Author Archives: Greg Johnston

An Advent Devotional Calendar

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Many of you reading this message will be familiar with the Rev. Tom Mousin, formerly Rector of this parish and now serving as Rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Portland, Maine. The fact that so many of you aren’t familiar with Tom is a testament to the vibrant and growing community he fostered at St. John’s during his time here, a community that has welcomed me and many of you in the last few years.

It occurs to me this Advent that if you don’t know Tom, then you might not know about Tom’s Advent calendar. For the last 35 years, Tom and the Rev. Merry Watters, who once served as pastors of neighboring churches in Vermont, have collaborated on an Advent devotional. Each day of the calendar includes a suggested short reading from the Bible, a brief invitation or intention (“Light one candle!” “See newness,” and “Be ready” began this week), and an illustration. Each year’s calendar also includes an Advent poem.

During Tom’s time here, this calendar became—and has remained!—a part of the Advent life of many people here. This year, with so many members new to the church since Tom departed in 2019, I thought it would be worthwhile to share it again with you all, as an inspiration to take a moment each day for prayer, and a moment’s reflection, as we the day of Jesus’ birth again draws near.

You can download the calendar or subscribe to the daily devotion email, at thomasmousin.com.

Thank God for You

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Sermon — December 1, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

“How can we thank God enough for you?” (1 Thess. 3:9)

Advent is a season of contrasts. The sense of quiet anticipation in the Advent liturgy of the church contrasts with the frenzy and exhaustion of the Christmas Season on our calendars and advertisements. The beauty and joy that we associate with the coming of the Christ child at Christmas contrasts with the chaos and confusion of “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” on some frightful future day. The words of Paul this morning, offering his heartfelt gratitude and prayers for the Christian disciples in Thessalonica contrasts with Jesus’ words of warning and vigilance delivered to the disciples when they are in Jerusalem.

We can talk about this contrast in a number of different ways. So for example, you might describe Advent as a season in which we prepare both for the first coming of Christ, in the birth of that sweet little child on Christmas Day, and for the second coming of Christ, on some future day, when we will finally stand before the Son of Man. Or, you might think of Advent as a time when our readings and our prayers tend to emphasize the fact that Christian life is always both “now” and “not yet”; when the promises God gives us in Christ have already begun to be realized and have not yet been fulfilled. God has already now established a kingdom of peace and love on the earth, but it has not yet fully taken hold. God has already now invited each one of us to begin a new life of faith and hope and love, but we are not yet perfect practitioners of faith, or hope, or love.

It can sometimes feel strange to live suspended between these two extremes. It can be alarming to come back to church after a Thanksgiving break, or maybe longer, ready to get into the Christmas spirit, ready to remind yourself of “the reason for the season,” and to be told instead that “there will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves!” (Luke 21:25) It can be discouraging, year after year, to hear prophecies of “justice and righteousness in the land,” to hear that “the days are surely coming” when “Jerusalem will live in safety,” and then to look around at our world, wondering where that justice and righteousness may be, wondering when Jerusalem, or Beirut, or Khartoum, or Kyiv will live in safety. It’s hard to be told, again and again, that we have been given the gift of eternal life, and then to say goodbye to people we have loved and be left with only the hope that we will see them again some day.

Advent is a season of contrasts, but here’s the thing: Our ordinary lives right run down the middle. Advent is the First Coming and the Second, the Now and the Not Yet, the Promise and the Fulfillment, and “Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”

In just a few minutes, I’ll baptize Hugo Watson. And baptism fits, in a strange way, with this “now and not yet” truth of Advent.

In the Episcopal Church we practice both adult and infant baptism. In other words, baptism is available, of course, to adults or older children who haven’t been baptized before and are beginning a life of faith. But it’s also available to infants, and to young children, who may not even be able to speak for themselves, let alone articulate their own beliefs. And that’s actually the norm, across the church, right now and for, oh… 16 centuries or so.

Of course, I could explain this to you historically. If you’d like the detailed historical account, come ask me at coffee hour. But I think that there’s a deeper spiritual truth at play. We don’t require people to come to a full understanding of faith before they can be baptized because we know that in this life, our faith, like all God’s work, is always both “now and not yet.” We are, already now, journeying along the long road toward God. And we have not yet any of us, however old or young, arrived in the place where we will see God face to face.

But we do not journey alone. In baptism, each one of us is brought into the community of the Church. And I hope you can hear the capital “C” in that. We are not only baptized into the community of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Charlestown, but into the one, holy, catholic—which just means “universal”—and apostolic Church with a capital C, the one Body of Christ of which all Christians are members. But we are also members of this particular church, because while the united life of the Church universal is not yet been revealed, we have the life of this church now.

In our baptismal prayers, we turn away from all the spiritual forces of evil in this world. We turn toward Christ. And then soon enough, we turn to Coffee Hour. And that’s no less a holy thing. Because while God’s work in us has already begun, it is not yet complete, and here we are—stuck in the middle with each other.

            So like I said at the beginning—well, like Paul said, at the beginning— “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?” (1 Thess. 3:9) He writes these words to a group of Christians in Thessalonica, a church that he himself had founded during his travels spreading the good news. He’d been run out of town when he was there—as was often the case for Paul—but the people he’d gotten to know there are still in his prayers.

And I find myself feeling the same way, on this post-Thanksgiving Sunday, this baptism Sunday, this first Advent Sunday, and I find myself asking, “How can I thank God enough for you in return for all the joy I feel before our God because of you?” Not because of who you will one day be, in some heavenly reality where all our imperfections fade away. But because of you, who you are now, each one of you. Some of you I know very well. Some of you don’t really want to be known. Some of you have only stepped foot in this place for the first time. But I thank God for each one of you, for walking together for at least a little part of this journey.

Because every one of us is still a work in project. Every one of us is still waiting for God to fulfill the promises God has made. Every one of us is still praying for the strength to face the things we face right now, let alone in days to come. But we have God to accompany us along the way. And we have one another, too; to share those burdens and to celebrate those joys, to live life together as the beloved community of God.

So “may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” Amen. (1 Thess. 3:12-13)

A Kingdom We Don’t Get to See

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Sermon — November 24, 2024

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

Did you notice anything cool about the lectionary today? Something I didn’t think actually happened; or rather, something I had never noticed happened, happened today. We get not one, but two different apocalypses in the lectionary readings for today. What a rare and wonderful treat to preach on. 

The apocalypse genre itself gets a bit of a bad rap; I would say first because of the modern connotations of the term apocalypse. And second, because we don’t get a lot of exposure to the genre. Although it was a relatively popular in the ancient world, we really only get two proper apocalyptic books in the Bible: Revelation and Daniel. 

Although the modern connotation is different, what an apocalypse does at its core is reveal something about God’s intention for the world, for humanity, and history. It often uses elaborate codes and imagery to convey its message. For Daniel, he was writing about a past period of captivity in the Babylonian exile, but the author likely actually lived under a different empire entirely. In any case, Daniel’s wider point that he makes; and the point that he makes in our reading today, is that the people holding him and his people captive are not God’s vision for the people.
In Revelation, the author is struggling under the regime of the Roman Empire. The author is given to us in the text as John of Patmos; he was likely on the island of Patmos after having been exiled on account of his faith and prophetic works. Even so, the vision that got him exiled far from his homeland was one that Caesar is not Lord, and that God has a vision for humanity that does not include the oppression of the Roman Empire. 

In both of these apocalypses, we can see a vague gesture towards the life and ministry of Jesus. For Daniel, we as Christians might read into how Jesus seems to fit the bill of the one who is “like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven…[and] given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” it sounds a lot like how we talk about Jesus. In Revelation, we see not only a repetition and interpretation of Jesus’ ministry, but the hope and expectation that Jesus will come back, and rule the kings of the earth. 

What we hear from Jesus himself today echoes this sentiment, while also turning the idea on its head. If Jesus is supposed to be this great king who rules over the nations, he does not necessarily do a great job [by the standards of the time]: he doesn’t take down any leaders, not even the local ones, much less the emperor. Instead, Jesus responds to Pilate with the basic fact of matter that the kingdom Jesus will rule over is not of this world.  The kingdom of God is, by this Gospel’s account, incompatible with the world Jesus lives in; and the one we live in now. 

As followers of Christ, of a king whose kingdom is not of this world, we belong to a kingdom we do not get to see. We belong to a kingdom where the powers that are important in our world are not the powers that will prevail in God’s ultimate plan: no empire, no government, no nation. None of these powers are God’s ultimate plan, and to none of these powers do we truly belong as Christians. 

As reassuring as this may or may not be, it does not really make the practice of faith that much easier. 

To return to Revelation. The aforementioned author, John of Patmos, naturally brings up what I have come to know as the “John problem” here. There are a number of Johns in the Bible, and it is unclear which one we are named after, and it is unclear exactly how many distinct Johns there are. The general consensus is that our John of Patmos, of Revelation fame, is a different John than the one who wrote the Gospel. If this is true, then it likely puts John of Patmos into a category of people whom I admire greatly: the “second generation” of Christians. People like Phoebe, Silas, and Timothy. A group of people who neither got the chance to meet Jesus, nor got the benefit of having multiple generations of Christian witness to guide them. 

Phoebe appears in the New Testament as the deliverer, and likely first interpreter, of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Silas and Timothy appear as travelling companions, coworkers,  and occasional co-authors of some of Paul’s letters. For these people, and John of Patmos, they followed a ‘king’ they had never met, and travelled far from their homes to witness that to others. With seemingly only the stories they had heard about him, and their experience of faith. This is to say, John of Patmos lives into belonging to a kingdom that is not of this world in a profound way; his vision of a world beyond our own is from a fellow follower for whom faith was likely a very hard thing to have and live into.

One of the silly hobbies I have in graduate school is that I still read for fun in the small amounts of free time I am able to steal away. I was recently enamored with a book called The Bright Sword. It takes place just after the main events of the legend of King Arthur. That is, King Arthur is dead, as are all the other noteworthy heroes from the stories. All those left when our protagonist shows up to audition for a place at King Arthur’s court are the unfortunate dregs and leftovers: knights who nobody remembers, and Nimue: Merlin’s apprentice. 

Similar to John of Patmos, Phoebe, and the rest of the “second generation”, I admire these non-heroes as they grieve the loss of almost everyone they knew, while trying to repair a broken realm, and figure out what it is they should do in the absence of their leader and his magical sword. In about the middle of the book, they attempt to perform a quest that they believe will get Arthur back; or at the very least another magical king to replace him, and get therefore them off the hook for trying to save the realm. The quest, unsurprisingly, does not work. In the end, they end up doing nothing more than fading into myth and legend, left largely forgotten. However, their labor for a king who is no longer there, and for a vision of a brighter world, remains admirable nonetheless. 

Although I find John of Patmos, Phoebe, and my beloved characters from The Bright Sword inspiring. It does not necessarily make the fact of belonging to a kingdom, and to a king, I never get to physically see that much easier. In a theological sense, I have not found a great answer for this aside from pointing to the various others who have lived and also belonged to this kingdom that is not of this world. It is difficult, as we go about our daily lives with our economies, our careers, our nation, to live into the fact that as Chrisitans we are called into a kingdom that moves towards love and community, and away from economy, careers, and nations with human kings. It was likely difficult for those Christians who lived through the Plague; or who lived through colonization; or who lived through any number of strange and tragic historical events. That is to say, if it is hard, we are in good company, historically speaking and today. 

To that end, I will leave you with a story and a poem. In 1820, a sperm whale attacked and sank a Nantucket whaler, The Essex, in the middle of the southern Pacific Ocean. Its twenty-man crew were stranded at sea in open row boats for 95 days; eventually they managed to come ashore on the west coast of South America; five of the twenty survived. In 1847, a poem was written in their memory by the captain of another Nantucket whaler, The Three Brothers. The poem is “row on”

Clouds are upon the summer sky;
There’s thunder in the wind
Row on, row on, and homeward high
Nor take one look behind

Row on, row on, another day
May shine with brighter light.
Ply, ply the oars and pull away
There’s dawn beyond the night

Bear where thou goest the words of love
Say all that words can say
Changeless affection and strength to prove
And speed upon the way

Like yonder river would I fly
To where my heart would be
My barque would soon outsail the tide
That hurries to the sea

Row on, row on another day
May shine with brighter light
Ply, ply the oars, and pull away
There’s dawn beyond the night

But yet a star shines constant, still
Through yonder cloudy skies
And hope, as bright, my bosom fills
From faith that cannot die

In the name of the one who loved us first. 

Five Stars

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People are always looking for good news, for the heart-warming fluff that appears all too rarely in the media these days. So here’s a dose of joy this week: At this year’s Harvest Fair, we accidentally created the world’s kindest system of restaurant reviews.

Over the last couple of post-pandemic years, we’ve had to remember how to serve a Turkey Dinner to so many people at once, and we’ve been refining the process over time. This year, we filled out an order slip for each diner at the door listing exactly what each person was ordering. Our servers brought them back to the kitchen, where plates could be made up, and then sent back out to the diners. Overall, it worked pretty well!

There was just one unintended hitch. On the order slip, we had fields like “Turkey — White / Dark,” “Sides — don’t give me… Potatoes / Stuffing / Gravy,” and “Pie — No Pie / Pie / Pie a la Mode.” And then, at the bottom, the simply-labeled: “Notes,” with a few blank lines. This was, I suppose, intended for things like “Extra gravy!” and so on, any additional random notes that we wanted to the kitchen from the front.

But when people received their meals, the order slips came back. And so what we received, by way of “Notes,” was not “Extra gravy!” or “Please don’t let the cranberry touch the stuffing.”

It was, in fact, the world’s kindest system of restaurant reviews. What was intended for us to write notes about people’s orders became a way for them to write something back to us. Here’s some of what they said:

  • “Nate was an efficient, attentive, and friendly server. Otto was a delightful host—fun and responsible. Turkey—moist, everything yummy! Tx.”
  • “Food was delicious, especially the apple pie. Most notably, the service was incredibly attentive. The whole experience was delightful.”
  • “What a treat! Thank you so much for the fast and attentive table service. You all did a wonderful job!”
  • “Lovely atmosphere with great food and service.”
  • “A splendid meal served by an exceptional crew.”
  • “5 star service. The food was amazing. You did an awesome job. Keep up the good work. Thank you and God Bless.”
  • “Great food thank you!!!” (this was from one of the aforementioned servers, to the kitchen!)
  • “Very fast service and food tasted amazing” (okay, this was also from one of the servers…)

Okay, some of these were patting ourselves on the back. (I’m pretty sure one Vestry member wrote “I will come back!”) But for the most part, I didn’t recognize the names. These were the honest and heartfelt thoughts of our neighbors, given the opportunity to say something. I think the only criticism I read, while leafing through, was “I could have used less mashed potatoes on my plate,” to which I can only say—No, dear neighbor; there is no such thing as too many mashed potatoes on your plate. (Only too little gravy.)

What an contrast to the endless piles of slop we wade through reading Internet reviews, to the well-known bifurcation into the 5-star “This worked great and did exactly what it said” reviews and the 1-star “THIS WAS TRASH!!!” Our social media websites have become consumed with rage-bait and with lies. Our TVs turned on the “breaking-news” chyrons years ago, and never turned them off. The online comments sections of newspapers are so depraved that “never read the comments” has become a truth universally acknowledged.

But the Harvest Fair notes? Pure, unalloyed, gratitude.

I don’t think that’s a mistake. The way we treat one another, in real communities, face to face, is just different from the way we behave online, obscured from one another by usernames or keyboards, shades of meaning stripped away by being transcribed to text. I’m willing to acknowledge the irony of writing this to you in an email newsletter, and I know that many of you read this from far afield. But I also know it to be true that as online communications becomes more and more widespread, our face-to-face, embodied communities become more important than they have ever been.

I’m incredibly grateful to all of you who made a delightful community event like the Harvest Fair possible, but more than that: I’m incredibly grateful for all of you who make a delightful community like ours possible at all.

All Will Be Thrown Down

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Sermon — November 17, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

I met a traveller from an antique land,                           (Not me, personally. It’s a poem.)
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The disciples roll up to the Temple in Jerusalem like the bumpkins that they are, gawking at the sights of the big city. As Jesus walks out of the Temple, having just said something wise about a poor widow who gave away her last two pennies there, one of the disciples says, “Wow! Rabbi! Have you seen how big these stones are? And the buildings! Look! They’re… they’re really big, too!” (Mark 13:1)

You might be surprised at this disciple’s surprise. After all, there were three great festivals a year, on which faithful Jews would travel to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple. Galilee’s not so far away. It would’ve been normal to do what Jesus’ parents did, and to come down, several times a year and for big family events as well, to offer a sacrifice there. This disciple may not be the most pious; maybe he’s stayed home the last few years, and it shows.

But to be fair, the Temple had been under construction for years, refurbished and rebuilt over the course of decades, beginning during the reign of Herod the Great. Over the course of Jesus’ life, the set of buildings around the Temple was transformed. What began as a few buildings around the Temple itself, which stood ten stories high or more, had been built up into a thirty-five acre Temple Mount surrounded by retaining walls; all in all, about a quarter of the size of ancient Jerusalem. Put another way: While the Temple itself was about the size of this church, the walls around the Temple Mount would’ve stretched to the Whole Foods parking lot in one direction, and up to the Monument in the other.

So fair enough. If you saw a building project of this scope grow over the course of your life, maybe all that you could say would be: “What large stones!”

But Jesus only looks at him and says: “Do you see these great buildings?” (13:2) “Well, yeah,” you can imagine the disciple might’ve thought to himself, “Wasn’t I just saying how big they are?” But Jesus isn’t done. “Do you see these big buildings?” he says. “Not one stone will be left here upon another. All will be thrown down.” (Mark 13:2)

Downer. But Jesus was right. Well, particularly pedantic readers of the Bible will sometimes point out that Jesus is actually wrong; that the Western Wall of the Temple Mount still stands to this day, a place of prayer for the Jewish people for two thousand years, ever since the Temple itself Mount was destroyed. But really, this only strengthens the point. Jesus was right: just a few decades after his death, at the end of the failed rebellion against Rome, all had been thrown down but one partial wall. And none of it would ever be rebuilt.

But of course, Rome itself was thrown down soon enough. The Roman Republic had already failed. The old gods would be next, Roman temples replaced as thoroughly as the Temple had been destroyed as new Emperors began to worship the man old Emperors had killed. And then the Empire collapsed, and only the ruins remained of its ancient glory, amid the medieval cities that rose up throughout the West, as nations and kingdoms rose and fell and rose and fell.

Human history, in fact, is an unbroken cycle of things being thrown down and new things being built. Every civilization seems to think that it is the greatest that has ever been, and that the End of History is surely near; and every one declines and falls in turn.

Jesus is right. Sooner or later, “all will be thrown down.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley knew this when he wrote the poem with which I began. Shelley was inspired by tales of ancient Egypt, whose extraordinary culture was only just being rediscovered in the early 19th century when he wrote that poem. “Ozymandias” is a Greek form of the name of Pharaoh Ramesses II, who really was one of the great figures in human history, probably the most powerful person to walk the Earth in 500 years or so.

Shelley envisions a statue worthy of the man, a form that would’ve towered over the crowds with a look of stern command. The pharaohs were worshiped as gods, and Ramesses was one of the greatest of them all. The statue addressed any who might think to challenge his grandeur and his might:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

And as two centuries of English teachers have pointed out, there’s a double meaning here. The statue sends a message to conquered lands and subjugated peoples, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” You will never be as powerful as I. But there’s a message for later times, as well. “Look on my works, ye Mighty.” See the ruins of my kingdom, forgotten for centuries after it crumbled into dust. See my “shattered visage,” as it crumbles into sand, next to a couple of legs, without a torso to be found. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Because if this is what remains of my great nation and my great reign—What will remain of you in 3500 years?

I think that there are a couple ways to take this, one bad, one good.

The bad way, I think, is to respond with despair. I’m sorry to say, your life will one day come to an end. This civilization will also decline. This building, into which so much energy and care have been poured for so many generations, will one day be thrown down, and not one stone will be left. So what’s the point? You might ask. It’s all just going to end up buried in the sand.

There’s half an answer in our reading from Daniel today, and it’s the promise that this world is not the end. That when we are forgotten after a hundred or a thousand years, we are remembered still by God. The world may go through anguish, time and time again, but in the end, “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake… [and] those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky.” (Daniel 12:1–3) The measure of our greatness is not how large our monuments and buildings are. It’s not whether we still inspire fear in the nations of the world. It’s the fact that we still receive God’s love, however great or small, however weak or mighty we are.

But there’s a second half to this good news, as well, and it’s not off in heaven. It’s right here. “Beware that no one leads you astray,” Jesus says. You may “hear of wars and rumors of wars…but the end is still to come.” This is all just “the beginning of the birth pangs.” (Mark 13:8)

I myself have never given birth. But I’m told it’s often worth it, in the end.

Yes, the Temple was cast down. And so was ancient Rome. But something else emerged. And that thing fell, and something else came next. Chaos and catastrophe recur. That’s human life. Everything we build will be destroyed. But that’s not a reason not to build it. That’s exactly why we must build, and rebuild, and rebuild again.

Because those buildings are beautiful and those stones are large. Because those relationships give us life and those communities teach us to love. Because when all our monuments have crumbled into dust, nothing can take away the acts of love we left behind. And even in some of the most anguishing times, something new is being born; in fact, nothing new is born in any other way.

So yes, one day this “all will be thrown down.” Our greatest achievements will collapse into the sand. So will our worst mistakes, for what it’s worth. And yes, one day you all will “shine like stars,” and the glory of that heavenly life will reflect the depth of God’s great love. But it is also true that the things that we build here matter, for as long as they remain. They’re temporary, and transient, but so is everything else. Our past has crumbled away, and our future is still far off, but right here, the things we build together remain, and we live in them—because we can try to remember the past, and we can pray for a better future, but we can start building a beautiful present together, today.