“Mothering Sunday”, traditionally on Lent 4 brings Anglicans back to their mother church and/or to visit their mother. It’s the British version of Mother’s Day.The mother idea is contrasted with the Gospel’s focus on the Prodigal Son where the Father goes all out to welcome his wayward son back to the family. The altar color also changes to pink in many churches.
A busy week with the Way of Love breakfast (March 27), Estudio Biblico (March 29), Work Day (March 30) and dedication of a donated piano (March 31). The choir provided the following anthem – “Make me a channel of your peace”:
Pictures and text from this Sunday, March 31, 2019
The Week Ahead…
April 1 – 12:00pm-1:30pm – Hymnody with Susan Onderdonk
April 3 – 10:00am-12pm – Ecumenical Bible Study
April 5 – 6:00pm-8pm – Spanish Bible Study. We start with a meal and have a combination English/Spanish Bible Study
April 7 – 10am – Children’s Education Living the Good News
April 7 – 10am – Adult Education – 1st Corinthians. Learning about Roman food with Elizabeth Heimbach
April 7 – 11am – Holy Eucharist, Fifth Sunday in Lent
April 7 – 12pm – Pot Luck Luncheon
Sunday, April 7 Readings and Servers
Lenten Links
We have a dedicated Lenten part of the website – Lent at St. Peter’s 2019 which a number of resources.
Christian Ed during Lent
Sundays in Lent, 10am
The book we are using is “Creating a Scene in Corinth.” That’s very true as we are creating a simulation of the society.
The participants divide into four factions – those favoring Paul, Apollos, Peter, and the Christ group (1 Corinthians 1:12). A brief description of the background and nature of the groups gives the participants a sense of their role in the recreation. The characters represent a cross-section of Corinthian society: they include slaves and freeborn, widows and singles, and a number who have suffered deprivation and sexual abuse – much like typical society in that day. The authors encourage the readers/actors to respond to the oral text of 1 Corinthians as if the church hadn’t yet solidified its authority as God’s revelation (as the original listeners did).
In many ways, the church at Corinth was a mess. partisanship, with the Corinthians factionalizing behind rival leaders (1:10–4:21; 16:10–18); incest (5:1–13); prostitution (6:12–21); celibacy within marriage (7:1–7); Christians married to one another asking about divorce (7:8–11, 39); Christians married to pagans asking about divorce (7:12–16); questions surrounding marriage and remarriage (7:25–40); lawsuits (6:1–11).
There were worship issues, including idolatry (8:1–11:1); concerns about women praying and prophesying in immodest ways (11:2–16); chaos in worship, with speaking in tongues and competing voices (chapter 14); inequality in the communal meal (11:17–34); denials of the bodily resurrection of Jesus and of Christians (15:1–58)
Corinthian Links
Next Week – April 7 Tainted Food and other Social Dilemmas (Elizabeth Heimbach will talk about Roman food) (1 Cor 8,10)
Fridays in Lent, 6pm-8pm
This class is an experiment in outreach to our Spanish brothers and sisters.
St Peter’s is one of six churches around the country that will be participating in an experimental Latino ministry for Lent. TryTank is providing all material for a Spanish Bible study (Estudio Biblico) and the Bible Study will be offered at St Peter’s on Friday nights in Lent from 6-8PM, beginning on Friday, March 15th. Claudia Villa, a fluent Spanish speaker, will be helping Catherine with this experimental project.
We need help organizing this class and promoting. Email Catherine with your ideas.
Way of Love breakfast, March 27
Five people gathered on the last Wednesday in March for the first Way of Love breakfast at St Peter’s. As you can see in the picture a number of vultures (about 30) were also interested in the subject (or just maybe the breakfast!).
The Way of Love came from a July 5, 2018 sermon by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry to General Convention meeting in Austin, Tx introduced the “Way of Love”, spiritual practices to “help our church to go deeper as the Jesus Movement, not just in word, but not just in deed, either, but for real. How do we help our folk to throw themselves into the arms of Jesus.” There are 7 practices – Turn, Learn, Pray, Worship, Bless, Go, Rest.
After enjoying a leisurely breakfast together, we worshiped and then talked about the purpose of meeting as a small group for the next nine months. We talked about rules of life working like trellises in our lives, providing structure and shape for the spiritual growing that we hope to do as individuals and for the work of God in this church. The hope is to deepen our relationships with God and with one another.
In the month ahead, some people will be working on praying more consistently (Pray) and another person plans to spend more time with scripture (Learn). We plan to be accountable to one another and be a source of encouragement to one another.
The April Way of Love breakfast will take place on Wednesday, April 24th at 8AM in the Parish House. All are welcome.
The links below get you started in the Way of Love. #1 includes Bishop Curry’s sermon and general information and links.
#2 provides examples on how to integrate the Way of Love into your daily life.
Links –
1. Way of Love introduction
2. Integrating the Way of Love into your daily life
So How’s Your Lent Going ?
We are halfway through Lent with Lent 4, 5 and Palm Sunday to go before getting to Holy Week.
So what are you doing for Lent and how it is going? What should you be doing? Lent is a journey – part of it is looking inside, removing things and taking on new things – building up. The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby suggested the following in 2015- "At the individual level it draws us to see what we have been saved from, and what we are being saved for."
"A good Lent makes space for hope by leading us afresh into encounter with the holiness of God." A good Lent starts with us.
"A good Lent begins with paying attention, with beginning to make straight the way of the Lord by listening… We cannot listen while we fill our ears with our own self-confidence and our own self-worth.
"So, how do we listen? Read Luke’s gospel, taking a small chunk each day, and ask yourself as you read it three simple questions: What does it say? What does it mean? What am I going to do about it? Very simple.
"And what do I do about it? Ask yourself: “How do I make my life more open to Christ because of what this is saying to me?”
"For myself, such reading is part of my own daily discipline of prayer, which includes a lot of other things as well. Time is spent and at the end of jotting down whatever banal or very occasionally less banal thoughts I have, I always put in a couple of lines of what I can do about it.
"Sometimes it is very practical writing to someone or speaking to someone who I may have offended. It may be very simple, merely saying a prayer of sorry, or thank you, or petition for something of which I need reminding.
"A good Lent must overflow in generosity. How do we live a good Lent with those whom we live with? The bumps in the road we need to smooth out for the Lord to come? Relationships that have been neglected and therefore are full of clutter that needs removing?
"They can be very difficult: broken relationships may be easily mendable, little irritations – or it may be that we need, in a good Lent, to take the first step to clearing away a major landslide.
"How do you do it in practice? Openness, transparency, and also go back and use the same approach to scripture as I suggested a few moments ago. One has to treat each person and situation different
"Let me suggest one other. As individuals, even short periods of complete silence during Lent, fasting from noise and conversation and distraction, will be of great value. How little we do of it.
"I’ve had to learn, and I’m still very much learning, that I do not need to do anything in that time. I need only to be willing to listen. It is a time of meditation and reflection, of discovering the God who – all the time – is saying: “Here I am.”
"The discipline of a good Lent is to find again how we welcome the stranger, how we practice hospitality, how we listen.
"A good Lent starts within us. It moves through those most closely around us. It comes into the church and it must be so generously experienced that it overflows into society. We will not really have a Good Lent until that chain is complete, and for that, we pray, may your Kingdom come."
Lectionary, April 7, 2019
I. Theme – The celebration of new life on the road.
“Christ in the House of Mary and Martha" – Jan Vermeer (1654-55)
"But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm – Psalm 126
Epistle – Philippians 3:4b-14
Gospel – John 12:1-8
Today’s readings celebrate the new life God grants through Christ. Isaiah speaks of the “new thing” God will do—life-giving, restorative, renewing. Paul asserts that all his personal achievements are worthless compared to the new life to be gained in Christ. Jesus reveals that his death and resurrection not only invite judgment but call us to compassion, forgiveness and conversion—that is, to new life!
Over the past weeks we have been looking at the pattern in the readings of the Lectionary during Lent. One aspect of that pattern has been the recurring notion of pilgrimage – an active journey to a holy site, a journey from tyranny into freedom, an interior journey into our own faith, or the journey from spiritual moment to spiritual moment, such as the Stations of the Cross. In Judaism (as well as in later Christianity) we hear of such journeys.
The Bible sees the journey of Abraham and Sarah from the Ur of the Chaldeans as not a mere relocation, but a journey guided and informed by God. Similarly the journey of Israel from Egypt to the promised land is not only a political reality but is peppered with spiritual moments of learning at various points along the way. With the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the people saw an opportunity to make a pilgrimage to a holy place, learn and experience there, and to return home. Even before this Temple, shrines and holy places in ancient Israel drew pilgrims to experience God on the journey. The Psalms of Ascent (Psalm 120-134) literally give voice to the sacred journey of people to the Temple and worship.
Since Luke 9 in the Gospel Jesus has "set his face to Jerusalem", his final pilgrimage. He has been tested after his baptism in Lent 1 by the devil. In Lent 2, Jesus reminds his audience that, as a prophet, his destiny awaits him in Jerusalem after being warned that Herod wants to kill him. During Lent 3, continued his teachings on repentance and confronted his critics with the Prodigal son in Lent 4. The hope of Christ gets connected in the resurrection and the life.
Christians began their own journeys; Paul’s being the most notable as he moved from place to place honoring the Gospel. Early Christians traveled back to the source as we read about the journeys of Origin, Helen, and Jerome. During this season, it might be interesting to read about the pilgrimage of Egeria, a Gallic woman, to Jerusalem during the Holy Week of (ca.) 381. Later Christians would journey to not only Jerusalem but to Santiago de Compostela, Canterbury, Rome, and many other places. The journey is the heightened human experience, often written down for the benefit of others. Let us continue our journey during this Lent.
Tomb, Perfume, Feet, Devil – John 12:1-8 (April 7)
John’s Gospel is a collection of signs and symbols. In particular, John 12, Mary Annoints Jesus at Bethany, in this week before Palm Sunday and Passover concentrates on life and death. Take four seemingly unconnected words – Tomb, Perfume, Feet, and Devil within this scripture and their meanings are intertwined:
1 Tomb – Passover is near, and so too is Jesus’ "hour" (see 13:1). He spends time with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus soon after the pivotal scene of Lazarus’s revivification (11:1-44). That is the "sign" that brings many to believe in him (11:45; 12:9-11), many to flock to him (12:17-19), and others to plot his death (11:47-53). When Jesus mentions his burial in 12:7, this confirms that his end is coming. Yet Lazarus’s presence at the table confirms that death does not speak the final word.
2 Perfume. Jesus forges the connection between the anointing and his burial in 12:7 Jesus suggests that Mary’s keeping the perfume in her possession and using it on him now have consequently achieved a greater, more meaningful purpose that she perhaps intended: announcing the nearness of Jesus’ death and preparing for his burial.
3 Feet – Mary’s wiping of Jesus’ feet prefigures the time when he will wipe the feet of his disciples (13:5). This reveals her as a model disciple, for the washing and wiping of feet expresses a unity with Jesus (13:8) and reflects his command (13:14-15).
4 Devil – Readers know from 6:70-71 that Judas is "a devil," but John chooses this point in the narrative to reveal him as a thief (compare 13:29).
Back to the words. You can connect the following-
Tomb and perfume – The sweet smell of Mary’s perfume counters the stench of Lazarus’s tomb (11:39). Life and death, wholeness and corruption remain contrasted throughout both scenes.
Feet and Devil represent the contrast between Mary and Judas This creates a clear opposition between him and Mary. He is false; she is true. He is greedy and self-serving; she is generous and ebullient in devotion.
2. Contact the Rev Catherine Hicks, Rector 4. April, 2019 Server Schedule 5. Latest Newsletter-the Parish Post (April, 2019) 6. Calendar 9. Latest Sunday Bulletin (April 7, 2019 11:00am), and Sermon (March 31, 2019) 10. Recent Services: |
Block Print by Mike Newman
Projects
| Colors | Season | Dates | |
|---|---|---|---|
| White | Gold | Christmas | Dec 25-Jan 5 |
| White | Gold | Epiphany | Jan 6 |
| Green | After Epiphany | Jan 7-March 2 | |
| White | Gold | Transfiguration | Mar 3-5 |
| Purple | Ash Wednesday | Mar 6-9 | |
| Purple | Lent | Mar 6-Apr 20 | |
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, March 31 – April 7
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31
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John Donne, Priest, 1631 |
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1
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Frederick Denison Maurice, Priest, 1872 |
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2
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James Lloyd Breck, Priest, 1876 |
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3
3 |
Mary of Egypt, Hermit & Penitent, c.421 Richard, Bishop of Chichester, 1253 |
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4
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Martin Luther King, Jr., Pastor & Martyr, 1968 |
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5
5 |
Harriet Starr Cannon, Monastic, 1896 Pandita Mary Ramabai, Missionary, 1922 |
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6
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Daniel G. C. Wu, Priest and Missionary, 1956 |
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7
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Tikhon, Patriarch & Ecumenist, 1925 |
Whilst the night takes a spin
