Frontpage, March 15, 2020

March 15, 2020 Lent 3

---

The Week Ahead…

March 18, 10:00-12pm – Ecumenical Bible Study

March 18, 3:00-5:00pm – Village Harvest

Johnny will arrive with the food around 10:45AM. If you are able and feel safe doing so, please come and help unload the truck. We are going to have a drive through distribution and pack bags ahead of time. Those who are helping to pack the bags for the distribution should be prepared to start distributing food at 2PM so that people can come and go without a wait.

---

March 22 – 10am – Genesis  Judah’s Sexual Ethics: Genesis 38:1-30 –online only

Adult Christian Ed in Lent online –
Signs of Life

This week – “food”

The COVID 19 virus has cancelled regular events on Sun. March 22. We will be back with online options before March 22

March 22 – 11am – Holy Eucharist, Fourth Sunday in Lent

March 22 – 11am – Holy Eucharist, Fourth Sunday in Lent – Servers and Readings

---

Lent – Links

• • We have a dedicated Lenten part of the website Lent at St. Peter’s Includes the background of Lent, the Lenten calendar with readings, resources, etc.
  • Lenten Calendar. As Lent begins on Feb. 26, start of practice of reading the Daily Office which is on the Calendar
  • Adult Christian Ed on Sundays in Lent at St. Peter’s – Genesis and Previous Sessions

 

• Adult Christian Ed in Lent online –Signs of Life

---

Spring has arrived!

March’s temperatures have been relatively mild with plenty of sun to see the cherries, daffodils, croakus and other appear.

Here’s a gallery of some of the delights.

---

From Lent 3, March 15 – Scripture in song – Peter, Paul and Mary’s – “Jesus Met A Woman at the Well”  

One of the first albums I had growing up was Peter, Paul and Mary in Concert, their first recorded concert. On that piece of vinyl was the song “Jesus Met a Woman at the Well.” The story from John  was popularized within a whole new generation. These lyrics conclude that Jesus is “the prophet” because he knew everything the woman at the well had ever done.

Dad was not a “folkie” but he took us to see them in performance at the Mosque in Richmond in 1966.  A great show to this day!

Hear the song in concert.

---

The essence of the Samaritan woman at the well  

This is a scripture of compassion and giving.

The key is that Jesus sees her, really sees her pain – she’s had five husbands before and then he reveals himself to her. She is living an unfocused life without husband and she is looking for direction and help.

He provides a direction with life giving words and his messianic identity. This is part of the living water. What Jesus is driving at is the divine life that is never exhausted even as it is given, since it is, in its essence, nothing other than giving. Jesus is uniting the tribes of Israel to “worship the Father in spirit and truth.”

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” By leaving her water jar there she takes on a new more purposeful life.

Daniel Goldeman looked into compassion in a TED talk –“Why aren’t we more compassionate?”

He explains “And this is, I think, the predicament of our lives: that we don’t take every opportunity to help because our focus is in the wrong direction.”

What is the wrong direction ? Here is the TED talk for his answer

---

Another Look at the Gospel – “Rebuilding the World with Everyday Wisdom” 

We can go further and look at Jesus’ example beyond the woman in simply doing what’s needed to be done.

Pschologist Barry Schwarz in a Ted Talk laments the loss of Wisdom. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world.   Here is the Ted Talk

“Practical wisdom,” Aristotle told us, “is the combination of moral will and moral skill.”

A wise person knows when and how to make the exception to every rule, as the janitors knew when to ignore the job duties in the service of other objectives. A wise person knows how to improvise, as Luke did when he re-washed the floor.

Real-world problems are often ambiguous and ill-defined and the context is always changing. A wise person is like a jazz musician — using the notes on the page, but dancing around them, inventing combinations that are appropriate for the situation and the people at hand. A wise person knows how to use these moral skills in the service of the right aims.

To serve other people, not to manipulate other people. And finally, perhaps most important, a wise person is made, not born. Wisdom depends on experience, and not just any experience. You need the time to get to know the people that you’re serving. You need permission to be allowed to improvise, try new things, occasionally to fail and to learn from your failures. And you need to be mentored by wise teachers.”

---

St. Patrick, Saint, March 17

St. Patrick, apostle of Ireland, was born in England, circa 386. Surprisingly, he was not raised with a strong emphasis on religion.

When St. Patrick was 16 years old, he was captured by Irish pirates and brought to Ireland where he was sold into slavery. His job was to tend sheep. He came to view his enslavement of six years as God’s test of his faith, during which he became deeply devoted to Christianity through constant prayer. In a vision, he saw the children of Pagan Ireland reaching out their hands to him, which only increased his determination to free the Irish from Druidism by converting them to Christianity.

The idea of escaping enslavement came to St. Patrick in a dream, where a voice promised him he would find his way home to England. Eager to see the dream materialize, St. Patrick convinced some sailors to let him board their ship. After three days of sailing, he and the crew abandoned the ship in France and wandered, lost, for 28 days—covering 200 miles of territory in the process. At last, St. Patrick was reunited with his family in England.

Now a free man, he went to France where he studied and entered the priesthood. He never lost sight of his vision: he was determined to convert Ireland to Christianity. In 431, St. Patrick was Consecrated Bishop of the Irish, and went to Ireland to spread “The Good News” to the Pagans there. Patrick made his headquarters at Armagh in the North, where he built a school, and had the protection of the local monarch. From this base he made extensive missionary journeys, with considerable success. To say that he single-handedly turned Ireland from a pagan to a Christian country is an exaggeration, but is not far from the truth.

Continue reading about St. Patrick

---

Art for the 4th Week in Lent, Year A

Commentary is by Daniella Zsupan-Jerome.

We enter into this fourth Sunday of Lent with the words of Samuel I telling us that, “not as man sees does God see.” At Mass, we then hear the story of Christ healing the blind man at the pool of Siloam. El Greco painted two versions of this story; here we explore his first rendition. Christ Healing the Blind tells the story but also reveals El Greco’s blossoming artistic vision. In this early painting, we observe El Greco learning to see with the eyes of an artist as he depicts perspective and the movement of bodies from all angles. Just as the blind man learns to see, El Greco is gaining his unique vision here.

Christ Healing the Blind presents two main groups of people: Christ healing the blind man on the left, and the Pharisees clustered on the right, suspicious and protesting. Front and center are the blind beggar’s meager possessions and a sniffing dog—perhaps his only loyal companion. Further back, two figures complete the circle, engaged in a pose of compassion and healing—God’s mercy juxtaposed with the confrontation below. Placing Christ and the Pharisees on the left and right is a point of irony: the Pharisees, who are assured of their right vision, are in fact blind to the truth unfolding before them, while Christ reveals the truth on the left. Behind the Pharisees a sky of swirling clouds reinforces their disarray, but Christ’s healing act takes place in front of a firm visual backdrop of stable architectural elements. Behind Christ, El Greco leads our eye to a vanishing point with a long row of arches, hinting that the sight Christ grants to the blind beggar is long-ranging and far. In contrast, the cluster of Pharisees obscures their own horizon, as their near-sighted vision lands on one another.

Finally, the four men gathered on the left seem unaware of what is going on. Here, El Greco inserts another kind of blindness: oblivion to grace unfolding before their very eyes. Their mild presence is perhaps more challenging than that of the Pharisees, who are lacking vision but not awareness.

This story invites us to open wider our eyes of faith and become aware of the merciful, healing grace all around us.

---

Lectionary, Lent 4, Year A, March 22, 2020

I.Theme –   The emphasis this week is on the themes of light, vision and insight. Samuel is given insight to anoint a shepherd boy to be king. Paul urges the church to be people of light. In the Gospel a blind  man is given sight to see Jesus the Messiah.

<

“The Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind” – El Greco (1560) . The man in the foreground with his wife may be the blind man’s parents

The lectionary readings are here  or individually:

Old Testament – 1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm – Psalm 23
Epistle –Ephesians 5:8-14
Gospel – John 9:1-41

In the Old Testament , The problem was, who shall succeed King Saul who was rejected by Yahweh The Lord sends Samuel to Jesse’s home where there were eight sons. One of them Yahweh wants as the new king. One by one seven sons are passed by. David is called home from caring for his father’s sheep. At once Samuel is given insight that David is God’s choice. Here is a case similar to the Gospel’s account of Jesus’ giving the healed man the insight that he was the Messiah

Psalm 23 is the Psalm of the Day. It harmonizes with the miracle’s account of Jesus’ compassion for a blind person. He becomes one of Jesus sheep.  Like the sheep, the blind man hears Jesus’ voice. Like the shepherd, Jesus finds the blind man when he has been cast out (9:35). Jesus provides for the man born blind much more than sight–he provides for him what he, as the good shepherd, gives all of his sheep–the protection of his fold (10:16), the blessing of needed pasture (10:9), and the gift of abundant life (10:10).

In Ephesians, the Epistle reacing,  Christians are people of the light according to Paul. Before accepting Christ they lived in the darkness of sin. Christians are to shun the works of darkness and to live in the light of goodness and truth. In the Gospel miracle account Jesus, the light of the world, brings light to a blind man both physically and spiritually.

 The Gospel account is one of not one but two miracles and is the story of the “Man Born Blind.” The first miracle is told in the first seven verses. The rest of the chapter deals with human reactions to the miracle: the healed man, his parents, the Pharisees and Jesus. The second miracle is the insight the healed man was given enabling him to confess Jesus as the Son of man, Messiah. The chapter begins and ends with blindness. At the beginning a man was physically blind. At the end, the Pharisees were spiritually blind because of their sin. The healed man experienced a double miracle: sight and insight.

Confronted by the blindness of the world, a blindness encapsulated in the man born blind, Jesus said to his disciples, “we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.”  This scripture can be seen as a call to us to practice evangelism, providing light to others.   It is there, through faith, that they will find life eternal.

Read more..

---