Welcome to this email newsletter doohickey. You're probably thinking about what this time was like a year ago. I am too. My story isn't special, but I do have vivid memories about our last three Sundays in worship. This is a reflection about the first of those days, March 1, 2020.

One year ago was a time of new beginnings at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in St. Louis.

We had recently bid a fond farewell to our rector, and we were turning our eyes toward a series of firsts:

It was the first day of March. 

It was the first Sunday in Lent. 

It was our first Sunday singing new service music by Jeffrey Smith (his Mass in E). 

It was our Interim Rector’s first day, and the parish turned out to meet him. The church was packed, and people were excited.

But another first had just taken place: the first reported death of someone in the United States from the coronavirus (a patient near Seattle).

On the First Sunday in Lent, we prayed the Great Litany. This sublime, venerable prayer is a part of our liturgical custom at St. Peter’s for this Sunday, and it’s something that connects us to our liturgical heritage. (First published in 1544, the Great Litany is the oldest piece of our tradition of Common Prayer.)

In the Litany, we pray, “From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine, / Good Lord, deliver us.”

I was the (unmasked!) cantor for the Litany on this day, and I remember that I gave some emphasis to the word “plague.” 

Today, I want to appreciate the wisdom of this prayer. In past years when we have prayed the Litany, perhaps you, like me, thought that plagues were something biblical, remote, foreign. When I sang that word, my general sense was: yes, this is something good to pray about, but I doubt it will affect my life or anyone I know.

But since that morning, we have added more than a half-million reported deaths to that first patient in Seattle. A plague has descended on the entire world, and the United States has suffered greatly. We have all been affected in some way. And we don’t yet know the long-term health effects for those who have survived the virus.

In the Litany we ask God that we be “spared” from our sins and offenses but “delivered” from everything else, including plague. How arrogant was I to think, “it can’t really happen here”? That the virus would somehow spare us who live in St. Louis? in America? Because, of course, plagues can and do happen in every place and in every age.

The good news is that the deliverance we prayed for that day is coming. Increasingly, news articles appear with the headline that is some variation of “When will the pandemic end?”. 

There is, of course, great reason for hope that the pandemic will, in fact, end — now more than ever. But we’re not there yet. In just the last few days, yet another vaccine was approved (something that was almost too good to hope for in March/April 2020). Meanwhile, the virus’s more contagious variants pose a serious concern, especially in conjunction with loosening restrictions in various places. 

On that First Sunday of Lent a year ago, we finished the service with that great hymn of Martin Luther based on Psalm 46: “A mighty fortress is our God”.

At the beginning of that hymn, we sing, “our helper he amid the flood / of mortal ills prevailing”.

Like our Litany and this hymn, everything that we sing at St. Peter’s is grounded in our human experience. Part of the real pain in this last year has been not being able to sing and pray and laugh together, but I know we will be able to in the future.

Once the pandemic subsides enough for us to safely sing together, won’t it be good to gather together to sing once again what we at St. Peter’s have sung for 152 years? to laugh in the face of darkness and death, the way the Church has for millennia, and the way our Jewish forebears have sung for even longer?

LISTEN: “A mighty fortress is our God” sung Sunday, March 1, 2020