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Written by: Guest User
God loves you. Love God and love your neighbor. Fear not. Peace be with you. Those were the first things I learned about God. Simple messages, but not always easy. In my early years, those Sunday school messages that God loves you and is always with you helped me through some scary times and some lonely times. It’s a comfort to know that when you’re alone you’re never truly alone.
In preparing mine, I reflected on at least a dozen years of memories of Sunday School, church camp, youth group and folk group at Grace Methodist Church in Wilmington, Delaware. It was here in a very uni-cultural, middle-class, Protestant, largely white environment that I acquired the basics for my understanding of Christian faith and community.
Greater maturity in my own spirituality came naturally with reading, prayer and life experience. A good part of the latter involved coming into contact with a wider, more multicultural society. As a Boy Scout, I interacted with other Protestant, Jewish, Catholic, and Baha’i Scouts and Scouters. We obviously shared ethical values in Scouting, and discussions I had with them about their faith beliefs caused me to conclude that their own religious convictions, sometimes quite different from my own, contributed to this similarity in personal ethics. This pushed me in the direction of considering how the God of my upbringing might be understood entirely differently by other faithful people. I found this to be reassuring, as I had struggled with the thought of people whom I knew and respected being cut off from God’s grace and the opportunity to abide in God simply because they believed differently from me.
This week St. Luke’s Adopt-a-Kindergartener program delivered 27 backpacks to Bucknell Elementary, and 10 to the United Community Early Learning Center. Teacher’s supplies, including paper towels, Kleenex and freezer bags, also were delivered to both schools.
This past Sunday St. Luke’s had a wonderful celebration of Pentecost with our Ghanaian congregation including a love feast. It was a powerful image of what we celebrate on Pentecost, the birth of the Church, the whole Church in all its diversity and beauty. It was wonderful to intermingle with our siblings and experience a different culture, worship style, music, language and tasty food. This is part of experiencing the diverse beauty God has made the Church to be.
Let’s be honest. It’s hard to get into the customary pre-Christmas frenzy. When I read that 795,000 people have died from Covid in this country alone, it’s hard to get excited about what’s under the tree. Then there are the worldwide deaths and the mess in Washington.
I will admit my playlist is retro because I have never gotten over the sixties. However, some years ago I found a singer named Ted Small. One of his songs has this line: “When gravity is getting you down, look up.” While walking around the neighborhood this week, I listened to this song, and I thought of the words in our Eucharist, “Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord.” I realized I need a reorientation.
The parable of the weeds sown among the wheat is often used as a way to talk about discernment. Our world is filled with situations like the one Jesus describes, where a person sows a field with grain and “the evil one” comes and sows weeds among the wheat. Both grow up and are indistinguishable until they are ready for harvest. Jesus tells his disciples that it is better to leave the two together until it is clear which is which.
One of the most interesting things about discernment, or the process of knowing God's Spirit, is that it is rarely linear. As one walks with Jesus, praying, reading Scripture and working in community, the path forward bends, sometimes so much that we can't see the end. It is like this with parables as well. The stories Jesus tells in the synoptic Gospels about seeds, wheat, bread and other ordinary things are indeed about those things, but the deeper meanings of them are often obscure.
The commitee shares its priorities for planning the early stages of re-gathering.
Please join us for morning, noonday, and morning prayer during Lent.
Topic: Tuesday and Thursday Compline
Time: 8 pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82213028698
Meeting ID: 822 1302 8698
Password: 100557
The practices of the Christian life give us the order and structure to deal with the anxiety and fear that come from shifts as dramatic as we are going through now. Like structures built to withstand earthquakes, we will need to have a good foundation and the flexibility to move with the trembling around us.
Today (May 1) we celebrate the feast of the apostles Phillip and James. These saints are often mistaken for two others: Phillip the Deacon and Evangelist and James the brother of Jesus. We know more about Phillip than we do about James, but together they are an example of facilitating others’ coming to know Jesus. Their witness is sometimes obscured by associations with other people, but they are important companions of Jesus who show us discernment and the ability to seize the right moment to bring others to Christ.
In this video, Veronika asks St. Luker's to reflect on ways to get out of the Slough of Despond ( an image from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress), which is an allegory for the disillusionment one may feel at certain early points in a long difficult journey, like a pilgrimage or a response to a long-lasting crisis. Bunyan's character gets out of the Slough only after accepting help from another person (usefully named "Help" in the story).
Join Tom Hargrove, The Rev. Richard Jones, and others for Morning Prayer and a reflection time.
Bishop Goff has extended her direction that no churches worship in person until after Easter. While we are not able to worship in person, St. Luke’s will continue worshipping online via Zoom and the office will continue to be open for phone calls and limited visits.
You can read the bishop’s message about Holy Week and Easter here.
I’ve always had a bit of an unruly will, and it has been more difficult than usual to obey needed restrictions these past couple of weeks. During a period of self-isolation because of my brief lunch with a colleague who tested positive for Covid-19, and now due to the governor’s orders, I have been mostly in my house for seventeen days. We’ve been worshiping online each week, but I long to see all of you in person. I’ve been praying to receive “my daily bread” from God, but fasting from the “Bread of Life” as we have not been able to share the Eucharist on three Sundays. I am doing what the public health authorities say I must to help slow the spread of the coronavirus that causes covid-19, but I don’t have to like it. You don’t have to like it either. What we are going through this Lent is hard, but it is not unprecedented in our Christian history.
This week, Bishop Susan Goff recorded a video meditation, titled “Let our prayers and our praise of God become contagious.” You can view it by clicking on the image below.
Click on the above image to be taken to the video
We are the family of God, who has adopted us, choosing people to be his beloved ones before the world was even created. Because of the love of God that has chosen us, we choose to care for others by continuing to suspend our in person services until after Easter.
From the Board of Directors of Saint Luke’s Day School.
St. Luke's Day School is closed effective today, March 13th, 2020, in accordance with Bishop Goff and the Episcopal Church, St. Luke's Church leadership and the SLDS Parent Trustees. Along with the Church, we will consider reopening March 25th, 2020. However, we will reassess what public health officials are recommending at that time.
The Diocese of Virginia has made a page of resources related to COVID-19. You can access it here:
http://www.thediocese.net/news-and-events/covid-19-resources/
More information from St. Luke’s about online worship and how to best stay connected while we are not meeting in person will be coming later today.
