A combination of "ah, shucks" humility mixed with the kind of awe we feel when God zaps us, causes me to feel a tad reluctant to ask this of you. But, ask I shall. Please read the sermon on page ten which I preached at our Convention Eucharist on November 2 as we began to consider the issues of life together in the Diocese of Maine.

While I, like most preachin’ folk, often feel the humbling sense that God chooses to use my poor self to speak a divine Word, this Convention Address felt more like that than usual. In that sermon/address, God invited us to embrace a new way of being, a new understanding of God’s Abundance...a new way of looking at ourselves as members of the Body of Christ:

DEATH Happens; yes, loss and tragedy and sadness are real. And grief is the right response. (Christ has died!)

LIFE Springs from DEATH: new life comes forth when grief has made room for a new vision, a new way to see and to be. (Christ is risen!)

Now, we approach that most tender of the seasons of the Church year: the season of Advent. By the time you read this, Advent will have enfolded us. Advent lifts our reluctant and feeble eyes to God’s promise of a future and a hope: even when we are busy thinking in the negative, living in the cynical, obsessed with "not enough," God’s abundance breaks into the smallness of our thinking. We are so blessed, and we will be more blessed as the future dawns.

That’s what Advent whispers to us.

Let me blend together into one story the recent stories of several of our congregations to illustrate the concrete reality of Advent’s promise. Here is a congregation, nearing the bottom of its financial resources and ready to consider closing its doors, painfully talking with me about its options. One day, with no advance warning, this congregation learns that they have received a bequest, from a person they barely knew...someone who passed through briefly, but felt the faithfulness of that congregation’s ministry, the warm welcome of their hospitality, the Good News they courageously lived and believed.

This once-grieving congregation now has the financial means to welcome "a future and a hope." Of their gratitude, they quickly move to assure that their gift will bless another congregation in our diocese which knows the struggle they have known. I receive their request, "Bishop, who else is needy...which other congregation can we help?" and soon a linkage is formed. Not just money, but prayer and mutual support now flows generously. Life bursts forth from death. Christ is risen!

We have learned, over and over in our diocesan community, that life surges forth in the midst of death. I am struck by how often that sign of life has to do with the gifts which continue beyond our death — by the bequests offered to benefit the Body of Christ in the future.

It is time for all of us to learn this great lesson of life which transcends death. In the months to come, we will have the opportunity to learn about Planned Giving...that avenue by which we make a gift of life beyond our death. And there is no better time than Advent to consider this kind of giving, as we look forward to the Gift of Gifts who is Christ himself: God born to us in the humble earthiness of a manger. I invite you all to learn about giving a gift of Life beyond your death, that a future and a hope may be real and concrete in the Body of Christ which is our diocesan community.

It’s always tempting to get caught up in the daily-ness of it all and to lose sight of how our death might bring New Life after our days have run their course. I am just now examining and re-writing my will. I surely want my life to be an offering to the Body of Christ, not only now, but after I no longer live amongst you. Join me, in the months to come, as we consider, through Planned Giving, how our lives may be joined to the Life which emerges from death.Watch for announcements about our diocesan Planned Giving program, a deeply reverent celebration of Life which is triumphant over death.

And so, dear sisters and brothers, may God’s Advent promise of a future and a hope take root within us in concrete ways. How blessed we are by God’s promise of Life triumphant over death, as we move on into the future and the hope which God has promised. God is so good, so inexpressibly good, to us.