Though we are physically dispersed as we enter this most Holy Week, Saint Matthew’s parish can remain in connection with each other by engaging in daily prayer and contemplation.
I want to offer us a series of daily meditations and hymns that support this blessed connection, and help us walk The Way of The Cross with Christ this week.
We will pray each day on one of three themes that will encompass our Maundy Thursday observance: Servanthood, Community, and Abandonment.
Today we will reflect on Abandonment.
~ Peter+ The Rev. Dr. Peter B. Stube, Interim Rector
Ponder these questions at the end of each day’s reading and hymn.
In light of what I have just heard/read:
1. How can I love God today? (in a small way) 2. How can I love my neighbor today? (person you live with, person who thinks differently than you, etc.) 3. How can I love myself today?
Thursday:Abandonment
Maundy Thursday with all of its hopefulness, ends badly. We might think that Jesus call to Servanthood and Community would be joyfully received; that the disciples were ready to change the world, but this part of Jesus’ vision will not be fulfilled this night.
The disciples have too much that hinders them from following Jesus freely. Judas rushes off to betray Jesus. Why? (To force Jesus hand to stir up a revolution? Greed? What is a human life worth? For Judas, 30 pieces of silver. For Jesus? The cost of his own life for the lives of all.) As Jesus prays at the Mount of Olives the disciples fall asleep until the betrayer and the enemies of Jesus arrive. They wake up startled, they see Jesus in all his power give himself over to the soldiers and then every disciple deserts him. Peter, one of Jesus’ dearest friends, denies Him three times. (Why? Fear? Public Opinion?)
What? Who nails Jesus to the cross? If his own disciples who walked with him for three years and clearly loved him could not stand with Him in His hour of need how can we hope to do any better? We mortals are a complicated lot; given to self-interest, pride, greed, denial of death, jealousy, claiming our rights at the expense of other’s need; the very antithesis of servanthood and community. Who nails Jesus to the Cross? Hear the hymn below and reflect on the text. Where am I in this abandonment? Am I Judas? Peter? Am I the guilty? Do I have any hope? Stay tuned.
1. Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended, that we to judge thee have in hate pretended? By foes derided, by thine own rejected, O most afflicted! 2. Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee! ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee; I crucified thee. 3. Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered; the slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered. For our atonement, while we nothing heeded, God interceded. 4. For me, kind Jesus, was thy incarnation, thy mortal sorrow, and thy life’s oblation; thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion, for my salvation. 5. Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee, I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee, think on thy pity and thy love unswerving, not my deserving.
Though we are physically dispersed as we enter this most Holy Week, Saint Matthew’s parish can remain in connection with each other by engaging in daily prayer and contemplation
I want to offer us a series of daily meditations and hymns that support this blessed connection, and help us walk The Way of The Cross with Christ this week.
We will pray each day on one of three themes that will encompass our Maundy Thursday observance: Servanthood, Community, and Abandonment.
Today we will reflect on Community.
~ Peter+ The Rev. Dr. Peter B. Stube, Interim Rector
Ponder these questions at the end of each day’s reading and hymn.
In light of what I have just heard/read:
1. How can I love God today? (in a small way) 2. How can I love my neighbor today? (person you live with, person who thinks differently than you, etc.) 3. How can I love myself today?
Wednesday: Community
Jesus ate the Passover meal with his disciples. They remembered together God’s miraculous freeing of the people of Israel from the Pharaoh and Egypt, how he set them free from their bondage and led them through the Red Sea on dry land and then destroyed the army of Egypt in the Red Sea.
After supper Jesus set fresh baked bread and new wine before his disciples and blessed the bread and then the wine. He gave it to them introducing a New Covenant in His Body and Blood. As the people of Israel were baptized in the waters of the Red Sea to be the people of God, so they and we are baptized in the water of Baptism to be a new people of God drawn from all nations and people. We become Christ’s Body and Blood to the world, serving the perfect will of God together so that people may hear of God’s love for them. We will not condemn them because Jesus did not, but we will affirm that through Him they may be saved (safe).
Our work is the same as Jesus’. He entrusted it to us. This work can be difficult. And so Jesus created community of faith in which to study the things of God, and encourage and exhort each other to greater faith. Here we pray for each other, honor each other, love each other with Christ’s love. We allow God to take our gifts, skills and passions we have to offer.
Through the community of faith, the Holy Spirit teaches us how to bring salvation and understanding and redemptive creation to the places where God’s redemption is needed; politics, law, medicine, education, and the diverse peoples of the earth. All of this is called into being on Maundy Thursday as Jesus gives his body and blood so that we may become His Body and Blood to our neighbors, enemies, those of other faith traditions, and all the people of the earth whom God has made “of one blood’.
Though for this time of pandemic, we can not take communion together because we are dispersed, there will come a time when this winter of pandemic is over, and we shall again be sustained by the holy food and drink. And we shall gather again for Communion and community.
Listen to “I come with joy to meet my Lord” and hear one man’s reflection on the incredible body of Christ of which we are a part.
I Come with joy to meet my Lord 1. I come with joy to meet my Lord, Forgiven, loved and free, In awe and wonder to recall His life laid down for me. 2. I come with Christians far and near to find, as all are fed, our true community of love in Christ’s communion bread. 3. As Christ breaks bread for us to share Each proud division ends. That love that made us makes us one, and strangers now are friends. 4. And thus, with joy we meet our Lord. His presence always near, Is in such friendship better known: We see and praise Him here. 5. Together met, together bound, We’ll go our diff’rent ways, And as His people in the world, We’ll live and speak His praise.
Though we are physically dispersed as we enter this most Holy Week, Saint Matthew’s parish can remain in connection with each other by engaging in daily prayer and contemplation
I want to offer us a series of daily meditations and hymns that support this blessed connection, and help us walk The Way of The Cross with Christ this week.
We will pray each day on one of three themes that will encompass our Maundy Thursday observance: Servanthood, Community, and Abandonment.
Today we will reflect on Servanthood.
~ Peter+ The Rev. Dr. Peter B. Stube, Interim Rector
Ponder these questions at the end of each day’s reading and hymn.
In light of what I have just heard/read:
1. How can I love God today? (in a small way) 2. How can I love my neighbor today? (person you live with, person who thinks differently than you, etc.) 3. How can I love myself today?
Tuesday: Servanthood
“Maundy” means to remember, to live into again. On this day we remember the day the Lord gave the disciples the Lord’s Supper, what we call Holy Communion or Eucharist (Thanksgiving). The Gospel on this day is the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
This is a shocking development. He, their Lord, demonstrates a different way of leading. He leads by serving them, performing the job that the lowest servant in a household would do. Some of his disciples are scandalized by this and want to wash his feet. Peter who really does not understand, wants Jesus to wash all of him. Jesus indicates that washing his feet is enough to make him clean.
Leadership in God’s household is most concerned with making sure that the needs of all who are entrusted to God’s care are served, cleansed, and safe. Jesus is not subservient in any way and yet leads through service. He shows no partiality, clings to no prerogative, but lays all aside willingly, obediently for his disciples and for us. In so doing, he invites them and us to the same life of servanthood for all who will be entrusted to us as we walk the way of the cross in service to God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The first generation of disciples were then willing to go to the ends of the earth, to place themselves in danger, to labor among all people from the least to the greatest for the sake of their Lord who taught them that the way of the cross means we will joyfully follow God wherever God leads, whatever it costs because of our deep thankfulness of all that he did for them and for us during this week.
Listen to John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem on Servanthood as he reflects on the lives of the first disciples and our lives in service to God.
The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge – “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”
1. Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways; Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper rev’rence, praise.
2. O Sabbath rest by Galilee, O calm of hills above, Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee The silence of eternity, Interpreted by love!
3. Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace.
4. Breathe through the heats of our desire Thy coolness and Thy balm; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small Voice of calm.
5. In simple trust like theirs who heard Beside the Syrian sea The gracious calling of the Lord, Let us, like them, without a word, Rise up and follow Thee.
Lenten Study with Father Stube Wednesdays, 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. March 4, 11, 18, 25 and April 1
This study will facilitate conversation around Scripture and the current historical moment in order that we might reflect together about what the Holy Spirit may be inviting Christians (particularly those of us who worship together at St. Matthews) to do to bring peace and Christ to culture. We may think globally, but the intent is to bring us to ways that we can be the Gospel of Christ locally.
The evening gathering will include a potluck dinner that will begin at 6:00 followed by our study around 6:45pm. Each study will last about 45 minutes. Please bring a dish to share with others.
Shrove Tuesday February 25 at 6 p.m.
We prepare for Lent with our traditional Shrove Tuesday dinner feast. You don’t want to miss out on all of the delicious food that will be served by St. Matthew’s youth. There’s nothing better than breakfast for dinner!
Ash Wednesday February 26
Join us at one of our Ash Wednesday Eucharists, including the Imposition of Ashes.
Service times are: 7:30 a.m. 12:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m. ~ Youth & Family Eucharist
At our annual Vestry Retreat, we considered a verse from Isaiah which you will recognize from Sunday mornings, “I have sent you to be a light to the nations that my salvation may come to the whole earth.” We framed our consideration of St. Matthew’s mission around the need to balance all aspects of our common life around three basic needs of Church life; Contemplation, Community, and Missional Action. I observed that all three basic needs should be a part of the normal Christian church’s life. With this sense of balance in mind, we were led to embrace 4 disciplines of our common life this year. The 4 committees are Communication, Fellowship, Outreach, and Worship/Faith Formation. Two other standing committees will function as needed this year, Stewardship and Buildings and Grounds.
We charged each committee to hold as a rule the call to balance in our common life in the areas of Contemplation, Community, and Missional Action. The actions we identify this year will be viewed through this lens.
We appointed Facilitators from the vestry to further the work we identified together and encouraged them to identify and invite members of the congregation to join them in their work.
We also proposed ideas for the committees to address. Knowing that the Spirit may take them in directions that we cannot now imagine, these ideas may be viewed as starting points to our common work and mission. Here then follows the work each committee is addressing. If you want to be a part of any of these committees please reach out to the Vestry contact person.
Communications. Joe Buesgen, Mary Anne Noon.
a. Integrate the Nursery School more fully into our common life by inviting parents and children to participate in the life of the community as we did for the Christmas Pageant this year.
b. Develop a communication strategy that utilizes a spectrum of ways of telling about our common life and mission, of channeling information without over-communicating.
c. Be sensitive to the demographics of the area we serve; needs, issues, economic status, etc.
d. Consider recovering the use of personal testimony and witness on Sundays so that the ministries we do well may be showcased.
e. Find ways to celebrate our wins and give thanks.
Fellowship. Bill Reynolds, Chris Suhy.
a. Recover and create Fellowship/fun socials and events for the congregation so that we rebuild community and enhance ways of connection.
i. Chili Bingo
ii. Spaghetti Dinner
iii. Progressive Dinner
iv. Breakfasts
v. Potlucks/Lenten Studies
vi. Speaker Series
b. Work with Communication to invite parishioners to be a part of the events
Outreach. Tim Walsh, Marie Clark.
a. Create structure so as to make communication regarding the good things we do to be celebrated in the larger St. Matthew’s community.
b. Create a list of the ministries we already do and recover some of the ones we that gave us life in the past.
i. Habitat for Humanity
ii. Interaction with the Diocese by participating in the “Five Days of 2020” in which we partner with other parishes in the deanery to cloth and feed the needy, offer free medical care, and participate in a service project.
iii. Community Garden
iv. Mattie Dixon Community Cupboard
c. Encourage participants to give a testimony of the outreach ministries on Sunday mornings at worship. Let the priest know so they can be scheduled to speak.
d. Study the needs and demographics of the area St. Matthew’s serves so that we may be attentive to them.
e. Consider ways to work with other faith communities in the area in addressing needs.
Faith Formation/Worship. Karen Randall, Chris Strittmatter.
a. We have noticed that our children do not get to participate in our worship and Communion of Sundays. We have appreciated having them in Church the first Sunday of each month at 9:00am.
b. We wonder if there is a better way to structure Sunday morning so that there is more room for children in worship and more time for adult faith formation. We realize that this may require thinking outside the box and asking questions about how we can best strike a balance between Contemplation, Community and Missional Action.
c. We will need to ask questions that allow us to dream new dreams rather than ones that get us stuck. Will faith formation happen if we move it off Sunday morning? Can we imagine a way to have children in church in such a way that parents can still worship and listen? How might we accomplish this as a community?
Transition time is a good time to explore our community life. We will also be exploring demographics in order to better understand the community in which we are planted so that we may be a light that leads to the Salvation of God.
Saint Matthew’s Property Committee will be running a Parish Clean-Up Day on Saturday, January 18th from 9am to 3pm.
The primary goal of this event will be to clean-out and organize the four storage areas (closets) in the Parish Hall.
If you manage or participate in a ministry with items stored in any of these spaces, we’d recommend that you have someone present at the event able to make decisions as to what is kept, discarded, recycled or given away, or make arrangements to review this with Joe Buesgen (buesgen@gmail.com) prior to the event.
During Epiphany the Church draws our attention to God’s intention that all people become a part of his beloved community. The Apostle Paul has much to say to all of us at St. Matthews about the call that is on our lives as believers to be ambassadors who bring the world’s people to peace with God. Here follow seven Pauline principles.
Our call is to be agents of reconciliation: Paul understood the Church to be the body of Christ with Christ himself as the head of the church. He assumed that Christ’s mission to the world was to be ours as well. Christ’s concerns, emphases, attributes, ministries of care and proclamation are ours. Paul described our mission in 2 Corinthians 5:17-20, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.” Our mission as agents for God is to bring reconciliation to the world, to break down the walls of alienation.
The mission is to the earth’s diverse peoples and systems so that the peace of God “that passes all understanding” may rest in them. We pray globally and act locally. As we capture God’s vision of reconciliation that breaks down the walls that divide the peoples of the earth from their God and from each other, we become co-workers with God in God’s restoration of all things.
Sometimes God has to heal us while we are agents of change in a changing world. In order to heal us God has been known to “stir up the heavens and come down” as God does the unexpected and transforms hearts, breathing through the heats of our desire the Spirit’s cooling balm (See Ephesians 4, Romans 8 and Colossians 1) Perhaps parish transitions are one of those moments of “stirring.”
Foundational to the missionary strategy of Paul is a profound confidence in the Holy Spirit to transform lives, to heal diseases of mind, body and spirit, to end oppression, and to reconcile men and women and disparate races and cultures.
Paul assumed that the work of God would be accomplished by the Holy Spirit through the members of the local body of Christ. Paul enumerates the gifts and ministries of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12 and Ephesians 4. These include gifts of healing, prophesy, miracles and ministries of administration, teaching, helps, and prophesy. It is clear that he assumed that these would be part of the normal Christian church life. Paul’s vision for the church was therefore not dependent on powerful personalities or learned methodologies, but on the charisms of the Holy Spirit present in the lives of all men and women, youth and children of the body of Christ. Paul trusted young leaders, like Timothy, Priscilla, Barnabas, and Lydia who were teachable and open to the direction of the Holy Spirit; leaders who relied on the Holy Spirit for the tools and strategies to do the mission of the church. The mission of St. Matthews does not take a holiday during a transition, but instead offers an opportunity for each of us to find and do the work the Spirit.
Paul was convinced the Spirit-filled community was capable of learning in the Spirit the things they needed to know about life and ministry. Since he never stayed in a place very long, he made sure converts had an encounter with the Holy Spirit and then he set them in house churches where they could engage the ministries of the Holy Spirit enumerated in the texts mentioned above. It is clear that Paul expected new converts to be empowered by the Holy Spirit so that they became a new creation. Their lives were to be radically transformed in Christ. Their affections were to undergo conversion. They were to become witnesses as Paul was. This moment of transition might provide a good opportunity to explore small groups that allow us to grow in grace and mission.
Paul was focused on bringing Christ to all whom he met using every resource he had. Paul supported himself through tent making. He looked to establish common ground with his listeners. The clearest example is found in Acts 17:16-33. Paul noticed that the Athenians were very religious. He saw numerous idols and altars throughout the city, including one with the inscription, “To an unknown god.” He seizes this opportunity to make known to the Athenians, “the God who made the world and everything in it.” He even quotes from one of the Greek philosophers to say, “In him we live and move and have our being.” As a result of him beginning where the Athenians were, using what was already known to them, he was able to proclaim the gospel with greater ease. Consequently, some became believers that day. Paul’s missionary strategy was to introduce people into relationship with their God in ways that they were able to hear.
We live in a post Christian century like the one Paul served. The Church today has moved to the margins, no longer valued much by society. We might consider leaving the familiar, the tried and true in order to understand the ways our culture and her people can be open to the mystery of God. New strategies and ways of being are called for this Epiphany to bring the people of the earth to their creator and savior. We children of the Spirit are the ones who must follow her in order to find new ways forward.
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Hebrews 3:2
From before Jesus’ birth, while his mother and father journeyed to Bethlehem, we Christians, like them, have been dependent on Hospitality of strangers. In Bethlehem Mary and Joseph were unable to find room in the inn and so a stable became the birthplace for the King of Kings.
Throughout the Old Testament God reminds the people of God that they are to extend care and support to the “resident alien,” the fatherless and widows, because the people of God also had once been aliens in a land and would not have survived without the generosity of the people of the lands in which they resided.
A generation ago the people of St. Matthews Church came into the church through birth and baptism. We knew each other well and ate in each other’s homes. In the 80’s and 90’s as St. Matthews grew, the people of St. Matthew’s welcomed with open arms the strangers that soon became our friends on the journey to God.
People came to a church looking for a home and we welcomed them home. Perhaps they grew up in the Episcopal Church in another part of the country, perhaps they came from another faith tradition, but we welcomed them into our homes and into our hearts. We stood beside them when they were in times of need and danced with them in moments of celebration. In this transitional moment we may be fearful about the change we face, but God remains faithful to us and holds out to us always in his heart, longing for what is best for us.
As we have become a more diverse people, the resulting changes in life and practice might not have been what we bargained for, but St. Matthew’s is a compassionate place that knows that Christ’s love extends through us to these who are now and will be in the future entrusted to our care.
In scripture through the ministry of hospitality we welcome strangers into restorative community. Henri Nouwen says, “A world of strangers estranged from their own past, culture, and country, from their neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self and their God come to us seeking a place of safety and acceptance.” As a church where hospitality is a mark of our common life, we will need to look beyond our own world in order to create space for the need of the stranger. “Hospitality,” Diana Bass says, “is the creation of a free space in which strangers become friends.” Hospitality’s task is not to change people but to offer them space where change can take place graciously and kindly through Christ in us.
A church that values hospitality will value the dignity of each of its members. Standards of conformity will be of little importance, instead like Christ we will seek to welcome all with arms of love and grace. It is a risky way to run a church, but we are a missionary church whose mission extends to all God’s children wherever we find them.
St. Matthews has long understood this. We have generously invited into our midst wayfarers and strangers, refugees and retirees. We have moved them as quickly as possible into our common life. We have worked hard to maintain a safe place in which to raise our children and nurture them in faith. Hospitality requires the careful engagement of a faithful congregation that realizes how important this ministry of healing, reconciliation and grace is to God. May we continue to find ways to turn the stranger into a friend with openness and grace, providing a safe place where they can continue their pilgrimage with us to God.
The Annual Parish Meeting will be held on Sunday, November 10 at 9:50 a.m. in the Parish Hall.
Sunday school will be offered at the usual time of 9 a.m. and will continue until the meeting’s end. To accommodate the meeting, our 9 a.m. Eucharist will be abbreviated, and the later service will start at 10:45 a.m.
Elections for Diocesan Delegates and the Vestry will be held. Nominated for election to Vestry are Bill Reynolds, Mary Anne Noon and Marie Clark. The Treasurer and Rector will report on the financial and spiritual “State of the Parish”.
St. Matthew’s 2019 Annual Report can be downloaded here.
