September 6, 2026 - The Very Rev. Erika von Haaren, Dean

In the name of the one holy and living God, Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, good morning.

Today launches our program year here at Trinity Cathedral.

And while it's my third launch with you, it's my first one as your dean.

In the previous two years as your priest in charge, we've done good and important work of right-sizing and stabilizing and doing the work an interim time calls for.

And now this year, in our new relationship that has a longer runway than we did before, we have a different kind of launch before us.

We get to kind of pull off some blinders and see the whole big picture of our future together.

It's humbling and exciting, and I confess a bit daunting too.

We are still in our process toward calling another priest to come and work amongst us, particularly one who has fluent Spanish, but also one who can help us toward many of our overarching dreams as a community in this season at Trinity.

We continue to progress slowly but surely, as is always the case when hearts and minds and spirits are in play, and we are trying our best for the sake of all involved.

So while we are starting this new and exciting season, our horsepower toward our goal is measured in this moment, because we all know ministry is a marathon, not a sprint.

So I thank you for adjusting with us to where we need to be in this moment as we walk the path as best we can.

And I thank you because though the path is slower than we'd wish, it is still one that I feel energized and hopeful about for our future.

In June, the chapter, our governing board, had a visioning retreat to start thinking about what's next for us as a community.

And with those blinders off that I mentioned and a longer view finally available to us, we were able to start looking at who do we want to become, and where do we feel we're headed?

To examine that, we began by looking backward at Trinity's history, our highs and our lows, our challenges and our mountaintops.

We've come through a lot as a community in the past 105 years.

I was not the only one humbled to look back and see that who we are today continues the echoes of who we've always been.

Did you know that Trinity had a ministry to those suffering tuberculosis in the 1910s?

That we had a nursery and childcare for women who had to work during the First World War?

And that was even before we started constructing this particular property.

Did you know that we planted St.

Andrew's Church in Glendale, All Saints up on Central, St.

Paul's, which is now San Pablo, over on Thomas Road?

And we did all of that before Arizona was even named an official diocese in the Episcopal Church.

During our heyday, we were home to 1,800 families, particularly from the 1940s to 1960s.

The top floor of our building on that side was a roller rink because there were so many youth and young people about.

Then the I-10 started being built.

It kind of bifurcated the city, as I understand, and downtown was no longer as appealing.

People started moving to the suburbs, and this area became downtrodden and neglected.

People started going to churches closer to home where they had moved.

Staff had to be laid off due to lack of funds.

And yet we still served people.

It was in those very lean years that led up to and through the 1980s that we launched our Thanksgiving and Christmas breakfast ministries that continue to this day.

We rented space to a startup food bank at that time, which is now known as Nourish Phoenix.

We were a site for a PAPA school for homeless children for a spell.

And we started openly ministering to those who had developed HIV and AIDS when so many others rejected and feared those who were suffering.

We conducted services and memorials for those whose families had rejected them.

We held the hands of those who were dying.

We were not afraid to keep loving.

And when we burned down in 2002, Dean Emeritus Rebecca McLean was here.

She writes of the experience of the firefighters bringing her inside after the fire had just been put out.

She wrote, wet cloths on our faces, we walked through the dark and now blackened cathedral, the violence of the fire seen in melted organ pipes and piano keys, the fair linen fused onto the wooden altar.

As we made our way through the cathedral, I saw the ombre and opened it, finding the sacraments, the blessed bread and wine still intact, carrying them outside and into the courtyard behind the cathedral, where forty or fifty parishioners were gathered, waiting for the news from inside.

We took the bread, wafers now infused with a smoky, sweet smell of burning red wood, and we drank the wine again, tasting the smoke.

My final words that night were, Out of the ashes we shall rise.

And rise we did, my friends.

After worshiping in the parish hall for nearly four years while we rebuilt, the community returned to full-time worship in this space around 2006.

We do not take for granted that we are in this space today, nor do we take for granted the saints who sustained this place and this community in that season of trauma and grief.

And we give thanks for you all.

Later in 2008, we began our ministry amongst the Hispanic and Latino families of Phoenix.

We welcomed a new and blessed community to Trinity, and it bred a new kind of justice work for us.

We resisted SB 1070 and other harmful legislation meant to target people with brown skin, and continue to resist such measures that continue to be presented today.

We continue to include both languages and cultures in our Trinity community to this day, knowing we can no longer be who fully fully who Trinity is unless all of us are side by side at the table of grace.

The chapter looked at all of that, all of where we've come from, and we let it be in the room around us as we discerned what's next for us as a community now.

So I'm gonna ask you to put a brief pin in that because it does all connect with our scriptures today.

So I want to spend some time with them.

These lessons we receive today from Romans and from Matthew are all about what it is to be in community now.

As much or maybe even more than back then.

Owe no one anything but to love one another.

For the one who loves another fulfills the law.

And this is a part of that.

It's like he's giving them the cheat code on the Ten Commandments.

If you're focused on loving your neighbor, you're obeying the Ten Commandments.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor, Paul tells them.

Love fulfills the law.

So wake up.

Put on the armor of light to contend with the challenges and difficulties of the day, and let's go love each other undistracted by all the world's earthly temptations and live honorably together.

Love.

Just love.

If love is genuinely the guide, you will fulfill the laws of God.

Y'all Trinity has been letting love be the guide for 105 years.

Over and over, we have loved and served those in need, those in pain, those who have needed support or partnership or fellowship or dignity or new beginnings.

This has been our enduring legacy.

Has it always been easy?

Not even remotely.

Is it easy now?

It is not.

Is that going to stop us, though, from continuing this enduring legacy?

Not even a little bit.

Throughout these 105 years, we've had to learn over and over again how to be community.

And that's part of what made it difficult and what will continue to make it difficult because we know community is made up of people and we know how people can be.

Which is why Jesus teaches us the way.

Things will not always be peachy keen in a blue sky when we're dealing with each other, but it matters what we do when the skies are grayer between us.

What do we do when we sin against each other?

We first go one-to-one.

We're honest.

We speak with love because love fulfills the law.

And let's be honest, none of us like to be told we've screwed up, right?

One could say that makes us conflict avoidant, but who is going out seeking conflict, really?

Not those seeking relationships or reconciliation.

All of that is to say it's hard to do this, it's hard to be in community, no doubt about it.

But it needs to be done and done faithfully because that's the community Jesus calls us to.

If the grievance is spoken and then it's amended by the one who erred, that's ideal.

If not, you might need some help from some trusted people.

Bring a couple folks with you to try and address it again.

Have them help listen and understand what both parties are saying and experiencing.

Let them help to try and build reconciliation.

And if that still doesn't work, the whole community needs to come together and try to address it.

If the person still can't hear the feedback even then, then know that you've done what you can and you can let them go.

Because it'll bind up you and the community for someone who cannot face their failings and refuses the counsel of the community who loves them to remain in that community.

It's incompatible in that moment.

That doesn't mean that we stop loving them or that they're never welcome back, but it's okay to not be in the same circle for the time being if it's unhealthy for all involved.

This is the grounding we get from Jesus today.

Here's best practices that show us how the church is meant to be a community and hopefully even beyond the church as well.

Again, it goes back to love.

This is a deeply loving way to call someone into accountability for an action that caused harm.

It gives every opportunity for reconciliation, for fairness, and for justice to be done.

Trinity has sought to be a place of reconciliation, fairness, and justice too, in all of our efforts to be a place of love.

At dark times and in relationships that didn't work, in birthing new endeavors, in fighting to keep these doors open, we've grounded ourselves in the witness of Jesus that teaches us what we heard today and so much more.

We've grounded ourselves in the long heritage of our episcopal identity that centers itself in Jesus.

And we have grounded ourselves in our communal life, which knows that we are always better together.

We have also welcomed one and all through these doors.

Even when community has been difficult, even when we don't see eye to eye, when we have grieved one another or been hurt or broken, our doors have been open to the possibilities for healing and new life.

These pews have held the stories of entire lives.

In these walls are the whispers of millions of prayers of gratitude and sorrow, of hope and despair.

We contain these prayers too.

Prayers for ourselves and for others, for our future and for our past, for all who needed us then, and for all who need us in the coming days and weeks and years.

This is a place where our whole selves are welcomed and embraced, because no one comes here without all of themselves.

No one comes here a tidy and spit spot and without their stories or their scars.

Because all of that belongs here.

Our whole story, our whole selves belong here.

If not at the altar of grace, then where else could we belong?

This is the radical belonging that we can create here, that has been in constant evolution and growth since some folks first dreamed the idea of Trinity Cathedral.

And it's the dream of Trinity today, that our chapter discovered through our explorations and prayers and discernment that we deepen and strengthen our Trinity culture in these three ways.

That we know ourselves to be grounded in Jesus, in our Anglican heritage, and in the history of this community, that we honor that we have endured much in our history.

And now we can co-create the conditions to endure for another 100 years as a vital outpost for the gospel in our city and our neighborhood.

And to understand ourselves as what we've always been: a place of radical belonging for the least, the lost, and the lonely, for us and all who need the love of neighbor and love of Christ, to keep these doors wide open, because by doing so we entertain angels unaware.

And we cannot be who we are meant to be as Christ followers without everyone knowing their full self is valued and sacred in this place.

This is our new beginning, beloveds, and it is not a new beginning at all.

It is a strengthening of our witness for this next season, to carry forward the saints who guided the way before us so they can help inspire us toward what is next.

It is an emboldening of all of us to realize the power of Jesus' love in our lives and in the lives of those around us, and to live out of that love for the sake of the world that God made.

And it's a deepening of our faith and hope that a Christian witness can and will make a difference in a hurting world.

That a Christian witness that includes everyone, that helps us be brave, that is not about fixing ourselves, but rather about connecting ourselves, is the witness that can be transformative for more people than we could ask or imagine.

So we begin today.

But really we continue today, as we have always done, as we always will.

It is our time at the Trinity Cathedral.

Let us begin again.

Amen.