Frontpage, March 7, 2021

March 7 – Third Sunday in Lent

March 7 – 11:00am, Morning Prayer – Join here at 10:30am for gathering – service starts at 11am Meeting ID 834 7356 6532 Password 748475

March 7 – 7:00pm, Compline – Join here at 6:30am for gathering – service starts at 7pm Meeting ID: 878 7167 9302 Passcode: 729195

---

March 8 – 6:30am – Be Still – Silent Prayer Meeting ID: 879 8071 6417 Passcode: 790929 Every Monday in Lent

March 10 – 10:00am – Ecumenical Bible Study through Zoom

March 10 – 5:00pm – 6:30pm, Village Dinner – “Chicken and Rice”

---

March 14 – Fourth Sunday in Lent

March 14 – 11:00am Morning Prayer – Join here at 10:30am for gathering – service starts at 11am Meeting ID 834 7356 6532 Password 748475

March 14 – 7:00pm, Compline – Join here at 6:30am for gathering – service starts at 7pm Meeting ID 834 7356 6532 Password 748475

---

This was an ECW project on May 1 to deliver vegetable soup to 18 families in the area that we have not seen as much during the pandemic. Andrea also made chicken soup and Catherine braided bread.

Read more…

---

---

Lent 4, March 14, "Mothering Sunday"

The fourth Sunday in Lent is traditionally known as “Mothering Sunday” or Refreshment Sunday. In some parts of Great Britain, the custom was to return to the “mother church” or the cathedral for a special service on this day, and it also became customary to celebrate or pay special respect to one’s own mother on this day, a sort of Anglican “Mother’s Day.”

Another custom is the relaxation of austere Lenten observances on this day, the baking of simnel cakes (light fruit cakes covered in marzipan), and in some places the replacement of purple robes and liturgical hangings with rose-colored ones. Simnel cakes are called such because of the fine flour (Latin "simila") they were made of.  
 

Children of all ages were expected to pay a formal visit to their mothers and to bring a Simnel cake as a gift. In return, the mothers gave their children a special blessing. This custom was so well-established that masters were required to give servants enough time off to visit out-of-town mothers – provided the trip did not exceed 5 days! This holiday became Mother’s Day in America.

A recipe for Simnel cake is here. 

---

Lent at St. Peter’s, 2021

This is a central hub for Lent articles and activities.

New videos from the “Come, Pray” series are added weekly. The one for Lent 3 is at “Praying the Sacrament” for which is about the Eucharist.

We are also adding the series from the Diocese of Atlanta on “5 Lenten Questions”. The first question is “How to Move Closer to God” and this week “What to do When God is Silent?” . The link to the series is here. Don’t miss the reflection guide that is a part of the series.

---

Lent 4, Year B Lectionary Sunday, March 14, 2021 

I. Theme –   Rebellion and Redemption

 "Saving grace to all humankind"  – stained glass, Washington Cathedral

The lectionary readings are here  or individually:

Old Testament – Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm – Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 Page 746, BCP
Epistle –Ephesians 2:1-10
Gospel – John 3:14-21 

We hear of snakes in the desert (Numbers 21, John 3:14), shipwrecks at sea (Psalm 107), and grace, faith, and good works (Ephesians 2). In the midst of all this is the most well-known verse in the Bible, John 3:16.

This week of Lent, we take a slight break from the journey through the covenants of the Hebrew Scriptures. Instead, we read this strange story in Numbers, in which the people one last time complain about the journey to the promised land. The formula occurs for the final time: the people complain, God gets angry, God sends some sort of plague or force against the people to dwindle their numbers, the people cry out to Moses for help, Moses calls out to God, and God responds to Moses, relenting from whatever misfortune has occurred and offering deliverance. In this case, poisonous snakes are sent, and the remedy is for Moses to lift up a bronze serpent on a pole, and whoever lifts their eyes up to the pole would live if they were bitten by the serpent. We are reminded that God’s desire for us is always life, not death, and restoration, not punishment.

Psalm 107 reminds us that God brings deliverance to all, even those who sin and go astray. God always provides a way when we seek it. The psalmist sings the story of the people of Israel, and sings our story–when we sin, we are not well–it is as if we are sick, and God brings healing and restoration, hope and a way home.

John 3:14-21 begins by echoing the passage from Numbers. It seems a strange reference, but the writer of John is linking how the people’s only way of hope was to look up to the serpent, and now their only way of hope is to look to Jesus, who will be raised up on a cross as well as raised up from the dead.

So many of us have memorized John 3:16 from our youth, but have forgotten John 3:17, in which we are reminded that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save the world. Jesus goes on to share that there is condemnation for those who reject the light of God, but that God’s desire is not rejection but salvation. God’s desire for us is to live into God’s light and become light in the world, not to live in darkness, where we know only ourselves, focus only on our own desires and own gain, but in the light, we see the needs of our brothers and sisters and see the world God has created, as well as God’s desire for us, which is light, life, and love.

Ephesians 2:1-10 reminds us of the darkness of the world–the sin that we have lived in is the sin of our own desires for our own self-satisfaction. Sin leads us to death, but God has given us the great gift of Jesus, who gives us the promise of new life now and the hope of resurrection. We are reminded that in God’s creation, we were created good, and that God has created us in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life (vs. 10).

The way of the world is sin that leads to death. When we desire only to seek self-satisfaction, our own success and gain, we are dead to the world’s pain, dead to the suffering of others, and dead to relationships. We cannot seek relationship with God when we have no relationships with others. But when we repent–we turn away from sin, turn towards the way of God, care for our neighbors and those in need, live in the way of Christ and not for our own gain–we are alive. We live in the light of God. We remember our true created intention: to do good works, which we were created to do.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (vs. 8). We need to remember the great verses of John 3:16-17–God sent us the greatest gift, God’s only son, Jesus, not to condemn the world, but that we might be saved through Christ. It is a gift. For there is nothing we can do to earn grace, and yet there is nothing we can do to be separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
 

Read more about the Lectionary…  

---

Old Testament: "Lifted Up"

Lifted up

The verses before the familiar John 3:16 recall the text from Numbers 21 that is the Lent 4B reading from Hebrew scripture. Moses is instructed to make a metal snake and place it on a pole. That episode is what is called to mind before we are reminded of how much God loved the world (John 3:13-22).

Mount Nebo is an elevated ridge or hill approximately 2680 feet above sea level in what is now western Jordan. There are great views from the summit providing a panorama of the Holy Land and, to the north, a more limited view of the River Jordan Valley. According to scholars, Mount Nebo is where Moses was given a view of the promised land given to the Jews by God. "And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho." (Deuteronomy 34:1).

Today, atop Mount Nebo is a sculpture by Italian artist Giovanni Fantoni. Mount Nebo is identified in the last chapter of Deuteronomy as the vantage point from which Moses is given a view into the Promised Land. Fantoni’s sculpture, called the Brazen Serpent Sculpture (also Serpent Cross Sculpture), illustrates the story from Numbers but overlays it with Christ’s crucifixion. The large metal piece features simplified forms expressed through various textures, lines and combinations of forms.

---

Thoughts on…John 3:16

1. David Lose "John 3:16 – God’s Offensive Love"

John 3:16, everyone’s favorite Bible verse. But I’ve wondered whether, if people thought about what this verse says for just a little longer than it takes to read a bumper sticker, it might just prove to be one of our least favorite verses in the Bible. Let me explain.

Jesus articulates in this statement what Luther called “the Gospel in a nutshell” – that God is fundamentally a God of love, that love is the logic by which the kingdom of God runs, and that God’s love trumps everything else, even justice, in the end.

I realize not everyone reads it this way. After all, Jesus says “everyone who believes…” will eternal life, which perhaps implies a different outcome for those who don’t believe. But read on, for in the next verse Jesus states that, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Period. Moreover, the “judgment” to come is not punishment but simply the crisis that befalls those who will not come out of the darkness for fear of the light. It is not judgment as punishment, but judgment as crisis, as tragedy, as loss. God comes in love to redeem such loss, turn such tragedy into victory, and demonstrate true power through sheer vulnerability and sacrifice.

Read more …

2.  Lawrence 

Jesus, John tells us, was responsible for creation. The purpose of the Incarnation was to save creation, not save us from it! Salvation is about Life with God in this world. Now, of course, this life is not all there is. But eternal life is primarily about the Life of God and life with God – what John calls “Life in all its abundance” (10:10). What the cross points to is that Life and God is to be found precisely in the places and moments of deepest darkness and hopelessness. The Life of God – the Light of Christ – is to be found where it has no right being! It is a Life that is stronger than death – strong enough to embrace it and rob it of its power. That is why the Light of Christ shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never been able to put it out (1:5)!

Jesus is quite explicitly the pre-existent Son of God from all eternity in John’s theology (cf John 1: 1-3). In 3:13 (the verse preceding the lectionary reading) he is the One who has “descended from heaven” (ie “come down”). This is Incarnation – God walking among us. Think about it in this way for as moment: the serpent is a symbol of death – and so are human beings! They symbolise darkness, lostness, rebellion, sin and death! And God, in order to save us, is to be found as a human being! In other words, the story of God’s salvation – from Exodus to Incarnation – is the story of God entering into lostness and redeeming it. And in the same way, the lifting up of Jesus on the cross is both the symbol of the very depths to which humanity sinks (the most potent symbol of evil) and the sign and symbol of Life! In other words, both the serpent and the crucified Jesus become the means of Life because God is there! They don’t show God’s pious horror and avoidance of the messiness and darkness of human living, but God’s embracing of it in order to save us. God, in love, embraces what is utterly opposite to God – suffering and death.

3. Dale Bruner

In his commentary on John, Dale Bruner points out that he once saw John 3:16 laid out as follows as a way to highlight the amazing power in this most famous of Bible verses:

“God ……………………………………………………….……….The greatest subject ever
  So (much)…………………………………………………….….The greatest extent ever Loved………………………………………………………..………The greatest affection ever
  The world (kosmos)…………………………….…… ..…….The greatest object ever
  That He gave His One-and-Only Son,………………… The greatest gift ever
  So that every single individual, whoever,……………. The greatest opportunity ever
  Who is [simply] entrusting oneself to him……………  The greatest commitment ever 
 Would never be destroyed, ………………………………… The greatest rescue ever
 “But would even now have a deep, lasting Life.” ……The greatest promise ever 

4. Marilyn Salmon

John 3:16 is a good interpretive lens into the gospel. John begins with echoes of Genesis (1:1) and the goodness of God’s creation, the world, all that is in it. That note is sounded again so clearly here. For the sake of this world, God gives his most cherished beloved son. Any parent knows that the love for one’s child is so great one might sacrifice oneself for a child. In this human experience we grasp God’s self-giving love for us, giving us the incomparable gift of salvation, life forever through his beloved Son.

How else to respond but to love and cherish the world and every creature in it as beloved of God. If we take this response seriously, it will be an all-consuming challenge. We might take it in the direction of global warming and care for the earth. Or we might tackle poverty or hunger in light of the abundance most of us enjoy. Or advocate for peaceful resolution of differences.

Opportunities stretch from our doorstep around the globe. We might conclude that we are too busy to make it our business to judge who is saved or not, condemned or not. We might instead accept John’s challenge to followers of Jesus in his community as our own, that is moving outside our comfort zone to make a public confession of our faith

5. Barbara Brown Taylor   

" And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.""

Barbara Brown Taylor in Learning to Walk in the Darkness makes a compelling case for the importance and beauty of darkness, both physical and spiritual. She writes, "…darkness turns out to be as essential to our physical well-being as light. We not only need it to sleep well, we need it to be well." Like stars in the night sky, sometimes we need to be surrounded by darkness in order to be seen and known.  

It is no surprise that darkness does not have a good reputation in our scriptures. Darkness is scary. But does that make it evil? Not necessarily. It is scary because it contains the unknown. Unknown things are neither bad nor good; they are simply mysteries. When Jesus says that he is the light of the world, I believe he means, "I am someone you can know, in the midst of all the things you cannot know."

In Jesus, our unknowable God becomes known to us. He is the light of the world. But before we can know him fully, we will be in darkness. We need darkness in order to appreciate light. It was scary in the darkness of the tomb, but that is where the resurrection happened.

---