It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the circus. If memory serves, the last circus performance I saw was the Big Apple Circus in Boston, over twenty-five years ago. I’m not a huge circus fan, especially when animals are involved, because no matter how well they are treated, I know how inhumane circus life is for a creature meant to live wild and free. Of the human performers, one of the most entertaining acts is always the trapeze artists, who swing and glide and soar across the performance space in “death-defying feats.” It seems so effortless, though we know it isn’t. It is certainly elegant and wondrous to see human beings flying through the air in beautiful arcs, catching and letting go of bars, ropes, and each other.

At one point in his happy ministry, Jesus began to teach his disciples that he would go to Jerusalem, was to suffer greatly, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and then be killed, and after three days, rise again. Peter, the leader of Jesus’ 12 disciples, takes Jesus aside and explains to his friend that this suffering thing is better avoided. It certainly isn’t something you go looking for. And it tends to find you anyway.… Sounds like the voice of a friend, right? Maybe the world would have been so much better if Jesus didn’t suffer, didn’t die at 33 years old? Oh, the things he might have been able to teach and do if only he had lived! Perhaps we would still have Christianity, but without that ugly cross and all the suffering. Jesus did not hear Peter’s well-intentioned admonition as having anything good about it at all….

I’m not going to give an oral version here of my detailed written annual report, because the scriptures today seem to demand a sermon. If you read the 36 page annual report with sections written by a wide variety of leaders at St. Paul’s, it has an overall theme that 2022 was a year of dramatic change and challenges, prior to that was the pandemic, but 2023 finally was a year of restoration of much that had not been present since before the global pandemic, a year of substantial consolidation where St. Paul’s regained its footing and confidence. If you give the annual report a careful reading, you may believe you have a full account of the ministries that happen here at St. Paul’s. In fact, all that data only captures a small subsection of St. Paul’s ministries, largely the organizational infrastructure of St. Paul’s, which is utterly necessary for the well-being of the whole, but is far, far, less than the whole….

No one seems to know why when our parish was founded in 1849, they named it after St. Paul the Apostle. For a church incorporated on October 31st, All Saints’ would seem to be the more obvious name. There not only was not another All Saints’ in Brookline at the time, there was not an Episcopal church with that name in the whole diocese. In fact, this is church is so old, they largely had their pick of names. Working through all the names, they picked St. Paul’s Church. So on this Feast of St. Paul, let’s think together about why they may have picked that name to define this place for all the generations they certainly intended it to be here as they put stone upon stone….

Have I told you how much I love Jonah? The story, yes, familiar from way back in childhood, but most of all, Jonah the character. He is the most real to me of all the characters in the Bible – whoever spun this yarn had a profound grasp of human nature.