Dear Friends,

On Sunday, November 10, 1841, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Charlestown was consecrated as a house of worship and dedicated to the glory of God. Now, 172 years later, November 10 falls on a Sunday as well. While we’ll have a grander celebration for our 175th anniversary a few years hence, we will commemorate the consecration of the church at our services this Sunday.

The parish was actually organized in 1840, and the cornerstone for the new building was laid on May 5, 1841. Remarkably, six months later the congregation was moving into its new house of worship. We have copies of the Order of Service from both the cornerstone laying and the consecration, and they will be on display at church this Sunday.

At both services, a hymn was sung that includes this stanza:

These walls we to thine honour raise,
Long may they echo in thy praise;
And thou, descending, fill the placeWith the rich tokens of they grace.

As I looked over those services, this stanza, and particularly the last two lines, jumped out at me. I took note of those words because of the ways in which the prayer being offered through them has been answered in the life of St. John’s. I cannot bear witness to how it was answered ten, twenty, or even fifty years ago.  But the rich tokens of God’s grace are evident everywhere in our life together.

Just this past Sunday, we saw an outpouring of grace as six young children were marked with water and oil, sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and welcomed as Christ’s own for ever. We saw an abundance of grace at the Bake Sale in the generosity of those who are supporting our Children’s Choir. We welcomed visitors and newcomers into our midst, inviting them to the banquet of bread and wine which itself is a means of grace, feeding all of us each week. Then there is the generosity of persons who are pledging to St. John’s, a number of them for the first time, a clear response to God’s good work in our lives.

Tokens of grace, signs of God’s gracious love freely offered to us, are manifest in this community. And as we recognize them, we are drawn more and more into a way of living that is not defined by the question of “Is there enough?” but rather by the affirmation that God’s grace is sufficient, and that we are blessed. And with that affirmation, we can look forward to a future as rich in faith as the past has been, both in and beyond the hallowed walls of St. John’s.

Faithfully,

Tom