Dear St. Luke’s,

We sprinted through the stress and joy of Christmas, got smacked in the face with the wonder of Epiphany, and I have suddenly found myself feeling humbled as we approach Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Growing up and learning about Dr. King in school, I remember thinking how wonderful it is that we were past the unambiguous hate of the past. We had somehow arrived at a point where we have “arrived”, and our task was to learn from the past and not necessarily question the present.

One year ago, was a monumental day for my family. I helped Leandra fill her car with toddler supplies and crammed our son into his car seat and we took one last picture before they left our home of four years to begin anew in Alexandria. I stayed behind and worked with the movers, and as each box was taken out over the next two days, I could feel all of the memories and stories we created in that space leave as well.

Last week, a group of dedicated parishioners helped clean every single table that will repopulate the parish hall. To prepare for this significant project, I brought my power washer and borrowed one from the McPeeks. We scrubbed, sprayed, hauled, and dried dozens of tables and chairs for about three hours and got them to fit neatly into the closet in our newly renovated space.

While we were cleaning up, I did something stupid. I had never noticed it before, but our sidewalk was dirty, and when the power washer hit it, you could see the mark, so I wrote a couple of silly messages like, “Nick <3 Church” and…

It is Day School Sunday this week! Hopefully, we’ll get a few families to join us on Sunday morning from the Day School to celebrate our shared community together. I have loved my time at St. Luke’s since I arrived last January, and the Day School has been an exceptionally bright spot, so I thought I would walk you through a typical Wednesday morning.

Advent is here! Many Churches treat Advent like a mini-Lent where the emphasis is on penitence as we try to make our paths straight for the coming of the Lord. Don’t get me wrong, I love penitence, but I think this misses the mark a little bit for this season. Advent is about excitement and expectation of the unknown as we prepare for the incarnation of God in the world. As we read the beginning of the Gospel story, we are invited to suspend our knowledge of how the story ends. We do not yet know about the miracles, the passion, the cross, or the resurrection. This coming Sunday, we only have the voice calling out from the wilderness urging us to repent of our sins and prepare the way of the Lord. The Lord is coming, and we do not know what will happen when the Lord arrives, so we have to be prepared.

Leandra and I have become surprisingly competent adults since our child was born. We were ok before, but now we are cleaning, organizing, hanging pictures, and bill-paying machines! Video games and bingeing television have been limited to about an hour and a half of freedom a night, for which we feel tremendously grateful. On Monday, we will get the opportunity to return to my parent’s house, a living monument to when I was terrible at being responsible, and I cannot wait.

Kate and I had a good conversation about singing in Church last week. We were considering including the words and not printing music in the bulletin. That may or may not happen, but the conversation around it has been bouncing around my head all week.

Everyone was much better at singing at one time because if you wanted to hear music, you had to sing or play an instrument. It meant that most Church-goers, even if they were not in the choir, had some idea how to read music, and there was significantly more participation. An unexpected consequence of recorded music is that people suddenly could hear flawless music whenever they turned on the radio and became shy about making mistakes. It may explain a common sight you’ve seen in Episcopal Churches, the choir belts it, while most of the congregation is shy to lift their voice and sing to God.

There is this misconception that Jesus was this serene, near-emotionless presence of calm in a sea of sin and anxiety. If you go back and read the Gospels, Jesus expresses all of the emotions that we feel regularly and then some. He feels love when people show deep faith. He occasionally tries to get away and rest, gets frustrated, and even indicates outrage and flips over some tables.

I think there is this misconception that we should strive to purge stress from the holiday season. Around this time of year, I get bombarded with tips to make it through the holidays with as much serenity as the emotionless Christ of our popular imagination. As well-intentioned as this advice may be, it ultimately causes me more stress because now I am failing the impossible task of not feeling pressure in an innately stressful time.

When we were growing up it was assumed that we were going to Church every single Sunday. We often hated it, but we went without fail, even on vacation. As we grew up together, we went through periods where we felt cynical about Church, and others where Church meant the world to us. When we felt cynical, we would find ways of entertaining each other that included tripping each other on the way to communion, flicking each other’s’ ears during the sermon, and competing who got to put the check in the plate.

Dear St. Luke's,

It sure feels awkward talking about money in Church. Money often feels morally dirty, and the mention of it from the pulpit can send images of jailed televangelists into the congregation's minds. We spend all of this time convincing people that we are here to serve, and when we admit that we need money too, everything else feels fake. But of course, we need money to pay staff, do ministry, keep the lights on, and be the place where people go for meaning and help. To complicate things even further, Jesus talks about money all of the time, and he probably didn't do it to make people feel good about their wealth.