Good morning, dear friends and church members,
This Holy Week is unlike any other we have experienced. We have been told to brace for the worst this week in terms of the toll of this pandemic. And so we do. We stick to our homes as much as possible. We try not to watch TV or follow the developments all the time because it only makes you crazy. We try to stay calm, go about our lives, and take to heart the old adage, “This too shall pass.” We pray for loved ones far away and those that are nearby, but weirdly far away during these times. We make phone calls. We face time. Some of us are busy making home-made masks and passing them on to those who need them most. Some of us are hard at work with our normal jobs, just in not so normal ways. As we enter this week, I would like to once again put this in perspective and remind us all that the human family has been through much, much worse with considerably less knowledge about how to fight a danger like this.
Some 12 years ago I read John Barry’s book, “The Great Influenza,” an account of the Influenza outbreak of 1918/1919. It’s a great book, I recommend it. Our experience has often been compared to that historic pandemic, and rightly so. It was a monster and by conservative accounts took the lives of 50 million people worldwide (at a time when the population globally was one-third or one-fourth of today’s). This came in the aftermath of a war (WW I) that took many, many lives, yet not nearly as many as this disease!!! We still don’t know where exactly it originated. Barry seems to favor the Kansas theory, which he explains in detail. But does it really matter? People still called it the “Spanish” flu and other names, attached to other countries, just as people have called this the “Chinese” virus. (They also suspected biowarfare and things like that.) It doesn’t matter, right? We have to deal with it, and we do, as best we can under our circumstances. Fortunately, we know a lot more about the enemy we are facing right now and how it spreads and how we can keep our communities safe. Please follow the rules for public safety! Barry wrote in his Afterword 16 years ago (the book was published in 2004) the following assessment, which is pretty close to what experts are telling us now: “So, even with all the medical advances since 1918, the CDC estimates that if a new pandemic virus strikes, then the US death toll will most likely fall between 89,000 and 300,000. It also estimates a best-case scenario of 75,000 deaths and a worst-case scenario in which 422,000 Americans would die.” Barry also wrote that experts were expecting a major pandemic to strike again at some point. We were due for one. Almost precisely 100 years after the Influenza pandemic, here we are, better prepared than our forebears who gathered in funeral processions and prayed together in churches, unknowingly and cruelly spreading the disease, but still (we are) woefully under-prepared.
One hundred years seems like a long time, but the way our collective memory is passed on still gives us some access apart from mere history books. Last week I spoke to Mary Ann Landmesser. She is one of our deacons. Mary Ann shared with me a precious childhood memory from her days growing up in Brooklyn. Also, don’t let her fool you – she is not that old, she just retired a year or two ago. In other words, she’s a spring chicken! I asked her to write her memory down for me because it intrigues me, and she did. I hope you enjoy this little tidbit of a story from one of our own members.
“In 1958 my parents purchased a small apartment house in Brooklyn. The house came with a lovely tenant who lived above us named Mr. Ridgeway. I was 12, I don’t know how old Mr. Ridgeway was, but to a 12-year-old, he was “old.” Mr. Ridgeway was a perfect gentleman. He dressed well and always wore a fedora. He knew about “social distancing” back then! He always tipped his hat (even to me) whenever he greeted us. We knew he went to work and to church every Sunday. He did not have a lot of visitors besides his sisters (who were as polite as he was). When he passed away (I was probably 14 or 15), his sisters cleaned out his apartment and put all his diaries in a box and put them in the basement next to the trash cans (that everyone in the house used). Well, I thought that as long as they tossed them out, they were free for me to read. I honestly did not expect to uncover any secrets about Mr. Ridgeway’s life. His diaries were exactly as we had known him. He had entries about what he did every day and most of his entries were about church, church events, birthdays, people who invited him to dinner, etc. But there were many entries about friends and acquaintances who were now “in the hands of the Lord” because of influenza. I really did not even know what influenza was! I knew about measles, mumps, whooping cough, German measles, and chickenpox – but not influenza. Later in life, I realized that he was writing about the great influenza of 1917-18. Had I not read his diaries, I probably would not even remember his name today. But over the years I thought about him and all the people who succumbed to that disease. (I was right about his age – he WAS old!)”
As you noticed, we had some technical difficulties with our Live-Stream service yesterday. For some reason, Facebook blocked us several times, viewing us as SPAM. We were finally able to get in and started the service 20 minutes late. We had several pre-recorded music pieces in our service. A number of churches pre-record the entire service, which cuts down on the possibility of technical issues creeping up in real-time. We prefer to do a live stream and will only go the pre-recording route if the problems persist, which I don’t expect. You can still view the service on our St. Peter’s Facebook page or just listen to some of the beautiful musical pieces separately. For this Holy Week, we are going to stream one other service at 7:00 p.m. on Good Friday. We will also continue our Thursday noon Bible Study, either via teleconference or Zoom. More about that tomorrow.
For today, I would like you to join me in prayer for a person you don’t know, who is a dear family member of Gail Turner. Gail and her husband and son run several small family businesses (mostly automotive) in Ambler. Like most everyone who runs a small family business, they work very hard. I am glad that Gail and her daughter-in law and granddaughter still make it to church pretty often. She shared with me that her daughter’s mother-law, Eileen J., is gravely ill.
“Good Afternoon Pastor Wagner,
I would love to add Eileen J. to the prayer chain. She is my son-in-law’s mother. A little history about Eileen. She adopted and raised four children, all grown now. Three were from South Korea and one from Russia, how very special does that make her. She was diagnosed with stage three cancer. At the beginning of February, before she could even get a treatment, she had to be admitted into the hospital… A few days later she has fluids between her lungs and chest cavity. They drain the fluid but have to do a procedure that burns her tissue in order to produce scar tissue so the fluid can’t build up. Phew, I can’t even imagine going through this. And now she has the corona virus. That is a lot for anyone to go through and she has to go it alone. She has never gone home since being admitted to the hospital…”
So please, St. Peter’s family, pray for Eileen J. today.
May the Lord help her to get better!
Today we congratulate Amy M., whose birthday is on April 6. Happy birthday, Amy!
All of you, be blessed and be safe! Pastor Andreas Wagner