The name for the season we are about to enter – Lent – comes from the Old English word lencten, meaning “spring season.” It is the time of year in the northern hemisphere when the days begin to lengthen, the daylight strengthens, and we look for signs of new growth in the natural world.

We would be forgiven, this year, if for us the idea of “lengthening” seems just too much to bear. For we have been in an entire year, not just a season, of lengthening – it’s felt not just long, but interminable. We have had to adjust our expectations and hopes to keep in our sights a constantly moving target. The far-off goals of normal life, without masks, without social distancing, without the loneliness and constriction of our days, keep receding into the distance, even with a vaccine to fight the coronavirus in our midst.

This morning, we are in an in- between moment. Yesterday Holy Women, Holy Men, our guide to the Saints of the Church, celebrated the life of Absalom Jones, a central figure in the story of our historically black churches as the first African American to be ordained priest in the Episcopal Church and founder of the first black church in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. St. Thomas was established in 1794 and Absalom was ordained its priest in 1802. The congregation continues to worship in the same church building today.

Yesterday, today, and on Wednesday we gather virtually for our Ash Wednesday services at noon and seven. It felt important to mark these two significant events in the life of the church in light of our readings today.

As many of you know, I am originally from southwest New Mexico and in my predominantly Hispanic small town, I never had to think too deeply about race. Even through high school and college, I became more conscious of it, but I never had to feel anything about it.

I suspect that I am not alone in my fascination with the concept of evil spirits and demonic possession. It doesn’t occupy a great deal of my time, but I confess to being drawn to accounts of such things, almost in spite of myself. When I was an early adolescent, my friends were obsessed with Ouija boards and the gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows” (I was too scared to watch it). Sleepovers would inevitably feature ghost stories and bumbling attempts at seances.

Good morning, church! And welcome to the one hundred and seventy-second annual meeting of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline, and my 12th Annual Address as your rector.

This past year was a crucible. It was a refiner’s fire. It stretched us -- individually, as a community, as a church, and as a nation -- in ways we scarcely could have imagined at last year’s Annual Meeting.

In his Open Letter from Birmingham City Jail in 1963 the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.”