June 21, The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
Wednesday, June 17, 2015 at 8:16AM Praying the Anglican Rosary Saturday June 20 at 9:00 a.m.
The Anglican Rosary gathering continues at the Church on Saturday mornings at 9:00 a.m. If you haven’t come before, you are more than welcome. Everyone will be happy to show you how to participate.
Reprise: Young Adult Barbecue: Last Saturday, June 13, 4:30 p.m.
A good crowd was present and a good time was had by all at the Young Adult Barbecue last Saturday at the Rectory. People got to spend quality time with one another and deepen their connections. Thanks everyone who came and brought food to share.
We will plan to hold another one toward the end of the summer!
Emmaus Road: Finishing the book, beginning the summer movies.
Emmaus Road concludes its reading of The Imitation of Christ. It was a challenge to transcend the cultural distance between the Middle Ages and our own time, yet contained within it was wisdom that is of perennial relevance.
With the beginning of summer, Emmaus Road will shift its focus from books to movies. We find movies that contain religious/spiritual themes and watch them and then discuss them. It’s great fun.
Monday June 22 7:00 p.m. in the Parish Hall Living Room. Black Robe
This movie is about a young Jesuit priest in the French Canadian wilderness in the 1600’s. He is on his way to a mission station to the Huron tribe to take the place of another priest who has died. It is a story of a clash of civilizations, not just between two groups of very different people, but more importantly, within each one.
Summer Reading; The Late History of Israel
Sunday June 14 is “Proper 6.” It is the way we number the weeks after Pentecost for moving through the Sunday and Daily Lectionary readings. It will be the Third Sunday after Pentecost. That is the title of the Sunday. The Proper is the sequence of readings and it changes depending on the date of Easter. The same thing happens with the Sundays after Epiphany. We can have as many as 9 or as few as 4 depending when Easter falls. (Hint: Usually on a Sunday!)
Once we get to Proper 6, the Daily Scripture readings settle into a pattern. In Year 1 (An odd numbered year as in 2015) The Daily Old Testament readings will be the late history of Israel. It opens with the First Book of Samuel and continues on into the time between the Old and New Testament periods with the Maccabees. We get the late history of Israel from Samuel and Saul to the later kings, (Ahab, who was named after the sea captain in Moby Dick) on to the Exile and return and then the conquest by the Greeks and the revolt. This late history is where most of the famous and familiar Bible stories come from. If you haven’t read this before, or you want to refresh your memory of some famous stories, (David and Goliath, Solomon and the two women and the baby, Ahab, Jezebel, Elijah and Elisha etc) doing the Daily Scripture readings posted in the bulletin insert each week is an easy way to do this. Consider taking it up. You’ll really enjoy it.
Summer Sunday School
The Atriums are closed for the summer giving our Catechists a well deserved rest. We are deeply grateful for all their dedication to the spiritual development of our children. During the summer we will have a basic Sunday School for children at the 10:15 service. Marielle Askew will give a short lesson and lead the children in some art and craft activities.
Coffee Hour Sign Up for July and August
The sign up sheet for Coffee hour is next to the Air Pots on the Coffee table outside Church. Please sign up to take a Sunday during the summer.
Catechesis of the Good Shepherd
Level 2
June 21, Pentecost 3
The History of the Kingdom of God
Abraham Heschel was a tremendous influence on Sofia’s work. She writes of his discussion between time and space in RPC part 2: “He points out that human beings can dominate space in the way they move through it and occupy it. He says, ‘Time, however, is beyond our reach, beyond our power. It is both near and far, intrinsic to all experience and transcending all experiences. It belongs exclusively to God.’”
For the Level II children, Sofia presents the concept of time and biblical history not as a collection of stories in chronological order but highlights the unity and vastness of the history. “Biblical history conserves the necessary “globalita because the vents it records are tied together by the constant presence of the one God. It is God who makes one story, one history from all the separate events. Generations follow one another throughout history. Major and minor characters appear on Israel’s stage and then make their exit. But the Lord of history is present throughout time. He is present at the beginning and even before. He is the artisan of creation, and he stays with the project throughout the development, projecting his presence also toward its conclusion.”
RPC Pt 2, 16.
How does Sofia communicate unity and vastness of the history to Level II 6-9 year olds? Through several weeks spent reflecting on the History of the Kingdom of God. The next week the La Fettuccia is brought out that gives a great visual to what was discussed in the earlier week. It tells of the great love God took in preparing the world for us, unfolding His plan for our redemption, and eternal presence with Him. Next, the children look at the Blue Strip, a small version of the La Fettuccia that makes it possible to work with the material inside the atrium. The work is smaller, but has symbols and added scripture passages. The Mute Strip goes along with this work. It is usually presented to older children. The Mute Strip is blank, and has added materials for the child to put in place using the Blue Strip as a control.
During all the presentations, the focus is on three great moments in time: Creation, Redemption, and Parousia. Starting with Creation, we talk about it being a great gift from God to us that was prepared over a long time and with care. The discussion begins with at “one time, out of nothing things began to take shape, over a long, long time, billions of years ago. There were gasses, and masses that created planets, moons, suns, stars and Earth. Slowly, over hundreds of millions of years, the elements found their place, some on the surface and some inside, as the Earth cooled and firmed up. Minerals settled under the earth, continents and oceans formed. As the Earth cooled, plants and trees began to come forth. Air! We call God’s work in making the universe, Creation.
How interesting, does Creation start - little, then expands! (Kingdom of God!) We talk about significance of the progression of atoms, amoebas, plant life, animals, and when humans appear. Humankind is set apart from other animals by the gift of intelligence and ability to use their hands, guided by intelligence for work and transformation. We ask ourselves, “Who could have possibly made all of this for us?” We reference back to Gen 1. In the Bible, we learn it is God who prepared everything.
More time has passed, but then God wanted to give us another gift! It is the gift of himself through His Son. This brings us to the second moment of Redemption, when Christ came and died for our sins and rose on the third day so we may have eternal life. From the moment of Redemption until the present, the light of Christ (started small, then grew!) has been spreading. Now, we choose how we are going to respond to the gift with our lives. In Level II, we refer to our time and our place in this History of the Kingdom of God as the “Blank Page” we write, as collaborators of God’s plan. Each person is writing on the blank page, each person is an important part of His History. We don’t know how long this time will last, but at the end of this time, we know that Christ will come again.
The third moment is called Parousia. We wait with hope for this time, when there will be no more pain, sadness or death. It is a time when we refer to as when “God will be all in all.” 1 Corin 15:1-28.
I promise we will get to the Fettuccia next week, but you need the context, as does the children, prior to receiving that work.
Ms. Georgie
Food For Thought
On the Food for Thought Table this weekend, two articles on different subjects.
1. The World Ike Wrought. This is a book review from the Wall Street Journal of Kevin Krause’s new book One Nation Under God. There are those who are convinced that the United States is a “Christian Nation,” and has been so since the beginning. However, it wasn’t until the 1950’s that the phrase “Under God,” was inserted into the Pledge of Alliegence. The book argues that with the help of some pastors, 1930’s business opposition to the New Deal blossomed into 1950’s Christian nationalism.
2. Considering the Heavens. This is from the current issue of The Christian Century and is an interview with Fr. Guy Consolmagno, S.J. on the relationship or religion and science. Fr. Consolmagno is a Jesuit priest and a researcher at the Vatican Observatory. He recently wrote with Paul Mueller S.J., “Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?...and Other Questions from the Astronomer’s In-Box at the Vatican Observatory.”
Sunday June 28th
One Service at 9:30 a.m.
Parish Potluck Follows
Disaster Preparedness talk by Jim Goltz
Disaster Preparedness & Recover for COA.
We continue our work toward developing a Parish Recovery Plan in the event of a major disaster. The plan will cover four areas.
1. Communication with members of the parish to make sure people are alright. We will be asking parish members to supply us with contact information for people out of the area. Sometimes if local phone service is not working, long distance does. It’s important that people have an out area, out of state preferably person who can be contacted. We’ll be looking at other forms of communication by means of social media etc.
2. Continuity of Worship and Operations. This will involve what some call “Church in a Box.” That is having the accoutrements prepared to do worship either outside, or in the Parish Hall, should the Church be unusable. Fr. Michael Bamberger who is the Episcopal Relief and Development Disaster Coordinator for our diocese says that the Churches that hold worship after a disaster are the ones that recover. We intend to be one of those.
The Finance Committee will put in place procedures that enable continuity of business for our parish.
3. The Integrity of our Building. We’ve got the engineering drawings of the Church, Parish Hall, and Rectory. We will be talking to the structural engineer who worked on the Church Tower Restoration so that we can quickly evaluate the structural integrity of the building and prevent a premature closure of the building by temporary building inspectors who just want to be on the safe side. This was important for Fr. Bamberger’s Church, Ascension Sierra Madre after the Sierra Madre Earthquke.
4. Our being of assistance to the surrounding community. In all likelihood most of our outreach efforts after a disaster will be directed toward Hillsides Home. We’ll be working with them to find out their plan and their needs.
Parish Potluck for June 28
The sign up sheet for the Parish Potluck will be on the table outside Church the next two Sundays. Please sign up. Our potlucks are always fun.
Disaster Preparedness Talk by Jim Goltz
Jim recently retired from the California Office of Emergency Services. Jim is an expert in Disaster Planning and Recovery. He will be talking with us about our own personal preparedness in terms of our homes, our cars, etc. It will be practical, down-to-earth and doable.