|
Block Print by Mike Newman
Projects
Donate School Supplies for Caroline County students
Needed—yellow #2 pencils, erasers, wide ruled notebook paper, glue sticks, Marble black and white composition books, boxes of 24 crayons, small index cards, tissues, Lysol wipes, hand sanitizer, dry erase markers, fiskar scissors, spiral bound notebooks, yellow highlighters, pocket folders with and without prongs.
Hornes Promotion – Back Again!
10% back to St. Peter’s until ? Click on the logo for the coupon to print.
Daily meditations in words and music.
Read the Bible in a year or a part of it:
Prayer requests – Add a name to the prayer list here.
Saints of the Week, Aug. 10-17
| August |
||
|
10
|
Lawrence, Deacon, and Martyr at Rome, 258 | |
|
11
|
Clare, Abbess at Assisi, 1253 | |
|
12
|
Florence Nightingale, Nurse, Social Reformer, 1910 | |
|
13
|
Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore, 1667 | |
|
14
|
Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Seminarian and Martyr, 1965 | |
|
15
|
Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ | |
|
16
|
||
|
17
|
[Samuel Johnson, 1772, Timothy Cutler, 1765, and Thomas Bradbury Chandler, 1790, Priests] |
|
Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014 (full size gallery)
August 17 – 11:00am – Holy Eucharist, Rite II
This Sunday at St. Peter’s – Servers, Readings
Back to Staten Island for mission
Two years ago, in 2012, 13 from St. Peter’s were part of the Staten Island clothing distribution, organized by the Moravian Church. (see the picture above). From the report then, "In only three days, we unloaded four boxes, filled the Brighton Heights Reformed Church gym with clothes, helped over 1000 people find what they needed and wanted, and then took everything down and packed it all away! The mission team is tired, but we feel that we’ve accomplished a great deal in our time here. Many, many people expressed their gratitude for the distribution and were happy to get clothes that they needed."
We have a "subsite" that contains posts and pictures from that trip. It was a big success.
Now in 2014, Roger and Eunice, who went in 2012, are going back to help as their "own group". The Moravians had a cancellation and were franically trying to find a replacement. Roger and Eunice graciously have stepped in . They depart this Wed. Aug 13 and will be there through Sunday, Aug. 17. "Knowing the ropes" they feel they can add more to the work and more than replace the group that cancelled.
Eunice described the process. On Thursday they literally create a clothing store by type of clothes, size, style for males and females. The distribution is on Friday with first those from social services coming in to get fitted for job interview clothes. Then it’s the kids. The Moravians have a standard distribution for each child so they can maximize the distribution. Saturday the whole store is dismantled.
In church on Aug 10, they were commissioned and a prayer said for them from Catherine.
Here are pictures of them leaving on the train from Fredericksburg early on Aug 13 with Catherine providing some coffee and snacks for the ride. Then later in the day, boy scouts from Staten Island and Roger involved in unloading from a truck to get ready for the setup on Thursday.
Staten Island on Thursday, Aug. 14
Foodies Fridays at St. Peter’s
St Peter’s has served as a site for the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service’s Foodies Fridays for the past several months on the second Friday of every month.
At their last gathering for this summer, Pegi Wright, Lou Harper and The Rev. Wil Greene arrived early to set up for the gathering of people who were coming from both Caroline and King George County to have fun cooking together for a few hours. The Rev. Greene was the featured chef for the day and he planned to grill turkey burgers for the group. Inside the parish house, the participants planned to create dishes from fresh produce that they brought to chop, dice and slice.
Pegi Wright,the Extension Agent who heads up the program, says that the average attendance for these events is around twelve people, and twenty five people have participated in this year’s sessions at St Peter’s. This program helps fulfill one of the goals of the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service in the area of Family and Community Sciences – To provide appropriate research-based information to empower individuals, families, and communities to reduce risks of preventable diseases and to adopt food and nutrition choices that contribute to a healthy, productive society and to improve the quality of life for individuals, families, and communities, and support economic self-sufficiency and family stability.
Lou Harper, one of the leaders of Foodies Fridays, is a retired teacher. She taught Culinary Arts at Caroline County High School for many years.
We hope to welcome Pegi and the Va Cooperative Extension Service and Foodies Fridays to St Peter’s again soon.
Lectionary, Aug. 17, 2014, Pentecost 10, Year A
I.Theme – God comes to all us, includes all in his mercy and calls us to lead lives of justice
"Jesus and the Canaanite Woman" – Jean Colombe
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – Isaiah 56:1,6-8
Psalm – Psalm 67 Page 675, BCP
Epistle –Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Gospel – Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28
Three ingredients come together to create a celebratory mix in this week’s Lectionary: The first is God’s salvation (expressed in terms of justice and mercy); the second is God’s blessing given to those who are saved; and the third is the inclusion of "foreigners" and "outcasts". The expansion of the gospel beyond the boundaries of Judaism does not supersede God’s love for Israel, but reflects God’s love and inspiration of all people. The focus, then, of this week’s worship is on God’s coming to us, welcoming all people, and including all people in God’s mercy, salvation and blessing, while also calling all people to lives of justice.
In Isaiah 5 , God calls God’s people to justice and fairness because God promises to come to them and bring not just God’s people, but also the foreigners and outcasts, to worship and to be blessed by God on God’s mountain.
Psalm 67 is a psalm of praise for God’s blessings and mercy, which calls all nations to join in praising God for God’s saving power.
In Romans 11, the apostle Paul affirms God’s faithfulness to the Jewish people. There is no room for anti-Judaism in Christianity. God’s providential gifts of grace are irrevocable. God has made an eternal covenant with the children of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. God’s revelation in Christ expands God’s covenant to include all the peoples of the earth. God will have mercy on disobedient people everywhere, whether Jew or Gentile.
The question of being chosen once again is ambiguous. An omnipresent and omni-active God, for whom love is the guiding principle, chooses all creation. No one is left out. This is problematic for those who see the Jewish people and nation, or any other nation, as absolutely unique. As some prophetic writings suggest, Israel was chosen for a mission, to be a light to the Gentiles, bringing God’s love to all peoples.
The gospel reading places Jesus in an unusual light. When a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus to seek healing for her daughter, Jesus puts her off, apparently excluding her because of her ethnicity from God’s healing realm. The woman persists and eventually Jesus relents, apparently impressed by the depth of her faith and her willingness to experience humiliation for the love of her daughter. Jesus cures her daughter from a distance; his energy transcends the boundaries of space.
This story also portrays another kind of transcendence, the transcendence of ethnic and personal barriers for the sake healing and wholeness. Now, there are a number of ways to interpret the encounter of Jesus with the Canaanite woman. At first glance, Jesus appears to succumb to the racist tendencies that characterized the attitudes of many Jewish people toward foreigners. He puts her off because, as a Canaanite, she is unworthy of God’s love. A second interpretation suggests that Jesus is testing her faith, trying to discern how much she loves her daughter and what she is willing to do to secure a healing for her daughter. Finally, a third interpretation asserts that Jesus may be creating a trap for those who see the woman as an inferior outsider. He acts and speaks like a racist, getting their insider assent, and then pulls the rug out from under them by healing the Canaanite woman’s daughter. From this perspective, the encounter is a parable, a reversal of expectations, a turning upside down of socially acceptable racism in light of God’s realm of inclusion and healing.
However, we understand the meaning of the encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman, the story portrays Jesus’ eventual inclusion of non-Jewish people into his ministry. God’s healing embraces all people, regardless of gender, ethnicity, race, or sexuality. Mature faith widens the circles of God’s love to go beyond our well-being to embrace and support the various gifts of the earth’s peoples.
Earlier in the readings, Jesus explains that it is not what we eat that defiles us but the evil that is in our hearts. Then he is approached by a Canaanite woman who convinces him, in spite of his initial reluctance, to heal her daughter who is being tormented by a demon.
The Music of Lyra
Here are few examples of their music. They will be in concert at St. Peter’s, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 7pm:
1. LYRA – The Russian Vocal Ensemble of St. Petersburg – performed a concert at the invitation of Lovely Lane United Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Sunday, April 8, 2013, as part of the church’s 2013 Spring/Summer Concert Series.
Bless The Lord Oh My Soul by P. Tchesnokov
2. LYRA at Liberty Grove U.M.C.
Selections: "Dub-Duba" "Wicket Gate" "The Bright Moon Is Shining" "Let Me Look At You" "Let Us Go Home"
3. Youtube link with many selections is here