Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017, Season of Creation 5 (full size gallery)
This Sunday we celebrate the last Sunday in the Season of Creation which traditionally ends with St. Francis day on Oct. 4. On Wed, we will have Art with Susan Tilt, Andrew Huffman to talk about our bees, a scavenger hunt for children, and at 5PM, The Blessing of the Pets.
The Village Dinner will be a nice addition at 5:00pm to 6:30pm to end your day. This month we will serve spiced Baked ham, crock pot mac and cheese, broccoli and topping it off with pineapple upside down cake
We had pet blessings at St. Peter’s until Charter day in 2014. In 2015, St. Francis day was on Sunday so we brought the animals into the church and had 9 dogs. We did not have a blessing in 2016.
Wendell Berry comes to mind this week as we move to fall out of the Season of Creation with St. Francis Day. Here is his poem "October 10" from The Selected Poem of Wendell Berry, a reminder of the wonder of fall:
"Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.
"Under their loosening bright
gold, the sycamore limbs
bleach whiter.
"Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.
"The calling of a crow sounds
loud—a landmark—now
that the life of summer falls
silent, and the nights grow."
The children in Sunday School gathered rocks to be painted next week. In celebration of the Season of Creation, the adult class took a nature hike observing flowers and a family of cardinals residing at St. Peter’s
We had 46 for the last Sunday in the Season of Creation. Boyd has his cousin and husband from Texas. More children were present.
We learned a new processional hymn "Earth and all Stars" by Herbert Brokering. This text was written for the 90th anniversary of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He wrote that "I tried to gather into a hymn of praise the many facets of life which emerge in the life of community. So there are the references to building, nature, learning, family, war, festivity. Seasons, emotions, death and resurrection, bread, wine, water, wind, sun, spirit. . . have made great impressions on my imagination."
The Psalm (Psalm 33) was done creatively with a text and harp accompaniment.
This Sunday was pledge collection Sunday collected by the Long family. It was also Roger’s Birthday and Helmut and Susan Linne von Berg’s anniversary.
The First Sunday Social was provided by the Wicks and Longs. The former contributed a clam chowder soup and cheese cake. The Longs added hot dogs and chile.
The Lectionary readings for the Season of Creation 5 are here
Lectionary summary – “The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.” In the reading from Leviticus, God has Moses instruct the Israelites to observe every 50th year as a jubilee year. They are to rest and return to their property, and to let the land rest: “you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces.” This jubilee year is a year of rest and return. How do we rest in the steadfast love of the Lord? In the gospel, Jesus turns to nature to describe the rest of one who waits on the Lord rather than worrying about what to eat or drink or wear. How does honoring God’s work as Creator help us rest and return to the Lord? As Isaiah says, “in returning and rest we shall be saved.
The sermon concentrated on Matthew 6:25-33
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,[a] or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
"How can you tell someone in Puerto Rico, who has just lost everything because of a hurricane, not to worry? The whole island’s infrastructure has been destroyed and no one can yet see how they will manage to put their lives back together
"Jesus was reminding his listeners that God made creation good and perfect at the beginning of time.
"Jesus was getting at the idea that when we truly look at our home in creation, the original goodness and perfection of God’s plan for all of creation and for all of us gets revealed to us, and in that perfection, we can see the promise of the kingdom of God that will someday come to earth
"God made us the caretakers of our domicile, the earth.
"To have dominion over the earth is to be a housekeeper of the home of all creation. Our task, as the people of the earth, is to encourage the earth’s fruitfulness rather than to strip it of every life-giving resource.
"So we Christians have our work cut out for us. God expects us to care for this world, and to be healers in this world.
"This healing and care cannot even begin until we take the time to open our eyes and truly see what is around us; to know that even in the midst of the degraded condition of the earth, glimpses of the goodness that God had in mind at creation are still visible.
"That’s why we must first, before we do anything else, take the time to appreciate the natural world in its beauty and sometimes terrible magnificence, to see it as the dwelling God has given us rather than an object to be used up for our own benefit.
"This act of seeing is a prayerful activity.
"This act of prayerful seeing gives us hope and gives us an undying longing for the kingdom of God to come on earth, which is why Jesus taught us to pray, that God’s kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. In God’s kingdom on earth all of creation will be restored
"In the meantime, we are to work for the healing of the world, starting out by doing simple things like supporting God’s healing work through this church with our pledges of financial support,
Simple things like making fresh produce available to our neighbors,
Simple things like seeing and giving thanks for the natural world around us, and caring for it as carefully as we can,
"Simple things like planting a garden, or making a compost pile,
"Simple things like listening to the stories of those whose lives are closely connected to the earth,
"Simple things like singing songs of praise."