Frontpage, March 3, 2019

March 3, 2019 – Last Epiphany

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The Week Ahead…

March 5 – 5:00pm-6:30pm – Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

March 6 – 10:00-12pm – Ecumenical Bible Study

March 6 – 7pm – Ash Wednesday, imposition of ashes

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March 10 – 10am – Children’s Education Living the Good News

March 10 – 10am – Creating a Scene in Corinth – Reading 1st Corinthians

March 10 – 11am – Holy Eucharist, First Sunday in Lent

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Lent Begins March 6

Lent is a 40 day Christian festival beginning Ash Wednesday and concluding on Easter (Sundays are not counted).  The 40 day fast of Jesus in the wilderness was responsible for the number 40 being chosen .  It was said by Athanasius in 339 AD to be celebrated the world over.  

The word "Lent" comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word lengten, which means "springtime," named so for the time of the year in which it occurs.   The five Lenten Sundays are followed by the Sunday of the Passion, Palm Sunday, which begins Holy Week, when we relive the events of Jesus Christ’s suffering and death.  

What we now call Lent was originally a period of fasting and study for catechumens who were to be baptized on the Saturday before Easter.  The purpose of this extended fast was to practice self-denial and humility. This was to prepare oneself for receiving God’s grace and forgiveness in baptism, given on Easter Saturday or Easter Sunday.

Lent is:

• A time for looking at the things we do that are wrong or that tempt us, asking God’s and other people’s forgiveness;
• A time for giving up things that keep us from being loving people;
• A time for doing extra things that will help us grow closer to God;
• A time to be more aware of what it means to love as God loves us;
• A time to ask God to help us to be more loving, remembering
that God is always ready to strengthen us.
• A time to let go of our normal routine, try a new spiritual practice, to step out of our box, to reflect on ourselves, to reflect on a relationship with God. It can be a very creative time. At a later time these practices may help us endure trying of challenging times. Lent gives us a chance to practice facing our fears, journeying in the wilderness, confronting the dangers and difficulties we find there, and reaching out for Jesus’ hand the entire trip.

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Lent – Getting Started

• We have a dedicated Lenten part of the website Lent at St. Peter’s Includes the background of Lent, the Lenten calendar with readings, resources, etc.
• Lenten Calendar. As Lent begins on March 6, start of practice of reading the Daily Office which is on the Calendar
• Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, March 5, 5pm-6:30pm. Dave Fannon will be doing the cooking.
• Lent begins Wednesday, March 6. The Ash Wednesday service with the imposition of ashes and Holy Eucharist was held at 7PM. Here is a description.
• Adult Christian Ed on Sundays in Lent – spend some time in 1st century Corinth. Meet (and become) one of the people who would have lived there and were Christians, and who would have inspired Paul’s letter to them.
• Lenten Quiet Day, March 13. The Rt. Rev. David C. Jones will lead the program “Here I am, Lord” on Wednesday, March 13th at Roslyn Conference and Retreat Center. Registration begins at 9:30 a.m. and the meditations at 10 a.m. The day will end at approximately 2:30 p.m. Cost for the day is $35 and includes lunch. The sign-up sheet is in the Parish House.

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Lent Christian Ed – Sunday Preview 1st Corinthians

Around 50AD a woman named Chloe was the leader of a house church in Corinth. But she was very upset because, like some churches today, her church was splitting apart. There were those who said there is only one true apostle, and that’s Paul. The wealthier, more educated people said, “Nah, Paul’s just a poor tentmaker who can’t even speak well. We follow Apollos, the teacher of wisdom.” The Jewish believers said, “Paul’s too liberal. Peter follows the law and he is our leader forever!” And the charismatic group of slaves said, “You’re all wrong. We should be following Christ alone!”

Creating a Scene in Corinth:A Simulation explores 1st Corinthians through a book by Reta Halteman Finger which provides an introduction to the Greco-Roman setting of Corinth and a chapter-by-chapter survey of Paul’s letter and in turn leads to a simulation of a church.

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).

The book and class will be a unique way to understand the Corinthians 1 as text and the environment in which it was created.

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Voices of Lent

1.  Desmond Tutu   from In God’s Hands

And humans were given dominion over all creation. That is why we were created to be God’s viceroys, to be God’s stand ins. We should love, we should bear rule over the rest of creation as God would. We are meant to be caring in how we deal with the rest of God’s creation. God wants everything to flourish. It gives us a huge responsibility – that we should not ravish and waste the natural resources which God places at our disposal for our wellbeing. 

 2. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry

Lenten Message

Clarence Jorden of the Koinonia Movement many years ago wrote this:
Jesus founded the most revolutionary movement in human history, a movement built on the unconditional love of God for the world, and the mandate to those who follow to live that love.

The season of Lent is upon us. It is a season of making a renewed commitment to participate and be a part of the movement of Jesus in this world. You can see some of that in the Gospel lesson for the first Sunday of Lent where Luke says that after the Baptism of Jesus he went into the wilderness, there to be tempted of Satan.

After the Baptism. Baptism is the sacrament of commitment to the Jesus Movement. It is to be washed, if you will, in the love and the reality of God, and to emerge from that great washing as one whose life is dedicated to living that love in the world.

In this season of Lent, we take some time to focus on what that means for our lives, whether it is as simple as giving up chocolate candy or as profound as taking on a commitment to serve the poor or to serve others in some new way. Whatever it is, let that something be something that helps you participate in the movement of God’s love in this world following in the footsteps of Jesus.

And the truth is, the fact that Jesus was baptized and began that movement in the world and immediately found himself tempted by the devil is an ever-present reminder that this movement is not without struggle. It is not easy. The truth is, this movement is difficult. It’s hard work. It’s work of following Jesus to the cross. And it’s work of following Jesus through the cross to the Resurrection. To new life. And new possibility. That is our calling. That is the work of the movement. To help this world move from what is often the nightmare of the world itself into the dream that God intends.

So I pray that this Lent, as they used to say many years ago, might be the first day of the rest of your life. It might be a new day for this world.

Read more voices…

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Conversation about Ash Wednesday

Two priests from All Saints Episcopal Church in Frederick Maryland discuss the Ash Wednesday experience. (click the picture)

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Art for Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent

Art expresses the key themes of the season – conflict between secular and religious, the forces of temptation and selfishness affecting all of us, the importance of retreat, repentance, and conversion in this season. We have three pieces of art thanks to the Loyola press

1. Pieter Brueghel the Elder, “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent,” 1559

Sometimes when the spiritual and the secular clash, we can see the hand of God at work. In Pieter Brueghel’s The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, there is a clash of contrasts happening in this 16th-century Dutch village. Near the center of the hustle and bustle a curious pair is ready to spar: “Carnival,” represented by a well-endowed man riding a barrel, wears a meat-pie hat and is ready for action with a spear loaded with roasted pork. “Lent” faces him, personified by a clear-eyed but gaunt woman on a spare cart, wearing a beehive and holding out two fish on a peel. She is surrounded by loaves, pretzels, and a basket of mussels.

See for two more pieces of Ash Wednesday art

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Lectionary, March 10, 2019

I. Theme – Developing strength and hope in the face of temptation and evil

“ Christ in the Desert ” – Nikolas Kramskoy (1872)

“After his baptism, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. ” –Luke 4:1

The lectionary readings are here  or individually: 

Old Testament – Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm – Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Epistle – Romans 10:8b-13
Gospel – Luke 4:1-13     

Today’s readings offer strength and hope in the face of temptation and evil. Deuteronomy recalls God’s great deliverance and encourages Israel to depend solely on God. Paul declares that salvation comes to those who call on Jesus as lord. In today’s gospel, Jesus trusts solely in God and thus defeats the temptations presented by the devil

Lent begins as a journey to the cross, a journey of repentance and self-denial, a journey of serving others. We are also reminded that our ancestors were sojourners, that we are called not only to seek forgiveness but to forgive and reconcile with others, and that we have faith in the same God, the same Christ, and when we are seeking God, we are seeking relationship with each other. The journey reminds us that we are in this together, pilgrims to the cross, where we put to death what has separated us from God and live in the hope of resurrection.

We are not alone in facing life’s challenges as Jesus was in Luke. Although we might raise the question about how the indigenous Canaanites felt about the coming of the Hebrews, the key element of this passage is its affirmation that God hears, responds, and acts. God is influenced by our cries of anguish – God hears the cries of the poor, oppressed, and vulnerable. God is present in the soup kitchen, the unemployment line, and the bedside. God does not control the outcome of our quests for wholeness, but is a factor in bringing about moments of comfort, possibilities of change, and the movements of liberation and affirmation.

Jesus Christ, our Champion against the devil, endures and overcomes “every temptation” (Luke 4:13) on our behalf. He worships the Lord, His God, and serves Him only by trusting the Word of His Father: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). Jesus’ victory is now ours through His gracious Word, which is not far away but near us — in our mouth and in our heart, in the proclamation of repentance and faith

Read more..

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Art for the 1st Week in Lent

The scene below of the temptation of Christ comes from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, a 15th-century book of hours, or personal devotional book created especially for Duke Jean de Berry. The book offered meditations based on the time of day, as well as the feasts and seasons of the liturgical calendar. As the Latin text on the bottom tells us, this scene comes from the Gospel for the first Sunday of Lent.

Read more…

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