledges and ourselves on the table.

We did this as a sign of what we do every time we gather at Eucharist. We offer our whole selves on the table along with the bread and the wine.

As I stood watching so many people come forward, I had a glimpse of what God must see every time we gather. What does it look like to see all of All Saints Church laid on that table?

It was beautiful. It was powerful. It was inspirational.

What does All Saints look like?

All Saints looks like smiles and hugs. All Saints looks like tears rolling down cheeks. All Saints looks like wheelchairs being lifted, arms being extended in support and hands carrying gifts for those whose legs won’t carry them across the church but whose hearts can fill the entire world.

All Saints looks like children holding their hands over the bread and the wine and people struggling with dementia who struggle to remember the faces around them they once knew so well.

All Saints looks like dresses and suits, t-shirts and short, and clothes worn from nights of sleeping on the street.

All Saints looks like skin of many colors, skin smooth and wrinkled. All Saints looks like married, single, divorced, separated, polyamorous and still trying to figure it out. All Saints looks like the entire spectrum of gender identity and sexual orientation.

All Saints looks like Saints who have been here for more than half a century and Saints who have just wandered in the door. All Saints looks like people who have driven an hour to get here and people who spent the night in the parking lot.

All Saints looks like all this and more. All welcome at Christ’s table. All offering themselves. All supporting and rejoicing in each other.

And … that’s not all that happens in Eucharist. In Eucharist God takes all that God sees … all that All Saints is … and brings the most extraordinary new life out of it.

It’s an amazing honor to preside at Eucharist. It’s an amazing honor to be rector of this parish. Because what I get to do is to direct all of our attention to the table, invite us to look at the whole glorious mess of life that we lay on there with Christ, and ask a most wonderful question:

What new life is God creating with us, in us, through us?
What new life is trying to emerge at All Saints Church?
What is the vision that God is shaping for us based on the amazing community that God is continually drawing to Christ’s table?

What do you see when you look at All Saints Church? Not just what are we … but what are we becoming?

Your vestry is already having these conversations every time we gather. “What is trying to emerge here?” is a question we ask ourselves over and over and over again. AND … this is not merely a vestry conversation. Because what is trying to emerge is happening with, in and through us all.

So what do you see when you look at the table?
What new life is God creating with us, in us, through us?
What new life is trying to emerge at All Saints Church?

And … that’s not all. Because as the new life happens, we receive it. It will be a piece of each of us and it will bind us even more closely together in love. It will become a part of us and send us out into the world to meet the love of God that is already out there with the love from and with which we are sent.

As this new life happens, a new generation of All Saints Church will be drawn into the Body as part of this new life, drawn by the beauty and power and passion of all of our lives laid on that table … both by what we are and by what we are becoming. A new generation, just as the oldest of our Saints once were themselves.

This month, I invite you to keep laying your life on the table. And while you are doing that, look around.
Look around and ask yourselves what you see.
Look around and imagine what God sees.

What does All Saints look like?
What is All Saints becoming?
What new life is God creating with, in and through you?

This reflection by Mike Kinman, Rector of All Saints Church, was the cover article of this month’s Saints Alive — our monthly news magazine. Read the whole issue online here. And if you don’t yet subscribe to Saints Alive, click here to have it delivered to your inbox every month. Questions? Contact us at info@allsaints-pas.org