St. John's Episcopal Church - Centreville, VA |
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Parish News - January 27, 2021 |
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Dear St. John's Parishioners and Friends: |
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Dear St. John's Parishioners and Friends:
I was taking a walk outside a few days ago and about five different flocks of geese flew overhead at different times. I don't know if they were "heading south" for the winter or going somewhere else, but all the flocks were heading in the same direction. They fly in an amazing "V" formation. The one who is the leader has to work the hardest, facing into the wind. Each one behind the leader in this formation has it a bit easier as they can ride on the "draft" of the bird ahead of them. When the leader gets tired, he slips to the back and another bird takes the leadership position. The geese work together and depend on each other to get to their destination.
As I was watching these flocks fly overhead, it occurred to me that what they are doing is similar to our community of faith. We have people step forward in leadership positions, but they get tired at some point and someone else needs to take over. We depend on each other. Sometimes we are in a position in our lives when we can step into a leadership role. Sometimes we are not able to do that and we must ride in the "draft" of the leader for awhile.
As you know, we are looking for some parishioners (confirmed communicants in good standing) to step forward into positions of leadership to serve on the Vestry. Some might not be able to "take on one more thing" right now and that is understandable. They may need to ride in the "draft" right now. But there are others who could. Are you being called to a leadership position at St. John's? Might you prayerfully consider this? We all have gifts and skills to offer, given to us by God. The Vestry needs more people, dedicated to serving God in this place, at this time. If you are able to run on the Vestry (the election is held at the Annual Parish meeting now scheduled for May) or if you have any questions about serving on the Vestry, please contact Carol or Susie Pike.
The Rev. Carol Hancock
Rector
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The Rev. Carol Hancock
Rector
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Annual Parish Meeting - At its last meeting, the Vestry decided to postpone our Annual Parish Meeting until May. All the reports that we normally have at the Annual Parish Meeting will be sent out electronically by mid February. You will be able to see the budget and reports from our various groups. Postponing this meeting had to do, in part, with our inability to get any new people to run for the Vestry. (We now have one person willing to run, but we need more.) The current Vestry has agreed to stay on until our meeting in May. We hope that, with this extra time, we can find a few people to join the Vestry. If you want more information about serving on the Vestry, please contact Carol Hancock or Susie Pike.
Lenten Book Study - This year, Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent, is February 17. For our Lenten book study, we will discuss Presiding Bishop Michael Curry's most recent book, "Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times." If you are interested in joining this book discussion, which will be held on Zoom, please let Carol know. You will need to order the book ahead of time. We will probably meet on Monday evenings at 7:00 PM, starting on Monday, February 22.
Will we have Ash Wednesday this year? The answer to that question is yes! We will have a pre-recorded service recorded in the church for you to watch at home. Our bishop has said that each family or individual can use ashes from their fire place or fire pit, or they can burn some leaves into ashes. Another option is to pick up a small bag of ashes from the church sometime before the service. Families can apply ashes to the foreheads of other family members with the words "You are dust and to dust you shall return." Those who live alone can apply the ashes to their own forehead. More details about this service will be available closer to February 17.
What about the Pancake Supper? We will have the Pancake Supper on Tuesday, February 16, only this year it will be virtual. We will send out a Zoom link ahead of time and anyone who wants to join in can click on the link. We can all eat our pancakes and discuss who has the best or most creative pancakes! I am sure none of them will be as good as Dave Parker's (and his assistants) pancakes. But we will enjoy being together virtually.
Sunday readers - We are in need of people to sign up to be readers for our Sunday services for February and March. Below is the link to sign up for the date(s) when you would like to read. You can sign up to read the three scripture readings, or the psalm and the Prayers of the People, or both. You can do the recordings at home and send them electronically to David Weir by the preceding Thursday.
Congratulations go to Val Tucker who retired today after serving Fairfax County for over 30 years. Most recently, she worked in the water management division. Happy retirement, Val!!!!
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Be a Sunday service reader, from anywhere!
During this time of covid, St. John's holds a Sunday morning prayer service which is "aired" on Sunday mornings at 9 AM. The readings are
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...pre-recorded, and several parishioners have been doing a great job doing them, from different venues - no matter where they are! We welcome, need, and value your help! If you would like more information on how to do this, click here for the info page on SignUp Genius. Please sign up a week before the Sunday you would like to read, so we can get the readings to you and you can get your recording to David Weir by Thursday.
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Every Wednesday, St. John's has a Service of Evening Prayer at 6 PM. It is a peaceful way to end the day, and it's now being held virtually. Here is the link to this evening's service:
January 31, 2021
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COVID Vaccines - The Governor of Virginia has announced that those who are 65 and older can now register with the Fairfax County Health Department for a vaccine. You are encouraged to register now, although it might be several weeks or months before they assign you an appointment date and time to get the vaccine. As more vaccines are produced and become available, pharmacies and doctors offices will also have access to the vaccine and be able to administer them. The health department also lists other targeted groups that are eligible to register for the vaccine. You can register at
Please tell your friends and neighbors over 65 that they can register now.
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The link to the Sunday service is sent out each Saturday as usual. Then join us for the coffee hour from 10:00 - 10:30 and the Adult Lectionary Class at 10:30 AM on Zoom. The links will be sent out in Saturday's email to all.
Forward Day by Day is a daily devotional booklet that is published every three months. Different writers contribute for a month at a time and reflect on the daily readings. Those daily devotions are now online. Go to www.forwarddaybyday.org to see the daily devotion. Because we are not having in-person worship, we have stopped our subscription of the printed booklets. If you would like the printed booklets, you can order a personal copy on their website that can be mailed to your home.
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Free COVID Testing
COVID Testing is done at the Centreville Regional Library for those who have symptoms or who have been in contact with someone who has COVID. For more information, call 703-267-3511 for hours and other restrictions.
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Fight hunger in Fairfax County! Help us fill the shelves of food pantries to support our neighbors who have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Stuff the Bus will be collecting donations Saturday, Jan 30 and Saturday, Feb 6 at 21 locations throughout the county.
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Behind the Woodshed!
A couple that stacks together, stays together. Monti and Gluay Zimmerman were literally ‘behind the woodshed’ for hours on Saturday, January 16th. They bundled approximately 60 stacks of wood. Thanks also to Andrew Wade and Susie Pike who are keeping the supply of bundles ready to be sold!
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The firewood sale is still going well. We are hoping to be done with the sale in the next few months. $5 per bundle or 5 for $20. We thank all parishioners that continue to give necessary Time, Talent, and Treasure.
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If no one is around to receive your money for the firewood, you may put it into the secure black mailbox adjacent to the firewood stack. |
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SUNDAY WORSHIP & EDUCATION |
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The Adult Lectionary Forum
Now being held virtually via Zoom. All are invited to join in, following the virtual Sunday service. The links to the Forum and the service are sent out in a separate email on Saturdays.
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We can prepare our hearts & minds by reading ahead
for the Sunday Service lesson
The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
January 31, 2020
The First Reading:
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
A prophetic leader will come after Moses. God warns that a prophet must faithfully relay God’s message, as the consequences of inaccuracy are fatal.
The Psalm: 111, p. 754, BCP
The Second Reading:
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Paul advises the Corinthians to have mercy for confused and convicted brethren who might find dietary freedom to be an obstacle.
The Gospel:
Mark 1:21-28
Jesus performs a miraculous healing before the crowds, who witness with amazement his authority even over unclean spirits.
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Online Contributions
to St. John's
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St. John's now offers three buttons for online donations via Tithe.ly. You may use the buttons below to go directly to Tithe.ly, or you may download the Tithe.ly app on your phone or tablet. |
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The Pledge payment button may be used only to make your pledge payment (after signing up to be a pledger, which may be done at any time in the year. See Carol or Vestry)
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The Facility Campaign button may be used only for any contribution for the facility's buildings and grounds, or special facility campaigns.
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The Donation button may be used for any other type of donation to St. John's. To designate a special purpose (i.e. Organ Fund, Ministry Partner payments, etc.) please send a note to [email protected].
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Sermons from the Bishop's Online Chapel
Each week, one of our bishops or a member of the diocesan staff prepares and posts a sermon based on the Sunday's readings that can be used for online services. Here is the sermon posted for this past Sunday.
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Truth
A Meditation for the Third Week After
the Epiphany
“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, asked Jesus.
It’s a question that hangs in the air, even in our time. It may be the defining question of our time.
St. John does not record any answer; Pilate seems to simply turn to the crowd and announce that he is acquitting Jesus. Pilate had been interrogating Jesus about accusations that Jesus was claiming power as king – a claim that would threaten the power of the local puppet king and the politico-religious leaders. In response to these questions, Jesus has answered Pilate, “I was born into this world to tell about the truth. And everyone who belongs to the truth knows my voice.”
So Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?”
Pilate didn’t press for an answer, so his question is often treated as rhetorical – cynical, even. It is the last question in the extended kangaroo court that is the capital trial of Jesus, a trial in which nobody seems very interested in truth, but everybody is keenly interested in power, in hanging onto power, and in obliterating anybody who poses a threat to power. The local potentates have cooked up a jumble of rumor, innuendo, and outright lies, stirring up crowds who threaten to riot in the crowded capitol city. Pilate’s job was to serve Emperor Tiberius and to keep the peace in this outlying province. That is the truth that Pilate knows – imperial power. Deference to imperial power will lead in a few years to the rule of Caligula, and then Nero, whose brazenly evil madness stand as stark warnings of the perils of autocratic power seized in wealthy, well-armed states. Truth – the kind of truth of which Jesus speaks – is beside the point to these leaders.
Truth is central, on the other hand, to the character and purpose of Jesus. Think of all the passages; these are just a few from the Gospel of John:
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. John 1:14
The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John 1:17
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. John 4:24
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” John 8:32
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”. John 14:6
Here’s the thing. We have two problems when it comes to truth. The first is the telling of lies. The second is believing that you have the truth, when you don’t. They can be related or not, but both are deadly.
Perhaps it is obvious, but if not, I’ll remind us all: lying is a sin. It’s a violation of the Ten Commandments. The lie of the serpent led to the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Lies led to the execution of Jesus. Jesus refers to the devil as “the father of lies.” We’re not talking here about how you respond to a loved one who says “how do I look?” or to the retroactive previous engagement; we’re talking about malicious untruths, denials of reality, false witness. Lies can be individual and they can be social, political, and systemic. They may begin with denial or rationalization, but they end in ruin and destruction. And one of the ways they do that is by infecting the unsuspecting with false narrative, false accusation, and false history. Every one of us has encountered such a lie at some point in our lives. And each of us can be shaken to our foundation when the “truths” that we were taught, often by people we loved and trusted, turned out to be false.
Suddenly, we don’t know which way is up or whom to trust. And when this happens on a societal scale, things can get very fraught, very irrational, and very frightening, very fast.
What then?
Well, today, January 25, is the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. You can read account of his story here. It may resonate in surprising ways. Saul (his original name) was convinced that the new sect known as the followers of the Way – i.e., the followers of the rebel Jesus – were a danger to the honored traditions of faith, if not to the Empire of which he was a citizen, and he went after them. He launched lawsuits, roundups, interrogations, trials, even executions. Saul was not dissembling; he’d been to the best schools, he was a respected religious and legal leader, and he genuinely believed that his cause was righteous. But you know the story – one day, on the road to Damascus, Jesus blew his world apart with the truth. Saul got a new name – Paul – and new information, first from the Lord himself, then from a rather unwilling Ananias, then more tutoring and mentoring from the apostles. Eventually, Paul’s education, zeal and determination, turned in the right direction, led to the planting of the Christian Church across a pagan, hostile, otherwise-occupied Roman Empire. Without Paul’s willingness to accept new information and change his mind about what was true, we Christians might well not be here now.
Maybe the way through our current struggle with truth, lies, and the American Way comes not in finding ways to out-argue or out-maneuver or out-clobber one another. Maybe it comes through an unshakeable commitment to find and live into deep, full, holy truth, whatever that might reveal about us and about the world. Maybe the way through requires each and every one of us, however righteous we believe we are, to believe that there is important information that we do not yet have.
Here in the Diocese of Virginia, some of that information concerns our own history. It’s funny: we all like history when it makes us (or our ancestors) look good (perhaps with a bit of embroidery to dress it up); not so much, when it’s about the less noble parts. But we need to know those things. Otherwise we end up like a person who only tells the good things when giving the doctor a medical history. The embarrassing things that aren’t mentioned fester, hidden, until they pose a lethal threat to the body. But if they are named, aired out, disinfected, or otherwise treated as best we can, health and vibrancy can be restored. It’s true in medicine; it’s true in psychotherapy; and it’s true in history, in sociopolitical narrative, and even in the Church.
That’s because an incomplete truth, or embroidered truth, is ultimately really an untruth. That is why a witness must swear to tell the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing BUT the truth. The fuller picture reveals blind spots, and incorrect assumptions, and ingrained habits in the system, that we can’t otherwise see. It may sting at first, but knowing the truth then sets you free. Just as with medicine or therapy or family dynamics, that is true of reckoning with our heritage in Virginia and across the country, and it is true of every other tension and conflict that roils our society.
Perhaps the way forward is an openness to MORE truth, more information, rather than a defensive protection of “MY truth.” On a basic everyday level, we do that by speaking what we know, or think we know, into the shared pool of knowledge and meaning, in love, and by listening as others do the same. We can speak the truth in love because truth joined to love is the strongest force in the world. It is stronger than empires. It is stronger than demagogues and mobs. It is stronger than death. It is, as Jesus said and as Saul discovered, the Way. It is, in fact the foundation of the Way of Love.
That new, larger truth may knock us off our horse, but it leads to life. And so I give the last word to the man of the hour, St. Paul:
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. Ephesians 4:14-16
Be well; be brave; be free, beloved.
+Bishop Jennifer Brooke-Davidson
Image: The Conversion of Saint Paul, ca. 1391–92, Spinello Aretino. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Holiness
God’s holiness is not limited to God. God’s holiness dwells in you for the simple reason that you have been made in the image and likeness of God.
-Br. James Koester
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and the office number is 703-803-7500.
May our ministry together spread God's love to all whom we encounter.
- Carol
The Rev. Carol Hancock, Rector
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