St. Paul's Episcopal Church   Poughkeepsie, NY 12601


MESSENGER
"Making friends while serving God"

 
The Week of August 19-25, 2019
  

 
Working on the Sabbath
 
There was a time when  it was difficult if not impossible to do much besides go to church on Sunday. There were laws called blue laws that required most places of business to be closed for the Sabbath. Gradually laws of this sort faded away as society became ever more secular. Today Sunday is almost unrecognizable as a day for religious focus. If the churches weren't open no one would know.
 
However, the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy was in full force in Jesus' time. And he knew as he moved around meeting people, speaking to 
crowds and healing sick individuals that his desire to do his good 
bible.jpg
This week's readings.
works would be unpo pular with the religious authorities. 

This Sunday's Gospel portrays Jesus healing a woman disabled for 18 years. The religious leaders criticized him for doing so on the Sabbath.
 
Jesus called them hypocrites and asked what better day a woman with an ailment for 18 years might be healed. The crowds loved it. The Gospel lesson says his opponents were put to shame and that the long-suffering woman "stood up straight and began praising God."
 
The attention such demonstrations attracted was not helpful to Jesus in the long run. He was not out to confront or offend the authorities, either religious or secular. But there were times when confrontation was unavoidable. This was such a time.
 
 
    
 
 
To be redirected to the Lectionary Page and get a digital copy of the readings 
 
 

   PARISH  NEWS
   
 
HABITAT NEIGHBORHOOD CLEAN UP THURSDAY
 
 
On Thursday August 22nd, students from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will be joining Habitat Dutchess to help clean up the 5th ward.

All volunteers are welcome to join in this community building experience. To help this day run smoothly Habitat needs two "Task captains"--
                    -Tool Captain
                    -Materials Captain

Volunteers will meet at 45 Smith Street at 9am to get started. This will be a fun day working with the community that is in our Neighborhood Revitalization area.  We look forward to working alongside our volunteers and residents as well as RPI to work towards making the neighborhood even more beautiful! If you are interested in being a captain for tools or materials, please email Jennifer.radicone@habitatdutchess.org
 
 
NEXT EVENT!
           
Outdoor Rummage Sale - September 14 from 10:00 - 3:00
 
Save all of your STUFF and donate it to St. Paul's for this sale - clothing, pictures, housewares, sheets, towels, toys, working small appliances - all will be for sale and the proceeds will go to St. Paul's.
 
Hot Dogs, water, and lemonade are for sale too.
 
Sign up in the Narthex if you have STUFF to donate.
 
 
PASTORAL CARE COMMITTEE NEEDS YOUR HELP 
 
The Pastoral Care Committee is asking for help from the St. Paul's congregation to identify individuals who might appreciate some help dealing with their practical and spiritual struggles.  The Pastoral Care Committee reaches out to those who are sick, homebound, need support or are struggling in any way.
 
VISITATIONS
Visitations are made to those who are homebound or are in hospitals or nursing homes.
COMMUNICATION
Cards are sent out on a regular basis for "Thinking of You",  Get Well, Sympathy or holidays to those we do not see but wish to keep in touch. Phone calls also keep us in touch with the home-bound.
RIDES
Rides to church are provided to those who are unable to drive or need assistance. We don't know how many members of our parish are "stuck at home" due to the lack of transportation. Please consider those you haven't seen in church for a while and let the Pastoral Care team know.
 
HOLIDAY GIFTS
Holiday bags are prepared at Christmas for those who are homebound.

If you can help or if you have a concern or know of anyone in need of pastoral care, please contact Cynthia Benjamin, Chairperson or any member of the committee - Rose Marie Proctor, Janet Quade, Charlie Benjamin, Norma Williams.

Pastoral Care also joins with the Seekers Group which meets on the 3rd Tuesday of each month at 6pm. For more information on this, please contact Cynthia Benjamin.
                                                                                                                  --Janet Quade
 
 
 
 
  Help for families and friends of those who are in prison 
 
Do you or someone you know have an incarcerated family member or friend?  There is a Kairos Outside program for people in your situation. On weekends the program takes place in most of the 50 states. A friend or family member can participate no matter where they reside and no matter where there friend or family member is incarcerated.
  
The Kairos Weekend:  Kairos Outside is a safe place where women gather together to share the impact that incarceration has had on the them and their families.  Kairos Outside Guests are women who are "doing time alongside their family/friends who are incarcerated or women who were previously incarcerated but were not able to participate in Kairos Inside at the time."  The Weekend starts at 6 pm on Friday night September 20 and continues until 4 pm on Sunday, September 22.  It provides an opportunity to not only explore one's relationship with God, but to also experience a time of fun, music, great food and community.
  
If you are interested, please contact Deacon Julett to obtain a flyer by leaving a message with your contact number at the Parish Office.                                         
                                                                                           --Deacon Julett 
 
   

 
  
SCHOOL'S OUT & THE FOOD PANTRY NEEDS YOUR HELP!
During the summer months, our Food Pantry volunteers see an increase in demand from our neighbors in need. School is out, so children are eating more meals at home. Please bring non-perishable food with you when you come to church and place it in the large basket in the Narthax.
 
Items that are always needed are pancake mix and pancake syrup, tuna fish and mayonnaise, and beef stew. Anything you donate will be given away. Thank you!
 
  
  
25 WEEK CLUB
 

Do you have your ticket for the 25 Week Club? Remember "you have to be in it to win it!! We have held weekly drawings since April 7 for $20 & $10, so that means there have been 28 winners so far and some people have won more than once.   The final drawing for the large prizes will be held at a lunch on September 28th. Ticket holders will receive an invitation in late August. Money raised from the 25 Week Club helps support the church and this time half of the earnings will go toward the cost of the new pew cushions. It's not too late to get a ticket - see Bobbie Gordon if you'd like one or if you can sell some to your friends.
 
 
  

Sunday's sermon
 
The cloud
 
SERMON: 10 Pentecost C 8 18 19
Isa5:1-7;Ps80:1-2,8-18;Heb11:29-12:2;Lk12:49-56
Our readings this day rather unanimously and brilliantly point to the presence of God in all our doings. It also points out the presence of all God's faithful followers. Most significantly, I think, our Epistle reading describes many of those witnesses we may not think of every day. The letter offers this image: we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. 

This is a cloud unlike the newly-formed data-filled cloud of today's computer society. It is even different from the atmospheric clouds that have attracted the attention of humans forever. The great cloud includes the spirits of those who did well and those who chose poorly; those who were successful and those who failed; those who were valiant and surmounted all difficulties and those who were also valiant but died for their faith in a God that was with them always.

God's relationship with people is portrayed in the Hebrew Bible reading, with God delighting in a vineyard which ultimately does not produce grapes. Then we see God's wrath is both extreme and understandable. Isaiah relates that God intends to remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down; make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; the wasted vineyard will also be deprived of rain. This tells us God is with us when things are working out and that God is with us when the wheels fall off and we're in trouble.

We have no difficulty accepting that this is how Isaiah described God feeling about the uncooperative vineyard thousands of years ago. We also don't worry about it being related to the house of Israel and the people of Judah. But when we stop and consider that perhaps this message is intended for us as well, we have to stop and think: what kind of grapes are we? Are we fruit of God's vine that brings God joy? Or are we the bitter and useless wild grapes that generated so much of God's displeasure?

When I try to imagine in what way we might seem like useless wild grapes to God, the notion of gratitude occurs to me. We have much to be grateful for: gratitude for our every breath, gratitude for the life we've been given, gratitude for each other, gratitude even for the challenges we face, gratitude as it says in the Great Thanksgiving, for those disappointments and failures which cause us to remember we rely on God alone.

I don't know if God gets ticked off when we are ungrateful. I don't think when I'm ungrateful God is about to ruin my life like Isaiah reports God ruined the vineyard. But I suspect God is aware that I am missing the opportunity to be in harmony with God and to be appreciative. I want to be aware of it, too.

I have a friend who is generally quite a joy but who cannot accept that everything is not perfect. This friend is just peeved at things that are actually quite lovely and fine. And I think that God objects when we start to think we have better ideas about how things should be than God does. Or, for that matter, how the people who actually made them did their part. They may have done the best they could or they may have done the best that could have been done at the time. The point is what they left behind does not need to be criticized or critiqued; it needs to be accepted as what is. If it needs to be changed, well, that's a different matter.

When I observe that God is with us all the time I do not intend to make the Almighty a kind of attitude monitor of each of us, expecting gratitude and punishing the ungrateful. Rather I believe that God delights in us and in response we are called --invited might even be a better term--to delight in the gifts of creation and the life we've been given. Sure, we can imagine how it might be easier, better, sunnier, friendlier, and so on. But let's remember what truly is, what the reality is, and deal with that, not imagine something that isn't real and get worked up about why not.

This focus on gratitude points directly at today's Gospel. Jesus is warning his followers of the coming end time, of Judgment Day. He is telling his followers that they have to decide if they are going to accept Jesus and follow his teaching or not. It will cause strain in families, it will cause division. Anybody who has discussed faith matters with others knows that belief does not always lend itself to cheerful comparison. A friend who was raised a Christian Scientist told me recently that he met someone when he was younger who informed him, "I don't think I could be friends with someone who didn't believe in the Doctrine of Transubstantiation," the belief that the elements of Communion are the actual body and blood of Christ. My friend admitted it was a conversation stopper. He not only didn't believe in it; he had no idea what it was.

But also in our Gospel Jesus really works his followers over for their ability to understand all kinds of natural things but miss the signals Jesus is giving them that can save their souls. "You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"

In that time and place the present time included the presence of Jesus, the man we believe was the son of God, who was thereby the co-creator of the entire creation. If people believed him and believed in him, why weren't they taking his words to heart? We could ask the same question today.

Today's psalm reminds us of the historic reliance on God that brings us our faith. It concludes with the marvelous line, "Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved." Indeed, the light of God's countenance is around us all the time, whether in sunlight or starlight, moon glow or fog. We know it's there, we depend on it, and it assures us we are in God's presence perpetually, even when we act like we think we're not.

But it's today's Epistle, the Letter to the Hebrews, I particularly want to talk about today. Bible scholars have determined that this epistle not only was not written by Paul but it was also written a generation later, considering some of the historical references made in it. Efforts were made treat it as a letter of Paul which had been translated, but that argument doesn't work because elsewhere in the epistle there are instances of plays on words which make the translation excuse implausible.
Already you can see that this must have been a pretty significant letter, considering the efforts made to connect it to Paul rather than let it simply stand on its own. But it does stand on its own for a few excellent reasons. Since I'm preaching to the converted here these explanations may not exactly light your soul on fire. But consider a generation of new Christians a couple or a few decades after Jesus' resurrection. They are besieged by Roman authorities who dislike intensely the idea that anyone other than the emperor is being worshiped. That's problem 1.

Then there are the competing views of those who consider Jesus but a prophet and secondary to the major prophets. That argument is fully put to rest in this letter. The letter also rejects claims that the Jewish priesthood is superior to Jesus' priesthood. Finally, it points out that Jesus' giving of his life was a demonstrably greater sacrifice than the animal sacrifices offered by Jewish religious leaders.

We live in such a secularized post-Christian era that the idea that competing faiths were struggling for a foothold, not for relative prominence, strikes us as unusual. We take for granted that Christianity is the majority religion in our nation and we don't think about times and places where that wasn't the case. But here is a letter to a community of new Christians who needed reminders, who were probably begging for reinforcement, of their belief in Jesus.

So I think this is a wonderful and beautiful song of our faith. It reminds us of times when God famously guided our people in faith; it reminds us of the many, many Christians who suffered death for their faith rather than publicly deny it; and it points out to us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, all these faithful people who have gone before us, who do the same thing for us that the Letter to the Hebrews did for its recipients: it lifts up our faith and reminds us of the power of faith.

This notion of a great cloud of witnesses brings to mind for me a phrase from the prayer we pray as we conclude our Wednesday healing service:

"You have united us with Christ and one another and all your people on heaven and earth." 

This phrase may not rise to the level of doctrinaire Christian orthodoxy, but it expresses something that Jesus pointed toward that we need today more than ever: that we are all one. We are to love our neighbor even the neighbor across or at border; on the other side of the world; in the hospital bed; perhaps behind bars. That is our calling: to help. This is our calling and our faith in action is needed more today than ever.

I sense the cloud of witnesses around me in this church, the people of faith at St. Paul's we see no longer, both those we knew when they were with us on earth and whom we've heard about and those who simply lived their faith in this fine old church. It thrills me to be in their company, if only rhetorically and in my imagination. I honor them, I delight in them, and I thank them for their fine examples and the strength they give me in my faith journey.

Amen
 
A sermon preached on the 10th Sunday after Pentecost, August 18, 2019, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Poughkeepsie NY, by The Rev. Tyler Jones, Rector
                           
                     
                                   AUGUST BIRTHDAYS
 
  1 Josephine Sherow             4 Owen Tucker Sr.             14  Ed McCurty 
     Ann Marie McKenzie         5  Owen Scarlett                 15  Adrianna Babb
  3 Gillian Prater-Lee              7  Charlene DuBois             20  Krystal Hyson
     Gerry Sprague                  9   Barry Connelly                23  Marlene Taylor
     Nathesia Wethington                                                     25  Dewy Clarke
 

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St. Paul's Episcopal Church-Poughkeepsie
 
 

'In Service to God & You'
 

SUNDAY 8AM
Lectors:           Cora Keith

Litanist:            Pete Bedrossian

Server:             Maria Bell

SUNDAY 10AM
Organist:         Maris Kristapsons
  
Acolytes:         Shawn Prater-Lee                 
  
Lectors:           Colleen Misner
                        Debbie Pitcher
  
Litanist:            Mark Debald
  
Usher:              Dewy Clarke
                         Mark Debald
  
Altar Guild:       Hyacinth & Daphne


 
 
 
 
 
THIS WEEK'S HYMNS
 
1982              8     Morning has broken (Bunessan) 
 
1982          368     Holy Father, great Creator (Regent Square)
 
1982          685     Rock of ages, cleft for me (Toplady)
 
1982          412     Earth and all stars (Earth and all stars) 
  
    
HYMN COMMENTARY: American Episcopal clergyman Alexander V. Griswold was born at Simsbury, Connecticut, in 1766, was rector at Bristol, Rhode Island, for some time. In 1811 he was consecrated bishop of the Eastern Diocese (all of New England) in 1811, and was was the fifth Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States from 1836  until his death in 1843. His best-known hymn text, Holy Father, great Creator, was written around 1835. English organist and composer Henry T. Smart (1813-1879) wrote numerous hymn tunes, of which "Regent Square" is the best-known. Originally composed as a Presbyterian liturgical setting in 1867, its name refers to Regent Square Church in London. It was soon paired with Griswold's hymn but has come to be better known as the melody for the popular Christmas carol "Angels, from the realms of glory."
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 

THIS WEEK'S CALENDAR
August 5-11, 2019
 
                               
MON  19
  

7:30am    AA Meeting
6:30pm    NA Meeting - Journey to Recovery


TUE   20
10:00am  Office, Food Pantry, Thrift Store
2:00pm    Small Blessings
6:00pm    Evening Prayer; Seekers Group



WED  21
7:30am     AA Meeting
10:00am   Office, Food Pantry, Thrift Shop 
12:15pm   Healing Service & Eucharist


 
THU   22
10:00am   Office, Food Pantry, Thrift Shop
6:00pm     Evening Prayer, Finance


FRI    23
7:30am     AA Meeting
6:30pm     NA Meeting


SAT   24
10:00am   NA Meeting
3:00pm     NA Meeting - Men Do Recover 


SUN  25
8:00am     RITE I
8:45am     Lessons' Discussions
10:00am   RITE II; Sunday School  
11:15am   Coffee Hour
11:30am   Youth - Connect 
                          
 

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