Church is a complicated homecoming

I didn’t grow up in London. St John’s is not my parent’s church. You didn't know me as a child. And yet when our family joined St John’s, for me, it was a homecoming.

From the heavy red door to the tidy kitchen in the church hall, the choir making it’s way slowly up the aisle to the very same creche at the front at Christmas, this church transported me to Holy Trinity Anglican Church where I spent Sundays as a child. A homecoming following five years of intermittent Sundays at Renison College as a university student and many beautiful years, including the baptism of our sons, in the arms of a tiny aging Anglican parish in very rural Alberta.

Joining St John’s was a familiar confirmation, a sureness, a breath, a connection.

I see it when a choir member tousles one of our boy’s hair on the way down the aisle. I hear it when you tell my kids they did a good job in the Christmas pageant. I taste it in the eucharist and feel it in my hands pressing my forehead when I pray after communion. It’s in the lilting pace of the Apostle’s Creed with my childhood minister’s voice coming through your voices. It’s in the wistful smiles you send our way when the kids are a tiny bit too restless in the pews. It’s the sun shining through the stained glass on Sunday morning and it’s in the backward shuffle of altar servers during communion reminding
me of my teenage years. It’s in the organ and the text I send my Dad on Sunday afternoon to tell him we sang his favourite hymn in church (but no one sang it quite as loudly as he would have.)

It’s here on Easter morning when Spring is most often still a promise. It swirls around the pumpkins and leaves on Thanksgiving and flickers in candlelight on my favourite day in church: Christmas eve. It’s in the prayer I’ve been saying to myself every night for as long as I can remember. And it’s in the fellowship we share during regular services and special celebrations.

More than a familiarity, our experience at St John’s, what I see, hear, taste and feel is community: it’s neighbours and friends looking out for each other and dedication to ensuring the most vulnerable in our community are loved, it’s selfless, it’s tireless and it’s given with joy. I want for myself, for Chris and for our children to be part of this community, this church. To be loved by you, to grow with you and to give with you.