The Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace preaches at opening worship of the Polity, Benefits, and Mission Conference in St. Louis. Photo by Randy Hobson.
The Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis co-presided at the communion table during opening worship of the Polity, Benefits, and Mission Conference in St. Louis. Photo by Randy Hobson.
The Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace preaches at opening worship of the Polity, Benefits, and Mission Conference in St. Louis. Photo by Randy Hobson.
The Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis co-presided at the communion table during opening worship of the Polity, Benefits, and Mission Conference in St. Louis. Photo by Randy Hobson.
The nearly 300 Presbyterians gathered Tuesday for the start of the first Polity, Benefits and Mission Conference since the pandemic did what they enjoy doing the most: worshiping the God who has not forsaken them and continues to delight in hearing about their faith journeys.
No one can quite tell that story like the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace, Co-Moderator of the 225th General Assembly (2022), whose sermon, “In the Margins and Footnotes,” highlighted opening worship held in a hotel conference center just a few hundred feet from the Gateway Arch.
Santana-Grace, who was joined presiding at the Communion Table by her fellow Co-Moderator, the Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis — each bedecked in outfits given to them during their recent travels — talked about her recent experience successfully climbing the scenic Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia. That arduous exercise gave her the chance to ponder what she’d seen the previous days visiting island nations and communities in the Pacific, including Hawaii, the Marshall Islands, and other places severely challenged by climate change, affordable housing and other forces. Many are places no previous PC(USA) moderator had visited.
Residents of the Marshall Islands continue to deal with the effects of nuclear testing that occurred decades ago. The government has informed many residents they need to move if they want their children go grow up healthy, which many have done, Santana-Grace noted.
Among her many stops, “I was surprised by how I was touched by their journey, their world seemingly limited by complex realities, and yet there was a movement where they tried to reclaim possibilities,” Santana-Grace said. Churches there “are being intentional and purposeful” with their “theology of resurrection even with the realities” that residents are facing.
“It’s a story that needs to make its way to the pages you and I read,” she said. “They are accomplishing far more than we can ask or imagine, from the margins and the footnotes, where so much of life happens that never makes it to the pages we read.”
“I cried when I said goodbye. Their stories caused my spirit to understand my own journey more deeply, the diaspora of my own ancestors, the island people of Puerto Rico,” she said. “I realize that notwithstanding how well-adjusted I may look, I still live with the scars and markings of the people of the diaspora. My story is one that is also written on the margins and the footnotes, seeking to find its way onto the pages we read.”
Fifteen years ago, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” garnered multiple Tony Awards. Santana-Grace called the musical “the first time anyone had talked about Latino identity in a way others can see themselves in as well.”
“My mother also owned a beauty salon. This story was her story in many ways,” Santana-Grace said. Her father, for whom Spanish was the first language, learned Greek and Hebrew in English-language classes in seminary and went on to be ordained as a pastor. “Somehow, they heard the voice of God saying, ‘Don’t stop — press on,’” a theme Santana-Grace would repeat during her sermon.
“They courageously allowed God’s voice to move them beyond comfort and complacency,” she said of her parents. “Theirs was a story that found its way into the heart of my story.”
This is “the kind of leadership we are called to in a church that is anxious and worried about its future,” she said. “Order without ardor can easily slip into legalism, which is missing the core element of our faith: a relentless and relational love that will literally go into the depths to reach in and say, ‘Gotcha!’ and bring us back.”
As people entrusted to lead mid councils and the denomination, “This is the opportunity to take stories from the margins and footnotes and bring them into the pages of the present,” Santana-Grace said. “We will hear voices we never heard before. We will find Spirit-driven stories to press on and embrace the sounds in our hearts that say, ‘Don’t stop! Press on!’”
“May God bless us along the way. Amen.”