August 23, 2020 – Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Evening Prayer on the River, Aug. 16, 2020
The Week Ahead…
August 23 – Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 23 – 10:00am, Morning Prayer on the River
Bulletin
August 23 – 11:15am – National Cathedral church service online
August 23 – 7:00pm, Evening Prayer on Zoom – Join here at 6:30pm for gathering – service starts at 7pm Meeting ID 882 4567 8370 Password 399302
1. Bulletin for Aug. 23, 7:00pm, Evening Prayer
2. Readings and Prayers Pentecost 12, Aug. 23
August 26 – 10:00am – Ecumenical Bible Study through Zoom
August 30 – Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 30 – 10:00am, Morning Prayer on the River
August 30 – 11:15am – National Cathedral church service online
August 30 – 7:00pm, Evening Prayer on Zoom – Join here at 6:30pm for gathering – service starts at 7pm Meeting ID 834 7356 6532 Password 748475
Raising the Roof on the Pavilion Aug 26, 2020
Thanks to Jim Heimbach for providing both the pictures and video of the event in the link. See the complete article with additional photos and video.
The work has progressed quickly in the last week with the posts and floor added. It was all ready to place the roof on the pavilion Aug 26, 2020 by Chris Flora’s team.
Village Harvest gets a boost in August
Food and Workers
The numbers concerning people and pounds of food are off comparing earlier years but the benchmark of value is there for the typical shopper.
While it is August, we have had 5 months of activity with the Harvest closed from April through June. Numbers served are 489 with 6,625 pounds of food. The numbers are the lowest in five years and pounds is second lowest.
For just Aug., 2020, we had 102 clients compared to 77 last month when we just reopened after being closed for 3 months. 102 is also larger than August a year ago which served 70.
The boost in the article’s title how the food affects the typical shopper. However, the pounds per person averages 13.55 just below 2018, the highest value at 13.67. Also the dollar value per shopper calculated at $6 a pound is $85.35, again just below the high value in 2018 at $85.80.
The costs to the church in 2020 has been $789.22, lower than the two previous year which were over $1,000 but higher than 2016 $669.
Lectionary, Aug. 30 2020, Pentecost 13, Proper 17, Year A
I.Theme – What does God’s Call Mean for Us ?
"Carrying the Cross of Christ"– Gabriel Loire (1904-1996)
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – Jeremiah 15:15-21
Psalm – Psalm 26:1-8 Page 616, BCP
Epistle –Romans 12:9-21
Gospel – Matthew 16:21-28
The lectionary this week is about two questions. “What does God’s call mean for us? What can we expect when we receive God’s call?” The key words this week are integrity(Jeremiah), transformation (Romans) and self-denial(Matthew).
In the Gospel, we are all called to follow Christ to be liberators of others, serving and loving all people, including our enemies, and that as we respond to this call we must be willing to lay our lives down and embrace the inevitable suffering that and sacrifice that will come. Yet, even in the midst of this tough word is a light of hope. It is in this self-giving love that we find our ‘souls’ (our true, God-given selves) and we discover true, abundant life.
Questions of identity from last week continue in the Gospel reading. In Matthew, along with last week’s readings, we find lots of questions about the identity of Jesus . There are the many names given to Jesus – Messiah/Christ, Son of the living God, Son of Man. There is also an identity crisis for Peter, who has gone from the rock on which Jesus’ church will be built, to the Satan who is a stumbling block to Jesus.
The Gospel goes beyond “who he is” last week to consider issues of transformation of “whom they are”. In Matthew, Jesus is trying to turn upside-down the rules people apply when they observe his life, and the life of his followers. Seeing a man die in agony on a cross will be transformed from a sign of shame and failure into a sign of new life and hope.
Our call is to take up the cross, denying ourselves – our self -interest, our own desires, wants and needs. Seeing Jesus’ followers denying their own needs, in order to serve God and other people, will be a sign of true discipleship. What God sees and will judge by is very different from the status and standing of a world obsessed with power and prosperity.
Romans is a laundry list of how one can be transformed so that we can transform our communities. Paul encourages the believers to be committed to a life of love for one another and even for enemies – seeking to bless and not curse, and to conquer evil with good. They are marks of the Christian. Most stretch the love wider – loving enemies, strangers and those who persecute (all of whom may be inside or outside the church).
All of this is quite counter-cultural within Roman society – social status is to be ignored, honor is to be shown to all, vengeance is to be put aside, strangers and enemies are to be welcomed and offered hospitality. And it all comes quick and fast, as short phrases with great energy, explicitly and implicitly invoking zeal and ardent service.
Jeremiah’s proclamation to the people in exile–that Babylon was the instrument of God’s judgment upon the people and that Judah should not resist–caused him to be regarded as a traitor by his own people. He has prayed for his enemies (14:7-11), but they have not listened to God’s message. Now the prophet’s concern for them is exhausted and he cries out for the lord to take vengeance upon them. Jeremiah’s plea for God’s vindication in the Old Testament echoes Jesus’ own suffering in spite of his innocence.
Jeremiah pleads with God to act immediately and decisively on his behalf. The prophet can approach God with such confidence because he has demonstrated fidelity to his God as both a messenger of God’s words, but also in his life.
Whereas Jeremiah approached service to God with an attitude of delight he has only received indignation, anger, and bitterness in return. For this reason the prophet can accuse God of deceiving him in verse.
God reminds Jeremiah that the suffering he has experienced is as advertised. Jeremiah then, is not to crumble in the face of adversity but rather redouble his commitment to being a prophet. Persecution has not derailed God’s promise to deliver and vindicate, and God reminds Jeremiah that his perseverance is the very vehicle by which the people are won over to repentance. In the midst of injustice, Jeremiah is not to allow evil to overcome good. The reward for Jeremiah’s faithful service is not relief from suffering but more service.
The Psalms both express praise for God’s salvation and the plea for God to recognize the innocence of the Psalmist and God’s people – even as Jesus suffered though innocent. Psalm 26:1-8 echoes the lament and call of Jeremiah by the author calling out to God for deliverance, telling God that they have stayed true to God’s ways and that they do not take company with people who have turned away from God’s ways. Psalm 26 is likely best understood as presenting a sobering statement of the requirements for priestly entrance into God’s holy presence.
Read more about the Lectionary…
The Hill of Crosses – a place of "hope, peace, love and sacrifice"
The Hill of Crosses is a pilgrimage site today in northern Lithuania with crosses left from different time periods. It is not certain the origin of leaving crosses on this hill.
From Art in the Christian Tradition. Vanderbilt Divinity Library
"Over the centuries, the place has come to signify the peaceful endurance of Lithuanian Catholicism despite the threats it faced throughout history. After the 3rd partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, Lithuania became part of the Russian Empire. Poles and Lithuanians unsuccessfully rebelled against Russian authorities in 1831 and 1863. These two uprisings are connected with the beginnings of the hill: as families could not locate bodies of perished rebels, they started putting up symbolic crosses in place of a former hill fort.
"When the old political structure of Eastern Europe fell apart in 1918, Lithuania once again declared its independence. Throughout this time, the Hill of Crosses was used as a place for Lithuanians to pray for peace, for their country, and for the loved ones they had lost during the Wars of Independence.
"Most recently, the site took on a special significance during the years 1944–1990, when Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union. Continuing to travel to the Hill and leave their tributes, Lithuanians used it to demonstrate their allegiance to their original identity, religion and heritage. It was a venue of peaceful resistance, although the Soviets worked hard to remove new crosses, and bulldozed the site at least three times (including attempts in 1963 and 1973). There were even rumors that the authorities planned to build a dam on the nearby Kulvė River, a tributary to Mūša, so that the hill would end up under water.
"On September 7, 1993, Pope John Paul II visited the Hill of Crosses, declaring it a place for hope, peace, love and sacrifice. In 2000 a Franciscan hermitage was opened nearby. The interior decoration draws links with La Verna, the mountain where St. Francis received his stigmata. The hill remains under nobody’s jurisdiction; therefore people are free to build crosses as they see fit." [from Wikipedia] — Photo by Ben Beiske.
What does it mean to "take up your cross"?
Jesus uses the cross to represent true discipleship five times (Matt 10:38; 16:24-26; Mark 8:34-35; Luke 9:23-24; 14:27).
Jesus’ declaration of the conditions of discipleship came after he had foretold his death and resurrection. Peter reacted strongly; he took Jesus aside “and began to rebuke him, saying ‘God forbid it, Lord!’” (Matthew 16:22). But Jesus rebuked Peter, calling him “a stumbling block,” for Peter was “setting his mind not on divine things but on human things” (16:23).
The conditions of discipleship also require us to set our minds on divine things. As the nineteenth-century Spanish archbishop and missionary St. Anthony Mary Claret explained:
“The Christian who desires to follow Jesus carrying his cross must bear in mind that the name “Christian” means “bearer or imitator of Christ” and that if he wishes to bear that noble title worthily, he must above all do as Christ charges us in the Gospel; we must oppose or deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow him.” Some couldn’t take it . In fact, John tells us that at this point many turned and went back, and followed him no more, because these words seemed to them harsh and demanding."
There are several concepts:
1. Self-denial – He is not asking us to deny our basic humanity, our personhood. "Deny" in New Testament Greek is to “disavow or abjure connection with someone or something.” Interestingly enough, it is the very word used to refer to Peter’s denial of Jesus a little later on. Peter denied that he had any connection with Jesus, said he did not know him, and affirmed his disavowal with oaths and curses.
Thus, to deny oneself is to renounce self-interest; to disregard the gratification of one’s own needs and desires; to relinquish one’s own will to do the will of God, imitating Jesus who gave himself over to his Father’s plans . We don’t own ourselves – by ourselves we can’t get the job done. We can’t rely on just ourselves.
We simply deny ourselves those things that are temporarily pleasurable but eternally painful.
It is instead the turning away from the idolatry of self centeredness and every attempt to orient one’s life by the dictates of self interest
2. Taking up your cross means torture. And we wince at the thought, but stop and think about it. Many great achievements requires torture. Athletes torture their bodies. Thinkers torture their minds. And we get that on the physical and intellectual plane, but wish there was another way on the spiritual plane. There isn’t. Just like the physical realm: no pain, no gain. Are you willing to suffer temporal pain for eternal gain? That’s what it comes down to.
The cross stands forever as a symbol of those circumstances and events in our experience which humble us, expose us, offend our pride, shame us, and reveal our basic evil — that evil which Jesus described earlier: "Out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness," (Mark 7:22 RSV).
3. Finally, it means death. You have to die to self everyday. How? By allowing your circumstances to help you become more like Christ–especially the circumstances you don’t like. Anytime you feel the pain of an insult, disappointment, suffering, physical challenge, failure, injustice, or trial–it’s an opportunity to die to pride, die to ego, die to sin, die to self.
For Jesus promised that “those who lose their life for [his] sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). If we hold fast, an everlasting reward will be ours, for when he comes “with his angels in the glory of his Father, . . . he will repay everyone for what has been done” (16:27).
The Visual Lectionary- From "Measuring Faith in Footsteps"by David Perry
"The photograph of the path is taken at ground level which gives a depth of field of about one footstep. Everything else is out of focus. I think that this is the plane of focus that Jesus has in mind when, in a decisive moment of great clarity, he frames the nature of discipleship and produces a snapshot whose meaning is as timeless and strikingly obvious to us now as it was confusing and troubling to his first followers then.
"Jesus invited his disciples to follow in his footsteps – and literally so. One step at a time they were introduced to the purposeful and intent-laden journey that constituted a kingdom of love shaped life. Their focus was to be on Jesus and as followers their faith was measured in footsteps. In this way he held their attention close in and nearby. The direction of travel towards the far horizon and the geography of the path were not their immediate concern. Indeed, if their focus was on what lay ahead far away down the path, and the personal implications for them of making this journey, they were already looking in the wrong place and in the wrong way. Such a view, in which it is the horizon that is sharply in focus, rather than the foreground, calculates the costs and benefits of navigating one’s life in this way first before ever putting a foot forward.
"The denial and loss of which Jesus speaks relates precisely to this point of focus. Jesus wants his followers to follow closely in his footsteps and with each step to be mindfully, meaningfully and lovingly within the present moment, fully attentive and present to all that it brings, just as he was. Setting our minds on divine things is what he asks of his followers. You can’t do that if your mind and attention are elsewhere preoccupied with human things, not least the personal consequences of being a follower of Jesus. Comfortable outcomes and easy paths are not our first priority, trusting Jesus is, wherever and however he chooses to lead us, which is why his rebuke of Peter is so sharp.
"Inevitably then Jesus says that we have to take up our cross if we are to follow faithfully in his footsteps. Here the symbol of self-sacrifice and surrender, of threat and risk, of challenge and choice, is the weight we must bear. The cross signifies consequences, humiliation and failure. It is the tangible shape and burden of all of our questions; questions which would hold us back, keep our eyes on the far horizon and inhibit us making those crucial footstep
"It also signifies radical trust in God. Whatever the future holds for us in the middle distance and at and beyond the horizon, the life enriching integrity of this step by step journey of living lovingly, authentically in the footsteps of Jesus is worth it. That is the central proposition of faith which Jesus puts before his would-be followers. Can we, will we, hold in our hands all of our doubts, anxieties, fears and questions, and carry that load whilst still walking forward in trust with Jesus, making God’s love real and relevant with our traveling companions and amongst those whom we meet? Are we prepared to measure our faith in footsteps rather than in results and rewards?"
"Taking up the Cross"- Martin Luther King and the Vietnam War
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech entitled "Beyond Vietnam" in front of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, exactly a year before he was assassinated.
In it, he said that there was a common link forming between the civil rights and peace movements. King proposed that the United States stop all bombing of North and South Vietnam; declare a unilateral truce in the hope that it would lead to peace talks; set a date for withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam; and give the National Liberation Front a role in negotiations.
King had been a solid supporter of President Lyndon B. Johnson and his Great Society, but he became increasingly concerned about U.S. involvement in Vietnam and, as his concerns became more public, his relationship with the Johnson administration deteriorated. King came to view U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia as little more than imperialism. Additionally, he believed that the Vietnam War diverted money and attention from domestic programs created to aid the black poor. Furthermore, he said, "the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home…We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem."
King maintained his antiwar stance and supported peace movements until he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, one year to the day after delivering his Beyond Vietnam speech.
Although some activists and newspapers supported King’s statement, most responded with criticism. King’s civil rights colleagues began to disassociate themselves with his radical stance and the NAACP issued a statement against merging the civil rights movement and peace movement. King remained undeterred, stating that he was not fusing the civil rights and peace movements, as many had suggested.
The entire speech (56 min.) can be viewed here. You can view a 4 minute excerpt here
Writer Nora Gallagher on "Taking up the Cross"
Excerpts of a sermon preached at Grace Church. Bainbridge Island, Washington, March 16, 2003
"The words we hear from Jesus this morning come from the mouth of a man who grew up under the heel of an empire. And who saw, all around him, its cost. The Romans saw themselves as creating “a new world order.” To accomplish this, Roman soldiers burned villages, pillaged the countryside, slaughtered or enslaved those they conquered. Huge taxes were imposed on the people in the colonies. When the Roman governor Antipas built two Roman-style cities in Galilee, a rural countryside, the Galileans had to provide the resources for this massive building project. They paid a tax unto Caesar.
".. We know beyond a doubt that Jesus chose not to identify with those in power.
"Instead, this is how Jesus spent his time. Just before the section of the gospel we just heard, Jesus took a blind man by the hand and restored his sight. He fed a crowd with loaves and fish. He helped a deaf and mute man find his voice again. And, my favorite, he listened when a Gentile woman begged him to heal her daughter of demons. He bound himself to those in need. He did not even exclude persons who were collaborators with the empire: i.e. the tax-collector, Matthew. This is not an easy kingdom, folks.
"..We can say, from these stories, that Jesus was moved by compassion.
"I want to suggest to you a few ways of looking at compassion. First, it’s not a form of sympathy.
"Compassion, as you know, means to suffer with: to enter into another’s suffering. And that’s quite a way to go. But let’s take it a step farther. The theologian Walter Brueggemann calls compassion, ‘a radical form of criticism,’ a radical form of criticism for it announces that, ‘the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.’
"Jesus in his compassion says that the hurt of those who are hungry and poor, and taxed beyond their means is to be taken seriously: It is not normal for people to be without food; it is not normal for someone who is blind or deaf to beg on the street. But, ‘Empires are never built nor are they maintained on the basis of compassion…’ Empires, like Rome, like the United States, live by keeping their own citizens distracted with ‘bread and circuses.’ The Roman rulers expected their citizens to remain silent in response to the human cost of war; mute in the face of the human cost of greed. And they kept those in the colonies in check by systemic terror: the price of the prophetic witness of John the Baptist was death. But Jesus speaks up. He acts. By and through his compassion, he takes the first step in revealing the abnormality that has become business as usual.
“Thus his compassion is …a criticism of the system… that produces the hurt. Finally Jesus enters into the hurt and comes to embody it.
"When it comes right down to it, it seems to me that Jesus invites us this morning to follow where compassion leads us, and bear the cost of what we find. Jesus asks us to follow where truth leads us, and to bear the cost of the truth we find.
"He calls us, as Nicholas Cage says in the movie Moonstruck, “to ruin our lives, to break our hearts, to love the wrong person and to die.” We are invited to ruin the old life of silence, to break our hearts with compassion over suffering, to love the wrong person–that would be Jesus–and to die. As Bill said to me last week, “ to get resurrected ya gotta get dead.” Because we know, from Jesus’s example, and from our own lives, what lies on the other side of that death. The other side of silence and distraction , of the deadly life of business as usual, is new life, resurrected life, born of compassion-awake and broken-hearted, and, yes, dangerous."
Nora Gallagher is author of the two memoirs, Things Seen and Unseen and Practicing Resurrection and editor of the award-winning "Notes from the Field." Her essays, book reviews, and other writings have appeared in many publications including the New York Times Magazine, Utne Reader and the Los Angeles Times.
"Taking up the Cross" in Literature – John Coffey and the Green Mile
Stephen King originally published this as a book that was serialized in parts. The book and movie are about death row in a Louisiana prison in 1935. The last walk, from the cell to the electric chair, is known at this prison as The Green Mile, due to the color of the floor. The Green Mile is the remarkable story of the cell block’s head guard (Tom Hanks), who develops a poignant, unusual relationship with an inmate named John Coffey (Michael Duncan) .
Coffey has been convicted of molesting and killing two little white girls. He doesn’t seem like a killer, however. Coffey cannot read or write, seems simpleminded, causes no trouble and exudes goodness. Yet Coffey was found with their broken bodies in his huge arms. In that time period, it was enough to convict.
He takes up his cross and heals. Tom Hanks discovers that his prisoner, John Coffey is able to perform healing miracles by taking the "bad" out of people, and then disposing of it into the air. He does this to heal Tom Hanks’ urinary infection, and later, heals the Warden’s wife ‘s brain tumor.
Hanks agonizes over the fact that he had to electrocute John Coffey. How could he put to death an innocent man who can perform miracles? He is forced to struggle with this for the rest of his life, which turns out to be longer than normal. Along with the "gift" that Hanks (and the mouse "Mr. Jingles") received from Coffey was the "gift of life". This explains why Hanks is really 108 years old and why he walks up to the woods every day with a piece of toast (to feed the mouse). This is a provocative story that can be approached on many levels and reveals another side of author Stephen King.
Two scenes from the movie:
I’m Tired/I’m In Heaven Scene
The Ending
Gospel According to Steve King
Lincoln’s Cross – the Civil War
William Lincoln, Lincoln’s third son, died of typhoid in February, 1862. He had been born in 1850 the same year their second son died. In an article in the Atlantic Magazine concerning "Lincoln", the movie, the author writes about Lincoln’s cross. "Over time, Lincoln came to view the war as God’s divine punishment for the sin of slavery, and in some fashion, he saw Willie’s death as the personal cross that he must bear to atone for that crime."
Lincoln’s religion is hard to pin down. He rejected the Baptist heritage of his ancestors as too emotional and did not like the denominational battles that afflicted the Methodists as well as Baptists, and Universalists in his early years. He was hounded in the 1840’s because he wasn’t associated with any church. Lincoln changed, however. Lincoln started attending Presbyterian services in 1850, following the death of his 4-year-old son, Edward which continued when he entered the White House. It was conservative, non-revivalistic brand that focused on "God’s in charge. Though he never joined that church, his faith became more deeply felt.
The battlefield led his confidence to be shaken which was taken by increasing in relying on God as leading the direction of the war. As one writer has suggested a "providential, interventionist God who had something up his sleeve, and that something was Emancipation. "
"Taking up the Cross"- Iraq(2007)
Although this article by Rev. Canon Andrew White is over a decade old, it provides thoughts relevant to today. He is vicar of Baghdad.
Understanding and Witnessing as a Christian in Baghdad By Rev. Canon Andrew White October 2007
"As I sit and write this article, I can hear automatic weapons firing. I cannot imagine the tragedy going on outside our compound at this very moment. Constantly, I have people asking me to help them escape to another nation. It is not pleasant to live in one of the most dangerous places on earth. Yet I know this is where my work is; this is where God has sent me and this is where I love to be, here in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. Today is Sunday, so we had church this morning. As I led worship, I saw my congregation place their body armor, rifles and helmets aside and start to praise the living God.
"Yesterday I led my Iraqi congregation. I could not leave the international zone and go to church; evidently, too many people want to kill me, so I cannot leave the secure area. My congregation had to come to me. This took hours as they were all forced to go through an intense security process. Yet these Christians are the most wonderful people I have ever served. They worship our Lord with great intensity and joy! In the midst of their darkness and fear, Jesus is their joy. When you lose everything, you realize Jesus is all you have.
…. "Despite these restrictions, there is ample opportunity to show and share the good news of Jesus. The prime way is through love and prayer. I have seen people come to faith in Jesus. I have baptized people and then sought to find protection for them as the death threats grew. One little girl whose mother became a Christian started telling friends that every night her mother talked to Jesus. It was not long before they also were forced to flee. I have wept when people I have loved had come to faith and then been killed. Here it is a matter of life and death.
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Saints of the Week, – Aug. 23 – Aug. 30, 2020
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23
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Martin de Porres, 1639, Rosa de Lima, 1617, and Toribio de Mogrovejo, 1606, Witnesses to the Faith in South America |
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24
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Saint Bartholomew the Apostle |
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25
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Louis, King of France, 1270 |
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26
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27
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Thomas Gallaudet, 1902, and Henry Winter Syle, Priests, 1890 |
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28
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Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and Theologian, 430 |
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[Beheading of John the Baptist] John Bunyan, Writer, 1688 |
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[Margaret Ward, Margaret Clitherow & Anne Line], Martyrs, 1588, 1586 & 1601 Charles Grafton, Bishop and Ecumenist, 1912 |