St. Paul's Episcopal Church   Poughkeepsie, NY 12601


MESSENGER
"Making friends while serving God"

 
The Week of September 2-8, 2019
  

 
God is the potter and we are the clay.
 
In our reading from Jeremiah this Sunday Jeremiah receives word to go to the potter's house and there receive God's message. Jeremiah pays the potter a visit and observes the potter just  as a vessel is spoiled in his hand. That is, it fails to become what the potter intended. So the potter remakes the vessel into another object which is completed satisfactorily.
 
Then Jeremiah hears from God, "Isn't it the same for me?"
bible.jpg
This week's readings.
 
God has made and remade each of us in ways large and small in the course of our lives. We don't always know the details of what God has in mind, but ultimately we realize what the finished work is intended to be. And we try to live into that sense we get of what God intends for us to be or become in our lives.
 
God is the potter and we are the clay. Looking at the image above, isn't it pleasant to imagine God forming us and responding to our formation with pleasure?
   
   
To be redirected to the Lectionary Page and get a digital copy of the readings 
 
 

   PARISH  NEWS
   
  Sign up in the Narthex if you have STUFF to donate. 
 
MARATHON HELP NEEDED
St.Paul's will again be manning the Water Station for the Duchess County Classic Marathon on Sunday, September 15. We need to be at the Maloney Road Water Station by 7:30 that morning. We need to have at least 12 people there to hand out water and encourage the runners. This is a great event and a wonderful opportunity for St. Paul's to "Put Faith in Action" as our T-shirts say. Sign-up in the Narthex or talk with either Shawn Prater-Lee or Bobbie Gordon.
   

ANNUAL FOOD PANTRY PICNIC 
 
Volunteers who operate our food pantry Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays gathered at the Poughkeepsie Yacht Club for the annual picnic celebrating their generous offering of time and energy to keep the pantry operating week after week, month after month, year after year.
   
 
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
 
 
 
SEPTEMBER IN THE FOOD PANTRY  
Let's think about sandwiches for September for our Food Pantry clients. Please bring peanut butter and jelly and/or tuna fish and mayonnaise during this back-to-school month. Our clients can use these high protein foods to make sandwiches on the 100% whole grain bread we purchase every week from Freihofer's Outlet in New Paltz.
 
Thanks to everyone who helps our neighbors in need!
 
 
ANTI-RACISM WORKSHOP
       
 
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.
 
 
 
 VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL 
 

 Our partners at First Lutheran Church ran this nice article about our shared Vacation Bible School which took place at St. Paul's from Aug. 6-8.
  
Sunday's sermon
 
Harmony
 
 
SERMON: 12 Pentecost c 9 1 19
Jer2:4-13;Ps 81:1,10-16;Heb13:1-8,15-16;Lk14: 1,7-14
 
We all know someone who jokes that they don't go to church or they don't want to go back to church for fear that lightning would strike and innocent people might get hurt. Do we really have an image of God smiting the building someone finally got to or got back to? Of course not. But people joke--or comment-- about how ticked off God is at those who stay away.

So when we're trying to figure out the way to go about something we assume God has an opinion. Do we consider asking God? When God or our sense of the Almighty shows us the way it usually ends up being pretty obvious. When we take the time to ask and we get a clear answer or sense of what to do it causes us to pause. We recognize the answer we attribute to God is not always the plan we had or the way we would have gone about something on our own.

Sometimes we just proceed and it becomes obvious that whatever we were involved with worked out just fine. We can presume that's consistent with God's plan. We say a little prayer of thanks, don't we?

Sometimes it's too late and we have a mistake on our hands that we wouldn't have made if we'd checked with God first. Sometimes we're just careless and we realize it soon enough. Make no mistake, if we were checking our plans and intentions with God we'd make fewer of those forced errors. Sometimes those forced errors are easily remedied. Sometimes they are out in the open for everyone to see. I heard of such a circumstance the other day.

During the collection at another church the usher noticed a parishioner fumbling in her purse for her offering. As she was digging a large television remote fell out and clattered into the aisle.

The curious usher bent over to retrieve it for her and whispered, "Do you always carry your TV remote to church?"

"No," she replied, "but my husband refused to come to church with me this morning, and I was pretty unhappy about it. I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him legally."

In case you missed what I was saying earlier, that's often how things work out--exposure and embarrassment--when we don't consider what choice God might encourage.

It seems to me that the story of the guest at the dinner in the Gospel this morning reveals a whole lot about how God would have us behave, and not just at meal time. In fact I think this story also reveals something elemental about spiritual growth: That controlling our ego and suppressing our need to be first or on top or at the head table reduces the prospect of being humiliated and increases the prospect of being honored. The problem with this approach is that it requires two attributes which are often difficult to muster: patience and humility.

What is it about us that Jeremiah is worked up about in our Hebrew Bible reading? This is about arrogance: people who utterly forgot or ignored God's gracious acts to their benefit the minute they thought they were out of the woods, so to speak.
It is almost as though there is a direct line between the people who forgot all about God in the Hebrew Bible reading and the person who would take the best seat at the party and run the risk of being asked to sit in a less prestigious seat. Each of these examples involves people who don't think about anything except their wants:
--Jeremiah writes of those who want everything God has made available, but they don't want to be troubled, not even for a moment of reflection, with expressions of gratitude or even acknowledgment of God's generosity.

--The character in the Gospel who grabs the best seat as though it was his for the asking, never considering that the host, or God, might have someone else in mind for the seat of honor.  
Do you think God has better things in mind for us that we can conjure up for ourselves? Stop and think about this for a moment. Are the lessons we learn in faith reliable or not?

Rather than grab the best seat and hope people will think we're entitled to it, what would it be like to sit back and see what the evening brings, whether we get agreeable tablemates, perhaps, or perhaps even get asked to move up to a better table, as the Gospel suggests?

Don't you think the readings we go over each week are telling us that it is by acknowledging God and giving thanks to God and not being greedy about the things God had brought into our lives that we live into the greatest gift of all, a strong relationship with God? Was that "Yes" or "no"?

Today's lessons highlight the vast range of personality types from the arrogant to the humble. The arrogant clearly occupy Jeremiah's reading and they are targeted completely by Jeremiah's scorn. God helped Jeremiah realize that the people had come into the land provided by God, having been led by God safely away from their persecutors, and yet they forgot God. They enjoyed the harvest of the fields and the fat of the land, yet God was not on their minds morning or night. Even the priests forgot about God, so they weren't trying to remind people about God. The situation, to put it mildly, went from bad to worse.

Our psalm offers a solution for the people of Israel who have forgotten God. Praying this psalm--or better yet, singing it-- would put them back in a state of awareness and gratitude for the Almighty's immense grace and generosity.

The epistle contains a list of fourteen admonitions that we'd all benefit from adopting:

let mutual love continue
do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers
remember those who are in prison
remember those who are being tortured
let marriage be held in honor by all
let the marriage bed be kept undefiled
keep your lives free from the love of money
be content with what you have
say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?"
remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you
consider the outcome of their way of life
imitate their faith
let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name
do not neglect to do good
share what you have
 
Note that none of these --not --one--says anything about being large and in charge, or being the first to grab a seat at the head table. These are the suggestions that disciples of our namesake St. Paul came up with based on the teachings of Jesus as understood by Paul. They are profoundly deep--they convey wisdom in a few words. In spirit they capture the way Jesus behaved. The paint a very clear picture of why Jesus had to die--the way of life he led and encouraged his followers to lead would utterly upset and overturn the system of Roman control all over the Mediterranean. They couldn't have that, could they?

However, our Gospel suggests somewhat playfully that we have little to lose and much to gain by following Jesus' suggestions. If we act humbly we might be surprised by how fitting it feels, doing so. Rather than striving so hard for that special seat and possibly losing face in the process. If we take the time to seek and follow God's will and check to see which way the river is running before we climb into our canoe and start paddling, we stand a much better chance of saving ourselves a lot of grief and trouble and, yes, potential embarrassment.

The signs are everywhere if we look for them. God is harmony, as is all creation. We need to seek harmony if we are going to seek to do God's will. If we look for the signs of harmony, if we pay attention to how the world works and how we can fit into situations rather than try to take over and try to run the show, our lives become a living acknowledgment that God's in charge and we are not. This is what happens when we seek to align ourselves with God's creation. There is no better way to honor God, to give thanks for our place in this wonder called creation, and to lead others to the same discovery of the key to a happy and satisfying life by humbly seeking and following God's will.                                           Amen  
 
A sermon preached on Sept. 1, 2019, the 12th Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church,     Poughkeepsie NY, by The Rev. Tyler Jones, Rector 
                           
 
SEPTEMBER BIRTHDAYS
     
1    Brandon Clarke                      Janet Woods              21 Aleen Josephs-Clarke

     Notoe Hodge                   11  Louise Evans            22 Shamara Wethington Mizell

4   Brian McCarthy               12  Colleen Misner          23 Benjamin Porter               

7   Rebecca Lynn Brown            Marjorie Marks          28 Adrian Goldson

      Florence Greenway        14  Jack Porter                29 Daphne Barrett                   

9   Judith Mizell               Clifford Robert DuBois Jr.    30 Thomas A Walker

                                            18 Candis Henry               
 

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St. Paul's Episcopal Church-Poughkeepsie
 
 

'In Service to God & You'
 

SUNDAY 8AM
Lectors:           Julett Butler

Litanist:            Pete Bedrossian

Server:             Maria Bell

SUNDAY 10AM
Organist:         Maris Kristapsons
  
Acolytes:         Shawn Prater-Lee                 
  
Lectors:           Adrian Goldson
                        Jim Schneider
  
Litanist:            Mark Debald
  
Usher:              Daphne Barrett
                         MollyJones
  
Altar Guild:       Joanna & Rose Marie


 
 
 
 
 
THIS WEEK'S HYMNS
 
1982             9      Not here for high and holy things (Morning Somg) 
 
1982          372     Praise to the living God! (Leoni)
 
CPWI         233    O God beyong all praising (Thaxted)  
 
1982          539    O Zion, haste, thy mission high fulfilling (Tidings) 
  
    
HYMN COMMENTARY: "Thaxted" is a hymn tune derived from the stately main theme of the "Jupiter" movement of English composer Gustav Holst's "The Planets." Thaxted is the English village where he resided much of his life, and the adaptation dates from 1921, when it was created to fit a patriotic poem "I Vow to Thee, My Country." Its first use as a hymn tune dates from 1926. Since then, over 20 different hymn texts have been written to this tune. One of the more popular texts is O God beyond all praising, written by English clergyman and hymnodist Michael Perry in 1982, and based on Hebrews 13:15.
    
 
 
 
 
 
 

THIS WEEK'S CALENDAR
August 26-September 1, 2019
 
                               
MON  2
  

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


TUE   3
10:00am  Office, Food Pantry, Thrift Store
6:00pm    Evening Prayer; Spiritual Life



WED  4
7:30am     AA Meeting
10:00am   Office, Food Pantry, Thrift Shop 
12:15pm   Healing Service & Eucharist


 
THU   5
10:00am   Office, Food Pantry, Thrift Shop


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


SAT   7
9:30am     Morning Prayer 
10:00am   NA Meeting; Bldgs. & Grnds./Mtg.
11:00am   Block Clean-up 
3:00pm     NA Meeting - Men Do Recover 


SUN  8
8:00am     RITE I
8:45am     Lessons' Discussions
9:30am     Choir practice
10:00am   RITE II; Sunday School  
11:15am   Coffee Hour
11:30am   Youth
                          
 

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