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Block Print by Mike Newman
Projects
Help us advertise the concert!
Go to the Thirteen page for links including the poster.
3-Minute Retreats invite you to take a short prayer break right at your computer. Spend some quiet time reflecting on a Scripture passage.
Knowing that not everyone prays at the same pace, you have control over the pace of the retreat. After each screen, a Continue button will appear. Click it when you are ready to move on. If you are new to online prayer, the basic timing of the screens will guide you through the experience.
Daily meditations in words and music.
Your daily prayer online, since 1999
"We invite you to make a ‘Sacred Space’ in your day, praying here and now, as you visit our website, with the help of scripture chosen every day and on-screen guidance."
Saints of the Week, Jan 7- Jan. 14
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7
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8
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Harriet Bedell, Deaconess and Misisonary, 1969 |
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9
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Julia Chester Emery, 1922 |
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10
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William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1645 |
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11
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12
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Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167 |
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13
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Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, 367 |
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14
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The Epiphany page is here and the Baptism page
The Week Ahead…
Jan 8 – 2pm – Vestry
Jan 10 – 10:00am – Ecumenical Bible Study
Jan 14 – 10am – Christian Education for childrren
Jan 14 – 11am – Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Congregational Meeting
Sunday, Jan. 14, 2018 Readings and Servers
Jan. 14, 11am. What were the key things that happened in 2017 ? What’s in store for St. Peter’s in 2018 ?
These are other questions will be part of the 2018 congregational meeting held after the 11am service.
Come hear the stories of all that we have accomplished as a parish during this past year and to receive updates on our life together as a parish.
We will be electing two members of the Vestry and be hearing reports of the happenings of the ministries in 2017.
The 2018 Congregational Meeting reports. Please read the reports and bring questions to the meeting on Sunday. The reports are available here
We have the reports in several formats – as a spread, pdf format and book formats:
1. Web. (Great for PC ). This shows the reports as a table of contents in the left sidebar and you can click on the reports which will display in the right pane. Below the table of contents are also the PDF and flash formats described below.
2. Pull up a PDF (For PC, smart phone, tablets)
3. HTML 5 Book view. (For smartphones, tablets and PC). Looks like a book with table of contents, searching, etc.
For those who want to compare all of this with 2017, here are the topics and reports of last year’s 2017’s meeting .
Epiphany 2, Year B Lectionary Sunday, Jan. 14, 2018
I.Theme – Discipleship and calling
"Calling Disciples" –He Qi (2001)
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – 1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20)
Psalm – Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
Epistle –1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Gospel – John 1:43-51
Samuel – calling Samuel
Paul – call to honor their bodies.
John – calling Philip and Nathanael
From Bruce Epperly "Process and Faith"
"Today’s readings describe the many faces of revelation. God’s presence and activity is both intimate and global. The heavens declare the glory of God and God’s glory is also revealed through the chanting of toddlers, nocturnal whispers, beating hearts, and adult inspirations. God is as equally present in our cells as in our souls. Our universe is omni-centered, that is, all things exist as a result of God’s energy and inspiration coursing through them.
"There are no God-forsaken places or persons. This spiritual insight leads to interpersonal and ethical responses: we are challenged to experience, honor, and support God’s movements in all creation. While this may complicate our ethical decision-making, it opens us to a world of wonder and beauty. Despite our turning from God, God is always turning toward us. There is hope for transformation in the most dire situations and most despicable people.
"The call of Samuel reminds us that children as well as adults can be God’s messengers to the world. God is moving through boys and girls listening to a children’s sermon or having their diapers changed in the church nursery. Samuel is both an unlikely and likely candidate for divine inspiration. He is a child and hardly expected to hear the voice of God, and yet he does. Yet, from the beginning of his life, he was a child of promise – his mother dedicated him to God and her fidelity to her promise may have opened unexpected pathways of divine presence in his life.
"In the call and response, the care that others have for us – their vision of our possibilities – creates a field of resonance that enables God to be more present in their lives. In seeing and honoring God’s presence in our children – and that means all children! – we awaken energies of growth and inspiration within them and ourselves.
"The call of Samuel reminds us that divine inspiration requires a community to be fully understood. It takes time for Samuel to discover that this nocturnal voice – a dream, a whisper, an inner inclination – comes from God. After all, God’s voice comes in the context and through the many voices of our lives. It takes a process of discernment to discover which of the voices in our lives is most authentic to our vocation as God’s loving and beloved children. Samuel seeks the guidance of Eli.
"We all need mentors who, in non-possessive ways, call forth our ability to hear God’s voice and movements in our lives. Samuel’s call in not just personal or individual, it is contextual. Our calls, accordingly, draw us deeper into our own experiences and yet lure us toward care for the larger community. The journey of revelation is always both inward and outward, and needs a community of discernment to mature and find direction.
"Psalm 139: 1-18 places each life in a divine environment. We live and move and have our being in relationship to God. God’s care and character determine God’s presence, action, and awareness of us. God is not out to get us or use divine knowledge to punish us. God fully knows us and fully loves us. This inspires both wonder and gratitude. More than that, God’s love leads to creating us as awesome and wonder-full from the moment of conception. Questions of “when life begins” are foolish from the Psalmist’s perspective and should not enter the political conversations of right and left, nor Christian arguments for the legality or prohibition of abortion.
"The Psalmist is clear that God cares for the fetus, and that shouldn’t be a matter of controversy even for those who support abortion rights. We cannot devaluate fetal life to affirm the lives of women. Both are valuable and cherished by God. This makes life and death decisions more complicated – and involves weighing contrasting values – but in the complication we may discover broader community and individual answers that honor both women and unborn children. (For more on ethics in the context of divine omnipresence, see Bruce Epperly, Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed, Continuum and Emerging Process: Adventurous Theology for a Missional Church, Parson’s Porch.)
"Divine activity sustains all things. Divine knowledge embraces all things. Divine presence supports all things. I purposely added verses 7-12 to today’s readings to render a more holistic reading of the Psalm. It is a Psalm of wonder and gratitude, of insight and inspiration, that has profound implications for how we view ourselves and others. We are wonderfully made – we are beautiful – and so is every other God-loved child.
"Today’s readers need not get bogged down on the minutia of I Corinthians 12. The passage speaks of temple prostitution and spirituality and sexuality, but it is really about the affirmation and care of our bodies. There is no mind-body dualism here: when Paul speaks of the body as the temple of God, he is clear that the body is connected with the spirit – each shapes the other. The spirit is embodied and the body is inspired. Our bodies are temples, that is, shrines to divine wisdom and deserve both affirmation and care. Glorify God in your bodies implies that we are to treat our bodies as expressions of divinity – this applies to our diet, sexuality, and lifestyle.
"It also applies to our care for the bodies of others. Recent allegations of child sexual abuse in major university sports programs remind and challenge us to support the safety of every child. More than that, we are called as churches to honor all bodies and perceive and affirm the goodness of all creation. This involves feeding hungry bodies, restoring broken bodies, healing sick bodies, and affirming all bodies as beloved by God.
"There are no perfect bodies. Nor are a culture’s standards of beauty absolute. Rather, the church is called to be counter-cultural: to promote wellness, but also to see God’s wonder in every body. We are all awesomely made. We need to see and bring forth beauty where others see ugliness.
"The gospel story presents Jesus’ call to Philip and Nathaniel. While the details of Jesus’ call are sparse, the scripture points out that God calls people in everyday life. Adults can open the doors of perception, experience divinity, and come to God in child-like spirits. John’s gospel describes a community of call in which our experiences of call and vocational inspiration inspire us to invite others to be part of the Jesus’ movement. There is no compulsion here, just invitation. “Come and see.” For those who respond, the heavens open up, new horizons emerge, and our lives are forever transformed.
"The call of God goes forth – everywhere. The doctrines of omnipresence, omniscience, and omni-activity (omnipotence) are not stale era pieces, irrelevant to our lives, but invitations to adventure – to see God everywhere, to experience God in our daily lives, to honor embodiment, and welcome revelation whenever and wherever it occurs. We are to be discerning and ask questions of ourselves and others when we have had mystical experiences. In the questioning, t have time to read the reports.inspired by a sense of holiness in all moments and all creatures, we will discover God’s voice amid the voices, and God’s pathways amid the pathways we travel individually and as communities. "
Read more about the Lectionary…
Come and See!
The Gospel refrain from John is relevant this week. We have the annual meeting this Sunday. Some people may be tempted to skip this Sunday thinking they will hear "boring speeches." No, Come and See.
The reports will be posted online. They all won’t be reported on Sunday. We do look back into last year. Obviously, we can be proud of our steps in the Village Harvest and our concert participation. But we will gaze ahead into 2018 and see what God will be doing with us. What can we do in 2018 to make this a better world and to strengthen our own community ?
Lutheran seminary president David Lose writes the following this week about "Come and See":
"These words, this invitation, form the heart not simply of this opening scene but much of John’s Gospel. John’s story is structured around encounters with Jesus. Again and again, from these early disciples, to the Pharisee named Nicodemus, to the Samaritan women at the well, to the man born blind, to Peter and Pilate and eventually Thomas, characters throughout John’s Gospel are encountered by Jesus. John structures his story this way, I think, to offer us a variety of possibilities, both in terms of the kind of people to whom Jesus reaches out and the kinds of responses they offer…and we might offer as well. And so across the pages of John’s Gospel there are women and men, Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, powerful and vulnerable, people of all shapes and sizes and varieties that Jesus meets. And to each one, in one way or another, he says the same thing: come and see. Come and see God do a new thing. Come and see as your future opens up in front of you. Come and see the grace of God made manifest and accessible and available to all."
This is the Sunday to invite someone to come to Church. Is St. Peter’s a "good fit" for them ? Come and see. As Lose writes "the number one reason people give for coming to a church for the first time is that someone invited them personally. Just as Philip said to Nathaniel, that is, someone said to them, “Come and see.” Which means that the future of the church depends greatly on ordinary, everyday Christians summoning the courage to invite someone to come and see what they have found in the community of the faithful that is their congregation." Go and Tell.
The Call of Prophecy – King and Samuel
by Rev. Mindi Welton-Mitchell 
For many church leaders, in the past and present, we have been called to speak out for God’s ways of righteousness and justice, and sometimes we have to speak out against the very institutions that have nurtured us in our call. We have had to overcome the voices of fear inside us or the voices of doubt outside of us that tell us we haven’t heard God’s call and we should go lie back down. It’s not an easy call to follow. As we honor and remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this month we remember King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, in which he writes to some of the very clergy who have supported him but have also tried to stop him, in an attempt to avoid conflict. Prophets are called to speak to conflict, to address it and not run from it, to speak and act out despite their fears and the fears of others. Dr. King certainly did this in his life and ministry. While one can argue for or against calling Dr. King a prophet, it is clear the Dr. King lived his life as many of our Biblical prophets did, speaking and acting out for God’s ways of justice and righteousness. I call him a prophet.
As we honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this month, the Call of the Prophet Samuel is an appropriate reading for today. In reading Samuel’s story, we can find the story of all prophets who have been called to speak out for God’s ways of justice and righteousness. We find the story of many who have heard the call of God but have had that call questioned by others (in this story, Eli questions the call, but not God, and when Eli is certain it is God calling Samuel, he encourages Samuel to listen to God). God calls Samuel to do something that is not easy: to speak out against Eli’s own sons, that they can’t skate by doing whatever they want to by offering sacrifices afterwards, that they can’t get off because their father is a priest. Samuel has to stand up to the family of the very person who has taken him in and cared for him, the very person who has instructed him how to listen to God’s ways. It is not easy to follow the call of the prophet.
The Thirteen began the yearly concert series in 2013. We are pleased to welcome that back in our 6th concert year.
From their website “Described as having “a tight and attractive vocal blend and excellent choral discipline” (American Record Guide), The Thirteen is an all-star professional choir known for inspired and powerful live performance. Since its founding in 2012, the choir has been at the forefront of bringing invigorating performances to the American choral community in repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to the Romantic, from Bach to Bruckner; and from Gregorian chant to the world premieres of new American composers. “
The concert is free but we encourage donations so we can keep this series going.
Help us advertise the concert. The Thirteen page has both informational links as well as a poster like the one above you can download and distribute.