Frontpage, April 28, 2019

Guest preacher the Rev. David Casey, David with Catherine, Iris as Altar flowers, River with colorful clouds,azaleas out this week.

April 28, 2019 – Second Sunday of Easter (includes a link to David’s sermon).

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The Week Ahead…

May 1 – 10:00am-12pm – Ecumenical Bible Study

May 4 – MS Walk with Shiloh Baptist.

It is sponsored by the Laura Dobbins Missionary Circle, Shiloh Baptist Church, Port Royal Registration will be at 8:30 at Shiloh on Saturday May 4. St. Peter’s will have a table of water and food – Can you help with water or snacks ? Email Catherine.

MS Walk is a charity walk series that take place in over 550 locations with more than 330,000 people participating annually. When you participate in Walk MS, you help ensure no one ever has to be diagnosed again.

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May 5 – 10am – Children’s Education Living the Good News

May 5 – 10am – Adult Education – 1st Corinthians

May 5 – 11:00am – Holy Eucharist, Rite II

May 5 – 12:00pm – 1st Sunday, Potluck

Sunday, May 5, Easter 3 Readings and Servers

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 First Corinthians schedule for May

We are continuing to read Corinthians through typical people of the time including slaves and freeborn, widows and singles, and a number who have suffered deprivation and sexual abuse – much like typical society in that day. The book shows that Christianity was a subversive force in the brutal Roman Empire. Here is the May schedule:

5/5 Body image (1 Cor 12:12-13:13)

5/12 Competitive Spirituality (1 Cor 12, 14)

5/19 What Gives us hope? (1 Cor 15)

No class on May 26—Catherine will be away.

The class will conclude on June 16 with an agape meal with Bishop Ihloff.

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 We are in Eastertide until Pentecost, June 9

Eastertide is the period of fifty days, seven Sundays from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday. Easter is not a day but a season and it is one to examine the Resurrection, more broadly and deeply.  There are a number of questions.

Is Resurrection just about death has been swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54-56) ? Is Resurrection of Jesus is a precursor to your own resurrection (1 Corinthians 15) ? Does it say something about our own ability to expect to see Jesus (Luke 24) ? How does the new Christian community begin to function making Christ the central part of daily life ? (Acts 2)  

Jesus physically appears in Easter 2 and 3 making the Resurection tangible. The shepherding part of his ministry is explored in Easter 4. From Easter 5-7, Jesus must prepare the disciples for his departure. He is going to leave them. Jesus prepares his disciples for continuing his ministry without his physical presence.  Themes explored include the holy spirit, the Prayer of Jesus and God’s glory through His Son and the church.

Christ ascends on the 40th day with his disciples watching (Thursday, May 5th). The weekdays after the Ascension until the Saturday before Pentecost inclusive are a preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit.This fifty days comes to an end on Pentecost Sunday, which commemorates the giving of the Holy Spirit to the apostles, the beginnings of the Church and its mission to all  peoples and nation.  Note that the Old Testament lessons are replaced by selections from the Book of Acts, recognizing the important of the growth of the church.  

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Lectionary Easter 3, Year C

I.Theme –   Considering Jesus’ presence with us. 

 "Christ’s Appearance on Lake Tiberias" – Duccio di Buoninsegna 1308-11)

The lectionary readings are here  or individually:

Old Testament – Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)
Psalm – Psalm 30 
Epistle –Revelation 5:11-14
Gospel – John 21:1-19 

Today’s readings invite us to consider the meaning of Jesus’ presence with us. In the story from Acts, the apostles, empowered by the Spirit of Jesus, preach the gospel despite persecution. John, in his Revelation, describes how being in the presence of Jesus, the enthroned Lamb of God, moves all of creation to bless and praise. In today’s gospel story, Jesus, in another pos t resurrection appearance, provides an abundant catch of fish for his disciples.

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen tells Alice that in her youth, she believed six impossible things every morning before breakfast and counsels Alice to believe in impossibilities as well. The Easter season is a season for mystics and “impossibility” thinkers. We are challenged to believe “more” rather than “less” about the world and its resources. Tempted to think small, we may discover that God is at work in our lives – in the causal events of life – to give us more than we can ask than imagine. Possibilities abound that appear to be “impossibilities” for unimaginative realists. Persecutor Paul encounters the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus; the Resurrected Christ cooks breakfast for the disciples and invites Peter to claim a global vocation; the author of Revelation envisages an enchanted and lively universe, in which all creation praises God; and Psalmist experiences ecstasy and joy amid the maelstrom of external challenges.

The call of the readings is to go out and act on them. There are people who are hungry—we must go and feed them, we can’t be only worried about our own needs. There are people who are mourning, who are sad—we must go and be with them, to help bear their burdens. We must remember that the picture is greater than ourselves. Messages of personal salvation only go so far, to help us feel good about ourselves. Remembering that God’s purpose as Creator is new life, we must do our part to help in all of creation to nurture that new life. "Feed my sheep", "Follow me’

Read more from the lectionary 

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Making Adustments (Lectionary Easter 3)

Suzanne Guthrie

“The disciples have been night-fishing, but as dawn breaks they have nothing to show for their efforts. Jesus appears on the shore, too far away to help. He shouts at them to fish differently, to throw their nets on the unconventional side of the boat. That’s where they find what they’re looking for.”

-Richard Beard
from the novel, Lazarus is Dead (p.219)

“Is it possible that finding what I’m looking requires just the slightest adjustment in my way of seeing? How can pulling up my net, moving it a few feet over, throwing it back in the same waters, make a difference? And yet…

“What other slight adjustments to my life, my character, my thinking, my relating to family, friends, neighbors, the world, might change barrenness to fecundity? At any given moment there’s probably at least 153 ways to begin.

Do you remember the dynamic between the two disciples running to the tomb on Easter Morning? Mary Magdalene, having found the tomb empty runs to wherever the disciples have been hiding and brings back Peter and John. John outruns Peter but hesitates to go in. When Peter arrives he enters the tomb and sees the disarray of cloths. “Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed” (John 20:8).

“John understands. Peter acts.

“Here in the boat, the stranger on the shore calls to the men in the boat. Children, have you caught anything? No? Cast your net on the right side of the boat and you’ll catch some. And they did. And could hardly manage the haul of fish. “The disciple who Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!”

“Peter, who is naked, throws on his clothes and jumps into the water to swim toward shore, leaving the others to manage the miraculous catch of fish.

“John understands. Peter acts.

“When I act first, perhaps I need to understand more. When I understand and fail to act, well, that’s another adjustment I need to make.”

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During the Easter season Jesus reappears in 2^nd and  3^rd Easter as Jesus did from Easter Sunday onward.   The timeline above shows there were at least 10 appearances between Easter Sunday and Ascension.  What do we make of these appearances ?

Gerald Hughes in his book, The God of Surprises mentions three features that are common in all of the resurrection accounts. The most common feature he pointed out is that before Christ appeared everyone was in a negative mood: the women who came to the tomb, came only expecting to embalm Jesus; the disciples on the road to Emmaus are sad and disillusioned; the disciples in the upper room are afraid and living behind closed doors; and Thomas is in doubt.  On Easter 3, no fish were begin caught. In every case, their pain and disillusionment revealed their poverty of spirit and need of God. Yet in each person our Lord’s love met them in the midst of their despair and led them to a life-transforming faith.

The second common feature of those who came to faith was the slowness of those to whom Christ appears to recognize that He really was the risen Christ. The disciples on the road to Emmaus walked several miles with him before they recognized him. “But their eyes were kept from recognizing him” In Easter 3, the disciples go back to being fisherman, their profession before they met Jesus, They catch nothing until a stranger calls to them to put out their nets on the right side. Once they bring in the load of the miraculous catch, Peter finally proclaims, “It is the Lord!” 

A final feature common to the resurrection is that those to whom Christ appeared are commissioned to go and tell others. In  Luke’s Road to Emmaus,  the heartburn of despair had been replaced by a new burning faith. These two were re-energized. They might have been dragging on the way to Emmaus but they were ready to run back to Jerusalem. Before their faces were downcast. Even though it was late, very possibly dark by now—they immediately raced off to Jerusalem.  The lesson is not to prejudge Jesus and expect to find Jesus in the most unlikely places, such as a war-torn country 

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