Friends,

This has been a very special year for me. This was the only year in my life where both of my sons are in St Luke’s Day School. Theo is in the two-year-old “Kangaroo” classroom, and Andrew is in the oldest class we offer which is the “Elephant” kindergarten room. Mondays are extra special as we begin the week with chapel, and you can’t have chapel without Rev. Vanilla Bean. Considering Vanilla Bean lives with us, she gets to ride to Church with us on Monday mornings.

The teachers seem to be concerned with their students being quiet in the Church, but I always get them to be LOUD! Chapel starts off with me yelling, “What time is it?!”, which the thunderous response is, “Chapel time!!” From there we have a cadence, which everyone has mastered by this time of year.

Celebrant: Since it’s chapel time, I need to put on my fancy Jesus scarf, but it’s not called a Jesus scarf, it’s called a….”

Congregation: STOLE!!

Celebrant: After we light the candles and sing a song we’re going to read a story from the library about God’s love for the world, called the…”

Congregation: BIBLE!!

Celebrant: And after we read that story, we are going to take that table and put our prayers on it to turn it into a….

Congregation: ALTAR!!

There are a bunch of little things like that. The prayers we put on the table might seem familiar to you if you went to the 10:00 the past two Sundays, as we did them in lieu of our normal prayers of the people for Day School Sunday and the Children’s Musical. I get them to shout out something they are thankful for, and I get my helpers to help me “catch” them and put them on the altar. It can be something big like the sun, moon or coffee, or something small like brown sugar cinnamon pop-tarts. It’s good to be thankful for everything good God has given us. For the second prayer, we pray for someone we love that God might take care of them. I always end the prayer by saying something like, “Almighty God we pray that all of your children will have full hearts, and full bellies, that they may be safe and know your love, we pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ, AMEN!”

After that we do a few other things like birthday blessings, they sing a couple of songs, and we end with the Shrine Mont shouting prayer. While they leave, they can give Rev. Vanilla Bean treats made by Pawfectly Delicious, which is another great ministry housed at St. Luke’s. If you haven’t figured it out, Rev. Vanilla Bean is my dog.

This Monday was the last day that the four of us went to Church and did chapel all together. Next year my oldest will be at Waynewood, which I am sure will be wonderful, but I am already mourning the fact he won’t be in chapel with us next year. Since it was the last chapel of the year, I found the passage in the children’s illustrated bible about the last supper and how Jesus commanded his disciples to love each other as he loved them. I told the student body that regardless of where they will be next year, they can count on the fact that they will always be loved at St. Luke’s, and that I love them.

For most of our students, St. Luke’s Day School was their first taste of school, and I for one can see the incredible transformation that sort of love in community can do for a child. Andrew was reserved and skeptical of strangers when he first arrived. Though he was always perfectly happy at home, Andrew’s teachers told me he never smiled in school as a two-year-old, which made for hilarious class pictures. He made his first friends within our walls, and it has transformed him. He is now a social butterfly, loves school, and two of the little girls in his class told me they were married to him. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but the affection and love between the teachers and students is palpable, and it shaped Andrew in a way that we couldn’t do on our own. He had a loving family, but he needed a loving community as well.

Chapel as I run it at St. Luke’s is cute and silly, but don’t discount things that look cute and silly as being shallow. Right now, I think that faithfully cute and silly things are the most effective weapon at my disposal to fight against the forces of evil, which plot to destroy the world. Jesus made it super clear in many places in the Bible, but especially clear in Matthew 18:6, that we are in profound trouble if we do not treat children well. In Matthew Jesus tells us emphatically that it would be better if a great millstone were hung around our necks and thrown into the sea if we cause one of these little ones to stumble. This is Jesus, the Prince of Peace, not delivering a threat, but a promise that bad things will happen to us if we cause a little one to stumble. We should take this very seriously and carefully consider how we live our lives.

If you think this is going to get polemic, calm down. The uncomfortable truth is that children are chronically undervalued on a global level, and sometimes this is something our country can do something about, and sometimes it is not. Sometimes our government’s policies cause this, and sometimes they do not. Few of us can do much at all, but even if we lack any sort of political authority or power, we should not be complacent. We can love freedoms, privileges, causes and ideals that have real human cost. At the very least, we should be aware of the nature of the cost and ask ourselves if it is worth it. At this moment, I yearn for discourse with the expressed goal being the well-being of all people, and especially the most vulnerable. Now, I fear the human cost is an afterthought, rather than the point of it all.

In all the global political things I keep up with on BBC news, there is little room for the hope that things are going to get better in my lifetime. Not long ago, I really thought tensions between Israel and Palestine were going to ease, and progress toward a lasting peace would be made. Violence continues in Ukraine as Russia continues to play games that probably feel far too familiar to the cold warriors amongst us. Conflicts in countries that we do not share economic ties are underreported. Along with the children who were taken hostage and lost their lives, the Palestinian, Ukrainian, Ethiopian, Sudanese, and all the children in Myanmar find their ways into my prayer when we pray that all of God’s children may have full bellies and full hearts.

The students in chapel are unaware of the nature of my prayers, but for me seeing eightyish young children with full hearts and full bellies pray that all of God’s children can have the same is transformational. My hope is that at least some will remember St. Luke’s as their Eden, where everything was simple, full of love, and just as it should be. When they leave Eden, I hope the love we have shown them will be their foundation, rather than some fleeting children’s story. The love we have for them is real, and I hope they take it with them, so they can make this place better out of love for what is good rather than distain for what is evil. Just as Christ commanded us to love each other, and just as my son’s life was changed by the love of this place, love needs to be the foundation of how we go about this work. I am often at a loss of what to do, but I know that starting with loving these littles ones and teaching them they should love in turn is the right place to start.

Blessings,

Nick