July 27, 2026

Friends, I speak to you this morning in the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Please be seated. I want to invite you all to do something while I'm offering my homily this morning, at least at the beginning. In the pews right in front of you, you'll see prayer books, you'll see hymnals. I invite you to pick one of them up. Maybe you have to pick up a couple. But if you turn to the front cover, in many of those hymnals, in many of those prayer books, you see memorial plates. These hymnals, these prayer books, they've been donated, dedicated by faithful members of our community in ages past.

A couple of years ago for our stewardship campaign, I reflected on the many names of these folks who have been a part of this community over the years and generations. But I want to invite us to think about them, to think about the legacy that they offer us. Maybe this upcoming week, if you have a name in one of your hymnals or your prayer books, pray a special prayer of memory for that person, for that family, for the legacy that they have left us as the people of St. Anne's.

I went to Virginia Theological Seminary down in Alexandria. I've talked about this several times before. Just before I started seminary in the fall of 2010, the chapel burned down at the seminary. It took them several years to rebuild it, but it just so happened that my second year in seminary was the great year of dedication for this new, wonderful building that had been built. It was pristine and fresh, and it kind of felt unlived in.

One of the great members of the international Anglican communion that we had with us at that celebration of dedication was the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. I remember during his homily at this service of dedication, he remarked on the power of prayer. What makes these spaces sacred, what sets places apart, are the generations and layers of faithfulness, of prayerfulness, of lived experience that soak these places in meaning, in this great spiritual power that they come to imbue.

It really captured me in thinking about that, because the work that we do—the work that God does through us—has a staying power, a legacy. It adds to the generations of faithful who have come before, who have in their own ways dedicated their life's energy to keeping the faith alive and real and lived in the many spaces and places in which we reside and go in our lives.

There's this great image, if you ever have the chance to go to the Holy Land, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There's a pathway down to this crypt where it is said that St. Helena found the true cross of Christ. All along the passageway are centuries, millennia now, of etched crosses that pilgrims have put into the stone walls of that passageway. It is a physical reminder to us of that same layeredness that we experience, and the ways in which we are shaped and formed by that history.

I'm talking about all of that today because we celebrate our patronal feast of Saint Anne, or Saint Anna, today. It is celebrated in conjunction with her spouse, St. Joachim, and they are identified as the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But what's interesting and unique, and frankly kind of difficult about them for me in preaching this Sunday, is how very little we actually know of them. They are not attested to anywhere in Scripture. It's only the Protoevangelium of St. James, an extra-biblical source that comes about 100 years after Jesus died, that preserves their names and gives any kind of description of them.

Even that text focuses almost exclusively on the life of Mary. It's about her, about the power of her faithfulness. So even in the brief sources we have, the majority of what we know of our patron saint, Anne—of the life of Anna and Joachim—is inferred from the life and the faithfulness of their daughter, Mary.

I think that's instructive. It's not necessarily a fault or a difficulty, because it helps us reflect on the same experience we have had as the faithful in our own day and time. We can talk about it as a community of faith, of who we are as St. Anne's, precisely where I invited us to begin today. These myriad numbers of people, many of them unknown to the majority of us as the present-day congregation—though, Janet, maybe you would recognize a lot of these names!—are folks who have come in and out of our lives. They are often forgotten to time, to history, and yet have deeply shaped and formed the experience of who we are today. They have influenced in their myriad ways the culture and character of the way we live out our faith in this time and this place.

They are for us our Annas and Joaquims. Their legacy, their memory, is lived through who we are and the important emphases we place on our life as an ongoing Christian faith community.

Interestingly, we're named precisely because of this dynamic. Many of you may know that our very first building, what is now our parish hall, was built with the financial support of All Saints Church in Chevy Chase. At the time that it was built, we gave to All Saints the opportunity to name our congregation. We invited their rector at the time, Dr. Edward Berger, to come up with a name. He said, "Well, I immediately think of St. Anne." He was born on St. Anne's day himself, but he had also led at one point in his life St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Annapolis.

He reflects in this beautiful letter he wrote to us in the early 1960s on how the quiet and unassuming character of St. Anne shaped and formed him through his life. It was always this kind of background witness to the great saints in heaven through his connection to the feast day and his birth, and also through the lived, ongoing experience of the faithful in this congregation he led at St. Anne's in Annapolis. It's all those unremarkable and unremarked-upon experiences of faithfulness that together build towards this great witness to the Christian faith that so shaped and formed him.

That's us, too. The many ways that we live our faith life today, the many gifts that we bring to our community, have been shaped and formed and concretized by these unknown faithful who have come before us—these myriad numbers, hundreds if not thousands, who have walked through these doors, worshipped in these pews, and guided and shaped us in their own quiet ways.

What is it that we're carrying forward through their legacy? What is it that we offer in our witness? I think we can look around us and name many of those: our commitments to works of social justice; our deep, abiding support of those who have needs in our community through Damascus Help or now through The Hub; through the very many outreaches that we have had to seniors and to others; to the ways in which we cultivate a life of community through our music, through our fellowship offerings; to the many ways that we are a presence of connection to the community and region around us.

These are all the values that we are carrying forward from the generations who have gone before us, who in their quiet, unassuming ways shaped and formed us to be those people in this time and place. We remember them today, inasmuch as we remember Saint Anna and Saint Joachim. We're reminded of their quiet presence, their unassuming witness that has led us to be the people we are in this place.

But there's a final turn, too. It's this reflection on who we are in this moment—what it is that we do in carrying forward our own witness in our own time, how we shape and form those who are going to come after us. What is it that we are leaving them? How is it that we are offering them a vision for the kingdom of God for them to live into, embrace, and support in the times that are ahead, in the lives that will be led in the future?

So often today in our society, in our world writ large, we have this assumption that our legacies last only as long as the structures that we build to memorialize them—that our permanence is related to our memory, that we don't want to be forgotten. We want to have our names on things. We want to have some kind of concrete, physical way of remembering and acknowledging who we are.

And yet, as many of our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters have often taught us throughout the centuries (and in other parts of our Christian faith as well), the greatest witness that we have is in our deep humility—in our ability to let go of that need or desire for recognition, for remembrance. It is to let our legacy be the good work that continues on, even if we are not the ones named for it, even if we are not the ones remembered for it, even if the legacy of our work is shaped and formed more by those who come after us. It is nevertheless the work that God is calling us into. It is nevertheless the depth and power of our faithfulness.

So today, as we remember those who have come before us in this place, and as we remember in each of our own individual lives the great many who have shaped and formed us in their own quiet witnesses and ways, may we be renewed in our own commitment to being those faithful witnesses at this time for those coming in the future ahead of us. May those who follow us reflect and live most fully into the things of the kingdom that we help to communicate and bring forward in this day and in this time.

I'll finally remark on this: We are blessed to have Adekoya serving with us today. After we do our prayers for anniversaries and birthdays, we will be celebrating him as he has graduated high school and prepares to transition to college. This is a time of life in which we are brought to mind of this experience of transition, of influence, of remembering those who have come before and acknowledging and celebrating those who are coming after.

Adekoya, I invite you as you make this transition to be ever mindful of those influences of goodness and compassion that have surrounded you, formed you, and shaped you in these many years of your life here. In this moment in a societal sense, where the impulse is to speak loudest and be most dominating, remember the goodness and holiness and quiet fortitude. Remember the goodness and holiness of being present to the present moment in small and maybe often unacknowledged ways—that perseverance of the faith that shapes and guides us over the course of our whole lives.

And so, for all of us, may we have this moment of pause to look backwards and forwards, to celebrate the great legacy of Anna and Joachim, and to be renewed in that same sense of quiet faithfulness for ourselves, now and always.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.