August 5, 2018 Pentecost 11, Proper 13
Pictures and text from this Sunday, August 5
The Week Ahead…
Purchase school supplies at a discount while the Virginia state holiday continues August 5 for the Village Harvest on August 15.
August 6 – The Feast of the Transfiguration
August 10 – 7:30am, ECM at Horne’s
August 12 – 11:00am, Morning Prayer, Rite II, Morning Prayer
Sunday, August 12 Readings and Servers
Butterflies on Transfiguration
Butterflies are some of the best metaphors of transformation and transfiguration. They are transformed from eggs to caterpillars to chrysalis and finally the adult butterfly emerges. The day was mild, full of sunshine and the butterflies liked the phlox bush.
Catherine in Guatemala, Aug 9, 2018
Studying away!
“Spent most of today working with my teacher, and we only briefly left the house after lunch because it rained. Whew! Verbos, verbos, verbos!!!!
“Being in one place for a while is just wonderful. I’m getting to know the neighborhood and some of the people. I saw a woman in the restaurant where I ate lunch today with the cutest young dog–then this afternoon, I saw her on my street–sure enough, she’s my neighbor. The dog, Bango, is a rescue dog from the volcano explosion a few months ago. Paula and her husband have moved to Guatemala for good. They are from Nevada.
“I’m addicted to the bakery, San Marten, I go there almost every day! Tonight I had a pizza there.
“Also, late yesterday afternoon as I was walking home, near dusk, I saw the volcano that exploded recently! It’s only 12 miles away. I could see it smoking.
Catherine in Guatemala, Aug 8, 2018
"Today Marleny, my teacher, and I worked on verbs all morning. Tomorrow we will start with the irregular verbs. We took a lunch break, and then after lunch we worked on prepositions and more verbs. We spend a lot of time speaking in Spanish. I’m slowly catching on.
"Today was beautiful, sunny and the butterflies (they are transparent with colored trim–they look like little pieces of light flying from flower to flower!) flew in and out of my apartment all day as I studied Spanish with my teacher. I had lunch at the most tranquil place, in a garden. After lunch, I had the famous chocolate drink–felt that I had died and gone to heaven!
"After studies were over in the afternoon, I walked into town, went to several historic sites and then to the grocery store. I walked downtown to the Arco de Santa Catalina. Quoting from the guidebook, it’s all that’s left of a convent dating to 1613. As the convent grew, it expanded to include a structure across the street. The arch then was built to allow the nuns to cross to the other side while avoiding contact with the general populace in accordance with strict rules governing seclusion. Its current version with a clock tower is a reconstruction dating to the 19th century, as the original was destroyed in the 1773 earthquakes.
Rain gotten to you?
Psalm 34:17-19 When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
Lectionary, Pentecost 12, Proper 14 Year B
I. Theme – Nurture and Community
"The Breadline" – Grigori Grigorjewitsch Mjassojedow (1872)
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – 1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm – Psalm 34:1-8
Epistle –Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Gospel – John 6:35, 41-51
Today’s readings constellate around the themes of nurture and community.
We learn from David’s story (Tract 1, not in our readings) that violence breeds violence, that injustice must be brought to light. We know this is not easy
In 1 Kings God nourishes Elijah for a journey that takes forty days and forty nights and he is constantly on the brink of not continuing it. Poor Elijah was ready to die as he ran into hiding to escape persecution, violence and injustice. In Psalm 34, the righteous also cry for help, for they are afflicted, broken-hearted and crushed in spirit.
When the author of Ephesians says, “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us,” he reminds us of God’s providence. Christ’s extraordinary sacrifice on our behalf manifested God’s love and power once again and gave us safe passage into a new life with God. These acts demand a response from us. We are challenged as much by God’s gifts as we are by the lack of them. Our conduct toward each other must reflect God’s outpouring of love toward us. The author encourages Christians to be as loving as Christ to one another.
The Gospel emphasizes God’s sustenance through Jesus who gives himself for us. Jesus promises that he will save all who come to him. But God will renew our strength, will give us courage and will continue to encourage us. Jesus calls us into this new life, in which we must stand against injustice but in nonviolent ways. We are called to lead by example, to love and forgive, to use our anger at injustice to bring about justice through peaceful means. We are called into this new life.
Jesus points out that the Israelites ate manna in the wilderness and they died. He is reminding the people that people do not live by bread alone—true life comes from the word of God. Jesus identifies himself with God. Those “taught by God” will come to Jesus to be fed the living bread for eternal life in that long-promised land where there will never be scarcity. Anyone who tastes this bread will never die.
We need spiritual soul food not superficial fast food. We need the bread of heaven, embodied in earthly relationships; not spiritual quick fixes and easy answers. We feast on the Spirit when we see God in all things and all things in God. We come to the unsearchable mystery of the eucharist with a joyful hush of thanksgiving in our hearts. Jesus sustains our souls with his life now and forever.
Consider: How can I imitate Jesus example of total, selfless giving?
A Recently Discovered Leonardo Painting, "Salvador Mundi"
The painting fits our Gospel reading this week. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." – John 6:51
The fact that its "Salvador Mundi" by Leonardo da Vinci makes it even the more special. The discovering of a new Leonardo painting shook the art world in 2011. There were only some fourteen surviving Leonardo paintings in the world and the last one to be discovered was the "Benois Madonna" more than 100 years ago. This one was thought to exist only in copies.
This painting is small, 2×1.5 feet with cracked wooden frame and had suffered from centuries of neglect and poor restorations.The panel had also been subjected — unsuccessfully — to a forced flattening, and then glued to another backing. The worst offenses were crude areas of overpainting, in an attempt to hide the botched panel repair. And then there was plain old dirt and grime.
It shows Christ facing facing forwards with two fingers of his right hand raised in blessing and a crystal globe in his left hand. "Salvator Mundi" (Savior of the World) painted in 1500 is known to have been owned by English king, Charles I before moving around various private collections until 2005, when the current owner brought it to Robert Simon of Robert Simon Fine Art to study.
There were three immediate clues of the true painter:
1 One was a so-called "pentimento," an alteration in the painting showing traces of previous work
2 The other was the painting of Christ’s curls. Leonardo’s St. John the Baptist at the Louvre had the same curls.
3 The fingers were especially significant because, as Oxford Leonardo expert Martin Kemp put it, "All the versions of the ‘Salvator Mundi’ have rather tubular fingers. What Leonardo had done, and the copyists and imitators didn’t pick up, was to get just how the knuckle sort of sits underneath the skin."
It was compared to two preparatory drawings, housed in the Royal Library at Windsor, that Leonardo made for it. It was also compared to some 20 known copies and found to be superior to all of them. The new owners desired to build a consensus for this conclusion that it was a Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonardo provided an original treatment of this subject. Look at the orb or world resting in Christ’s left palm. Normally this orb was painted as brass or gold, may have had vague landforms mapped on it, and was topped by a crucifix. We know that Leonardo was a Roman Catholic, as were all of his patrons. However, he creates what appears to be a sphere of rock crystal. It reflects Leonardos studies what later became optics. Looking through it shows the natural distortion of looking through glass or crystal. Fundamentally, Leonardo was always trying to connect the natural and spiritual worlds together. No one had created a world like this which was very realistic!
The Ugly Duckling and John’s Gospel
By Rev Anne S Paton, Minister of East Kilbride
Do you remember the Hans Christian Andersen story The Ugly Duckling ? Here is the outline:
"When the tale begins, a mother duck’s eggs hatch. One of the little birds is perceived by the other birds and animals on the farm as a homely little creature and suffers much verbal and physical abuse from them. He wanders sadly from the barnyard and lives with wild ducks and geese until hunters slaughter the flocks. He finds a home with an old woman but her cat and hen tease him mercilessly and again he sets off on his own. He sees a flock of migrating wild swans; he is delighted and excited but he cannot join them for he is too young and cannot fly. Winter arrives. A farmer finds and carries the freezing little bird home, but the foundling is frightened by the farmer’s noisy children and flees the house. He spends a miserable winter alone in the outdoors, mostly hiding in a cave on the lake that partly freezes over. When spring arrives a flock of swans descends on the now thawing lake. The ugly duckling, now having fully grown and matured, unable to endure a life of solitude and hardship anymore and decides to throw himself at the flock of swans deciding that it is better to be killed by such beautiful birds than to live a life of ugliness and misery. He is shocked when the swans welcome and accept him, only to realise by looking at his reflection in the water that he has grown into one of them. The flock takes to the air and the ugly duckling spreads his beautiful large wings and takes flight with the rest of his new family.
"The important bit that ties in with today’s reading is in the paragraph where the ugly duck realises who he really is. "He saw below him his own image, but he was no longer a clumsy dark grey bird, ugly and ungainly, he was himself a swan! It does not matter in the least having been born in a duck yard, if only you come out of a swan’s egg!" Jesus was explaining to the gathered people that it was the same with them. It does not matter in the least having been from Nazareth and born in Bethlehem, if only you are born of God."
Thoughts by C.S.Lewis, Watchman of his generation
Psalm 130 – "My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning."
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1965), commonly referred to as C. S. was a British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist.According to his memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had been baptised in the Church of Ireland at birth, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of friend J. R. Tolkien and others, at the age of 32 Lewis returned to Christianity, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England". His conversion had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim. Biography
“Love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will…The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love your neighbor; act as if you did."
– C. S. Lewis
"Look for yourself & you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, & decay… …look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in
– C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity
“Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can’t see it. So quietly submit to be painted"
– C. S. Lewis
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him & bad when it turns from Him.”
– C. S. Lewis The Great Divorce
"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito
– C. S. Lewis
"Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose."
– C. S. Lewis
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
– C. S. Lewis
“Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.”
– C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity
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2. Contact the Rev Catherine Hicks, Rector 4. August, 2018 Server Schedule 5. Latest Newsletter-the Parish Post (August, 2018) 6. Calendar 8. What’s new on the website 10. Latest Sunday Bulletin (Aug. 12, 2018 11:00am), and Sermon (July 8, 2018) |
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Saints of the Week, Aug. 5 – Aug. 12
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5
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[Albrecht Dürer, 1528, Matthias Grünewald, 1529, and Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1553, Artists] |
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6
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The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ |
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7
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John Mason Neale, Priest, 1866; also [Catherine Winkworth, Poet, 1878] |
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8
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Dominic, Priest and Friar, 1221 |
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9
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[Herman of Alaska, Missionary to the Aleut, 1837] |
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10
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Lawrence, Deacon, and Martyr at Rome, 258 |
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11
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Clare, Abbess at Assisi, 1253 |
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12
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Florence Nightingale, Nurse, Social Reformer, 1910 |