9 am Eucharist and 11am Morning prayer on a day that started out rainy and ended up a clear day. We had 10 at 9am and an even 40 at 11am. We welcomed Jim and BJ Anderson back from Texas during the winter but were disturbed to hear about his experience with hail in the winter.

Morning Prayer featured a sermon by Jackie Collins on her experiences with Young Life in King George. Young Life is an interdenominatal group of students who discuss religious issues as they affect young students.  

In particular she belongs to the campaigners subgroup that features more Bible reading and discussion.

Using two chairs she described the role of sin and then reconciliation with God.

She then went into then challenge of dealing with Tyler's near death experience while keeping her faith. Young Life obviously helped deal with the ordeal. 

The Gospel deal with sherpherding and obviously the adult leaders of the organization provide an example of that with the youth.

The children's choir also performed "Jesus showed us God’s Love" at the offertory. The words were printed in the bulletin . They were accompanied by Catherine Hicks and Becky Fisher. Nancy Long is also involved in their training.  The children's choir meet three Wed a month for song, fellowship and other activities. 

Catherine also recognized Tierra Carter for her donation of a Bald Cyprus tree and Nancy Wick for some Lenten Roses. The tree show above was planted near the river and the roses in back of the sacristy
 

The joint ECW/Evening ECW luncheon was held at Lynn's Tavern after church. 14 attended. They resolved to share meeing minutes with each other to improve communications between them. Marian above is welcoming to the luncheon

The scripture readings revolved around Jesus as shepherd and recognizing the role of a shepherd in the other readings.

People in Jesus time knew sheep. Even they made their living as a carpenter or fisher, they knew or watched the shepherds all of the time, moving the sheep and goats from the pens to the fields. They drank the milk of those animals, turned that milk into cheese, and eventually ate the animals. Those animals provided not just daily nourishment, they were essential for important religious rituals.  

The scripture this week is part of the task written in the Gospel of John to understand who Jesus was.  Over and over again people were trying to understand who Jesus was and where he came from. "Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? . . . Who do you claim to be?" (John 8:53) Then, after being driven out of the temple, Jesus passed a blind man begging. As a sign of who he was, Jesus explained that the man's blindness was not caused by his sin or the sin of his parents. Rather, "he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him" (John 9:3).

The good shepherd decides who is in the sheepfold, we do not. "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold." (John 10:16) The Pharisees and the disciples alike thought that they knew who the chosen ones of God were. But this shepherd is telling them, and telling us, that there will be "one flock, one shepherd" and it is God, in Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, not we, who bring together that flock Jesus' lengthy exploration of what it means to be and who is the good shepherd is a response to a group of Pharisees. 

What does it mean to be a sheep of Jesus' flock?  As the sermon states "This good shepherd provides for our needs, revives us, guides us, accompanies us through the shadowy places in our lives, disciplines us, comforts us, sets a table for us, and anoints us with his goodness and his mercy."  

It means that we enter through his gate. Jesus is the way to salvation. We know his voice and follow him. He cares for us, keeping us safe. And when we wander away, which we know we do all too often, he comes searching for us. It's an up close, personal relationship.

The sermon proposed another "I AM" for Jesus.  "I AM the bridge. Jesus is like that for us-- a bridge between this life and the next.  The voice of Jesus never changes—Jesus calls us now, and someday, each one of us will hear that familiar and loving voice calling us across the bridge that carries us over the valley of the shadow of death into new life.  Jesus laid down his own life to become the bridge under our feet—as we sang last week"

"Jesus is also the bridge that connects each one of us with the other.  When we listen to his voice, we hear his voice telling us to love one another...  And so, even though we cannot see the destination across the bridge that those we love travel as they cross over the valley of the shadow of death, we know that they are still in the one flock in which we abide.  They have entered into the communion of saints, and they aren’t far away at all. "

The sermon is here. The readings are published as well as the bulletin for 9am and 11am.

The ECM met on March 10th for breakfast and their regularly scheduled monthly meeting. There were nine members present.

Joe Betchy gave the morning devotional which was based on the fourth Chapter of the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians. The main message was an appeal for the church to maintain a new unity and strive towards a complete maturity by rejecting former lifestyles and displaying Christian values of truth, love, forgiveness, and sexual purity. Additionally, work to develop a renewal of family relationships. Joe then lead a discussion of how these principles can be applied to our own families and relationships. Focus on speaking the truth and it’s ok to be angry but do not sin. Do not go to bed angry.

The group discussed the differences they were aware of with Christianity and Islam. In this discussion, Bill Smith introduced the possibility of a several week educational program examining the principles of several religions, but primarily contrasting Christianity and Islam. The group consensus was very favorable to this idea and most wanted to participate if it was scheduled at a time they could attend, maybe a weeknight.

The next ECM meeting will be Saturday morning April 14th. David Beck will lead the devotional. 

Together we celebrated St. Peter's for the work over the last year and realized once again how we have much to be thankful for at St. Peter's!  The Parish meeting was today and it was handled in the context of Catherine's sermon. All of the reports for the meeting can be found here.

First and foremost it's the people. Elizabeth Heimbach, as junior warden, marshalling the Vestry to complete the earthquake repairs quickly but also realizing an opportunity to make our HVAC better and more efficient at the same time. Her report detailed nine other smaller projects  So too in Mark's gospel for today (1:14-21). Jesus took four ordinary men and and made them into extraordinary leaders. (Here are the readings for today).

And it was the Vestry to have intense struggles over these issue but yet coming together to act. They worked as a team. Jesus was not a solo act but one instilling in us as a group to help building the kingdom. So too, must we search out how we are going to contribute towards that process.

We elected Cynthia Fields and Boyd Wisdom to offer their gifts to the Church in the coming years. And they were just received into the Church in 2011!  Catherine gave them a gift to start their Vestry careers - a bottle of aspirin! We also thanked Linda Beck for her leadership as Senior Warden.

One metaphor for St. Peter's is the beating heart. The main function of the heart is to pump blood containing oxygen and nutrients to the body. We do this through our programs described today that go out to a broken world - the community dinners, the donations to groups all over the world, the evangelism that goes for new members, Samaritan's Purse program, a new jail ministry and others. To better coordinate that effort we formed an Outreach Committee.  The Gospel is not about sitting around but going out into the world to transform it.

We recognized Helmut for his role in the evangelism area. Catherine asked those who had been brought to this Church by him and it was a significant number as shown, above.  And she asked those who had brought a friend to St. Peter's to also stand, below, which was also gratifying:

In return that heart must be refreshed from oxygen from the lungs. We renewed ourself by adding a 9am service, healing services during Lent, multiple Easter services, expanded Christian education, book group as well as two new groups - the Evening ECW and the ECM. In particular, both ECW's contributed to the cookbook in 2011 and the ECM, the Transportation in Need List. We also thanked Cookie Davis and Nancy Long for their work in the 175th Church anniversary in 2011.

And we saluted Clarence Kunstmann for helping us fund these initiatives as our treasurer. A pencil sharpener and eraser were his gifts! 

One additional celebration was for the work Helmut did on adding the belfry two years ago. We presented to him a framed list of those who contributed to the project (above). And also in the background of the picture is one of two crosses Helmut made for the church in 2011.

Despite the inclement weather (previous night snow and ice) we had 41 in the service. The interlocking ice crystals on one our bushes is a sign of nature bonded and working together. So too we must. We can change and in our changing, we are responding to God and enabling God to do new and innovating things in our lives and then into the world. This is our hope in 2012.  

An off and on rainy Sunday with 39 in attendance.

The key word of the sermon was "expectant gratitude" with the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman. She came to Jesus asking him to relieve her daughter of a demon. She wasn't a jew and was ignored at first in her plea. "But this woman-- because she was pleading for her daughter—was not about to give up.  She continued this conversation from a place of expectant gratitude....Lord, I am coming to you with the hope and expectancy that you can heal my daughter. And I will be grateful for whatever you do for me.” Her faith led Jesus to heal her daughter.

"How do we live with  expectant gratitude in the midst of the  aggravating and death-dealing situations that all of us face in our lives? We Christians find that we can live with expectant gratitude when we have faith."  A recent Washington Post article was read where people had found banquets of joy in simple things.  "Because when we can see God’s  goodness in a small thing, we know that God’s goodness is also in the big things that we can’t control. We need to search the crumbs under our trables where we might find our banquets."  The full sermon is here . The readings for the week are here as well as the bulletin.

We celebrated Mike's birthday and he explained the new ECM's initiative "Transportation in Need" to enlist volunteers to drive people to medical appointments and for other needs when they cannot drive.  We have 8 people signed up as a result.

We also donated food today and Fred will deliver school supplies to social services on the 15th.