St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church
A Spiritual Oasis Where Lives are Transformed
March 2006
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St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal ChurchA Spiritual Oasis Where Lives are Transformed |
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| Volume 23; Issue 01 |
March 2006
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From the Rector
Theology means the study of God. In the early years of Christianity, people experienced God in a real and powerful way. They began to reflect on their experiences, particularly the events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth. The purpose of this reflection was to enable them to know God more fully in order to become “wise, good, just, and happy through a lifelong personal involvement in knowing and loving God.” [Theology Today: January 2006]
By the middle ages, the focus of theology changed. It became more theoretical and less practical; an academic tool for suppressing heresy in order to sustain the unity and power of the Latin Church. Christianity became a “rationally ordered belief system rather than a delightful way of life that that brings individual happiness and social justice because it imparts wisdom, goodness, and truth.” As the Church sought to sustain Christianity's intellectual respectability in the face of secular Enlightenment sensibilities, theology became an academic pursuit. This indirect way of studying God no longer required theologians to have a relationship with God in order to pose their theories.
Today, the postmodern climate has rejected the notion of absolute truth. It has put in the place of truth, a posture of relativism (i.e. your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth). Any attempt to discern truth or the mind of God is viewed with skepticism and cynicism. In response to this crisis, liberals continue to focus on individual spirituality while the conservative evangelical churches are laying out an ordered, absolute approach to God.
As Episcopalians, I think it is time for us to reclaim theology as a means of becoming “wise, good, just, and happy through a lifelong personal involvement in knowing and loving God.” To that end, I invite you to attend this year's Lenten Program, The Via Media. This program will help us to reclaim what it means for us to find God delightful, loveable, and attractive, especially in the face of ambiguity, evil, and suffering in the world. It will also help us articulate our faith so that we can spread the good news in Christ. Please look at the insert in this month's View. I look forward to your presence at the Wednesday evening programs during the season of Lent.
Peace,
February is Black History Month. Is anyone else bothered that someone picked the SHORTEST month of the year to celebrate Black Americans in history? Award winning actor, Morgan Freeman, being interviewed on "60 Minutes", called Black History Month "ridiculous," igniting a firestorm of debate about its observance. Freeman told a visibly shocked Mike Wallace, "I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history. There's no white history month." For all the good the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s did to make segregation illegal in the United States, we really have not advanced as far as we like to believe in these last 40 years.
We live in a multi-cultural secular world, yet institutional churches separate people by ethnic groups. Thanks to the sacrificial efforts of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, it is now illegal to separate racial groups in public. But our churches continue to separate, not by intention, but by default. An unconscious, deeply systemic problem has created what some call the "most segregated hour of the week in America"-Sunday morning. What can we do to break down the barriers that separate us from the mission our Lord Jesus Christ called us to do, "to go forth into all nations and baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit"? (Matthew 28:19) This is the question considered at an introductory workshop hosted by the Santa Clara Valley Lutheran Parishes and led by Crossroads Ministry. Members of St. Jude's "Changing Demographics" group, Juneann McDonald, Tom Dyer and Pastor Mary Blessing attended this workshop in Gilroy one recent Saturday.
What we discovered was both painful and hopeful. Painful, as we recognized that the institutional church of which we are members, The Episcopal Church in the United States of America (and St. Jude's in particular) is stuck believing they are tolerant of "People of Color", but slow to make real changes to put anyone who is not white in positions of power and authority. Hopeful because our National Church has mandated each Diocese to educate, train and promote specific areas to break down racial barriers. Hopeful, too, that there are church leaders, sociologists and university educators who specialize in helping the institutional church discover its unconscious behavior, to change individuals so that they can change the institution.
Here is an insight I received in this workshop: in general, the white majority think of racism as something individuals possess. So, if I am not "prejudiced" toward people who are of a different race, then I'm not a racist. People of Color, on the other hand, tend to experience racism as an institutional problem—the way the institutional grouping is organized excludes them from participation, therefore is "prejudiced" against them as a group. If white people of power can begin to understand this perception and make real choices to change the institution, and if People of Color learn to trust individual white people's acceptance of them, then we can perhaps bridge the gap to create a truly anti-racist multicultural church.
Perhaps then we can truly live up to what St. Paul saw in the early church when he said, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)
Attendance in January was down 9% from 2005, but for a very good reason: New Year's Day fell on a Sunday this year and attendance was way down from last year when the first Sunday of January was on the 2nd. Attendance at the Annual Meeting was down 11% from 2005, but the aggregate of the four weeks after the New Year's weekend were flat, with two of the weeks up significantly.
The Lenten soup suppers begin on March 8, 2006 at 6:30 p.m. This is a call for Soup makers for Wednesday, March 29 and April 5. (We have volunteers for March 8, 15 and 22). Approximately 50 people attend each week requiring at least 5 gallons (20 quarts) of soup each evening. Please let Pat Coles know if you (or you and a friend) are able to make soup for one of these evenings.
We will need Volunteers to set tables and chairs each week. It takes about 30 minutest prior to dinner. Set tables with table clothes - 2 long tables for serving near kitchen and 5 round tables for eating. Put plates, bowls, flatware and napkins on the serving table. These can be found in pantry.
Everyone cleans up what they bring including drinks, bread and butter.
Label and put leftover food in the pantry refrigerator if it's to be left for next week.
Take out the garbage.
Wash table clothes.
Contact Pat Coles, email pat@saintjudes.org or 408-253-1224.
Every week we read in the news that a rich benefactor has given millions of dollars to his or her alma mater, local hospital, or other worthy cause. Sometimes that sort of news makes us think that wealthy donors give the most, and our contribution does not matter.
But that's a myth! Two government statistics show that low- and middle-income donors give more than half of charitable donations each year.
First, the IRS reports that in 2003, over 500,000 taxpayers filed tax returns where they carried forward a portion of charitable donations to future years. That happens when you give more than 30% (or in some cases 50%) of your adjusted gross income (AGI) in charitable donations. That's pretty generous giving! Of those 500,000 generous taxpayers, almost 60% had AGIs of less than $50,000 - the “wealthy” (incomes of more than $200,000) made up only 9%!
Second, and even more compelling, the majority of charitable bequests (gifts at death) come not from the wealthy, but from middle-income Americans. To see this, consider that in 2003 about $18 billion was given in bequests, from about 145,000 estates. But only 12,500 of those were from estates wealthy enough (over $1 million) to file a charitable estate tax deduction. The rest (over 90%) are giving the majority of charitable bequests dollars!
So don't wait for somebody wealthy to be the generous benefactor - you can be one of the generous majority who give most of the charitable giving!
As Helen Keller said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
The library committee is well advanced in reorganizing our farmhouse library. Books are being arranged alphabetically by author within four categories: adult fiction, adult non-fiction, children's fiction, and children's non-fiction. Reference sections remain as in the past.
The computer closest to the door to the ramp maintains a catalog of all our books. To find a book by title or subject, follow the printed instructions beside that computer to make a search. You can search by title or partial title or by author. The colored dots on spines of books will help you locate books by subject. The codes for the colors are posted on the bookcases. Eventually we hope to have a more refined system for locating books by subject.
Remember we also have a number of audios and videos for both children and adults available in the Farmhouse library and on the book cart kept in the Parish Hall.
Mar 5, 2006 - Using Your Retirement Plans to Benefit the People & Causes You Love
Mar 12, 2006 - Science & Religion: Conflicting World Views
Mar 19, 2006 - Amazing Grace
Mar 26, 2006 - Wanted: Dead or Alive!
Apr 2, 2006 - Religion & the Rise of Jim Crow
The editors, Nancy and Allan Chapman, thank all of this month's contributors and the always reliable and excellent production staff. |
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| Updated 3/13/2006 |
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