Kelsi Vanada

Dear Friends,

Today’s reading from 1 Maccabees 1:1-28 tells of Antiochus IV’s pillaging of the temple in Jerusalem in the year 169 BC:

“He arrogantly entered the sanctuary and took the golden altar, the lampstand for the light, and all its utensils. He took also…the bowls, the golden censers, the curtain, the crowns, and the gold decoration on the front of the temple; he stripped it all off…”

Having grown up in churches that set up in school gymnasiums on Sunday mornings, I am deeply drawn to the beauty (and permanence) of our sacred space at Saint Philip’s. Even more so since I started serving as an acolyte: I love being near the celebration of the Eucharist, and I cherish our beautiful vessels, crucifixes, and altar frontals. My body and soul go quiet anytime I step into our sanctuary. It’s holy. So many have worshipped here, and I hope many will worship after me.

Reading 1 Maccabees 1, I thought of how devastated, how outraged, I would be if someone came in and stripped everything from our sanctuary, leaving it bare. I thought of how we do this intentionally on Maundy Thursday, symbolizing the humiliation of Jesus’ suffering and death, and our longing for his presence.

But I also thought about the blowup pool brought into a school gym for my baptism as a teenager. I thought about how Saint Philip’s did church on Zoom during the pandemic, how some watch from home every week. I thought about our faithful parishioners who bring church—literally the Eucharist in a bag!—to local assisted living communities. I thought about how I can go into any Episcopal church, as well-resourced as Saint Philip’s or not, and know more or less how to join in worship. How anytime I pray the Daily Office at home, I am joining the chorus of saints past and present.

Church isn’t just a place, and—though I love them—it isn’t the chalices or the fair linen or the vestments. We make it—we are it—anywhere we are together and with whatever we have to offer to our God.

In Christ,

—Kelsi