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St Paul Episcopal Church, 206 Pecan Street, Winnfield, LA (2026)

06/24/2026

Church News for the Winn Parish Enterprise

Today, people of St Paul’s wish Happy Birthday for John the Baptist.

June 24 is likely a symbolic date, taken from Luke’s Gospel. John was born six months before his cousin Jesus, born December 25, as we all know. John’s life, prophecy, and martyrdom are reported in all the Gospels, in Acts, and in the non-biblical history of Josephus.

Two other calendar feasts are related to these dates: the appearance of Gabriel to Mary, called the Annunciation, is nine months before the birth of Jesus. It’s celebrated on March 25. The appearance of Gabriel to Zechariah in the Temple is celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox tradition on September 23. Thus does the calendar help us all keep these holy events in mind and in prayer.

John preached and baptized beside the Jordan river, in the wilderness of Judea, calling for repentance, baptism, and change in life in anticipation of the Kingship of God. He spoke about one greater who was to come after. When Jesus came to be baptized, John told some of his disciples, "This is the man I spoke of." After his baptism by John, Jesus began to preach, and many of his early followers had been followers of John. Some resented this, but John told them: "This is as it should be. My mission is to proclaim the Christ. The groomsman, the bridegroom's friend, who makes the wedding arrangements for the bridegroom, is not jealous of the bridegroom. No more am I of Jesus. He must increase, and I must decrease." (John 3:22-30)

John was a Prophet, the last and the greatest of the old dispensation, pointing the way to the Messiah and the coming Kingdom of God. Thus we remember his life and Prophecy, just one-half year away from Christmas.

St Paul’s Episcopal is an inclusive faith community worshipping in the Anglican liturgical tradition. Please phone for service times and church news: {318)5220675. [email protected] or Facebook at StPaulsWinnfield. 206 Pecan St. All are welcome.

06/21/2026

Meditation at Morning Prayer

Pentecost +4, Proper A-7, June 21, 2026
St Paul’s, Winnfield
Frank Fuller
Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, Romans 6:1b-11, Matthew 10:24-39

For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother …” Jesus said. Happy Fathers Day.

This ,mrning’s Lesson Let’s look back at a sentence or two from last week’s Gospel – just before this week’s selection – to the verses immediately preceding this morning’s lesson.

These are parts of Ahe Missio Discourse: a long, passage in Matthew’s Gospel in which Jesus commissions and send out the Disciples. Last week, we read that he called this disparate and unlikely group together … with a warning: “Brother will betray brother to death,” he warned, “ and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death…. “

This morning’s lesson continues the warning, cautioning the Disciples that their mission may erode the most familiar and important components of their oives: the structures of home and family.

As bad as this sounds to you and me, it was worse toi the ones to whom Jesus spoke. The structure if home and family – father and son, daughter in law and mother in law, even sevant and master were everything to the people of the time. These new Disciples were faithful Jews in Roman captivity. Families that were the only care for daughterns-in-law should they become widows. The order of their lives was contained within their small, family-centered communities, and whose immortality rested in the continued memory of their descendants, just as their ancestors’ immortality rested in thiers.

When someone today says “Family is everything,” it only hints at the importance of famioy to these twelve men. Whover does not take up his cross …” Jesus said. This is ther first mention of the loathed crucifixion tool in Matthew: One must e prepared for any thing. So Jesus warns hem of the cost of Discipleship[p.

And yet … and yet …

Jesus did not threaten the Disciples., Infinitely more than the sparrows that God also loes More than mere mortal can know. He was not threatening them, he was comforting. He was promising. The promise that. No matter how great the cost, they will be always held in his hand.

06/14/2026

A Meditation at Morning Prayer
Pentecost +4 (A-6), June 17, 2026
St Paul’s, Winnfield
Frank Fuller
Genesis 18:1-15, Psalm 116:1, 10-17, Romans 5:1-8, Matthew 9:3 St 5-10:8J

Right after the Sermon n the Mount, with more than 5000 hearing his words, Jesus gathered his Disciples. He needed help, for, “the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

And what a task he called them to! “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons,” Perform, in other words, healing miracles that defeat the veil of madness, the expulsion of lepers, the debility of illness, even the separation of death. People possessed by demons lived in the wild; lepers could not be near a town or anyone on the road. The Kingdom of God brings God’s people together, back into the family, like scattered lambs gathered by the shepherd into a flock.

Such a project requires many laborers. This project, in other words, requires Evangelists. Jesus called the twelve to evangelism, though not quite in the way the word is often currently used. Heal … cast out demons … raise the dead? Not a word about behaving or repenting or increasing membership.

Evangelists confront human suffering and need. It still does, though the names are differnet. The Gospel demands that evangelism grapple with disease and the demonic, with segregation, isolation and the power of death. It means wrestling with issues of public health care, with racism and fear of the stranger, with the nature of family, with human affection, with poverty and injustice. with institutional oppression, with domination that erodes the community and scatters the flock.

Who can undertake such a mission? Consider The Twelve. There was Matthew the Tax Collector, a tool of the Roman oppressors, and Simon the Zealot, a revolutionary devoted to overthrowing Roman rule. There was the loyal Peter and the traitorous Judas. They could hardly be more different or less likely to make common cause, but for the unifying Kingdom.

Imagine for a moment what such a group would look like today. What would such a group look like today, and what could bind them together?

To answer that question requires that every church member to ask what binds us together, and what could bind us with others. The answer is the grace-filled transformation, the change of heart that makes it possible for diverse people to come together and discover and experience shared humanity and grace in the eyes of a loving God who sees the "sheep without a shepherd" and responds with compassion and tender care. This is how God makes Evangelists. This is how God makes Shepherds.

06/11/2026

Church News for the Winn Parish Enterprise, June 10, Edition

There in the little rack on the back of every pew in an Episcopal Church, right next to the hymnal, there is the Book of Common Prayer. Yesterday, we celebrated the Book’s 477 anniversary.

In the year 1549, churches in Britain began using English, rather than Latin, as the principal language in church worship, . beginning on Pentecost Sunday, 9 June 1549, "on the first convenient day following Pentecost." The services translated from Latin were “according to the Sarum Use,” which referred to a liturgy that had risen within England over the previous centuries. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury led a group of scholars to produce a single volume so that people and priest could participate fully with only a Bible and the BCP. Every Christian for whom the language of worship is English shares to some extend the liturgies and history f the Book of Common Prayer.

We use the BCP each week. Often every day, for it contains daily prayers and blessings for families, formal prayers for the Daily Office, Sabbath services, and the grand liturgies like baptism, marriage, and ordination. The most recent revision of the American book was in 1979; the church is in the midst of a revision that is estimated to take 25 years.

St Paul’s Episcopal is an inclusive faith community worshipping in the Anglican liturgical tradition. Please ohone for service times and church news {318)5220675. [email protected] or Facebook at StPaulsWinnfield. 206 Pecan St. All are welcome.

06/07/2026

Morning Office Meditation forPentecost +2, June 7, 2026
St Paul’s, Winnfield
Frank Fuller
Genesis 12:1-9, Psalm 33:1-12 , Romans 4:13-25, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

A Meditation at Morning Prayer

This summer we’re invited to take a second look – or perhaps a third or fourth look – at the people whose lives formed the foundation of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths: the people of the Iron Age whom God chose to build the world of faith in the wake o the Threat Flood. This morning’s lesson introduces Abram, Sarai, and Lot.

This isn’t primarily a story about them, however. It’s a story about God. About how God enters life and blesses the lives of individual humans so that they might themselves become a blessing to all humanity. How God finds God’s blessed and calls them to respond. How that wandering herdsman changed – and continues to form – the world.

A short millennium later, there was a tax collector. Jesus called. Matthew got up from his table and walked away. It wasn’t so dramatic as Abram Sarai, Lot and the herds across the wilderness. In fact, as we just heard, Matthew had dinner with his friends that very evening. Still, this very flawed man rose from his collector’s desk and walked the new path.

In some ways, that’s always the story, in scripture and in life. God finds limited, flawed people, invites them to set a new path, and uses them to bless the entire world.

Sometimes in the middle of the desert of the Iron Age; sometimes in a Galilee town square; sometimes in Winnfield. Right now … right here. God calls. Just listen.

06/03/2026

Church News for the Winn Parish Enterprise, June 3, Edition

There’s a calendar that plays a role in the selection of readings, music, worship liturgy, and other things. Almost every tradition celebrates Easter and Christmas. Others, among them Episcopalians, find study and worship formed by a more detailed calendar and lectionary schedule In the season between Easter and Christmas – really, the days between Pentecost and the first day of Advent, there is a long period often called Ordinary Time. It’s the longest season of the church year.

Rather than meaning "common" or "mundane," Ordinary comes from the word "ordinal," which simply means counted time (1st Sunday after Pentecost, 2nd Sunday, etc.). Counted time always begins with Trinity Sunday and ends with Christ the King, the last Sunday before Advent, from May 31 through November 22 this year.

The lessons from the Hebrew Scripture this year come from the accounts of the Patriarchs, extending from God’s promise to Abram to Joseph in Egypt. Gospel lessons are from Matthew; Epistle readings from Paul’s letters to the church in Rome. The somewhat slower pace of Ordinary Time – and of our secular summer schedules – provides a chance to learn about portions of our heritage in detail and with connection, Sunday-to-Sunday, that’s sometimes not possible during the winter months. The focus may change a little during Counted Time, but our celebration of God’s love continues.

St Paul’s Episcopal is an inclusive faith community worshipping in the Anglican liturgical tradition. Service times and church news available from {318)5220675. [email protected] or Facebook at StPaulsWinnfield. All are welcome.

05/31/2026

HOMILY for Trinity Sunday, May 31, 2026
St Paul’s, Winnfield
Frank Fuller
Genesis 1:1-2:4a, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20, Canticle 13 (or Canticle 2)

Today begins the long, green season: the Sundays after Pentecost. This moring, we start by thinking about God. Never a bad way to begin any season – or any day, for that matter. Since this is Trinity Sunday, we think about God in the mystery that is the Trinity, God in Three Persons.

Mysteries, in theological terms, are, by definition, incomprehensible. Certainly The Trinity is no exception. If you open the Book of Common Prayer in front of you, and turn to page 864, to the sixth-century creed of St. Athanasius, you will find the official word: “The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.”

Or, as Dorothy Sayers wrote, “the father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the whole thing incomprehensible.”

Some biblical references speak of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but the Trinity does not come explicitly from scripture. It is a great irony — and grace — that the doctrine emerged out of attempts, in the early centuries of the current era, to know the nature and relationship of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. They could go only so far in figuring this out, so what we have is a mystery. But that’s just what you get when you think about God.

You have heard me say before, if someone tells you that he knows all about God, only two things are possible: he’s not telling the truth, or it isn’t God he’s talking about. The full nature of God cannot be grasped by human mind. Still, we try, and by trying, we learn more about God and about ourseves.

It is in the Trinity that we think about God as a family. There is a whole theology of how the persons of the Trinity relate to each other. It’s called “Perichoresis.” Never fear, I’m not going even to try.

Nonetheless, in addition to what the doctrine of the Trinity says about the way persons of God relate to each other, it tells a great deal about the way God relates to each of us. There is something in the Trinity that opens the multiple ways in which God makes God’s own self known.

It is in the Trinity that we internalize our concept of God, experience God, and integrate that experience with our own experience and values. The way to seek to know God as Trinity becomes the same way to seek to know another person, by full engagement. By entering into relationship. By being part of the family,

No one can know God without entering into relationship, in all that that means in human terms and more. Entering into relationship means opening hearts, making oneself vulnerable. The Trinitarian God is relational. And so are we all.

That is how the three persons of the Trinity relate to us, to you and me individually, to us as a community, and to creation as a whole.

This is the relation of the Trinitarian deity, even though it remains a mystery. There’s more that we don’t know; there will always be more.

What we do know is that we are invited into this mystery of Trinitarian relatedness. In Christ, in baptism, we are invited into this relationship with a god whom we understand as being always and irreducibly in relationship. The Trinitarian God is love made visible, and we in turn, are filled with this love.

05/27/2026

Church News for the Winn Parish Enterprise, Mat 27, Edition

The people of St Paul’s, like all congregations of the Anglican Communion, find study and worship formed by the Church calendar, both in the Daily and Sunday Lessons and in events marked on specific days. Of course, that is true of most Christians. Some Calendar days, like Christmas and Easter, are shared among all of the world. Some days commemorate people we call Holy Woman and Holy Men. Saint Patrick’s Day, for example, is broadly celebrated; others, less so.

Only one day of the calendar marks a theological concept. This Sunday will be Trinity Sunday.

As we all know, The Trinity – The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit – is one way most Christians understand God. Trinitarian references in Biblical text extend as early as Genesis, explicitly in the Gospels and Epistles. Nevertheless, the early church roiled in debate about the relative natures of each Person of the Trinity. In the year 325, The First Council of Nicaea convened to produce a concise solution to these concerns. The Council ended with the Nicaean Creed, which we embrace in a somewhat modified form through these 1700 years to this day,.

People quip that the principal minister in any congregation will find a reason to be away on Trinity Sunday, thereby avoiding the expectation of preaching on a theological concept. That’s more joke than fact. Certainly, at St Paul’s we shall be together, priest and people alike, to study and worship God in Trinitarian Glory, this Sunday just as every other.

St Paul’s Episcopal is an inclusive faith community worshipping in the Anglican liturgical tradition. Church news abd service times available from {318)5220675. [email protected] or Facebook at StPaulsWinnfield. All are welcome.

05/24/2026

HOMILY for Pentecost, May 24, 2026
St Paul’s, Winnfield
Frank Fuller
Acts 2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13, John 7:37-39, Psalm 104:25-35, 37

pCrowds gathered in Jerusalem for a great celebration, the Sabbath seven weeks after the Passover. Pentecost is Greek for Fifty Days.

People came from every community of Jews in the entire world. Well, the world as they knew it, for we have a list of all their countries and languages, which Diane read heroically just a moment ago. As the international crowd gathered at the Temple in familiar celebration: fire and rushing wind. We aren’t told how they reacted, but it must have seemed like the end of the world … but it wasn’t. It was creation all over again, with wind and fire, and something new bursting forth.

Then the Disciples began to preach and proclaim in ecstatic ways. Are they drunk? No, assured Peter. See the miracle taking place. Everyone understood what they were saying. The Holy Spirit worked the miracle in the heart and hearing and understanding of each person, gathered there together.

Some were skeptical. This was a morning that some people wanted to explain away or contain with cynical speculation: No wonder some hoped that they were just drunk.

God was speaking! Differently from the day when God proclaimed “This is my son: to the crowd at the Baptism. Not the way Jesus preached to the crowd on the Mount. No … this was God’s voice coming from the people … God’s voice, understo0d by the oeiople: everyone! : Jews and Gentiles and all those foreigners from the places mentioned in the lesson. Everyone participated.

In this case, at this moment, "all flesh," Jew and foreigner, male and female, old and young, gay and straight, slave and free, invited and included, and expected to prophesy and to dream!

And just to make sure that they know they're included, the obstacle of language is overcome by a sweeping wind, an uplifting Spirit that drove those disciples out. beyond their walls.

It wasn’t what they were expecting, and it was almost certainly not what they wanted. The disciples there at the morning of the Pentecost were faithful Jews looking for a Jewish messiah, looking for the completion of God’s Covenant with their ancestors.

When the Spirit came they became instead ambassadors of a universal experience of God. Their understanding of what it was to be a follower of Jesus was replaced by a renewed covenant that allowed them to speak with God’s own authority to all humankind.

Even though some scoffed, the crowd was hungry for the word brought by the Spirit-filled disciples. Reading a little further into the Book of Acts reveals that the church expanded from just over one hundred to three thousand in one day.

Their charge is our charge today.

The message of Pentecost is still the charge today, always and everywhere, to proclaim the love of God in Christ to everyone. No matter what language they speak. No matter where they are.

St Paul Episcopal Church

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