http://www.standrewsshippensburg.org/

Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church, Shippensburg, PA, 204 E Burd Street, Shippensburg, PA (2026)

09/15/2026

Calling kids of all ages! Join us this afternoon at Grace Place for Think Tank! A time of fun, problem solving, creativity, and snacks! 3:30-5:00pm

09/14/2026

Please join us for Community Meal tonight!
5:00-6:00 in the Parish Life Center. On the menu tonight is hoagies! All are welcome, always.

09/13/2026

Good morning, we are so happy that you chose to join us! We are happy to have Brian Helman and Marie Hershey playing for us today.

09/12/2026

Good evening. Here's my sermon for tomorrow morning. I look forward to being with you, as we continue our celebration of the Season of Creation. With abiding love, Mother Barbara

It is good for our souls, from time to time, to assume we have some deep reparation work to do with our relationship with God. For, although God always draws us near, and always loves us, without question or measure, there are times when we draw away from God. Sometimes we know this. Other times we don’t. But whether it is with intention or not, it can be strong soul work to look honestly at how we are being in the world and, reflect on whether this stance supports our noticing, receiving, and honoring the gifts given to us by God, or whether we have somehow missed the mark.
So, just for the sake of our souls, let’s imagine how it could be that we are the wicked slave from today’s story – the one who has been issued forgiveness and given the gift of new life, and we have squandered it. We have not taken it within us to allow God’s gift of mercy, fullness, and abundant life to move us into a place of gratitude and servanthood, where all our actions would reflect the gifts we have been given. Perhaps we are the wicked servant, who has received the abundant gift of God’s good earth, and we have not treated it well. Perhaps we are the ones who God forgives again and again, for our callousness toward honoring the gift given; perhaps we are the ones who God desires to liberate from our claim of power and domination of the earth and each other; perhaps we are the ones God urges to make a fresh new start, to have the grace to pay forward the grace we so freely received to our fellow human beings and all beings.
We often wonder how it is that we do not see the wisdom in stewardship of the gift of creation which God has given to us. We often wonder how we cannot seem to grasp the idea of God’s gift economy, where grace begets grace, where all have enough, where all are cared for, where all are shown the love that God shows to us. But it happens somehow – in our ignorance or in our awareness. And we know from our gospel story today that the wicked steward does not arrive at a good ending. I believe we can choose differently.
At the retreat I participated and attended these past few days, we explored the idea of God as creator – not just our creator, but the creator of all. The image we held onto was not a dispassionate God. This was not a God who created and then walked away. This was a God whose creative essence continues to reside within and among all parts of God’s creation: within us, as individuals, as well as a collective “tribe,” a group of people who share a common essence and, within us, all of us, in the entire web of interconnection we share with all of God’s creation.
One revelation we explored was that, if and when we destroy what God has created, God’s creative essence, we destroy God’s essence in the world. This revelation gave us pause. This cannot be the good news of Christ being manifested in our world.
So, let us imagine, rather, that we are called to honor and love God, to receive all of God’s creation as a gift, and to commit ourselves to being faithful and good stewards of the gifts given to us.
May we realize, as Moses and the faithful Israelites did in the story of the Passover and then the Exodus, that God, moving through and with God’s creation (in that case parting the Red Sea) is indeed our liberator, when we allow it. When we allow God’s freedom of new life to move through our being, through God’s creation, by listening, by trusting, by moving when God says, “go,” by allowing the deconstruction of our old patterns of being and thinking, by obeying, which of course, means deeply listening to the call of God, to move forward, into a new way of being, that allows abundant life for all people.
Maybe this is what we need to do, for our salvation and for the salvation of the world. Maybe we need to realize that we are again given the opportunity for God, in cooperation with God’s creation, to be saved. But not just God’s people to be saved, because when God saved the Israelites, God didn’t just save those particular people. God saved the desire and inspiration set within all of us to work toward justice with peace, to walk the way of Love, to embrace the path of liberation, of willingly letting go of what binds us to only ourselves, to ignite within us a passion to set all of creation free.
We are grateful that Moses said, “yes” to God. We are grateful that Mary said, “yes” to God. We are grateful that Jesus said, “yes” to God”. For each of those moments of consent have opened the pathway to our salvation. Perhaps now it is our turn to say, “yes.”
So, let’s stretch out our hands, in obedience, for the salvation of creation, in gratitude for the gift of abundant life, waiting for us to claim.
Let us stretch out our hands toward the blessed bread and wine, first and foremost, for this is the source of our nourishment and strength.
But let us also stretch out our hands over all that seems like obstacles, to our salvation and the world’s – as the Israelites would have done when they noticed with the Red Sea in front of them, and the chariots barreling down upon them, when death is moments away, when they feel the breath of the Egyptian horses ready to take their breath away, when they resisted thinking how foolish they had been to believe in a God who would save them, when instead they bent the knee of their hearts, in trust, belief, obedience, and love.
Let us be as the Israelites were – obedient to God’s directive for the Passover, the angel of death to pass over their households, not knowing why or how, but trusting it to be true. Obedient to the need to listen, when all they could see was the destruction and terror of the land; obedient to get up and go, as they were directed.
Let us imagine we can be as Miriam, or the redeemed slaves, with a tambourine in our hands, creating music that is joyous and celebratory and giving praise to a God who will not forsake us, even in the worst of our behaviors or hardness of heart.
Let us lean closely and deeply into our Eucharistic prayer, where we ask the Spirit to “Breathe your Spirit over the whole earth and make us your new creation, the Body of Christ given for the world you have made.” Do you hear that, that we can be the Body of Christ given for the world, not taking the world, but given for the world, you have made.
This means we stretch out our hands against human complacency and our need for domination; this means we stretch out our hands to pull away our desire to control, our desire to maintain status quo, and we stretch out hands to plant native trees, to pull weeds, not to use pesticides, to stretch out our hands in praise and glory for the beauty of the earth, God’s primary revelation; we stretch out our hands to notice, to feel, to embrace all that is good, and fall into God’s love, again and again, so we may be transformed.
For transformation is the pathway to our salvation and the salvation of the world.
Amen.

09/10/2026

Everyone is invited to join us for our weekly communal breakfast! This week we will be serving french toast and sausage! Thank you to Community CARES for the generous donation of eggs!!
Join us every Friday morning from 9:30-10:30 for a delicious, healthy, home-cooked meal. Doors open at 9 AM. See you there!

09/07/2026

All are invited to "Simply Prayer" tomorrow evening!

Simply Prayer is a new offering from St. Andrew's in which all are welcome to gather for a time of quiet, prayer, and community. Come as you are. We will meet Tuesday 9/8 at 6:00pm at Grace Place.
Happy Labor Day everyone! Hoping you all were able to enjoy a day off and bask in this glorious weather!

09/06/2026

Mark your calendars for events This Week at St. Andrew's:

Tuesday 9/8 Think Tank 3:30-5:00PM

Tuesday 9/8 Simply Prayer 6:00PM

Friday 9/11 Community Breakfast 9:30-10:30AM

Friday 9/11 Healing Prayer Service 11:00AM

Sunday 9/13 Worship Services 8:00 and 10:00

More details to come!

09/05/2026

Good afternoon. I look forward to being with you tomorrow morning. We will be offering healing prayers and anointing this Sunday. Here's my sermon for tomorrow. Sending much love, Mother Barbara

In this week’s film series exploring the intersection of multiple faith traditions and the call to care for God’s creation, the Rabbi spoke about the high holy day of Rosh Hashanah, which is approaching this week. He described it first in terms which many of us may be familiar with – a time of introspection, reflection, repentance, and ultimately the repair of the places where individuals have missed the mark. However, as he continued, he brought in a meaning new to me of this Jewish High Holy Day – it is a day of celebrating the anniversary of the acts of creation, of the birth of the world. And what he said next touched a deep place in my soul, “There is always the opportunity to repair, there is always the opportunity to do better.” To me, this is a statement of hope, a conviction to do what is right, and a decision or pivotal point to honor again, God, God’s people, and God’s creation.
The reason the Jewish people believe there is always an opportunity to repair, and the reason we as Christians believe this also, is because of our story today from the Hebrew Bible, the story of the Passover. This foundational story in our faith traditions is what speaks to us of the will of God to break the bonds of oppression, to repair what has been brought about by sin, to heal the wounds, to bring about liberation and justice through mercy and love. This act of God’s is to not simply return life to its prior state, but to infuse a life with new life, abundant life, life in the Promised Land.
In the Passover story, the angel of death passed over the homes of the faithful Israelites, not to keep them in their enslaved lives, but to bring them out to freedom, to a new way of knowing and being in relationship with their God, with each other, and in connection the land promised to them to till and to tend, as was the directive in the genesis story.
This pattern of the Passover is what we as Christians call the paschal mystery, the movement from life, or a particular orientation, to deconstruction or disorientation time, to a re-orientation, or a time of new and abundant life. This ancient pattern of God’s movement in our lives and in the life of the world was manifested and made real in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. This ancient pattern of God’s movement in our lives and in the life of the world plays out in our own lives, here and now. This is the continual invitation to always look for the opportunities to repair, to do better, to open ourselves to a deeper understanding of our call as faithful people to care for our relationship with God, with others, and with creation. The Spirit wants to set us free from whatever holds us back from living resurrection, here and now.
We can think about the opportunity to repair broken relationships and to do better from the perspective of our collective human experience. We can imagine and engage in the reparation work of healing the wounds caused by the lie of racism, the lie which many have lived which says one race is better than another. We can honor and celebrate the reparation work happening to both the indigenous people of the land we now occupy, or to those enslaved from other countries and brought to this land we now occupy. Although some may wish to, we cannot erase the history, or believe it wasn’t true, or believe it has anything to do with us. Instead, we can ask the questions, “what hurts?” This is the deconstruction part of the paschal mystery.
And then, for the reconstruction part of that holy pattern, we ask, “what heals?” For in these questions, the holy work of listening, wondering, imagining with others happens, and a new way forward emerges, only possible through the guidance and presence of the Holy Spirit. Suddenly the beloved community emerges within our transformed hearts.
Our gospel story today states clearly the centerpiece of Jesus’ life and ministry: the reconstruction part of that deep pattern of human growth and renewed life, the reconciliation, liberation, healing and the repair of the world that is the only option within a community faith.
Clearly, conflict will happen, but rather than engaging in behavior which destroys the life of a community, and Jesus lays these options out pretty clearly – avoiding conflict entirely, or gossiping, by telling other people about the person or behavior that’s offended us, rather than addressing our concerns directly to the person involved, or ganging up on each other, recruiting like-minded people to our side and creating echo-chambers of grievance, or airing our grievance to only those who won’t hold us accountable or offering alternative perspectives, or worst of all, wishing the people would leave the community.
But I wonder if we can look at moments of conflict as moments when the pascal mystery, that deep pattern of God’s way within our world, can guide us forward. Can these moments be times when everyone can allow deconstruction to happen, to allow new perspectives to emerge, to allow the Spirit to do something brand-new in the situation, to provide us the opportunities to repair, to do better, to see a new way based on God’s dream and Jesus’ life?
Can we imagine this within our interpersonal relationships, within our parish community, within our neighborhood, within the world – between us and God, between us and God’s creation, and between us and God’s beloved people?
There is a new way for us to imagine this, I believe, a way to allow the deconstruction to happen in a healthy, life-giving way – a way that was revealed to us during the anti-racism training, called Sowing Seeds in the Sand, which Jessica Larkin and I engaged with over the past 5 weeks. This training is based on telling a story about the lie of racism, tracing how the lie has been manifested throughout various periods of the history of our country. After each story was told, we engaged in a series of wondering questions. Such as, “I wonder what people are feeling in this story?” Or I wonder where we see ourselves in this story? It’s a glorious open time of allowing one’s heart to notice what is emerging, where the Spirit is drawing our attention, where the guidance to do better is offered, where is the invitation to repair is made clear.
During the first session, as we were listening and taking notes, Jessica asked a question that caused the facilitators to sit up and notice. She asked, “Is the wondering when the deconstruction happens”. It was a profound question and one which drew us into the heart of this format of storytelling. For it is true, it is in the times of wondering about those old assumptions, or patterns of thinking or behaving set deeply within us sometimes in our childhood, or convictions we hold onto but aren’t sure why, can be opened, to be addressed through curiosity, delight, and imagination. This is the holy work of the Spirit within us, nudging us forward to let go of the old lies, or the old hurts, we hold onto so that the truth of God can fill that space.
To begin the wondering, when there is conflict, or when there seems to be gap between your understanding and someone else’s, I invite you to ask two questions –
What hurts and then what heals?
When we can share our hurts or our pain or the deeper need within us which is not being met in a particular situation, we allow it to deconstruct, to be broken open, to be pulled apart. And then the new can begin to emerge – when we ask the question, what heals? What needs to be repaired, what path forward can we open, what new understanding can we gain, what can we wonder about with God here?
We have begun the Season of Creation, an intentional time when we reflect upon our relationship with God and God’s creation and all of God’s people on this common home, our earth.
Can we ask the questions to God’s creation – what hurts?
She is speaking loudly of the pain within, with her language of increased global temperatures on land and in the oceans, in the increased acidity of the oceans, in the increased humidity on the land, in the diminishment of arctic sea, in the decreasing of the springtime snow cover, in the shrinking of the glaciers, in the extended forest fire season, in the seas rising, in the plants’ and animals’ ranges shifting, and in our extreme weather. What hurts is very apparent.
But now, can we ask the question to God’s creation – what heals? What can we do better, what can we repair, what opportunities do we have, to restore our relationship with God’s primary revelation – the creation, so we can restore our relationship with God.
Let’s wonder about this together. Amen.

08/29/2026

Good evening. I look forward to being with you tomorrow morning. Here's my sermon. Sending love, Mother Barbara

This morning marks the midway point between Pentecost and the beginning of Advent, just about halfway in our “Ordinary Time” which has presented us with a chronological walk through the Gospel of Matthew.

Our story this morning is Part Two of a two-part sequence, set in motion by Jesus’ question we heard last week, “Who do they say — and who do you say — that I am?” As we saw, Part One was about Peter declaring (and Jesus confirming) that Jesus is the Messiah. This week we tackle what “messiahship” is really all about. Here in the middle of Matthew, as we turn toward the cross, we are stepping onto a sacred, treacherous path of true understanding of what Jesus is asking of us— and so we’re wise to stay alert to the truth and challenged revealed.

The initial exchange in Part One takes place in “the district of Caesarea Philippi”. As the name indicates (Caesar-ea), these were Roman settlements, and they were located near a temple built by Herod the Great, dedicated to Rome and specifically to the Emperor Augustus, the first Emperor of the Roman Empire — and a man who conspicuously added to his title the striking phrase, Divi Filius, “Son of the Divine.”

Last week, when Peter proclaimed that Jesus is the Messiah, he got it partly right — and mostly wrong. After hearing Jesus say that he must undergo suffering and be killed, Peter presumptuously takes him aside and rebukes him. Peter apparently has a vision of “the Messiah” as a deliverer who would never suffer or be conquered or killed — indeed, on the contrary, Peter likely shares the vision, common in those days, that “the Messiah” will be a military conqueror and will vanquish the Roman occupiers and restore the monarchy developed by King David, once and for all.

For you see. “Messiah” (or “The Anointed”) was an ancient title often given to a monarch, and Jesus is indeed a king — but not in the style of Caesar. On the contrary, Jesus opposes self-centered, grasping forms of power. But his mode of opposition isn’t armed with a sword; he has in mind a deeper source, a purer way of life, a truer expression of the love of God, which is a more subversive kind of resistance to the powers that be. After all, the opposite of a grasping, domineering fist isn’t a bigger fist, but rather an open, loving hand. Jesus will lead a revolution — but a revolution of love, service, and justice.

On the surface, he will suffer and be rejected. On the surface, he will at last submit to the ultimate imperial instrument of cruelty and intimidation, the Roman cross.

On the surface, he will be defeated — but God’s deeper rhythm or rule of life will prevail. After three days, he will rise again, and a movement called to love, service, and justice will be born.
And so, when Peter impulsively takes Jesus aside and rebukes him (Teacher, we’ve seen what you can do — you are here to conquer, not to be dishonored and killed!), Jesus exclaims, “Get behind me, Satan!” It’s a candid admission that Peter’s argument is a powerful temptation, reminiscent of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness being tested by “the devil” as a kind of sparring partner. Here in Caesarea Philippi, the diabolical test sounds like this: If you are the Son of God, if you are the Messiah, take these dazzling powers of yours and raise up an army, legions of angels to deliver the faithful! Invade and destroy the Temple to Augustus — and build an even greater Temple to Jesus of Nazareth! These ideas aren’t just off the mark; they’re 180 degrees off the mark, an outright reversal of what Jesus has in mind. Peter speaks boldly of Jesus as “Messiah” — but he’s drastically misunderstood true messiahship.

And then finally, as if propelled by his dispute with Peter, Jesus calls together the disciples. This is something he wants them all to hear (including us!), as if to say, Listen, all of you! Anyone who thinks of this journey as a violent campaign, a movement of domination and triumph — might as well turn back right now. That’s not what I’m about; that’s not what true deliverance is about; and so that’s not what following me is about. We’re not going to conquer the temple at Caesarea Philippi — we’re headed to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, to the cross. In effect, to follow me is to take up a cross of your own, to let go of all self-centered grasping, all will to own power and domination, and to suffer for the sake of Gospel. Let me tell you a great mystery: deep down in creation, there is a Rule of Life more profound than the superficial one. On the surface, everything seems to be driven by might and violence and grasping — but underneath all of that is a deeper rhythm, or way of true life, according to which what’s essential is actually driven by love and humility and generosity. To live according to this deeper rhythm means you will suffer — and it also means you will rise! The logic of self-centered grasping, of trying to save your own life, in the end only results in losing it. And the logic of neighborly generosity, of “losing” your life for the sake of Love and Justice, in the end results in saving it!
Perhaps the most accessible and familiar expression of this "deep rhythm or Rule of life" is the end of the famous prayer attributed to St. Francis: “let me not seek so much / to be consoled as to console, / to be understood as to understand, / to be loved as to love, / for it is in giving that we receive, / it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, / and it is in dying that we are raised to eternal life.”

It’s worth noting that Jesus does not say, “Seek out a cross and then follow me,” but rather “take up your cross and follow me.” This is no invitation to pursue, intensify, or prolong suffering. Rather, the assumptions here are first that you already have suffering in your life, and second, that following Jesus will entail some suffering. The invitation is not to seek out but rather to “take up” that suffering; to seize the role of becoming a survivor, not the role of a defeated victim; and then to follow Jesus along the way that leads to health, liberation, and new life.

Jesus has no illusions, and he wants us to see clearly, too. Following him means suffering, not because suffering is a good in itself to be sought or prolonged, but rather because confronting the powers that be — not with a sword, but with love — includes carrying a cross. Following Jesus on the road he is actually walking means following him into the shadows, out toward the margins, and down into places some call “unworthy” or “unclean.” That road will include suffering. For those of us who have followed Jesus into the messy parts of life, (ours or others)where there is much despair, disease, violence, or injustice, at times our hearts will become broken, at times our souls will become shattered, at times our world will get turned upside down, as we sit in the hardness of life with others, and we must sit there until God has done God’s work, until God has opened our hearts and hands even more, transforming our lives, offering us moments of resurrection, for that is how the world turns toward love, mercy, and justice. This is the way of the Cross, and it is hard, and it is life-giving, and it is the holy work given to us by Jesus.

St. Augustine (and many theologians after him) often spoke of sin as a form of being curvatus in se, “curved inward on oneself” — the implication being that God’s redemption helps us unfurl and open up. It’s a helpful image for conceiving what Jesus is getting at when he speaks of “losing” and “saving” our lives. What’s the “for-the-sake-of-which” that animates our days? Are we living for ourselves, trying to save ourselves? Then we’re curved inward, like an empty fist. Are we living for each other, for the neighborhood, for the good news of God’s love and mercy? Then we’re curved outward, like an open, loving hand.

So, who is Jesus? What does his messiahship look like? Jesus, our messiah, the one who liberates and saves us is the one who leads us into neighborhood and servanthood, and so into life. By all appearances, the journey will not be a triumphant march, and it will undoubtedly include suffering, as all movements of love, kindness, and justice do. It will include its share of crosses — and more than its share of resurrection. And in the end, little by little, it will uncurl our fingers; it will open our hands; it will soften our hearts; it will make us the children of God we were created to be. It won’t be easy. True love never is. But Jesus is with us, whispering, “Come, follow me…”
Amen.

08/23/2026

Good morning, it is such a blessing to have you join us today! We are honored to have Brian Helman playing the piano for us today!

Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church, Shippensburg, PA

09/15/2026

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