Moderator's Remarks at the 133rd Annual Meeting of the Connecticut Conference

by Moderator the Rev. Gordon Rankin

Moderator Gordon Rankin

I guess it was around five or six month ago when the planning committee for Annual Meeting was sitting around trying to figure out what our theme should be. We generally knew what we wanted but we had not come up with the right phrase. Jed had us reading through a few different scripture lessons to see if anything caught our attention. He then read the section of Ephesians 1 that our theme comes from and I shouted, "That's it". With the eyes of our hearts enlightened. That phrase spoke to me that day and pretty much has ever since.

As I have thought about this theme over the last many months, I have continued to think of one story in particular. It just happens to be a Silver Lake story. I have been a dean at Silver Lake seven or eight time now. For three of those times, I had a wheelchair-bound boy named Mark attend my conference. Now, we had a rule in my conferences that we would only do something ever person in the conference should be able to participate. If we couldn't figure out a way to have Mark participate then we did not do that particular activity. If we were going hiking, we figured out a way to have Mark go with us. If everyone had responsibilities for serving meals and cleaning toilets, Mark was going to serve meals and clean toilets as well. The second summer Mark attended Silver Lake it was for the Sacred Journey Conference when the first delegation of youth from Korea attended. We had decided early in the week that we wanted to do a work project because it would require a lot of language translation. The project we were assigned was to clean brush out of the wood on the hill going down to the lake and move it to the side of the road where it could be picked up. As we left for this project, I still hadn't figured out how we would include Mark. I didn't need to...the youth themselves figured out how to include Mark. Before long I notice that they were piling Mark from lap to chin-high with brush. Then they would wheel to the side of the road where he would push the brush off into a pile. I was quite touched to see youth from two different countries able to work beyond a language barrier to figure out how to include one of their own. Our work project lasted for a couple of hours. When we were all done, I looked at Mark and saw that he was just covered with twigs and dirt and sap. I said to him, "It looks like we're going to have to work things out so you can get a shower quickly". And Mark looked at me with big eyes on the edge of tears and said, "You know, I've never really been dirty before. I've never really been dirty." That day the eyes of my heart were enlightened to what things must be light for Mark. I believe the eyes of his heart were enlightened as well to what it mean to be treated just like everyone else.

Through the course of our Meeting this weekend, this is what I have heard said over and over...from Davida, from Ricardo and Bonnie, from our P.R.O.K Partners, from our Regional Ministers, from BBZ, and most certainly from the activities of our youth in Waterbury yesterday: We need to help others get dirty for God. We need to help others get dirty for God. We need to be a people who come up with creative, imaginative ways to be radically inclusive and to reach out to needs that we have hardly begun to see. I believe we need to be a church, as a local church, as the Connecticut Conference, and the United Church of Christ, as the Church of Jesus Christ, where we help one another - where we help all others - experience God's grace in unexpected ways.

My friends let us go forth from this Meeting and be such a church. Let us go forth as a people who have had the eyes of our hearts enlightened.