Heads up to all who are helping to move Dottie home:
We are meeting on Friday at noon at Mountain Glen, Room 426.
Author Archives: JenM
Weekly Reflection and News: December 26, 2019
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
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 testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
-John 1:1-18
Currently, the rest of the Star Wars stories are quite popular. Some of them carry the story into the future after the first great movie many years ago, and of course, some of them tell the backstory. Back stories are important because they put the story that we heard in a greater context. They tell us where it all came from. This is John’s approach to the Christmas story. John doesn’t mention angels and shepherds as Luck does. John doesn’t talk about wisemen from the east like Matthew. But neither of those stories really makes sense until you understand John. He gives us the background context.
It is a context that we live in now. It suggests that there are two interconnected, interpenetrating realms in which we live, one smaller and the other greater. The smaller one is made up of the social, economic, and political world we live in. We tell the stories of this realm in our history books, our checkbooks, and our social calendars. The greater realm tells us why our smaller realm is structured as it is, and it is the only realm from which we can answer the moral questions about the smaller realm. That greater realm, as John notes, begins in the Great Source, God. Jesus, the incarnate son of God, brings those two realms together. The first thing said is that the smaller realm depends on the larger one. We cannot ignore it. And now that we are aware of it, the way we live in the smaller one can never quite be the same, just as our appreciation of the character of Luke Skywalker cannot be the same after we have seen the prequel.
No wonder theologians called this section the prologue of the Gospel of John. It’s really the pro— or, first logos or word about God in Jesus Christ—and therefore us. This is our backstory, and by it we know who we are and where we are going. Consider this as you think about New Year’s Resolutions and see what difference it makes.
The Rev. Paul Moore
Priest at St. Paul’s (email)
Magnificat: Credits and Acknowledgements
The cover image is a painting entitled “The Virgin in Prayer” by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato, an Italian Baroque painter. I recolored it in a light blue so that I could add the text box for the title and because blue is frequently the liturgical color for Advent. Blue is also associated with the Virgin Mary.
I can do nothing on my own, so I would like to acknowledge the following people:
Blessings to you in this Advent season and Merry Christmas.
-Jen McCabe
Magnificat: December 25, 2019 (Christmas Day)
“So [the shepherds] went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” – Luke 2:16-19
“Oh, but you didn’t have to!” How many times has a gift I gave been greeted by those words! And my standard reply is not really very standard: “If I had to it wouldn’t have been a gift.” I know I miss the point. They mean to express unexpected joy and gratitude. (I’m hiding my dumb luck at having stumbled on just the right gift.) In another sense, I don’t miss the point. Gifts are given freely or not at all.
We’ve been reading all Advent long about two parallel songs of women whose sentiment toward God is similar. Hannah, childless until she conceives Samuel, the last and greatest of the judges of the Old Testament, bursts forth in song at the gift of what didn’t have to be. Mary, chosen by God to be the Mother of God, when it could have been most anyone else, bursts into song. The fact of the gift (rather than nothing) and the fittingness of the gift (when it could have been otherwise) give rise to unexpected joy and gratitude.
And perhaps it goes deeper still. There is wonder; wonder at a gift freely given, and therefore truly a gift, and exactly fitting, for it was precisely what we most needed. I wonder when I think that God actually takes the cosmic risk of giving people the freedom to reject their own Source so that any relationship between them and the Source could be freely given and received. If I were more capable, a song would be fitting. And there is more. I wonder that God would hide divinity in a human face so we would understand. I wonder that God would hide in our faces as we face one another.
It just didn’t have to be that way—and yet it is.
(As a prayer, imagine yourself in a place that inspires wonder and ponder the gift God didn’t have to give.)
-Fr. Paul Moore
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As a Christmas bonus to y’all, we have a playlist of Christmas music for you here.
Magnificat: December 24, 2019
“He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” – Luke 1:54-55
The Bible is the book that tells the story of God’s faithfulness and mercy to His people who did not always follow God as they were instructed. We all remember the story of God coming to Abraham and telling him that he would have a son when his wife Sarah was barren.
“I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.”
-Genesis 17:7
We remember the stories of the crossing of the Red Sea, the wandering of the Israelites in the desert for forty years where they whined about the manna, worshipped the golden calf and wanted to go back to Egypt because they remembered “the good old days”. But God was faithful and merciful and kept the covenant He had made with Abraham and his descendants despite the unfaithfulness of the Israelites.
This season of Advent, we focus on God’s gift of His Son Jesus who was born in a manager and became man to fulfill God’s plan. He died for us so that we can have both an abundant and eternal life.
As Mary magnifies the Lord in this passage for fulfilling his promises, so I truly feel overwhelmed when I think how God has worked in my life. Like the Israelites, I have wandered off, done my own thing, but He has always been faithful and forgiving to me. Many a time I have reached out to God when life has been unbearable AND every time, He has provided a way out. My desire is to live a life that magnifies God in everything I do, making a difference in my community.
Dear Lord, help me to magnify your Holy Name in everything I do. Thank you for your faithfulness and mercy, shown to me every day. Amen.
-Marilyn Allen
Magnificat: December 23, 2019
…he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. – Luke 1:53
One look at my calendar for the next month and it’s any wonder I’ll have time to sleep: assorted birthday and holiday parties, medical appointments, watching twin granddaughters for four days, multiple meetings, caring for my elderly mother, church responsibilities, and a looming deadline on my new manuscript. Oh, yeah, and Christmas. It seems more like the hurry season than the quiet, spirit-filled waiting season of Advent.
This passage from Luke seems to be more about our spiritual lives than anything having to do with physical hunger or riches. I don’t know about you, but when I enter a sanctuary—like I did this fall, visiting no less than fifty Italian churches and cathedrals and basilicas—I have an immediate and complete sense of calm, of wonder, of awe. It is as if an invisible cloud envelops me and my sense of time is dulled. I am in the very presence of the Lord, open to His leading (this phenomenon can also happen at the seashore or in the deep woods, high atop a mountain or, yes, even wandering in the desert. It is the feeling of being on holy ground).
When I am fully aware of being in God’s presence, I am open and ready for all the blessings He bestows. He fills me with so many “good things,” too many to count. But if I’m too busy to acknowledge His presence, I come up empty, every time.
I will try to remember my own advice the next time I’m in the aisles at Safeway or waiting at a red light on Burlington Boulevard. Every moment of every day we are in God’s presence, and He meets us where we are, ready to fill souls hungry for His Word and His Love. It is when we ignore Him that we are like the rich man sent empty away. It is up to us to be open to the Lord’s abundant grace. He is always there.
Thank you for being present in our lives, even when we seem too busy to realize it. Amen.
-Ashley Sweeney