We were honored to have a visit from The Rev. Canon Betsy Randall this Sunday. Here is her sermon.
Author: ronpar72
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Sermon 10/29/23
Rev. Nancy Gill’s Sermon
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St. Paul’s Newsletter – October 26
Happy Halloween (almost)!
A few fun facts: Halloween marks the start of Allhallowtide, a series of Christian holidays meant to remember the dead such as loved ones, saints, and martyrs. “Halloween” first appeared in Christian writings around 1745. It is a shortened form of the term Hallows evening, referring to the vigils and other activities the night before All Hallows Day (also called All Saints Day). Most celebrations of saints and martyrs were held from spring to summer. In 837, Pope Gregory IV moved All Saints Day to November 1 which coincides with Samhain (pronounced ‘sawin). This was a practical decision to decongest Rome from pilgrims during summers. In the Middle Ages, Christians would carry carved out turnips turned into lanterns while going around homes for traditional souling. These lanterns are thought to symbolize the souls of the dead.
Interested in learning more? Check out 62 Interesting Facts About Halloween – The Fact File
Prayer & Meditation Retreat
Need a break? Join us this Saturday morning as we intentionally take some time out. Use the time to focus on Allhallowtide; or use it to simply rest before the busy holiday season is upon us. Our retreat will take place in the Great Hall at St. Paul’s this Saturday, October 28, from 9:30-11:30 a.m. Shelby Mancell and Kaitlyn Rodwell will be our facilitators, and snack foods will be provided. Hope to see you there!
Which Commandment is the Greatest?
Last Sunday (10/22), based upon our Epistle lesson, Fr. Bill spoke about the value of Christ’s death as the agent of our salvation. 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 – For the people of those regions report … how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.
In this week’s (10/29) gospel lesson, Jesus condenses all of the law and prophets into two essential commandments. How is this relevant to us today? Come find out this Sunday morning during our Eucharistic service.
All Saints’ Day & CTO Visit
On Sunday, November 5, we will observe All Saints’ Day. If you have loved ones you wish to commemorate, please provide their name/s on the list available on the table at the back of the nave, or email your requests to Clergy@stpaulsclaremore.org. Please do this by Noon on Wednesday, November 1, so that we have time to print them for Sunday’s service.
In addition, The Reverend Canon Betsy Randall, Canon to the Ordinary (CTO) will be with us to preach and celebrate that day. She will also be available for a Q&A session during coffee hour after the service is concluded. If you have not had the chance to meet her, you are in for a real treat! We hope you are able to join us for this very special day.
Recognition of Veterans
Join us Sunday, November 12, as we recognize and pray for our veterans. If you know anyone who has previously served in the Armed Forces that you would like to have mentioned during our prayers, please send their names to Clergy@stpaulsclaremore.org by Noon on Wednesday, November 8.
Sunday Morning Formation
On Sunday mornings at 8:30, Fr. Bill is leading discussions on the book The Practice of Prayer. According to author Margaret Guenther, you don’t have to be one of the great spiritual Mystics to reap the benefits of prayer. Anyone interested in joining the class is welcome!
Way of Love Wednesdays
The Way of Love is a formation series in which participants discover and discuss reasons and ways to intentionally live a Jesus-centered life.
This week (10/25), Shelby led us in a discussion about what it means to Go: cross boundaries, listen deeply, and live like Jesus. As Jesus went to the highways and byways, he sends us beyond our circles and comfort to witness to the love, justice, and truth of God with our lips and with our lives. We go to listen with humility and to join God in healing a hurting world. We go to become Beloved Community, a people reconciled in love with God and one another. What is one thing you could do this week to help heal your world?
Next Wednesday (11/01) our discussion will focus on how Rest helps us to live a life more centered on Jesus. In rest, we receive the gift of God’s grace, peace, and restoration. From the beginning of creation, God has established the sacred pattern of going and returning, labor and rest. Especially today, God invites us to dedicate time for restoration and wholeness – within our bodies, minds, and souls, and within our communities and institutions. By resting we place our trust in God, the primary actor who brings all things to their fullness.
Join us, either in person or online through Facebook Live (Facebook) or via Google Meet (meet.google.com/kdu-asvd-ygy) at 7:00 p.m.
St. Paul’s Social Media
You’re invited to Follow us on Instagram! St Paul’s Episcopal Church Claremore (@stpaulsclaremore) • Instagram photos and videos
If you haven’t already seen it, be sure to check out – AND SHARE – our church web page! It includes information about our church, as well as links to previous newsletters, sermon videos, the prayer wall, and our Facebook page. Go to stpaulsclaremore.org
Let Us Pray
- Lift up the victims of the mass shooting in Maine
- Remember the victims of the Israel-Hamas war
- Pray for our congregation as we explore our dreams and discern where God is leading us next.
- Remember Jim Walker as he recovers from knee replacement surgery.
- Verna has requested prayer for Robert.
- Keep Lloyd Bajon in your prayers as he recovers from a horse riding accident.
- If you have prayer requests you’d like to add to the Newsletter, email them to Clergy@stpaulsclaremore.org
Save the Dates
- Saturday, October 28, 9:30-11:30 – Prayer & Meditation Retreat in the Great Hall
- Sunday, October 29 – Bishop’s Committee Meeting
- Wednesday, November 1, 7:00 p.m. – Way of Love Wednesday, Week Eight
- Sunday, November 5 – Observation of All Saints’ Day; and The Rev. Canon Betsy Randall, Canon to the Ordinary, will be celebrating with us
- Sunday, November 12 – Recognition of veterans
- Sunday, December 3 – Advent begins
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Sermon 10/22/23
Fr. Bill Martin’s Sermon 10/22/23
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Sermon 10/15/23
Reverend Nancy Gill’s Sermon 10/15/23
Sunday, October 15, 2023
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 23 – Year A – Track 2
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Claremore
Is. 25:1-9 & Ps. 23 / Phil. 4:1-9 / Mt. 22:1-14
The Rev. Nancy Gill
“The Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a king.” (Mt. 22:2) This king is generous; he prepared a huge banquet for all the guests at his son’s wedding. This banquet involved a lavish feast for which only the best foods were prepared. The guests would be full and pampered. The only problem was that the people for whom this banquet had been planned, those on the prestigious guest list, chose not to come. Furthermore, they mistreated those who were sent to bring them to the table. So, rightfully indignant, but still generous, the king enacts judgement on those who had harmed his messengers while, at the same time, issuing invitations to anyone and everyone else to come and partake in this celebration. So, the banquet hall is filled with guests eager to accept this king’s hospitality.
I don’t know about you; but so far, I like this king. He is lavishly giving, he defends those who have been wrongfully abused, and he welcomes one and all into his home. As the story of this king is one of the many analogies used to describe the Kingdom of Heaven, and given that this kingdom is said to be within me (us), I’m feeling pretty good about possessing it and about sharing it with others!
And then…I read verses 11-13. In this part of the story, the king sees that one of the guests present isn’t dressed the way he believes a wedding guest should be attired; so he has this guest bound and thrown out. Now, perhaps by this time, it was so far past the time when the banquet was scheduled to begin that the king was so hungry (or hangry) that he couldn’t control his anger; but this is the part of the story that I want to ignore – that this king and his actions are analogous to the kingdom of heaven is a little difficult to accept. I don’t want to think about the fact that I am this king in the sense that I also
possess the capacity for such cruelty. But, of course, I do have to face this reality: I carry within myself the power to act with vast and merciful generosity and grace; but I also have the potential for extremely harsh and devastating viciousness. It also occurs to me that, just as the king had this man cast into utter darkness where there was “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” (v13) my actions can have equally ruinous and traumatic results.
I know that Jesus is the one telling this parable; but given what we know about the character of Jesus, I like to think that, had he been present at this wedding banquet, he would have done something to prevent this poor guest from being thrown out. Perhaps he would have found an extra robe for the man, or even given him his own. It is likely, given his fondness for posing questions, that he would have asked the king whether it was not within his power to change the “rules for dress” in his own home. Undoubtedly, he would have invited the man to join him at his table; and would have, thereafter, been seen on
more than one occasion conversing with this man in the town square or walking about the village.
In our own day and age, the invitation to the banquet is still open. Every Sunday – and on various other special occasions – we celebrate the feast of our Savior. The host of this celebration still extends the invitation to any and all who will accept it. We, as followers of Christ, are like the messengers who issue the invitation, and we are also like the king who decides which guests will be welcomed. We are given these opportunities to respond as Jesus would have responded. Indeed, it has been my observation that the people of St. Paul’s Claremore almost always choose to be generously hospitable. I pray that God’s hand will always be with us and keep us from ever causing harm. As our collect for the day says, may God’s grace “always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
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Sermon 10/8/23
“Tradition Isn’t All That It’s Cracked up To Be”
By Bill Martin – 8 October 2023
PARABLES OF THE BIBLE
What kind of God do you have? In the last week of his life on earth, Jesus came face-to-face with the fact that his disciples then (yikes, now?) didn’t have a complete understanding of who he wants, of the nature of God the father, and what living in the new kingdom that Jesus was ushering in was like. There was so much to teach and so little time. Trying to close this gap in understanding, Jesus told his followers parables of the Kingdom. You know, “The kingdom of heaven is like….”.
TROUBLES IN THE BIBLE
Christian tradition has typically treated these parables as allegories. You may know, an allegory is a story in which a particular character represents something or someone else.
[You faithful folk who are in church every Sunday don’t need me to re-preach previous lessons, but let me refresh your memories.]
Three weeks ago we heard the parable of the unforgiving debtor. You’ll recall that in that parable the King decided to settle his accounts with the servants. One man owed him 10,000 talents—an impossible amount to repay.
The king felt sorry for him and forgave him the debt, whereupon the unforgiving debtor went out and put the arm on a guy who owed him 100 denarii. The unforgiving debtor threatened to imprison this poor soul, and when the king heard about it, he was enraged. He handed him over to the torturers until he could pay all his debt.
As an allegory, the king represents God. the first debtor represents a sinner of first proportion (like us?), And the second debtor is a sinner of much less degree. When the first debtor refuses to forgive another as he has been forgiven (doesn’t that sound familiar), God comes down him like a ton of bricks.
Two weeks ago we heard Jesus tell the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. Remember how the owner of the vineyard went out early in the morning to hire laborers for the harvest? Then he went out three more times during the day, and at the end of the day he paid everyone the same amount.
Allegorically speaking, who would you suppose the owner of the vineyard to represent? You guessed it, God. The first laborers represent the Jews, to whom Jesus originally came. The denarius represents salvation. The later groups of laborers represent Gentiles to whom Jesus came later. But both groups received the same salvation.
Last week we heard another parable regarding vineyards. From Jewish times on, the vineyard represented Israel. A father – that would be God – told the first son to go into the vineyard, and the son said that he would, but then didn’t. A second son told father he wouldn’t go, but then relented and went. The first son represents the scribes and the Pharisees who purport to obey God but don’t. The second son represents tax collectors, prostitutes, and other sinners – like us – who don’t appear to be righteous but in fact answer the call of Jesus.
TROUBLES IN OUR OWN TIME
What kind of God do you have? If you hear Jesus allegorically, Following Christian tradition, you have a God who is, variously, a king angrily settling accounts, a capricious employer, or an aggrieved father. Other parables cast God as having other forms of anger management issues. But, sometimes tradition isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
GRACE IN THE BIBLE
Maybe we should shuck the tradition of interpreting all of Jesus’ parables as allegories. We do so with the imprimatur of no less than that brilliant theologian, that amazing evangelist, that short, red – headed, physically deformed, irascible Paul. In his First Letter to the Thessalonians, Paul urges us “to test everything and hold fast to what is good”. I ask again, “what kind of God do you have?” Based on the totality of Scripture, our collective experience, the reflection of God shone forth in you friends of mine, and most of all in the words and examples of Jesus, God’s son, my God is not a “big King angrily settling accounts, a capricious employer, or an aggrieved father”. The parables must be telling us something else.
Restorative justice
For seven years, I was head of school at All Saints’ Episcopal School. Carole, my wife, became the admissions director (and call if you’ll pardon my saying so, under her tutelage our enrollment sky-rocketed). It was a small, boarding and day school serving seven through 12th graders. About one third of the students came from the Vicksburg, Mississippi area and the rest came from 10 other states and five other countries.
When We arrived, we inherited a disciplinary system based on retributive justice. Simply stated, that meant that we told the students that we expected them to screw up, when when they did we would catch them, and when we caught them we would punish them. That did little to reform the perpetrators and nothing to restore whomever or whatever was aggrieved.
With the support of soulful, prayerful colleagues, we changed that system to one based on restorative justice. The great theologian, Walter Brueggeman says that restorative justice is a process of “determining what belongs to whom, and returning it to them”.
Today’s parable about the wicked tenants in the vineyard could easily be seen as an exercise in retributive justice. When the Tenants refuse to give the owner of the vineyard what belongs to him – that is, the fruits of the harvest – ultimately killing his own son, the owner retaliates by killing them. A pretty good allegory, isn’t it? But a true parable is a realistic story, true – to – experience which points beyond the everyday situations it describes.
So, let’s drill down to exactly what it is that God, through Jesus Christ, wanted from those chief priests and Pharisees – indeed from everyone in
their time and from everyone in all times, in other words, from us, too.
Does God want us to behave properly, righteously, religiously? While it’s true that we can pretty well mess up our lives by not behaving thusly, right behavior doesn’t have a thing to do with God’s love and forgiveness for us.
Does God want us to think the right thoughts, to practice orthodoxy, to conform to the rules of religion? While it’s true that right-thinking can help us to understand God and the world more clearly, such thinking, such believing, doesn’t matter one fig to God when it comes to God’s unconditional acceptance of us.
What God wants from us is faith in God and faith in God’s son. As Richard Rohr, an astute Roman Catholic theologian with close ties to the Episcopal1 church, says, “God has always loved and always will love what God has created.” Faith in God’s love – belief in God’s love, acceptance of God’s love – those are the fruits that God expects from us, the tenant farmers of God’s creation.
Don’t you love the simple profundity of the hymn, “All things bright and beautiful”? Join me in reciting the refrain if you can remember it.
“All things bright and beautiful, creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.”
‘The Lord God made them all.” And remember, “God has always loved what God has made”.