Letter from The Reverend Sarah Reynolds

Dear people of St. Ann’s,

I couldn’t be more honored or thrilled to accept the call as your next rector of St. Ann’s. I’ve been moved and inspired by your resilience as a parish and by your commitment to being God’s hands and feet in your corner of the world. East Nashville is blessed to have you as a neighbor and I am blessed to be joining you in the good work you are already doing.

I look forward to getting to know you all as individuals and as a community as our relationship unfolds over time. In the meantime, a glimpse into who I am as a person and as a priest: born into a long line of Methodist clergy, I was raised with a profound sense of life as grace and gift – and a total certainty that ordination was not my path. Lucky for me, God’s persistent nudges come in a million different forms and as many times as needed. My meandering path to the priesthood – with stops in multiple seminaries and cities across many seasons – has given me a rich and diverse well of inspiration. I find glimpses of the Holy in nature’s untamed wildness as well as on the manicured expanse of the baseball diamond; in the blues, rock-n-roll and Americana as surely as in sacred music; in scripture to be sure, but also in poetry and fiction. I am taken to church as easily at a live music show as in a cathedral and find my prayer life most alive in the meditative spaces of an early morning walk with my dog or the focused task of chopping vegetables.

I bring to St. Ann’s a passion for preaching, a strong belief in community as a practice, a theologian’s mind and training, and a joyful relationship with life in this profoundly broken yet relentlessly beautiful world. I also bring the mind of a learner and am eager to receive all that you, as a community, have to teach me. It is my sincere hope that our journey together will be marked with both intentionality and spontaneity, seriousness and laughter; that our fellowship be joyful and authentic and our ministry together be focused, persistent, courageous, and generous.

My husband, Mitch, and I have many friends and family in and around Nashville and are excited to start this new chapter of our lives there. Please keep us in your prayers this summer as we pack up our lives in D.C. to make our new home among you. I look forward to seeing you at St. Ann’s on Sunday, September 1. Until then, a favorite blessing:

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to

believe that you can make a difference in the world,
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. 

In Christ’s love,
Sarah

The Rev. Sarah Reynolds