Christianity, especially it’s more liturgical manifestations, provides a tremendous constant throughout history in every culture that it touches. That constant element is the older generation bemoaning the lack of interest in Church in the younger generation. If you dig into the writings, diaries, sermons or other musing of Anglican clergy you find hundreds of years’ worth of concern that the Church will not survive the upcoming wave of apathy that seems to be rapidly approaching. This seems to be part of a much larger theme of older generations complaining the behavior of the younger, than it is about the future of the Church. Religion was all but dead in Eastern Europe, but it has experienced a resurgence since the time I was in elementary school. While Christianity still continues to decline in the West, we can see that Christianity has proven hard to snuff out, and that the Holy Spirit has a habit of reinventing her Church.

            Every spring, the Horticultural Society at River Farm hosts a native plant sale. The first of these that I experienced came at a perfect moment to have a disproportionate effect on my life. We had not been living in Alexandria very long, and I was coming to terms with the fact that my yard is less than ideal for tomatoes, which was my plant of choice before our move. With all of the chatter about local plants, a war I was beginning to wage on the wisteria that was killing our trees, and a desire to grow something fun, I was interested to see what I could learn and get from the native plant sale, just a few blocks away from our home. The biggest variable that drove me to the sale was my two year old son’s recent procurement of a riding electric John Deere tractor complete with a trailer. The weather was terrible that morning, and a long line of cars began to form to grab the few spaces that were not giant puddles, and I could not resist the temptation to have my son drive past them all on his tractor to load up that tiny trailer with whatever plants we could find. It was hilarious.

Since my wife’s cancer diagnosis, our house has been filled with extra clutter. Historically, clutter has been an issue that my wife and I have a habit of aggressively resolving. You might think our clutter issue is due to the vulnerable nature our of circumstance, and that housework is simply not getting done. The case is actually quite the opposite. When she began her treatment, the troops were mustered, and we have more help than we have ever had at our home. Nearly every day there is someone at our home to lend an extra hand with childcare and cleaning the home. This extra help is an outward and visible sign of the love our family, friends and thoughtful neighbors have for us, and so is the clutter.

            We have an overabundance of pianos. Well, we had an overabundance of pianos. When I arrive in 2021 the Church was shut down, and everything was out of sorts, because no one was in the Church. The narthex was largely used for storage, and I did not get a chance to see how the space was normally used. Before things got going again, we started the parish hall renovation, and when we all got back together after the worst of the pandemic and the renovation was complete, no one really knew where everything was supposed to go. We slowly figured this out, but one piano never found a home. Our organist, Kate Weber-Petrova, told me that it was too nice to give away to just anyone, but it wasn’t nice enough to replace any of our other pianos. The piano needed a good home.

            It has been a terrible couple of weeks. Let’s start with where we are now. My wife, Leandra, has breast cancer. It is going to be a trying year, but we feel certain that she will survive, and thoroughly kick cancer to the curb. About a year and half ago, Leandra noticed something, got it checked out, and was told it was nothing. When it changed a few months ago, she went back, and test after test came back inconclusive. This went on for weeks. Almost three weeks ago we received the call to tell us that her MRI shows that she almost certainly has cancer, and more invasive tests were needed to determine the kind. To add insult to injury, this was at the very beginning of our first couple’s trip together since the beginning of the pandemic. We are planning to go back to celebrate once treatment is over. For the past two weeks, we’ve been going to appointments for biopsies and more tests, and the news we’ve received on Monday was the best we could have hoped for. The dark cloud filled with “what-ifs” that has been following us has mostly dissipated. Now, we just need to do what we are told to do, persevere, and plan on growing old together.

Friends,
I am so glad that we are not ‘those’ Christians. You know, the judgmental kind, or even worse, the ones who get a little too enthusiastic in worship. For that matter, I am overjoyed we are not ‘those’ Episcopalians. We have all of the tradition, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Clearly, we have this whole Church thing figured out, and we accomplished this just in time, because this Sunday is Pentecost!

We are getting to the tail end of an amazing program year at St. Luke’s. Much has changed since this time last year, and we have welcomed in many new faces into our community. St. Luke’s began to offer new events and tweaked old traditions in order to build bridges between our longtime members and the next generation. Some of the new things we tried may make another appearance next year, while others will go by the wayside, so we can continue to try on new ways of creating a faithful community. One of the long-term things we have decided to do are Ministry Fairs in the spring and in the fall.