Dear church,

As we enter this season of celebration and worship, we’re not only asking how we attempt to go about Thanksgiving, Advent, and Christmas as usual. We are sometimes asking whether we should or should not honor our traditions.

The sharply rising red lines of coronavirus infection rates are burned into our eyes even when we rest, and occupy the background of all our thoughts and decisions. It is exhausting to constantly calibrate health safety in our daily lives, let alone this season we hold so sacred. Differing ideas on what is safe or unsafe divide our nation, our families, and even ourselves.

As you make plans and have conversations with friends and family, I invite you to practice intentional listening. In these fragile moments, may we discover the true fears, true joys, and true love inside the ones we hold dear. In awkward silences, may we hear God speak.

I pray the gift of faith is offering you the hope and optimism to navigate these upcoming weeks. This is not a false or illusory hope. This is the hope poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. As Paul writes in Romans 5,

…but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

As we start our new church year with the season of Advent, I invite you to be open to new ways of worship, praise, and prayer. In my contact with the church leaders of the Grand Canyon Synod, I am heartened by the effort and creativity put into new ways of experiencing and being our church. We are experimenting with new ways of telling an old story in real time, which is both invigorating and scary. My hope is we find new meaning as we experience the birth of Christ in a different way.

And finally, I ask that you pray for your steadfast church leaders. Anyone who has walked off-trail in the forest and desert knows it is extra hard to blaze new trails, and these leaders have been making a way for us since March.

Grateful for your dedication,

The Rev. Deborah K. Hutterer
Bishop
Grand Canyon Synod of the ELCA