Last Sunday (Pentecost 3, June 14, 2015)
June 21 – 10:00am, Godly Play (preschool through 2nd grade)
Godly Play will take vacation during July
June 21 – 11:00am, Holy Eucharist, Rite II, World Refugee Sunday
June 24 – 10:00am, Ecumenical Bible Study
This Sunday at St. Peter’s – Servers, Readings
Village Harvest sets record, June 17, 2015
Thanks for your help in providing spaghetti and sauce and especially to those who helped put the food distribution together. We set a record at Wednesday’s Village Harvest by giving out food for 27 families for a total of 94 people served. A month ago in May it was 80 people. We began with 60 people in November, 2014.
This month we gave out strawberries, bananas, kale, zucchini, potatoes, onions, crackers, and spaghetti and spaghetti sauce.
A special thank you and shout out to Johnny Davis who drives each month to purchase the fresh produce. We couldn’t do it without his support.
FredCamp lunch signup, June 29-July 3
St. Peter’s will be providing lunch to the youth volunteers working on rehabilitating homes the week of June 29- July 3. It will involve preparing food for 7-10 people in Port Royal on 7213 Royal Street.
Not only do you get to meet the crew, but you get a chance to see what they are doing! They are scheduled to build an accessibility ramp and provide other repairs to a couple. He has a work related injury and been out of work. She suffers heart problems, diabetes and COPD; she has difficulty walking.
If you can donate snacks, desserts, fruit, and help assemble sandwiches or choose a day to take pizza or other fast food to the workers, please let Catherine know (540) 809-7489 or by email.
In lieu of a mission trip, this is a great way to support local mission. FredCamp is working on some special ways restaurants can support the program. Stay tuned!
A Summer diversion – The Doors of Port Royal
So you think you know Port Royal ? We have a matching game of 6 questions with 4 doors in each set to match the door to the building. That’s 24 doors.
Each question with 4 doors has to be answered correctly to achieve 10 points. That’s the difficult part. But only 30 points to "win" of 60.
Care (Dare) to Try ? (We are not keeping records of how well you do).
A Summer Treat – Look! Up in the Sky!
From Earth and Sky
"Throughout the month of June 2015, the two brightest planets in the night sky, Venus and Jupiter, are converging for a jaw-dropping close encounter.
"When the sun goes down, step outside and look west. You don’t have to wait until the sky fades to black. Venus and Jupiter are so bright, you can see then shining through the twilight.
"In fact, every night in June, the separation between Venus and Jupiter will visibly shrink.
"On June 18th, Venus and Jupiter will be only 6 degrees apart. Now you can hide the two behind just two or three of your fingers with your arm outstretched.
"On June 19th, something exciting happens: the crescent moon joins the show. On that evening, the moon, Venus and Jupiter will form a bright isosceles triangle in the sunset sky. Isosceles means that two sides of the triangle are the same length. This is how most sky watchers in North America will see it.
"One night later, on June 20th, the vertices rearrange themselves, forming yet another isosceles triangle.
Check out this video focusing on June’s celestial show
World Refugee Sunday, June 21, 2015
Sergio Plecas was a teenager when civil war broke his country apart and sent him fleeing from refugee camp to refugee camp alongside his mother. An opportunity to resettle in the United States took the pair to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where 10 years later Sergio’s found his version of the American dream, thanks in part to a helping hand from the local Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) affiliate. His story is here.
World Refugee Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000 to honor the contributions of refugees throughout the world and to raise awareness about the growing refugee crisis in places like Syria and Central Africa,
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports:
- Every four seconds someone is forced to flee due to conflict, persecution or fear of violence.
- There are currently more than 50 million refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced people worldwide, the most in the post-World War II era.
- To date, more than 3 million Syrians have fled the violence in their country.
Resettlement facts from the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society:
- 70,000 refugees were resettled in the U.S. in 2014.
- 5,155 refugees were resettled in 2014 by the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society and its network of affiliate offices
The United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), the UN refugee agency, is mandated to “lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide.” In partnership with 148 countries, NGOs and other international partners, the UNHCR safeguards the right and well-being of persons displaced by war, conflict, violence, and persecution on the basis of religion, political affiliation, ethnicity, nationality, or identity. The UNHCR serves both persons who have been internally displaced by these factors (IDPs), as well as those who have fled across an international border seeking safety (asylum-seekers). The UNHCR adjudicates asylum-seekers’ claims and determines if they qualify as “refugees” by the definition set forth in the 1951 Refugee Convention.
There are three durable solutions for refugees: repatriation, integration, and resettlement. Thankfully, in many cases, refugees are able to repatriate to their home countries once the conflicts there have ceased and civil society has stabilized. Other refugees, who may not be able to return home, are able instead to integrate into the country of first asylum – the country to which they fled for safety. The remaining group of refugees – just 1 in 100 refugees – is resettled to another nation, as these are persons who, for various reasons, can never return home and cannot remain where they have fled. Roughly 75% of this group resettles in the United States. The United States resettles more refugees than all other resettlement countries combined through a multilateral process. This process involves the UNHCR; the International Organization for Migration (IOM); several U.S. governmental bodies, including the President of the United States, the Department of State, the Department of Health & Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, and Congress; nine national resettlement agencies, including the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of The Episcopal Church; and host of other refugee-serving organizations.
Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) is the refugee resettlement service of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society – a living example of the Church’s commitment to be a presence of hope, comfort, and welcome to those who have been displaced by conflict, violence, and persecution. Each year, Episcopal Migration Ministries provides a wide spectrum of services, including resettlement, employment, and intensive medical and mental health services, to more than 6,500 refugees, asylees, special immigrant visa holders, and Cuban/Haitian entrants. These new Americans receive assistance as they rebuild their lives in security and peace in 30 communities across the United States. In addition to Episcopal Migration Ministries’ collaboration with local affiliate partners to welcome and serve those fleeing persecution, EMM staff members equip, support, and empower dioceses, congregations, and individuals to learn about and find their own place in the ministry of refugee resettlement and of welcome.
Update ! Washington Post reported on Thursday, June 18 crisis numbers up to 60 million, "45,000 people a day join the ranks of those either on the move or stranded far from home… The four-year-old war in Syria has been the single biggest driver of the surging numbers. Last year, 1 in 5 displaced persons worldwide was Syrian." Countries are beginning a backlash, restricing entry into countries prompting Pope Francis to say those “who close the door to migrants seeking protection should ask forgiveness from God."
Prayer for World Refugee Day
“Gracious God, we pray for our newest neighbors, that those families who have sought refuge from the ravages of war and violence may find not only shelter and sustenance, but also a loving and supportive community in which to create a new beginning with dignity. Amen.”
Video about Episcopal migration ministries.
Share the Journey social media presentation
General Convention Link Summary
The 78th General Convention of the Episcopal Church will be held in Salt Lake City from June 25-July 3, 2015.
2. Our links
3. Presiding Bishop Candidates
4. Article about the State of the Church Report
5. Article on Task Force to Reimagine the Church (TREC)
6. Scott Gunn 10 things to love about General Convention
With General Convention of the Episcopal Church 2015 set to begin in Salt Lake City a number of groups have proposed meeting the trends head on. In particular there are two reform minded groups – Episcopal Resurrection and TREC(Taskforce to Reimagine the Church) and one group within the House of Deputies (State of the Church report). Last week we reviewed TREC. This week we look at Episcopal Resurrection.
At the 77th General Convention in Indianapolis in 2012, several Episcopalians gathered to encourage prayer at the heart of General Convention. That gathering resulted in the Acts 8 Moment, a movement that is devoted to fostering prayer within and for the church.
They describe it this way "The Acts 8 Moment is about prayer, not legislation. Still, some of us who grew to know each other in this effort wanted to work together to encourage our church to recommit to spiritual disciplines, to find its life in Jesus. We gathered at the Bexley Seabury campus in Bexley, Ohio in April 2015. There we drafted A Memorial to the Church along with some enabling resolutions, ways in which the General Convention can incarnate a vision of a renewed and revitalized Episcopal Church"
A. Memorial
"We believe that we have reached one of those critical junctures in the life of our church, and respectfully submit a Memorial calling for the church to recommit itself to the spiritual disciplines at the core of our common life, to go into our neighborhoods boldly with church planters and church revitalizers, and to restructure our church for the mission God is laying before us today"
"In the eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, the newly formed church of disciples of the risen Savior found itself in a new situation. No longer could Christians depend on traditional ways of following Jesus and traditional places in which to do it. Driven out of their comfortable existence praying in the Temple in Jerusalem and waiting for the kingdom to come, they found themselves in new and unexpected neighborhoods, developing new ways of proclaiming the Word. Yet they found that the crowds were eager to hear the Good News of Christ and welcomed it with joy. The very loss of the old ways of being the church gave them opportunities to expand and multiply the reach of Christ’s loving embrace.
"Our beloved Episcopal Church is in a similar situation. We must find new ways of proclaiming the gospel in varied and ever changing neighborhoods. Old ways of being the church no longer apply. We can no longer settle for complacency and comfort. We can no longer claim to dominate the political and social landscape. We can no longer wait inside our sanctuaries to welcome those who want to become Episcopalian.
"We have a choice before us. We can continue, valiantly and tragically, to try to save all the rights and privileges we have previously enjoyed. We can continue to watch our church dwindle until it someday becomes an endowed museum to the faith of our forebears. We can continue business as usual until we lose our common life entirely.
"Or we can lose our life for Jesus’ sake so that we might save it
"And we call upon those bishops and deputies gathered for Convention to the following actions as specific ways we may enter this time of transition in a spirit of exploration, discovering the gifts that the Holy Spirit has for us in this moment:
- Engage creatively, openly, and prayerfully in reading the signs of the times and discerning the particular ways God is speaking to the Episcopal Church now;
- Pray, read the scriptures, and listen deeply for the Holy Spirit’s guidance in electing a new Presiding Bishop and other leaders, in entering into creative initiatives for the spread of the kingdom, and in restructuring the church for mission;
- Fund evangelism initiatives extravagantly: training laborers to go into the harvest to revitalize existing congregations and plant new ones; forming networks and educational offerings to train and deploy church planters and revitalizers who will follow Jesus into all kinds of neighborhoods; and creating training opportunities for bilingual and bi-cultural ministry;
- Release our hold on buildings, structures, comfortable habits, egos, and conflicts that do not serve the church well;
- Remove obstacles embedded in current structures, however formerly useful or well-meaning, that hinder new and creative mission and evangelism initiatives;
- Refocus our energies from building up a large, centralized, expensive, hierarchical church-wide structure, to networking and supporting mission at the local level, where we all may learn how to follow Jesus into all of our neighborhoods.
They are proposing resolutions
Read interpretations of their work
Lectionary, June 21, Pentecost 4
I. Theme – God’s control over creation
"Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee ." – Ludolf Backhuysen, 1695
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – Job 38:1-11
Psalm – Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32 Page 746, BCP
Epistle –2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Gospel – Mark 4:35-41
Today’s readings remind and reaffirm God’s complete command over all creation. God’s reply to Job asserts the majesty of God as the Creator and Ruler of the world. Paul commends the ministry of reconciliation to all Christians. In the gospel, Jesus stills a storm at sea, revealing that he shares God’s power over creation.
Much as we would like to think otherwise, “the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And how much better to fear God who saves than to fear the things that threaten to destroy us!
Unlike the world of ancient myth where the chaos waters rage and threaten the order that makes life possible — threatening — chaos, in our texts, has been or is being tamed by a benign God who, in the end, means all God’s creatures well. In the process, capital-C Chaos becomes merely "chaos" — a real power that retains a place in God’s world, but one now "fenced in," become part of God’s ordered creation.
A word of hope in the Gospel (and Job and the Psalm) is that God has the power to control the chaos. God may not always do it according to our schedule. Sometimes God may appear to be sleeping in the boat while our world is falling apart, but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have the power to calm the storm.
This theme can also lead to the idea that sometimes the storms in our lives are beyond our control. The chaos in our lives may be caused by people or situations or evil powers which we can do nothing about. Sometimes it is not our fault. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes even the world of faithful Christians comes crashing down.
When the lord answers Job out of the whirlwind giving an awesome view of creative power and might, Job’s heart trembles before the one with whom he had contended so ignorantly and reproachfully. His fear is not only the beginning of wisdom, but also the beginning of real faith, as his ensuing humility leads to confession and acceptance by the lord. Job makes one of the greatest confessions of faith in the Bible: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God” (Job. 19:25-26).
Job’s spiritual experience is repeated by the disciples’ experience on the Sea of Galilee. Putting out to sea in the evenings was a grave risk, since the sudden storms that come up on the sea often occur at sundown. In this scene, the disciples were obeying the lord’s command against the odds for security. We tend to think that having Jesus in the boat would have spared them any trouble.
The disciples are not prepared for the action Jesus takes. He stills the storm at sea in an exhibition of God’s power and control over creation. His question: “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” is meant to convey to the disciples that their security lay in a different realm. When God is in control, no forces of destruction can touch them. Not a bad lesson to learn, even if fear is the teacher.
Read more about the lectionary…
The Politics of Chaos – Mark’s Gospel
Chaos is a real threat at any time and in Jesus time was seen often on the Sea. Today’s Gospel takes place on the Sea of Galilee crossing to the other side. Surrounded by hills and at a depth of 680 feet below sea level, the Sea of Galilee was a funnel for surprisingly sudden and dramatic storms. The sea itself was shaped like a wind tunnel at twelve and one-half miles long and anywhere from four to seven and one-half miles wide.
Mark Davis in this article provides a setting for the Gospel story. "And everybody lived with the risks of such dangers because the waters were the resources for work, food, portage, import, and export." He provides the setting for that ship on the water.
But there is another meaning that he explores because the Gospel of Mark was written in a time of Chaos in the 60’s. In the Spring of 66 A.D., the Jews of Judea began a full scale rebellion against Rome. In 69 A.D., Vespasian was made emperor of Rome and gave his son Titus the honor of delivering the final death blows to the rebellious Jews and their capital city. The Romans brutally slaughtered an estimated 600,000 people in Jerusalem including many of the Passover visitors who had been trapped there for the 143 days during the Roman siege. The temple was burned in 70AD. By the year 73 A.D., all traces of a self-ruling Jewish nation had seemingly disappeared. Out of these ruins, Christianity reappeared in Antioch in Turkey, in Greece and other parts of the Mediterranean world. As Davis writes "Jesus’ word is more powerful than Rome’s storm."
Voices of Pentecost 4 – Mark’s Gospel
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee– Rembrandt (1633)
This is Rembrandt’s only seascape picture and dramatically depicts Mark’s Gospel. Being lost at sea was a constant threat at the time. Rembrandt did not try to capture historical accuracy but used boats of his time. Ironically, this painting is now lost. On the morning of March 18, 1990, thieves disguised as police officers broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston and stole The Storm on the Sea of Galilee and 12 other works. It is considered the biggest art theft in US history and remains unsolved. The museum still displays the paintings’ empty frames in their original locations.
The museum describes the painting- "The detailed rendering of the scene, the figures’ varied expressions, the relatively polished brushwork, and the bright coloring are characteristic of Rembrandt’s early style…The panic-stricken disciples struggle against a sudden storm, and fight to regain control of their fishing boat as a huge wave crashes over its bow, ripping the sail and drawing the craft perilously close to the rocks in the left foreground. One of the disciples succumbs to the sea’s violence by vomiting over the side. Amidst this chaos, only Christ, at the right, remains calm, like the eye of the storm. Awakened by the disciples’ desperate pleas for help, he rebukes them: “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” and then rises to calm the fury of wind and waves."
"Set me alight
We’ll punch a hole right through the night
Everyday the dreamers die
See what’s on the other side "
-U2 "In God’s Country"
“People fear miracles because they fear being changed.” Which is the source, I think, of this other kind of fear that stands somewhere between a holy awe and mighty terror: the fear of being changed. And make no mistake, Jesus is asking the disciples to change. In this very moment he is drawing them from the familiar territory of Capernaum to the strange and foreign land of the Garasenes. And he is moving them from being fishermen to disciples. And he is preparing them to welcome a kingdom so very different from the one they’d either expected or wanted."
"The change they are facing is real, and hard, and inevitable, and all of this becomes crystal clear as they realize the one who is asking them to change has mastery over the wind and see and is, indeed, the Holy One of God. That change, of course, will also and ultimately be transformative, but I doubt if they see that yet."
– David Lose, President of Luther Seminary
"No amount of word-making will ever make a single soul to know these mountains. As well seek to warm the naked and frost bitten by lectures on caloric and pictures of flame. One day’s exposure to mountains is better than carloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographer’s plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul. All that is required is exposure, and purity of material. The pure in heart shall see God! … Come to the woods, for here is rest. … The galling harness of civilization drops off, and we are healed ere we are aware."
–John Muir 1838-1914
"However, the progression of the crossing stories demonstrates a much greater message. Although Jesus continued to use his power to still storms, in each crossing Mark recounts that Jesus grew increasingly impatient with the presumption of his disciples that he would simply perform a divine act and in every instance relieve them of their fear. They seemed to completely ignore that they also had responsibilities. They had an obligation to endure and to find inner calm through faith. By the final crossing, Jesus was totally exasperated and demanded to know if his disciples had yet learned anything whatsoever"
– Alexander Shaia – The Hidden Power of the Gospels
"I don’t really think the miracle in this story is about Jesus calming the storm and taking control. The miracle in this story is that Jesus was with the disciples in the water-logged and weatherbeaten boat, experiencing the same terrible storm, the same terrible waves, the same terrible danger.
"And that alone should have been enough.
"God’s power isn’t in the control of creation or of people, but in being in covenant and relationship with them. It isn’t in imposing the divine will or insisting on its own way but in sojourning with us as we fumble around and make our way in the world. God’s power is not in miraculous interventions, pre-emptive strikes in the cosmic war against suffering and evil, but in inviting us to build a kingdom out of love, peace and justice with God. God’s power is not in the obliterating of what is bad in the world, but in empowering us to build something good in this world.
"And isn’t this true power? Instead of enforcing control and solutions onto the world, God’s power is revealed in coming alongside us, journeying with us, suffering with us, and even staying with us in the boat when the storms come. "
– David Henson "When God Sleeps through Storms"
Marian Mahoney Sunday, June 28
Join us on the 28th for saying goodbye to Marian as she moves to a new home in Maryland.
During her 20+ years at St. Peter’s, Marian has been involved with the ECW (President for 12 years), she has taught Sunday School, helped with the Village Harvest and served on the Altar Guild.
We will pray for her during the service and the ECW will host a luncheon in her honor in the Parish House directly following the service.