16 Jan - Called to Fellowship

“God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (1 Cor 1:9)
How true Paul’s statement to the Corinthians is! With the Annual Meeting coming up next Sunday, I am very aware of the Christian fellowship we are all called into every day. Just before verse 9, Paul is giving thanks for the people he is writing to and the gifts they have been given – “speech and knowledge of every kind;” in fact, Paul tells them they “are not lacking in any spiritual gift.” I believe the same is true for all of us at St. Simon’s. God has called us together to be a vital place of community and worship and has given us all the gifts we need to continue to be good stewards and witnesses of Christ’s love in the world.
Come next Sunday at 9:00 a.m. to worship and give thanks for the many blessings we share. Stay for the Annual Meeting where we will celebrate our journey to date and prayerfully discern where God is leading us this year.
Peace,
The Rev. M.E. Eccles, LPC +

9 Jan 2011

Decisions are difficult for us all. At about the age of thirty, Jesus felt called to a decision in his life. His cousin, John, was talking to anyone who would listen about a new kind of world he felt sure was coming, a world for which people needed to make some changes in themselves and in their society. Jesus decided to go to John, to step down into the water of the Jordan river and to be baptized, intending this to be symbolic of the fact that one stage of his life was ending, and another was beginning.

We Christians need to ask if there needs to be a moment like that in our own lives, a moment of deciding how to be Christian and follow Christ in a new way in our changing world. We may not have been baptized as children, or been confirmed in our teens. Even if either of these things happened in our early years, we may still feel the need to find a way to say Yes to Jesus again. A friend might ask us to go on a Cursillo weekend. We might decide to attend an Enquirers/Confirmation class with the Rev. M.E. Eccles this year and to present ourselves in front of the Bishop for Reaffirmation of Baptismal Vows, as provided for in the Book of Common Prayer, p. 419. That would be a great way to refresh our knowledge of the Christian faith and end with our making a renewed commitment to Christ.

When we decide to do something like this, we know that we are following in the footsteps of Jesus himself. He knew what it was like to feel the need of renewing commitment to God. Jesus made a decision and he acted upon it. He offered himself to God for God’s service.

Notice what happened when Jesus did this. He became even more aware of God’s spirit being alive and active within him. So will we. The spirit came to Jesus like a dove. A dove is the symbol of peace, in this case inner peace. In the coming of inner peace, we will experience the coming of the dove. Secondly, Jesus knew that he was being addressed by God. He knew himself to be in close and loving relationship with the God he addressed as Father. We too can come to know that relationship with God if we decide to act. We will find it through our relationship with Christ. We will find a deep peace. We will be called to serve. And we will come to know who we really are.

Peace to you,

Fr. Bob+

2 Jan - Post Christmas

Christmas is over. Even though our “official” celebration lasts 12 days, until the Epiphany on January 6, for most of us Christmas is over when we return to normal routines of work and school after New Year’s. Many of us have probably taken the tree and the decorations down. The warmth and glow of Christmas have faded or disappeared.

The sense of warmth and joy that is so much a part of Christmas in the Church—the center candle in the Advent wreath now lit, the familiar carols, the joy of Jesus’ birth—fade quickly too. Our Gospel readings for the Second Sunday after Christmas sound a somber, even menacing tone. On this day we hear of the visit of the wise men from the East, being asked by Herod to inform him of where the newborn Messiah is. The wise men, sensing that Herod has evil intentions, do not return with this information, but instead head “for their own country by another way.” In an alternative Gospel reading for the day, Joseph is warned in a dream to flee with Mary and Jesus to Egypt and remain there until danger is past.

These readings remind us that the birth of Jesus was not a welcome event to those in power. These words are a first indication of what will be an ongoing theme in Jesus’ ministry: opposition from those who want to maintain the status quo. Jesus will challenge those who want to follow him in his ministry, as he challenges us today, to be critical of social structures that create and maintain a system of haves and have-nots, injustice, and suffering. He will challenge us to take action: to love one another and to work for justice and peace in the world.

Sound familiar? It should. Those are our baptismal promises, the pattern of our lives . And so, Christmas over, we continue on in our journey of Christian life.

Peace,

Deacon Sue

3 Advent

Jesus Is Not A Warrior King, But He Is Also Not Santa Claus

John, in today’s gospel, sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he is “the one,” the messiah. Perhaps that seems strange to us because John baptized Jesus after balking, saying Jesus should be the one to baptize him. The reason for John’s question is Jesus has not lived up to be the kind of messiah John expected, or that anyone of the time expected. The Jews of Jesus’ time expected a warrior king like David; one who would cause fear and trembling, delivering terrible justice. Instead, Jesus heals the blind, the deaf and raises the dead.

But Jesus and God aren’t Santa Claus either. We can’t help but ask the question: why doesn’t God rescue John from prison and allow him, instead, to be decapitated? Why do we suffer today in so many ways? That is the mystery we all must struggle with in this Advent season. We know, as does John, that Jesus is the messiah because of the miracles he does. Yet we wonder why our personal wishes aren’t granted and, instead, we are called to learn to love all in the world, putting the other before the self. These are hard questions that I certainly don’t have the answers for, yet I try to sit with them in this time of anticipation.

Blessings as you try to do the same,

The Rev. M.E.+

5 Dec - Second Advent

In today’s Gospel lesson, we encounter John the Baptist. John is a well-known figure in Christian tradition. He is eccentric. A wild sort of man, all rough edges and sharp tongue. He wears a camel skin and, so we are told, subsists on a diet of locusts and wild honey. He announces that one greater and more powerful than he is coming. We interpret his statements to be an announcement of the coming of Jesus in his ministry.

But John the Baptist proclaims more than the coming of someone great. He also proclaims that a new kind of world is coming. There will be destruction of the old, of what is known. You would think that people would turn away from such a message. Quite the contrary, people flocked to John the Baptist in large numbers. They were eager to repent and to be baptized. They looked forward with anticipation to a new world order. Who were these followers? Most likely, they were the poor, the weak, the marginalized of their society. People who had nothing to lose and everything to gain if the existing power structure was destroyed.

John’s message, like the message of Jesus, is a message of hope. It brings light into the darkness of the world of pain, suffering, and lack of hope. As we hear John’s message in our world, we are aware of the darkness of our own world: economic downturn, high unemployment, violence. May John’s message bring the light of hope into whatever darkness may be in our own lives. May it bring the light and hope to the darkness of our world around us.



- Deacon Sue Nebel

First Advent

Our goals, in the words of today’s Epistle lesson: Lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; live honorably. Let Christ transform us into people who love one another.

We learn from the past. The Bible is a record of divine promises made and kept. God, who was faithful in the past, will be faithful in the future. We are free to give up any obsession we have with the past, past wounds, past anxieties, past hurts, fears, and doubts, and live freely in the present, hoping for the future because God kept God’s promises. God will keep God’s promises.

We are realistic about what is possible. Trusting in God, we are realistic when we hope for things yet unseen, even big things, like joy and peace and salvation and wholeness.

But we are realistic: all of these things lie ahead of us. All of these things are in our future. All our real wholeness, our real joy, our real love, completely, fully realized, is in our future.

That’s whey Advent, and our Christian faith, is future-oriented. Yes, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem. Yes, he actually died and was buried and rose again and appeared openly to his disciples. Yes, all these things, historically, in the past, happened. But they all happened so that we can live into the future which awaits us, a future for which God is preparing us, a future of which Christ, raised from the dead, is the first fruits.

We cannot underestimate the importance of our future goals. They not only give us hope, but how we envision the future breaks into how we live our present. Our future can form our present, rescue it, revitalize it, give it meaning.

- The Rev. Dr. Amy Richter, rector of St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Annapolis, Maryland

Condensed from Sermons That Work

21 Nov - The Kingdom

Christ the King Sunday is new to the church. Pope Pius XI introduced it in 1925, a time when despotic rulers and systems began to take hold in Europe: Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin. The Pope wanted to advance a message of security through the rule of Christ over the chaos of tyranny.

And the kingdom of God does stand in stark contrast to the systems of this world. In this kingdom, there is justice. In this kingdom, the justice stands alongside mercy. In this kingdom, the innocents do not die. The kingdom of God is real. It exists, here and now, just not in what you see. It is the kingdom that exists in the heart of men and women who give themselves over to the King of Kings. It exists in the hearts of men and women who give themselves over to peace.

It is because of the peace of that kingdom that we – who live both there and here, at once – can promote justice here. It is because of that peace that we stand against genocide in Sudan and elsewhere. It is because of that peace that we feed the hungry and clothe the naked.

Justice, like a river, flows from that kingdom into this world, through you.

That is what the Kingdom of Christ means. It is otherworldly, and yet it is quite this-worldly. It is quite the here and now, light against darkness.

The light shone, and the darkness could not comprehend it, could not extinguish it.

Rev. Rob Gieselmann, author of "The Episcopal Call to Love"

Condensed from Sermons That Work