05/07/2020
This Sunday, May 5th, is the Fifth Sunday of Easter
Happy Mother’s Day!
https://youtu.be/sjKwSy3XKBE
AS POSTED PREVIOUSLY ALL CHURCH ACTIVITIES CANCELLED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
That means:
All church services and activities are cancelled until further notice.
In addition, the All Faiths Food Bank has cancelled food distribution until further notice, so no volunteers needed at this time
Online Worship Services
The Diocese of Southwest Florida has parishes that stream their weekly services. See below blue links for links to services or worship. Most stream their main Sunday services, as well as some weekday special services and studies. Below are some of them.
We continue to update this list as we get them for parishes without links that you see below. Note, these services will mostly be archived at the same links after they happen.
Below are a selection of links, and service times, if available. Note that some services are streamed via YouTube, and others on the individual web pages of the churches.
Find the page and links HERE https://www.episcopalswfl.org/video.html
Tips on streaming are HERE. https://episcopalswfl.org/streaming.html
April 2020 Financial Summary
Income - $13,574
Expenses- $6.074
Net Income Surplus or (Deficit) - $7,499
2020 Forecast
Income - $138,450
Expenses- $154,088
Net Income Surplus or (Deficit) - ($15,638)
Current bills are being paid out of our cash reserves. As we already stated, cash reserves are very low. With the church closure, it is obviously important that we keep our contributions current. Note that April expenses are lower because we have deferred about $3,500 in expenses into the next month’s so our cash reserves stay positive. Please continue sending your regular contribution (check, not cash) to the church through the US mail so we don't fall behind on our bills.
We are looking at other options to handle contributions and will update you as our plan evolves.
If you have any questions, please contact any vestry member or the Treasurer
REFLECTIONS FROM THE PRIEST IN CHARGE
What troubles your heart today?
For me the list is long and it's not pretty. It's a crushing and excruciating heart attack. I think about all the litanies and prayers we have offered in the last couple of years for the violence and suffering in the world and persecuted religions. I think about the protests around the world and in America. I think about healthcare, immigrants, and refugees. I think about gun violence, racism, and poverty. I think about stories of bullying and suicides. I think about the corona virus and the global pandemic. I think about the nightmare of our political dysfunction in both parties. I think about those grieving and mourning the death of a loved one. I think about families that are struggling, spouses that are divorcing, children that are hungry, and people that are hanging on by a thread. I think about my own sorrows, losses, and disappointments. I think about the ways today's gospel gets interpreted and used to exclude, condemn, and slam others.
Despite what Jesus says about not letting our hearts be troubled, my heart is troubled and I suspect yours might be too. What would you add to my list? What is troubling your heart today? None of us get through this life without a troubled heart. I don't think we can look at the pain of the world today, the suffering of a loved one, or our own wounds and hurts and not have a troubled heart. At least, I hope we can't.
That's the context in which I hear Jesus say, "Do not let your hearts be troubled." It's not that different from the context in which Jesus said those words. It is the night of the last supper. Jesus has announced his departure from this world, his death. Feet have been washed. Judas has left the table and stepped into the nighttime of betrayal. Peter will break his silence with a threefold denial. Thomas is lost and asks, "How can we know the way?" Philip has lost his center and can't see what is right in front of him. "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied," he says.
"Do not let your hearts be troubled," Jesus says. "Do not let your hearts be troubled?" Are you kidding me? Is Jesus really serious about that? Does he know what is happening in our lives and our world? How can Jesus say that with a straight face when he was troubled at seeing Mary and the Jews weeping at the death of Lazarus (John 11:33), when he said that his own "soul is troubled" (John 12:27), and when St. John tells us that Jesus "was troubled in spirit" (John 13:21)? What is Jesus telling us? It's not as if there is an on-off switch for troubled hearts. How do we begin to make sense of today's gospel in a world whose heart is constantly troubled?
It's not hard to understand why this text is so often used in a burial liturgy. Death troubles our hearts and we want to find some balance, stability, and harmony. This text, however, is about more than the after life. It has something to say right here and right now. It's speaks to the very circumstances that trouble our hearts today.
Think about times when you heart has been troubled. Maybe it is now. What does that feel like? We all experience it in our own ways but see if this sounds familiar: isolated, paralyzed, overwhelmed, powerless, off balance, out of control, disconnected, afraid, thoughts spinning in your head, no stability, despair, grief, tears, anger. Do you recognize any of those?
In the midst of a troubled heart the unspoken question is this: Will the center hold or is everything collapsing around us. Thomas and Philip are feeling the collapse. Much of the world is. Maybe you are too. Will the center hold? That's our question.
"Do not let your hearts be troubled." Jesus recognizes that our hearts are troubled. He is not warning us about a future condition. He knows the troubling has already begun. He can see it in us because he's experienced it within himself. He also knows that our lives and the world are not defined by or limited to what troubles.
What if not letting our hearts be troubled begins with looking into our hearts and seeing and naming what troubles? That means facing our selves, our lives, our world. That may be the first and most difficult thing Jesus asks of us in today's gospel. I don't know about you but sometimes I don't want to see. I don't want to name. It's too difficult and too painful. It takes me too close to the edge of the abyss and a free fall into a collapsing life and a collapsing world. "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Thomas speaks for us all. We've lost our center. How do we re-center? Where do we go when it seems everything is collapsing around us?
Here's the paradox. Sometimes we have to lose our center in order to find it. I want to be clear about this. I'm not suggesting that God purposely de-centers us. De-centering happens. It's a part of life. It's a part of the human condition. Sometimes it comes out of circumstances we didn't create or choose. Other times it is a consequence of our choices or actions. Regardless, Jesus says that is not a place to stay or a way to live. It is not the life he lives or offer us.
If your heart is troubled then it's time to re-center. Re-centering doesn't mean our hearts won't be troubled. It doesn't necessarily fix the problem, whatever it might be. It means that our lives are tethered to something greater than ourselves. It means that our hearts are held secure by the Divine Life and we are not free falling into the abyss. Jesus is reminding us that there is a center and it is not us. It is not America and her laws and constitution. It is not the church and her creeds and doctrines. It is not our success, accomplishments, position, or power. We do not have to be the center nor do we need to establish it. In fact, we can't. Instead, we awaken to it. We already know the way to and the place of this center Jesus says.
"Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied," Philip says to Jesus. He's bought into the lie that the Father is apart from, outside of, and distant from himself. The center, however, is within. The Father's house is within. The kingdom is within. Wherever you go, there is the center. Whatever you face, there is the center. Whoever you are, there is the center, Regardless of what troubles, there is the center. Wherever you are, there is the center. Not because you are the center, but because God is within.
In the language of today's gospel the center is the Father's house and there are many dwelling place in this house. In the Father's house there is a dwelling place for every troubled heart. I am not talking about the after life, and I am not thinking of this as some sort of celestial dormitory for those who have enough right belief and right behavior. I am taking about the dwelling places as the ways God's life intersects our own: mercy and forgiveness, justice, generosity, compassion, healing, love, beauty, wisdom, hope, courage, joy, intimacy. These are the dwelling places for troubled hearts, places of re-centering. Every time we live into and express the divine attributes in our way of being, with our words, or by our actions, we regain our center, restore balance, and take up residence in the Father's house.
What in you today needs re-centering? "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places."
How might centeredness, balance, and harmony within yourself help you see and respond to your troubles or the troubles of the world differently? "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places."
What if in the midst of troubles your heart could maintain a normal rhythm and beat with God's life? "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places."
"In my Father's house there are many dwelling places." I hear those words and I imagine a sign blinking like a heartbeat:
"Rooms available."
"Rooms available."
"Rooms available."
Have you ever looked for something around your house, maybe your car keys or your glasses, only to discover after a long and frustrating search that they were right there in your hand or your pocket, or even on your face? We do have an uncanny ability to miss the obvious sometimes. In fact, a friend of mine swears by this principle when she plays hide and seek with her youth group. She insists the very best place to hide is right next to the seeker - who simply takes off after counting and never guesses she's been sitting there all along. You can imagine how the seeker feels when he finally clues into his mistake.
I wonder if that's something like the shock the two disciples felt when they finally realized who it was they'd been talking to along the Emmaus road. Why hadn't they recognized Jesus sooner? Why did it take them so long to catch on?
Biblical commentators have come up with a number of interesting proposals to explain their difficulty. It was the blinding brightness of the setting sun in their eyes, they suggest, or maybe Jesus looked strikingly different after his resurrection. I wonder if it was something as simple as the fact that they weren't expecting to see Jesus walking along beside them three days after his death.
Or maybe it wasn't that simple. The text also says "their eyes were kept from recognizing" Jesus at first (v.16) and later that "their eyes were opened." (v. 31) An extra-ordinary act of God could well be tucked behind the passive voice here. God was that hidden agent who first keeps them from seeing and then allows them to see. After all, how else could we explain Jesus' quick disappearing act as soon as the two disciples finally do recognize him? So there may not be any perfect analogies in our own experience to this particular sequence of not seeing - seeing - not seeing.
But whatever the reasons for their lack of recognition, visually speaking, there's also a deeper recognition issue at play here. Notice how much Jesus makes of the lack of understanding demonstrated by Cleopas and his friend. He calls them "foolish" and speaks of their "slowness to believe all that the prophets had spoken." Perhaps they'd misunderstood something fundamental about the nature and the role of their Messiah. They'd certainly have been in good company if they found the news of the empty tomb hard to process.
Notice, too, that "a nice creative tension develops [here] as they wander down the road. It arises because according to [earlier verses in this chapter] the reports of the women had not convinced the disciples. [Of course] Luke's congregations, hearing [Luke's] story, know the resurrection has taken place. They (and we) understand a good deal more about what has happened than [do Cleopas and his companion]. We want to tell them - climb up on stage and whisper what we know or shout it!" Christ is risen! He's standing right there!
But of course the two disciples are as deaf to our cries as they are blind to the identity of their companion on the road. Until . . . and notice what it is that finally prompts their understanding. When Jesus does something as ordinary as sitting down at a meal and breaking bread with them, then "their eyes were opened and they recognized him." Jesus shared many meals with tax collectors and sinners, Pharisees and disciples alike. Sitting around a dinner table together would have been a very familiar setting to the two who encountered Jesus along that Emmaus road. So I don't think it's at all coincidental that this is where they had their "aha!" moment. It may have been the familiarity of this simple action that struck a chord deep within them and triggered recognition.
What is it that triggers recognition in us, here and now? What is it that makes us aware of Christ's presence in this place? How do we see Jesus in the pandemic that we are living through? It doesn't need to be anything fancy or complicated. It can be the simplest of things. A prayer. A favorite Bible verse. An old familiar song. A splash of water on someone's forehead. An ordinary looking loaf of bread and a pitcher of grape juice sitting on a table.
Remember that Jesus had already lectured, at some length, on the many references to himself throughout the Scriptures. It wasn't that he hadn't presented the material. But the two disciples didn't actually clue in to who he was and what he was saying until he sat down with them and broke bread at their table. An ordinary act, to begin an ordinary meal, in an ordinary house, with ordinary people. Nothing fancy. Just a simple meal. And it was then that they recognized their Lord.
