I was reminded this week of the paradox of the Ship of Theseus, which asks: Is an object the same if you’ve rebuilt the entire thing, one piece at a time?

This thought experiment takes its name from the story of Theseus, the legendary ancient king of Athens. Theseus was most famous for his defeat of the Minotaur, the half-human, the-bull monster to whom the Athenians were compelled to send young nobles to be sacrificed every few years. Theseus escaped the Labyrinth, rescued the victims, and sailed back to safety in Athens. And every year afterwards, the people of Athens celebrated this great day, by taking the ship on a sailing pilgrimage to Athens to honor Apollo.

Of course, keeping the ship seaworthy for generations meant frequent repairs, and eventually philosophers began to ask questions. Replacing a single part clearly doesn’t make it a different boat. But after centuries of maintenance, if each individual board and plank, each mast and sail, had been replaced since Theseus’s day—Could we really say that it’s still “The Ship of Theseus” at all?

It’s a decent question to ask of the church, as well.

I don’t think that this is only because as I write these words, I’m watching workers from Lyn Hovey’s stained glass studio scale the scaffolding outside my office to replace the stained-glass window in the nave, now beautifully restored. I don’t think it’s only because the kitchen is being upgraded and the paths in the Garden have been paved. The list of constant maintenance goes on—I can name the bell, and the door, and the organ, and more. The church is not the building, and the building is not the church, and yet in some real sense it is the ship in which we sail. (That’s why we call the body of the church the “nave”— navis is just Latin for a ship!) The building is a place of beauty in which we gather to worship God and spend time with one another, and if the work of rebuilding it piece by piece never seems to end, it’s sometimes helpful to remember that the only alternative is a ship that’s full of leaks.

But the church itself is constantly rebuilt, as well. And now I mean the people. Every year, a few members move away. Some have been with us for decades; some for just a year or two. Every year, new members begin to attend. Some are new to the neighborhood; some have lived here their whole lives. New parishioners are born, and some young or old pass away. Sometimes out of the blue it strikes me how much the church has changed, even just in the last four years, but it’s not a “directional” change. In other words, I don’t mean that we’re growing or shrinking, becoming younger or older; I simply mean that the collection of people who make up our church is constantly in flux, even as the church itself remains.

That’s probably true of our whole lives, as well. Each one of us is constantly rebuilt. Friendships come, and friendships go. We move on to new jobs, or trade one volunteering role for another. We move from place to place, or home to home. We may even change our minds, on rare occasions! And yet we are the same, even though by a thousand small steps we’ve traveled great distances from the way our lives once were.

But here’s the thing: even as we change, we remain the same. Whatever circumstances shape us, whatever situations in which we find ourselves, whichever ropes and planks we may replace, we are who we are. And “who we are” is nothing but the beloved children of God. Whatever choices you make, whatever you have done or left undone, wherever your voyage through this life takes you, however much you seem to have changed over the years, you are who you were at the moment you were baptized, when God looked at you, as God looked at Jesus, and said: This is my child, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.

On Monday this week, our church calendar observed the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels; this Sunday, our epistle reading from Hebrews compares Jesus to the angels. Given the other two readings on Sunday, which grapple rather contentiously with the topics of marriage and divorce, I likely won’t say much about angels on Sunday, per se. But angels are an interesting topic in and of themselves: They’ve been central to some people’s piety for thousands of years, and totally foreign to others’. So I thought I’d write a few words here for the curious on the rough topic: What’s the deal with angels, anyway?

First, a word on the word: “Angel” is borrowed from the Greek word angelos, which means “messenger.” That’s the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word mal’ak, which also means “messenger.” Both of them are used for both ordinary human messengers and for seemingly more-than-human messengers from God. To choose a couple of example out of a hat, Genesis 32 is following the story of Jacob: “Jacob went on his way,” it writes, “and the angels of God met him. … And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother in the land of Seir…” In verse 1, the “angels of God” are mal’akim. In verse 3, the “messengers” Jacob sends to his brother are… also mal’akim. When John the Baptist sends two of his followers to see what Jesus is up to, Luke calls them the angelon of John, just as Gabriel is the angelos of God. (Luke 7:24, 1:26)

In English, on the other hand, we use “angel” as a bit of a technical term: You’d never call the courier who delivers you food from GrubHub or Meals on Wheels an “angel.” (Although, depending on how hungry you were, perhaps you might!) We use “angel” for human beings only by way of metaphor: a human is being “an angel” when they’re acting like we imagine one of the messengers of God might appear.

But already in the Greek- and Hebrew-speaking cultures that produced the Bible, angels were also understood in this technical sense: there was a difference between a mere human messenger, even a human messenger from God, and an “angel” per se. Angels were understood to be a kind of celestial being, distinct from humans and perhaps closer to God. In early Judaism and in most of the Hebrew Bible, angels exist as a kind of amorphous species, appearing without much detail and no names. Traditions of named angels (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, and so on) emerge later, in the last books of the Hebrew Bible, in pieces of the New Testament, and in other books that have ended up in the “in-between” status of the Apocryphal books.

The trend to personalize and add details to angels continued over time, and it makes sense. For many people, angels came to feel closer to them than God. “Angels,” for some, are not only God’s messengers but the ones through whom God works in the world, and this can be a comforting thing.

For others, angels don’t mean much. Particularly for those who are scientifically-inclined, the prospect of a species of rational, spiritual beings who possess free will but cannot be systematically observed seems strange. Others, of course, might suggest that they observe their work all the time! (And surely “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”?)

In the end, perhaps the best answer is the same old boring answer: There’s a healthy balance to everything. The most beautiful part of the Christian message is that you don’t need angels to be intermediaries between you and God. God the Father loves you like the world’s best mother loves her children. God the Son became a human being, and knows how hard it is. God the Holy Spirit is working in the world to draw you closer to God. God is with you, wherever you go, and God is for you.

And yet we all encounter messengers from God, I suspect more often than we think—mal’akim and angeloi and messengers, human and perhaps more than human. I’m a skeptical person myself, by nature. I struggle with the idea of angels, per se. But perhaps the last and best word comes from Hebrews, yet again, when it exhorts us to practice hospitality and love; to treat every stranger we see as though they could be a messenger from God—”for thereby wsome have entertained angels unawares.” (Heb. 13:2)

This Saturday, St. John’s will be included in the Charlestown Preservation Society’s House Tour. A group of us will be welcoming neighbors starting at 1pm on Saturday. I’m out of town at a church meeting on Thursday, so haven’t written something for News & Notes, but I thought it would be fun to share with you the “Brief Architectural History” we’ll be handing out to visitors, along with a few photos.

The Church is the people, not the building—but the building’s quite nice, too, and it is an incredible gift to have received such a beautiful place in which to worship from the generations before us. (Many thanks to the generations of Building Committees in particular, and especially for those who prepared the history below!)

The congregation of St John’s was established in 1840, on the eve of Charlestown’s mid-1840s building and population boom. The cornerstone for the church was laid on 5 May 1841, on what was then called Bow Street (formerly Crooked Lane), the outermost part of Town Hill; the nave was consecrated in November of that same year. That the new church was ready within six months after breaking ground reveals the success of a staggeringly impressive construction schedule and how much easier it is to construct a building that does not require electricity, heat or water. The front façade of dark ashlar granite with crenellated tower and the tall, pointed arch windows are typical of the Early Gothic Revival style, a British import popular at that time in Eastern Massachusetts. The architect responsible for design was Richard Bond, who also designed Lewis Wharf in Boston and Gore Hall at Harvard College, a building which was torn down and replaced by the Widener Library, but whose image still graces the seal of the City of Cambridge.

The original design of the church’s interior was distinctly “low church”: warm browns, golds and terra cotta on the walls, galleries on all three sides, with organ in the rear, box pews, diamond-shaped clear glass in all the windows and only a small slightly raised sanctuary which contained two chairs, a lectern and a communion table. The two chairs are still in use today.

I’ve always loved the inscription on the baptismal font:
“From the Children of St. John’s, Easter 1845.”

In 1876-77, extensive alterations were made by architect A.C. Martin and included the arches one sees here today, which at that time were heavily decorated as was the border of the stained glass window and paneling behind the altar; there was also a decorative stencil along the top of the wainscot in the nave. The box pews remained, only to leave around 1910-11, when the wood floor of quarter-sawn oak was installed. The window over the altar is the only figured memorial window in a church in Charlestown, and is dedicated to the memory of Peter and Sara Hubbell. Peter was a long time Senior Warden of the church, a brick manufacturer who lived on Monument Square and built 1-2 Laurel Street. It was Peter Hubbell who in 1856 donated the 3,000 pound bell which still hangs in the tower and is rung by the congregation’s children every Sunday (with a little help from the adults). The window is the work of noted artisan W. J. McPherson. The stained glass on the sides of the church were produced by Kelley and Holland.

In addition to the bell and the window, the Hubbells can lay claim to another central part of our lives: Mrs. Hubbell donated the communion silver we use every week in memory of her husband, who was, as the inscription notes, Senior Warden of the parish for twenty-three years (!).

In 1998, the parish made a significant exterior restoration, including new copper roof flashing and selective slate replacement, repointing and cleaning of the granite and brick. This followed the installation of the “new” 1873 Odell tracker organ, which was bought from a church in Old Saybrook, Connecticut and fit into its space at St John’s perfectly. In 2003, with grants from Historic Boston and others, lighting for the church steeple was installed. More recently, the altar area and railings were reworked so that the original altar could be brought into the center of the platform; the step up to the altar was considerably widened and hand rails installed. In doing this work, two shoes were found in a wall cavity, a tradition of the time; however, what was unique about these shoes was that one was a man’s shoe and the other a woman’s. Pictures were taken, an article appeared in the bridge, and then the shoes were put back into the wall. The nave was also repainted at this time, in neutrals, but the narthex (entry) repainting was done in one of the historic colors and the stenciling on the wainscot was reproduced.

It is significant to note that for over a century the parish was served by only three priests. The Reverend Thomas R. Lambert served from 1856-1883; the Reverend Philo W. Sprague served from 1884-1923 (at which time he became rector emeritus), and then the Reverend Wolcott Cutler, who served from 1924-1959. The Reverend Mr. Cutler left a lasting legacy in his work to preserve Charlestown’s historic neighborhood and in his slide collection of Charlestown scenes and people, which is available for viewing through the Boston Public Library. Mr. Cutler is also primarily responsible for the Forest Garden behind the Church and Parish House, which is currently undergoing accessibility improvements funded by a Community Preservation Act grant

Today, St. John’s remains a vibrant parish church, open for worship every Sunday at 10am. The Parish House hosts community groups including the Charlestown Coalition’s Turn It Around, Jr. youth group, the Charlestown Community Cares Clothes Closet, addiction recovery meetings, and more.

I don’t have much to say, today, by way of a message “From the Rector,” but I wanted to share one small, potentially-illuminating fact about the season we’re entering, which we often call “Fall,” sometimes “Autumn,” and in our quainter or more whimsical states of mind perhaps even “Harvest,” as in the “Harvest Fair.” (I don’t think much has been harvested in Charlestown in the last 180 years, but it’s a nice bit of marketing.) Specifically, a fun fact about the season’s name.

“Fall” is in fact the most recent of the names, dating only—only!—to the 1660s, an abbreviation of the poetic “fall of the leaf.” “Autumn” had been around from the 14th century or so, a borrowing from Latin via French at a time when much English vocabulary was being borrowed into English from French. “Harvest” was the oldest name for the season after summer and before winter. In fact, in Old and Middle English “Harvest” referred primarily to the season, and only secondarily the gathering of crops. (So perhaps our “Harvest Fair” is really just a “Fall Fair” after all, without any urban farming implied!)

And yet the word “harvest” itself comes in turn from an ancient Indo-European root that means, of course, “to gather or pluck.” So “Harvest” was an action before it was a season before it was an action again, and there’s no season more suitable for such a cycling of meanings than Autumn, when the leaves fall from the trees and become mulch, and the cycle of life and growth turns toward death and rebirth again. Everything new becomes old, and everything old becomes new again in time.

And yet time is not, as has been pessimistically said, a “flat circle,” in which we do the same things time and time again, without change or growth or decline. Time is a spiral, in one direction or another. Our language grows, and where our ancestors had one word we have three, for better or for worse. Seasons pass, and the trees don’t simply shed their leaves—they grow, or die, but they never remain unchanged.

Nor do we! As the cycles of your life begin again this fall—as schools reopen, and choirs begin, and all the September shifts of life take place—I wonder which direction God’s inviting you to grow.

These last few weeks have been late summer the way it should be. Highs in the 70s, with the humidity just right, perfect for a last trip to the pool or the beach; lows in the 60s for perfect sleeping weather with the windows open all night. Colors saturated beyond all belief in my favorite combination of green leaves, blue skies, and red bricks in the shade on a sunny day, colors you can’t capture in a photo on a screen. Quiet sidewalks and empty pews as half the city tries to squeeze one more weekend of fun out of the summer.

The State of Maine isn’t the only place that can lay claim to the phrase “the way life should be.” Not these few weeks.

But not everything is as perfect as it seems. The leaves on the tree next to my desk are already beginning to turn, a sign of stress after a hot, dry summer. The joy of the last game of pick-up baseball being played in the park comes along with the sinking feeling I remember all too well of a school year about to begin. Our late-summer peace is troubled by news of war and violence, and all the anxieties of yet another election year.

This combination of flourishing and stress, of bitter and sweet, may not be “the way life should be.” But it’s certainly the way life is. And as it is with the world around us, so it is with the world inside us. Life is always both good and imperfect. And we are also always both good and imperfect. It’s a part of the human condition that the writer Dave Zahl calls “mixedness.”

When we misunderstand this reality, it has the potential to lead us to despair. Some of us crush ourselves with perfection, thinking that we’re supposed to be all beauty and no mess, that we should be able to do the right things and say the right things all the time, never making a mistake and never failing, and we find ourselves drowned in shame if we slip up. Others think we really are that great, unwilling or unable to see our rougher edges and our darker sides, and we expect the people around us to be perfect as well. A few of us might suffer from the opposite: We only see our failings and our struggles, and refuse to acknowledge the ways in which we’re good. Any of these imbalanced paths can only lead to despair.

But if we embrace the unfortunate truth of life’s “mixedness” and our own, it has the power to set us free. If you’re reading this, I am almost sure that you are mostly trying to be good. I am absolutely sure that you are imperfect. So am I. So is everyone else in your life. (And everyone else in mine!)

I can’t speak for you, I guess, but the more I come to grips with this, the better I feel. I find it easier to take the pressure of myself when I remember that my best efforts will inevitably be imperfect. I find it easier to love other people when I remember that theirs will, too. The more this truth sinks in, the more I find myself set free: free from my anxiety about my own small imperfections, free from my anger at everyone else’s minor failing, free to embrace and enjoy the good things I find all around me, knowing that they aren’t ruined by the bad.

This may not be the way life should be, but it’s certainly the way life is. And—seeing us exactly as we are, and knowing us more deeply than we know ourselves—God has chosen to love us, and to offer us a thousand small reminders of that love.