From the Senior Warden:

In my house we finally took our Christmas tree down this past week. Late, I know! But also not late, if we consider the old practice of observing the Nativity cycle from Advent through Candlemas, or the Feast of the Presentation, on February 2, which will be next Tuesday.

Candlemas is the day when we remember the meeting of Jesus, still a baby, and the elders Simeon and Anna, in the temple. It’s also a feast day when, by tradition, we bring our household candles and lanterns to the church to be blessed. And it is the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. This is the moment when we pivot from the stories of the Christ Child and early days of Jesus’s ministry in Galilee to set our faces toward Ash Wednesday and the road to Jerusalem.

Candlemas is a feast of hope, as Simeon tells us, for in the Christ child “my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles,” but Simeon has foreboding too, as he warns Mary that “a sword will pierce your own soul” [Luke 2:22-40].

We are in the in-between time, the pivot time, not knowing the future, waiting to take our next steps.

We turn, and we catch our breath for a moment, contemplating both the promise of God-with-us and also the road before us to the cross. The early February days remain short and dim and cold, but there are candles lit and glimmers of light on the horizon; we are gearing up for the walk together.

Are we not also in this moment in our Pandemic Time? Caught as we are in a long, long fast from the communion table. Caught in a race between new, apparently more contagious, variants of the virus and the wonderful hope of vaccinations—I have been celebrating as St. John’s members have begun to announce getting their first jabs!—wondering if we can hang on together through the last weeks of winter and pandemic. Knowing that the weeks ahead will bring their share of anxiety and grief but also a lengthening of days and hope for regathering.

In keeping with this in-between season, I bring some sad news, and good news (both announced last Sunday at our zoom church service).

We were expecting a new vicar to join us this next month. I’m sad to say that she has prayerfully discerned that this is not the time for her to be doing parish ministry, due to events in her own life and the world. We honor her discernment and pray for ministry, and for all of us as we navigate these strange times.
The good news in this disappointment is that we will have some extra help in the coming weeks. Our diocese has arranged for a priest to join us, starting on February 1 and going through Easter Sunday—to walk alongside us through Lent, as he put it to me. He is the Rev. Dr. Scot Sherman; he has several decades of experience as a Presbyterian pastor in New York City and at City Church SF and is now an ordained Episcopal priest; he is the Executive Director of the Newbigin House of Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley; and he has a deep interest in congregational development for mission. He will abide and walk with us in these hopeful, anxious days. Meanwhile, our search committee will be working with the diocese to look at various options for how to move forward toward having a permanent vicar.

So we don’t know where we will be by Easter, exactly. I know we will be in a different place. There is reason to hope: More of us will have been vaccinated. Our immigrant neighbors may be able to breathe a little easier thanks to the executive orders being signed by our new president. We will, I hope, have more clarity about St. John’s in 2021, including leadership and, looking deeper into the year, perhaps late summer or fall, reopening our building and regathering in person.

For now, at this pivot point, much of this is uncertain and unknown. So, we catch our breath, we refill our water bottles and light our lanterns, and we turn our faces to the road ahead. We are together, and God is with us on this road. We step forward in faith. We sing the words of longing and hope offered us by the psalmist:

How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts!
My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.
 
The sparrow has found her a house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young;
by the side of your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
 
Happy are they who dwell in your house!
they will always be praising you.
 
Happy are the people whose strength is in you!
whose hearts are set on the pilgrim’s way.
 
Those who go through a desolate valley will find it a place of springs;
for the early rains have covered it with pools of water.
 

[Psalm 84: 1-5; psalm appointed by for the Feast of the Presentation]