In its bulletin, St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Hacienda Heights notes that it offers pastoral care in Cantonese, English, Mandarin, and Tagalog. One doesn’t often see such an announcement. Long a pioneer in multilingual, multicultural ministry, this hearty mission, where the energetic the Rev. Dr. Fennie Hsin-Fen Chang serves as vicar, was Sunday’s stop on my retiring bishop’s farewell tour. On July 11, by the grace of God, Antonio Jose Gallardo Lucena will become bishop as well as rector of St. Thomas’s mission. I know they’re going to love one another.
My official duties were presiding and preaching, with Fennie translating into Mandarin, and watching as the Holy Spirit confirmed eight apostles of Jesus Christ’s love, justice, and righteousness. I took the opportunity to give thanks for Fennie’s ministry in helping our diocese form bonds of fellowship and exchange with the Taiwan Episcopal Church 台灣聖公會.
Our confirmation candidates ranged in age from 14 to 84. Among them was George, who served from 1965 to 1975 in the South Vietnamese army and spent a decade in a penal camp until finding his way to the United States in the early eighties. After George was confirmed, he offered his testimony in the form of a beautiful solo anthem.
We sat together at lunch. Another miracle of the Holy Spirit is that a Facebook friend, with whom I had been having a conversation about the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now,” had just recommended Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Sympathizer,” about the aftermath of the American war. I cautioned George that I couldn’t recommend it, because I hadn’t read it yet, and it might not align with his experience. We resolved to read it together and compare notes.
As always, Fennie had organized the worship impeccably. Organist and pianist Janice M. Lee brilliantly accompanied both choir and youthful chamber players as well as George . The Los Angeles Philharmonic Choir, also known as the Harmony Choir, many of whose members are Buddhists, was aboard, as is usually the case during special events at St. Thomas’s. Choir leader May May presented me with a thermos bearing the retirement-ready message, “Every sip tastes like it’s not my problem anymore.”
And yet the gospel paradox is that we remain, if not always one another’s problems, one another’s companions in Christ. Sunday was also an opportunity to give thanks for Phoebe Pao’s many years as an innovative Christian educator and Bishop’s Warden Janis Magnuson’s longstanding ministry in both diocese and mission. Janis and Roger shared a table at lunch with the Rev. Ricardo and Caryl Gonzalez. With his deep roots at St. Thomas’s, though long retired, Ric assists weekly. Both couples have been married over 60 years.
When we are in Christ, do we retire, or do we recollect, readjust, and redeploy? I have met people who pastored from their rooms in convalescent hospitals, even from their deathbeds. As we heard Sunday from the Book of Acts, “All who believed were together and had all things in common.” The pilgrim’s road goes on forever.
