Category Archives: From the Rector

Weekly articles from our Rector published in the News & Notes newsletter.

An Update on Our Worship

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Last week, I shared with you a portion of Bishop Alan’s address to our Diocesan Convention the weekend before, in which he reflected on the need for Jesus’ law of love of neighbor to guide us in our churches as coronavirus surges again this fall. He noted that there would be forthcoming worship guidance from the bishops, and yesterday we received that in a joint statement by the three bishops of the Episcopal Churches in Massachusetts and Western Massachusetts.

The bishops don’t mandate that we stop indoor, in-person worship. But they do urge, in “the strongest possible terms,” that all churches suspend indoor, in-person worship. (Click here to read the full text of the bishops’ letter.)

I’ll be meeting with our parish Reopening Committee, as well as our Vestry and Wardens, in the coming week, to reflect on what this means for St. John’s and for our worship in the time to come. There won’t be a strict switch that’s flipped from one thing to another. On March 8, we were entirely in person. On March 15, we were entirely online. And for the past several months, we’ve been somewhere on a continuum, with a handful of us worshiping together in person, in the Garden or in the church, and many if not most of us worshiping on Zoom. It’s likely that this Advent, we will shift back toward the Zoom end of the continuum, with just a skeleton crew of worship leaders—Douglas and I, a couple of readers, perhaps a couple of singers—worshiping in the church, and the rest of the congregation worshiping on Zoom.

This Sunday’s worship will continue as it has been in November, and we’ll make plans next week to adjust for the rest of Advent and Christmas.

I imagine that this news is not surprising to you, but it is probably disappointing. It certainly is disappointing for me. And it probably feels unfair. After all, every day I walk by businesses with safety regulations and practices much less stringent than ours. It isn’t fair that schools and churches are closing, while casinos remain open. It isn’t fair. But it is loving, and that’s what the bishops tried to remind us of: that love of neighbor, concern for the most vulnerable, must be our guiding value now.

It’s unsurprising. It’s disappointing. It’s unfair. I think, more than anything, it’s sad. At least for me, it is profoundly sad to face another season of the Church year, another season of holidays, without our beloved traditions; to face the prospect of Advent and Christmas without singing hymns and carols together in church. It is profoundly sad.

But our sadness is pale in comparison to the sadness of the dozens of families who are losing loved ones every day in Massachusetts. Forty, fifty a day in Massachusetts, nearing two thousand a day in our country. I will miss singing with you and worshiping with you, as we move toward a more-online format. But I know that we will do it again. And I know that if all the Episcopal churches in this Commonwealth, by banding together, can prevent just a few coronavirus cases, could prevent even one death, that would be a tremendous achievement for a few months’ work: to save just one life.

So, it is hard, and it is sad, but it is necessary. And whatever format that takes—however many of us remain in this church, however many of us are worshiping on Zoom instead—I hope and I pray that we can worship together in the spirit of love, remembering that the Holy Spirit is with us, that Jesus is with us, wherever two or three of us are gathered. Even if it’s just on a Zoom window.

From the Bishop: “Be Community”

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This video and the text below are excerpted from the Rt. Rev. Alan Gates’s Address to our Diocesan Convention on Saturday, November 7, 2020.

Finally, I want to return to the pandemic context of our lives these days. We are weary. We are anxious. We are sad. We yearn for the physical fellowship we cherish, the sacred spaces we treasure, the sacramental meals we crave, the joyful singing for which we pine. One day these yearnings will be fulfilled.

At the moment, however, we know that infection rates are surging and the Governor this week issued revised, tightened restrictions. Your three bishops in the Commonwealth are receiving new guidance from public health professionals, and you should expect further communication from us in the days ahead. For now, I must reiterate the strong cautions included in previous guidelines. Reality-based restraint is essential, especially as regards indoor, in-person gatherings that will become ever more challenging and risky as cold weather descends. Advent and Christmas simply will not, cannot, be observed with many of our cherished traditions this year. It will be a year, instead, for small, quiet, contemplative possibilities–perhaps not unlike the stony stable in Bethlehem shared by that little family at the Incarnation, where the original star of hope prevailed against stony hearts.

Last week I was talking with my 97-year-old mom about the limitations of COVID, and our fatigue as this crisis stretches on. How, I wondered, did everyone manage throughout the four long years of World War II? (My mom was 17 at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.) Well, she said, we just did what we had to do. She reminisced about food restrictions and ration coupons for things like sugar. She spoke of limited movement, of not traveling from Massachusetts to Maine to see family on account of gas rationing.

But then, mostly, she talked about the six young men she knew from her hometown, Bedford, who died in the war: two of her high school classmates; two from the class ahead of her; two from the class behind her. After seventy-five years, she recalled each one by name. She recollected what part of town they lived in. Which one had been an orphan. Whose family had immigrated from Latvia. What work their parents did. Whose surviving brother was a Bedford cop for subsequent decades. It was a phenomenal demonstration of memory.

But it demonstrated something else as well. It spoke about priorities in a time of crisis. When I asked her how people had endured four years of restriction and anxiety, her answer mostly dwelled upon those who’d died–upon the deep loss to their families and community. Sugar and gas rations and lost opportunities endured by everyone else were recollected as inconveniences, but they were not the tragedy, they were not the sacrifice. I say once again that when you and I think about the COVID-19 pandemic, we must never lose sight of the fact that the restrictions and losses that most of us face–while real, and resulting in frustration and grief–do not compare with the loss of life suffered by pandemic victims–1.2 million of them–and their loved ones.

And that is why masks are a sign of Love; and that is why closed concert halls and closed churches are a sign of Love. And that is why economic deprivation at every level is a sign of sacrificial Love. And that is why the notion of acceptable collateral loss of life in order to minimize economic hardship should be anathema to us.

When my mother’s answer to “how did you endure?” was to talk about baked bean and brown bread sales at the church, and to name the boys who didn’t come home, what she was talking about was Community. Question: How did you endure? Answer: Community. My intention is not to romanticize the small-town 1930s and 40s experience of my mother’s growing up. I simply mean to say that in her context, the way four years of war was endured was Community. And so it is for us.

So, dear friends, go forth and be the Church in Community. Physically-distanced, yes. Masked, yes. Gathering mostly virtually, yes. Sad and anxious and tired, yes. Worried and grieving and impatient, yes. But loved, and capable; blessed to be a blessing; serving those who need you; hopeful, by disposition; hopeful, as an act of will; and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Be Community. Be the Church. Be the Body of Christ, as I know that you can be. Be the Body of Christ, as you know that you are.

“Predictable Uncertainties”

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Like many people, I woke up Wednesday morning with my heart pounding. I’d been up late watching election returns and I woke up at 5:30am and couldn’t fall back asleep. All I could do was look at the news and see if it could resolve some of this uncertainty for me.

Of course, it couldn’t. And I should have been able to predict that. It was, after all, a predictable uncertainty. Experts had been talking for weeks about how it might take a week or more to count all of the legitimate votes, depending on different states’ rules and all of that. And yet here I was, desperately looking for some kind of answer.

I was able to handle it, fortunately. I drank a cup of coffee and I went for a run and I came in here to church. I’ll probably end up going for another run later; we’ll see how the day goes!

But it made me think. We face all sorts of predictable uncertainties in the near future. I don’t know what Advent and Christmas will look like, exactly, but I do know they’ll look very different. I don’t know how it will go to have a toddler or a small child when the libraries and indoor play spaces are closed all winter and the playgrounds are frozen solid, but I can imagine. And I think there’s an opportunity here, to think—with this test case—about what we do in the face of predictable uncertainty, what we do when we know there’s anxiety coming, and how we cope with it.

Do we do it in a healthy way? Go for a run, drink a cup of coffee, put down the news and do something else? Do we cope in an unhealthy way, scrolling endlessly through the news, staying up late, waking up early, and much worse things?

I was reminded of our gospel reading for this coming Sunday. It’s right on the nose. Matthew tells Jesus’ parable of the bridesmaids: five wise, five foolish. The wise fill their lamps with oil and wait up all night. The foolish wait up all night too, but they didn’t fill their lamps with oil. So when the bridegroom comes, the wise have light to see him—but the foolish don’t.

It makes me think. What are you doing to keep your oil full, to keep your lamp—as the old hymn goes—“trimmed and burning”? What are you doing to tend to yourself in this time of predictable uncertainties, of predictable unpredictability? How are you preparing now for the winter ahead? What are you storing up to make it through those cold, dark months? I don’t know what it is for you. I do know what it is for me—I learned that even more this week. I want to try to practice those things this fall as it becomes winter. I want to prepare myself for all the predictable uncertainties ahead. And I hope that this church can be part of that for you.

“Our Citizenship is in Heaven”

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It’s a strange fact that every Election Day, the first Tuesday in November, falls right after All Saints’ Sunday, the first Sunday after November 1. It reminds me, as we watch this election unfold, in which more than 70 million people have already voted, myself included, of Paul’s claim that “our citizenship is in heaven, and it’s from there that we’re expecting a Savior.” (Philippians 3:20)

This idea that our citizenship is in heaven doesn’t mean that our citizenship on earth isn’t important. It doesn’t mean that we should just wait for a heavenly kingdom to appear and ignore everything that’s going on in our earthly societies. In fact, it means amost the opposite. It means that our ultimate allegiance is to the values and the identities of that heavenly kingdom, not to the values and the identities of our earthly citizenships.

It’s that heavenly kingdom that we recognize on All Saints’ Day, and so I guess it’s appropriate that it always falls so close to an election. All Saints’ Day, after all, isn’t just the recognition of those who have died—that’s All Souls’ Day, November 2. All Saints’ Day is a recognition and a celebration of the whole communion of saints: living and dead; past, present, and future; from every time and every place; all those who are faithful to our God. It’s a kingdom that’s gathered, as our reading from Revelation this Sunday will say, from “every tribe and language and people and nation.” It’s a kingdom that follows the values that Jesus will lay out in our Gospel this Sunday: “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the persecuted.”

The Bible is always on the side of the poor and the weak. It cries out for justice for the orphan and the widow. It cries out for liberation of the enslaved and the oppressed. Well-meaning people can disagree on what kinds of public policies are best to achieve these goals. But a politics or a policy or a program that doesn’t pursue the goal of relief for the poor and liberation for the oppressed is one that simply isn’t in line with the kingdom of God.

Our citizenship is in heaven. Our community is the community of all the baptized, from every time and place, from every tribe and nation. And when we owe our allegiance to our fellow-citizens, we live our lives in this world, as citizens here in the United States, in accordance with those values.

So as we go to vote on Tuesday—or as we watch for election results in an election in which we’ve already voted—I hope we all remember that our citizenship is in heaven. Not in the sense that what happens on earth doesn’t matter, but in the sense that what happens on earth must be shaped by our shaped citizenship in that larger, transcendent reality.

“Turning Heads” — From the Rector

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On Tuesday evening, a group of us gathered here in the church and on Zoom to pray Compline together. Compline is the simple service that comes at the end of the day, and it’s really a beautiful thing. But the most beautiful thing was being here together, in church for the first time in a very long time. For most of the people here, it was the first time they’d been inside this church since March. For me, it was the first time I’ve ever worshiped inside this church, despite having been Rector for a month or so now!

I noticed the time capsule we were in—you can see the purple altar hangings still over my shoulder from the last Sunday we were here in March—but it was a powerful thing to be here together.

And I don’t just mean for us to be here together. For added safety, in addition to how far apart we were standing and our masks, we had the doors open for some fresh air, and I noticed as I stood here in the sanctuary that every so often somebody walking by would turn their head and peek in: a young couple with a baby in a carrier out for a nighttime walk, a couple of guys in their 20s with beards who stuck their heads around the corner.

And as I noticed this, I thought to myself: We should always be turning heads.

Too often, Christians turn heads for all the wrong reasons. We turn heads when it’s published in the newspaper that we had a giant coronavirus party for our youth group. (We are starting a youth group—no coronavirus parties.) Or we turn heads when a popular preacher predicts on TV that a certain presidential candidate will be elected and that will usher in the End Times, and he means it in a good way. That’s maybe not the best way to turn heads.

But our faith should turn heads. Our love should turn heads. And in everything that we do, and in everything that we are, we should be getting people—slowly, gently—to peek their heads around the corner and see what’s happening. To see what the song is that’s coming out the doors of our hearts and of our lives.

So I hope, as we begin to worship indoor here more regularly, that we do turn a few heads. Not just in our worship. Not just in this church. But in our own lives, as we go about our own business. May we all turn the heads of the people around us. Amen.