Frontpage, May 19, 2019

May 19, 2019 – Fifth Sunday of Easter

Greeters and others in pink – they got the memo!, Welcoming Jennifer back from Vanderbilt, Greeting friends from St Paul’s King George, Frontpiece with Lord’s prayer (subject of the sermon), Altar flowers

Pictures and text from this Sunday, May 19, 2019

---

The Week Ahead…

May 22 – 10:00am-12pm – Ecumenical Bible Study

---

May 26 – 10am – Children’s Education Living the Good News

May 26 – 10am – Creating a Scene in Corinthians – No class this Sunday

May 26 – 11:00am – Morning Prayer, Rite II

Sunday, May 26, Easter 6 Readings and Servers

---

Shred-It, May 18 – the 8th year

Thanks to Andrea Pogue’s work on Shred-it today May 18, 2019, we earned $390, the largest tally in 8 years. The funds go to St. Peter’s outreach ministries. It covers two months of the Village Harvest.

Andrea originated it and has developed it over the period. It is a not only a convenient way to dispose of sensitive, private documents but we find it is a great fellowship event attracting all ages, particularly with all the food Andrea brings to the event! The weather was seasonable but in the sun the temperature rose. The watermelon and popsicles she brought his the spot! Thanks to all who contributed and for Andrea’s leadership.

Photo gallery is here

---

Village Harvest and Bible Study, May 15 – A Birthday in Style!

Wed., May 15, 2019 on a gorgeous spring day. On St. Peter’s 183rd birthday – a full house for Bible Study at 10am showing off 3 cakes for the Village Harvest and then the Village Harvest later that day at 3pm. Eunice made a pineapple upside cake, Cherry angel food and Brad contributed a pound cake.

At the harvest, 146 were fed with 1,192 pounds of food – produce, groceries, meats and those birthday cakes! 146 was our best draw in a year. We have fed 593 this year close to last year at this point at 601 though under 2017 with 692.

Read more about the day and view the photos.

---

Bishop Michael Curry – Love as a commitment

This is from an interview of Michael Curry in the Harvard Business Review, May-June 2019

Easter 5 featured the following Gospel scripture from John.”I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

“How do you encourage people to bring love into their workplaces?”

“In the past couple years I’ve started thinking of love less as a sentiment and more as a commitment to a way of being with others. As a sentiment, love is more about what I’m getting out of it than what you’re getting out of it. But as a commitment, love means I’m seeking your self-interest as well as my own—and maybe above and beyond mine. That kind of unselfishness is actually how Jesus talked about love most of the time in the New Testament—the Greek word that’s used is agape. That’s the kind of love you see in a person who has done something selfless for you and affected your life for the good: a parent, teacher, Scout leader, or coach. Take that further and you realize that there has been no social good that’s been intentionally done apart from this kind of love. We don’t give people Nobel Peace prizes for selfishness. We recognize those people because they’ve given of themselves without counting the cost to themselves. So, I’ve been playing with the mantra: Is the action I’m contemplating selfish or selfless? I invite folks to just ask that question throughout the day: Selfish or selfless?”

---

Thy Kingdom Come, May 30-June 9, Prayers from Ascension to Pentecost

Thy Kingdom Come began as an invitation from the Most Rev. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the Church of England in 2016. It has since become global and ecumenical; last year, Christians from 65 denominations in 114 countries prayed together for the whole world to come to know Jesus Christ. This year it starts on May 30.

The Way of Love, the rule of life that helps us to live fully, includes prayer as one of its disciplines. The days between Ascension and Pentecost mark a traditional time of prayer in the Church, beginning with the first disciples who went back to Jerusalem after Jesus ascended. They spent their time in prayer as they waited for the coming of the Holy Spirit. These days give us the opportunity to focus on prayer as one of the blessings and disciplines that we Christians share as part of the body of Christ

Host a prayer service at your house or the Parish House during the Thy Kingdom Come prayer initiative beginning on Thursday May 30th. until Pentecost, June 9. Please let Catherine know of your plans.

Join Christians all over the world in prayer during these days. Choose five people to pray for. You can also host an hour of prayer and use the Parish House as the location. Sign up by contacting Catherine

---

 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.

---

Rogation Sunday, May 26, 2019

Rogation Sunday, a time of celebration and prayer, is a time set aside to appreciate and recognize our dependence upon the land for our food and most importantly upon our dependence of God for the miracles of sprouting seeds, growing plants, and maturing harvest.

The Rogation Days, the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day, originated in Vienne, France in 470 after a series of natural disasters had caused much suffering among the people.  Originally, the Christian observance of Rogation was taken over from Graeco-Roman  religion, where an annual procession invoked divine favour to protect crops against mildew.   Archbishop Mamertus proclaimed a fast and ordered that special litanies and prayers be said as the population processed around their fields, asking God’s protection and blessing on the crops that were just beginning to sprout.

The Latin word rogare means “to ask”, thus these were “rogation” processions. The tradition grew of using processional litanies, often around the parish boundaries, for the blessing of the land. These processions concluded with a mass. The Rogation procession was suppressed at the Reformation, but it was restored in 1559. The poet George Herbert interpreted the procession as a means of asking for God’s blessing on the land, of preserving boundaries, of encouraging fellowship between neighbours with the reconciling of differences, and of charitable giving to the poor. The tradition of ‘beating the bounds’ has been preserved in some communities. In the latter   a group of old and young members of the community would walk the boundaries of the parish, usually led by the parish priest and church officials, to share the knowledge of where they lay, and to pray for protection and blessings for the lands. Others maintain the traditional use of the Litany within worship. In more recent times, the scope of Rogation has been widened to include petition for the world of work and for accountable stewardship, and prayer for local communities, whether rural or urban.

The Sunday before the Rogation Days came to be considered a part of Rogationtide (or “Rogantide”) and was known as Rogation Sunday. The Gospel formerly appointed for that day was from John 16, where Jesus tells his disciples to ask, and ye shall receive.

---

Lectionary Easter 6, Year C, May 26

I.Theme –   God dwells with God’s people.

 ” John the Evangelist” – Cimabue (1301-1302)

The lectionary readings are here  or individually:

Old Testament – Acts 16:9-15
Psalm – Psalm 67
Epistle – Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
Gospel – John 14:23-29
Gospel – John 5:1-9

Today’s readings remind us that God dwells with God’s people. In Acts, Paul’s preaching brings about the conversion of Lydia, who opens her home to Paul and Timothy. John, in his Revelation, imagines life in the new Jerusalem, where the lord will be our temple, our sun and moon, our life. In the gospel, Jesus promises us the continuing presence of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit.

It’s clear from our Christian Scriptures that the historical Jesus was deeply concerned his ministry be carried on after his death and resurrection. That’s the problem: how do we know what Jesus practically wants us to do in our everyday lives? He certainly didn’t give his followers a step by step journal outlining what he expected. He simply gave them the Holy Spirit, his own Spirit which would not only “remind” us of the things he told his original disciples, but would also “teach” us.

As we prepare for Pentecost, in a sense we are preparing for the renewal of the Holy Spirit. God’s love is powerful and transforming. People we would never expect, like Lydia—a woman who made money by her own means and seemed to have a satisfying life—she was still yearning for more. The man who waited beside the pool for years in the second Gospel of John reading had to help break down the walls of oppression himself before he could escape the oppression that kept him from the healing waters.

From John’s Gospel , we know that the Holy Spirit is working among us and reminding us of what we know, assuring us that we are part of something greater than ourselves, reminding us that God’s love is with us when we love Jesus. And we love Jesus by keeping his words—living out his commandment to love one another.

As we prepare for Pentecost, however, we are preparing for a revival, a renewal, a re-appearing of the Spirit in our lives. Perhaps the Spirit has never left us and has never left the world, but in preparing for it to come again, perhaps we will find the Spirit at work in us in a new way

Read more from the lectionary

---