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Save The Date: May 6 at St Bede’s, NO 10am Liturgy at St Nicholas That Day
If you plan to stay for the breakfast at St. Bede’s, please sign up at church this weekend so that we can let them know how many people to prepare for. Thank you!
More details to follow in next week’s edition of News from Nick. Directions to the church are here.
Sermon: Be Direct, To The Point, And Deliver The Message (Like John the Baptist)
Detail from the Isenheim Altar, showing John the Baptist and referencing John 1:19-28
What an amazing Gospel passage we have today. Often times, the gospel writers, in their efforts to interpret what Jesus said or did wrote in such a way that our attempts to comprehend and fully understand, some times, is not easily accomplished. Of course, Jesus didn’t make matters any easier with His constant use of parables, metaphors, legendary stories and tales that his followers back then would certainly better understand and grasp than perhaps we 21st Century westerners today would understand. Jesus’ stories were relevant for His time though may seem odd to us, just like stories we share today may very well seem odd and difficult to understand in future generations that will follow ours. Perhaps in 50 to 100 years, stories of how people put little electronic devices into their ears to talk on some thing called a cell phone while driving some thing called an automobile on something called an expressway may well sound strange and odd to people in the future, though such things are quite relevant and understandable for us today.
However, today’s Gospel is rather straight forward. The writer John, penned these beautiful words while in Ephesis, a city in Asia, some 70 years after the crucifixion of Christ in around the year 100. He certainly did not mince his words. The writer reports the message of John the Baptist, who, like his namesake writer is direct, clear and to the point as to whom the true Chosen One is and what role he, the baptizer plays.
John the Baptist is terribly forthright in this Gospel. “Are you the Messiah?” He responds “No.” “Are you Elijah?” “No,” is his absolute statement in response. There is no talking around the issue, no misleading innuendos, no playing cute games with words, no hedging the question. John says the truth briefly and fearlessly. Not Elijah, not one of the other great prophets of old who had come back to his people and definitely not the long awaited Messiah.
How refreshing it would be to read of someone who has the public’s attention speaking with candor and directness, as John the Baptizer did.
How refreshing it would be to read of someone who has the public’s attention speaking with candor and directness, as John the Baptizer did. In our day and age, we rarely receive a simple “yes / no” reply to pressing questions. In the corporate world we’ve had scandals that have rocked the stock markets, Wall Street and the business world to their collective knees. In international affairs, one nation accuses another of some sort of violation of some treaty that was as binding as a band aid holding back a severed jugular vein. The political scene, my favorite place for a daily dose of ‘double talk,’ where each new day has some one in some high ranking office changing their previous statement with explanations for their lack of clarity or apologies for their lack of judgment and proper behavior. We have become accustomed to people using words for every possible purpose except for telling the truth! We hear bold lies under oath; we read the most clever manipulation of half-truth in our newspapers and news media outlets; we are barraged with double talk and even triple talk in press conference and interviews.
What has happened to the truth? Is it out of style or old fashioned or perhaps out step with modern person to person relationships? I don’t think such is the case across the board…but sadly, is sure seems to be the course in many public forums and this, my dear friends, in disheartening and discouraging. And John the Baptist says…NO…no lying, no pretending, no double or triple talk but straight from his heart with the absolute truth, so help him God.
John the Baptist is the perfect Advent character…he is the academy award winner for best performance. Why? Because he delivers a message with absolute, faith-filled from his gut conviction and he does so, in order for his listeners to prepare themselves. And exactly what is it for which they are to be prepared…what is it for which WE are to be preparing…
The coming of the Messiah
The coming of Salvation into our world
The arrival of Jesus, God’s only Son
Advent is our time, the right time to be heralds of the truth, to be as John and encourage others that God will be returning and we ought to be preparing ourselves for it, right now.
Now, I do not recommend nor suggest that we include in our holiday greetings some sort of cryptic message spelling out the end of the world and God’s judgment day…
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and oh yes,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, because He is coming
And the end is near…
Happy Holidays!
No. We accomplish this most worthy task of preparing others and ourselves for God’s ultimate return best by the example of how we live our life…our daily activities must best emulate Jesus’ message of peace, love and forgiveness; how we treat and welcome others especially the stranger, the foreigner, the homeless, those who are different than ourselves.
While I had the unique privilege of running a soup kitchen down in the city, there was always, ALWAYS daily drama. Hundreds upon hundreds of nightly dinner guests came though the doors in my 15 years there. I remember many. In fact I remember most of those loving and special people. One young lady, we’ll call her Betty; a “regular” at the center comes to mind, often, and still, to this day, tears at my heart. She was a drug addict and alcoholic; she was desperate, daily, for a fix or a drink and did anything, ANYTHING she needed to get what she craved. After a couple years of she and I talking, yelling, crying and fighting it out, she at last choose to go into treatment, an extended stay in a local rehabilitation center. I was overjoyed with her decision and I admit, I was as subtle with her as a rhino in crystal palace in my efforts to get her to go and get help!!!
After a week or so, she came back to the center, haggard and worn-out.
Her clothes were ripped, soiled and stained…I verbally fought with her for hours, trying to convince her to go back into treatment, back to the rehabilitation center because she wasn’t ready, she wasn’t right and she wasn’t prepared to be out and on her own. She said no, though she added a few adjectives to her emphatic NO. She was on my mind that whole day. I even went out walking the streets around the soup kitchen trying to find her in order to get her admitted to the hospital, an “involuntary admittance,” at that, though this was something I didn’t like to do, but did so many times. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find her. The next morning as I was opening the doors to the center, another guest of the soup kitchen was huddled up in a little ball near the door, waiting to see a counselor. I woke him and invited him in to sit and relax. He and I knew each other…he asked me if I had heard about the lady the police found in a construction port-o-potty near the river. I feared…I wondered… The police came by with photos and asked if I could help identify the body…it was Betty, my Betty…they found her with a needle in her arm, slumped on the floor of that filthy port-o-potty. Two of the case managers and I went to the funeral…her family was grateful for all we tried to do for her…her children, 3 beautiful children hugged me and thanked me for the work we did for their Mom and all the homeless. Her children called her ‘homeless.’
How do we get to these situations in life? And yes…I think of her often…what could have been…what should have been…We can not give up and we must always, always work at bringing God’s message of salvation and peace and forgiveness to others even when we know we may fail…
In our efforts to bring the Good News to others, let’s be direct, straight forward and to the point. Let’s remember the Baptizer, John, there in the river Jordan, baptizing the masses with water and all the while proclaiming that one greater than he will come and baptize with the Spirit. Let’s remember how he did not mince his words or deny his actions from performing the Lord’s bidding.
I challenge every one here today, to take one extra minute of our prayer time and pray for those who are homeless. Take that extra minute and pray for God’s guidance and how we, each of us, individually and collectively, make a difference and change the fate and plight of the homeless. One extra minute, that’s what I am asking. Can I see a show of hands from all who are willing to participate? I had better see every hand raised or I may well lose it! Seriously, one minute…it is so little but is so powerful and meaningful.
Let’s bring the Good News to all we meet.
Let’s live the Good News and be living examples of God’s divine love.
Let’s celebrate the Good News…Jesus is coming…God will come again.
Are we ready?
For heaven’s sake…as well as our own sake…I pray and hope so…
Manny
New Socks For New Friends
“Carmen’s Lovely and Amazing Socks,” photo credit Ginny Gibbs
The Guardian: Dry Traditional Anglican or Refreshing Innovative Episcopalian?
This was an interesting article at the Guardian; how many British people would be comfortable with the “must greet everyone” hugfest that the Peace is at St Nicholas? We’re certainly more comfortable with the flexible seating… but we did decide a few years ago that we wanted a (digital) organ after doing without for a long time. Still, summer Sundays the service is held in the air-conditioned Holy Innocents Hall, with piano, so the end result is a more relaxed and informal style until we move back into the worship space in the fall.
For the most part, let’s be honest, there is nothing very remarkable about the service: readings and hymns, the choir doing a turn, prayers, the slightly awkward business if you’re a proper Englishman like me of shaking people’s hands at "the Peace", listening to a sermon, saying the creed together.But then things change gear. The climax of an Anglican service is communion, or eucharist, but normally it doesn’t feel like much of a climax; one stays in one’s pew as the vicar gets busy at the altar, and then one lines up to receive the bread and wine. Here it is different: we all come forward and stand in a circle round the altar. The liturgy is mostly said by the priest, but we join in with a few setpiece prayers together, one or two of which are sung with gusto, and it’s at this point I get a strange sensation: we are not dutifully going through the motions, but performing a ritual that feels alive. It is a bit like participating in a play in a theatre-in-the-round. There is a sense of dramatic excitement. We pass the bread and wine round in a circle, announcing "The body of Christ, the bread of heaven", and "The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation". There is a palpable sense, that I have never really had in English churches, that this ritual is powerful. At the risk of sounding a bit pretentious, there’s a sort of primal force to it, not unrelated to a primitive rain-dance. We are doing something strange, other, mysterious: group sign-making of the most basic kind.
via Anglicans should throw out dry tradition | Theo Hobson | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Readings This Sunday: Jesus Proclaims Himself… to a humble Samaritan woman
March 27, 2011 – 3rd Sunday in Lent
The Episcopal Church uses the Revised Common Lectionary. When a choice is given for the Old Testament lesson and Psalm, at St. Nicholas we use the first option, or Track 1. More about the Revised Common Lectionary is at this link.
The Gospel
Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, `I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, `Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, `One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
Volunteers Needed For Compassionate Care
Death is a natural part of LIFE…..
YOU can make a difference in the care.
Alexian Brothers Health Care System in Elk Grove Village has a unique program that provides compassionate care for the dying and their families.
We are looking for volunteers to help in our care program:
1.) “Compassionate Companions“–individuals who sit with people who are dying so they are not alone
2.) Bereavement Callers–to do a ‘wellness check’ by phone of people who have recently lost a loved one
3.) Bereavement Angels–people who assist us with mailing supportive literature to the bereaved.
Training will be provided!
Please call The Center for Spiritual Care at 847-437-5500 ext. 4744 for more information.
Thank you so much for considering this important ministry.