Fr. Funston’s sermon for Sunday, June 2, 2013, the Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 4C), his 10th anniversary as Rector of this parish, is now available online:
More important than the building and the grounds are the ministries through which we have touched peoples’ lives. In these ten years, there have been more than 1,500 celebrations of the Holy Eucharist in this sanctuary! That means just here, in this space, there have been more than 250,000 administrations of Holy Communion; more than a quarter of a million times communicants have received the Blessed Sacrament, this sacrament which (as one of our prayers of thanksgiving says) is “the pledge of our redemption” through which the grace of God brings us “forgiveness of our sins, strength in our weakness, and everlasting salvation.”
During these ten years, since we started the Brown Bag Concerts in 2007, there have been more than seventy free concerts and recitals in this space, which means something on the order of 4,000 concert-goers have received the gift music which (the poet Berthold Auerbach said) “washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”