Strengthen for service, Lord, the hands and feet of your deacons that all whom we serve may come to know you more deeply.

These words are lines from a hymn written by Efrem of Edessa, the Deacon the church celebrates on June 10. He is one of the four deacons celebrated in our Episcopal Calendar of Saints. The others are Stephen, the first deacon; David Oakerhater, a Cheyenne warrior and Spiritual Leader who became an Evangelist to his people; Alcuin, advisor to Charlemagne, scholar, poet and Abbott of Tours. Efrem was baptized as a young man and, some say, was ordained shortly after. He established a School of Theology and is acclaimed as a poet and writer of hymns that are still sung in many liturgies.

Beloved, centering the youngest members of Christ’s family will be hard work, yet as the apostle Paul writes, “Do not lose heart. Everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”

Our Pentecost story from Acts is a fulfillment of what Jesus promises the disciples in our reading from John’s gospel. It is when God the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Comforter, came to our ancestors from God the Father, just as Jesus, God the Son, said she would. And today’s celebration is no different.

I have a distinct awareness these days of having come “full circle” – perhaps you have too. Another COVID spring. A new round of graduations in less-than-ideal circumstances. Perhaps it is a condition of our existence that we are always, in the midst of every present moment, thinking back to “where were we this time last year.” But this year it has seemed especially so.

This morning is my last Sunday with you before I leave for an extended time away. Part sabbatical and part vacation, I will leave on Thursday for three months, returning on Monday, August 16th.

Many of you have expressed your wishes to me that this time be what it is God wants it to be. That is my prayer, too. I hope I am open to what it is God has in store to show me, teach me, and feed me in the wilderness of stepping outside of the tasks and routines in which I can lose myself and that can come to define me, if I’m not careful.

We often say we are working to do God’s work in the world, but how do we know that what we are doing is, in fact God’s work? How do we know it is not the work of our own self interests slapped with the “God’s Work” stamp of approval, like the “certified organic” label at the grocery store?