Emmanuel Episcopal Church

The Pruden Parish Press for March 2008 Is Now Online

The March 2008 issue of The Pruden Parish Press, a periodic newsletter containing news and information for parishioners and friends of Emmanuel, is being published this week. The current issue includes:

• a report on the 116th Annual Diocesan Council Meeting,

• a message from the Senior Warden,

• a calendar of Parish events for March through May 2008,

• a retrospective for Helen James,

• A New Dawn, by Dr. Smith, Pastoral Vicar.

Click  here to read the March issue online.

Earlier issues may be viewed at The Pruden Parish Press.

To receive future issues by mail, please call or email the Parish Office.

March - May Online Calendar Updated

Emmanuel's Online Calendar has recently been updated for upcoming events during the Easter Season and through May 2008 including:

• Mar 16 - Palm Sunday Services
  

• Mar 20 - Maunday Thursday Services

• Mar 21 - Good Friday Services

• Mar 22 - Great Easter Vigil

• Mar 23 - Easter Sunday Services
  

• Apr 6 - G2R with Dr. Smith Begins at 10 am
  

Visit the Online Calendar for additional details and other events.

Emmanuel's Online Calendar has recently been updated for upcoming events during the Easter Season and through May 2008 including:

• Mar 16 - Palm Sunday Services
  

• Mar 20 - Maunday Thursday Services

• Mar 21 - Good Friday Services

• Mar 22 - Great Easter Vigil

• Mar 23 - Easter Sunday Services
  

• Apr 6 - G2R with Dr. Smith Begins at 10 am
  

Visit the Online Calendar for additional details and other events.

Homily for the Third Sunday in Lent - The Conversation

The Gospel - John 4:5-26(27-38)39-42

Homily by the Rev. Dr. David Smith

The Conversation

Nowhere else in any Gospel account does Jesus have a longer conversation with anyone. There are longer discourses where Jesus is preaching, or teaching, but sitting here by this well, he is down right sociable and chatty.

It is a long passage, chocked full of things for us to consider....and a lot of different ways to consider them. We could look at it like a play with four acts.

Act 1: Jesus and the woman alone by the well

Act 2: The disciples return, the woman leaves and Jesus talks with his men

Act 3: The Samaritan villagers come to the well to see Jesus because of the woman’s report

Act 4: Jesus stays two days with the Samaritans and their lives are changed

Or, we could see this whole story as one running parallel to the theme of Acts where Jesus tells the disciples to take the gospel from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria to the ends of the earth. And John does the same thing here. Jesus has left Jerusalem, gone into Judea, is now in Samaria and the word travels to the ends of the earth.

And since the gospel of John was probably written after Acts, John could well be using the structure already established by Luke. Interesting, but not particularly compelling for our lives today.

What is most interesting, however, is the nature of the discussion between Jesus and the woman.

Dinner Clubs Enjoy the Yancey House Restaurant

Nearly two dozen parishioners and friends from two Dinner Clubs (Linda Swanberg's and Alice Wilson's) enjoyed an evening of fellowship and excellent food at the Yancey House Restaurant and Gallery in Yanceyville, North Carolina on February 22nd.

The Yancey House was originally the home of Bartlett Yancey, one of Caswell County’s most noted citizens. The house was built in three stages over the course of the nineteenth century using three different styles (Federal, Greek Revival, and Victorian) .

Join Us for Lenten Luncheons

Lenten Luncheons are being held every Wednesday at noon in the Fellowship Hall of Chatham Baptist Church. The food is good and local ministers offer a brief Lenten meditation.

*****

"Lent offers a time of self-examination, a time to slow down, to draw in a deep breath and ask ourselves: How is it between God and me?

Lent offers us a season of brutal honesty. A time to strip away the pretensions we hide behind to cope in this world from day to day - a time to be real, to be open, to be honest before God and with ourselves.

This day gives us the time and space to hear the truth, to speak the truth, to acknowledge the gritty, utterly frank truth – of who we are, and whose we are."  - The Rev. Fred Poteet, Ash Wednesday Sermon

Homily for the Second Sunday in Lent - Rebirth

The Gospel - John 3:1-17

Homily by the Rev. Dr. David Smith

Rebirth

Once, everything seemed possible. Anything could and would be done. Energy was boundless. Strength and imagination were uninhibited. Once there was courage and hope...confidence and trust in people....their good will and faithful intentions unquestioned.

Once upon a time, it was as though we lived in the garden, with ripe fruit waiting to be cultivated, picked, eaten and shared.

 Once it was about building respect and honor. Amassing a stake....securing tomorrow for oneself and the family. Once, everything seemed possible.

But as the years have passed and strength wanes, the golden glow on the horizon has dimmed a bit, and imagination, and creativity and energy have been dulled by walls here and barriers there. Expectations on one side, tradition on the other.

“Why don’t we do this?” we ask.....or try that. Why not experiment a bit here and play some there?

“No,” we hear...not here....not that....not now.

Homily for the First Sunday in Lent - The Struggle

The Gospel - Matthew 4:1-11

Homily by the Rev. Dr. David Smith

The Struggle

It all happens so quickly. One day there is a picture in the paper of some celebrity riding a float in Neptune’s parade in New Orleans.....and the next day, one of the guys on CNN financial news is reporting from the floor of the NYSE with ashes on his forehead.

Welcome to Lent....the forty days preceding Easter. It is forty days not counting Sundays....because Sundays are always a day of celebration and thanksgiving. But Lent is a season of struggle and preparation....a time for fasting, alms giving, prayer and reflection meant to help us accentuate the wonderful taste of Easter when it arrives. Lent is a season of penance in which we are asked to examine the foibles, failures of our lives and ask God to intervene and forgive.

Since Lent is a time of reflection and penance, the perfect scripture with which to begin is Jesus temptation and struggle in the wilderness. Our forty days of Lent are meant to unite us spiritually with Jesus and his time in the desert. It is meant to include us in the forty days and nights Noah and his family spent in the ark. It is our contemporary answer to the Hebrew’s forty years in the wilderness.

Giving up something for Lent is supposed to create in us an ever present sense of temptation. Through giving up something, we crave, we create an atmosphere wherein we come to terms with a deeper spiritual dilemma.

Homily for Ash Wednesday - Lent Calls Us to Repentance

The Gospel - Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Homily by the the Rev. Fred Poteet,
Archdeacon of the Diocese of Southern Virginia

Lent Calls Us to Repentance

To the uninformed, this service of Ash Wednesday may seem like a morbid fixation on death and dying. Thoughts of returning to dust is not a service that draws the crowds of Christmas and Easter.

Yet without this day to acknowledge our mortality; Christmas and Easter really don’t matter. For, if you and I are as indestructible, invincible, and self-sufficient as we want think we are, then we have no need of a savior.

Ash Wednesday kicks off Lent, you see, and Lent is all about coming to grips with sin in our lives.

We tend to codify sin into a list of wrongful deeds. We tend to measure our “goodness” by how well we avoid those deeds on our lists. And worse yet, we measure other people’s “goodness” by how well they avoid the deeds on our lists.

And in focusing so closely on our lists of sinful acts, we lose sight of the true nature of sin. Sin, my friends, is separation from God. Separation from God is the notion that we have no need of a savior.

That sense of self-destiny, self-reliance, of invincibility that our culture celebrates – too often and too easily masks a denial that God is the source of all life.

Vestry Hosts Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

Click here for more pictures.

Members of the Emmanuel Vestry hosted over 50 parishioners and friends in the Parish Hall on Tuesday evening, February 5th,  for the traditional Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper. In addition to some great pancakes, the menu included fried ham and stewed apples along with an assortment of beverages.

Shrove Tuesday is the last day before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, the forty-day liturgical season of fasting and prayer leading up to Easter. Traditionally, pancakes and donuts were an efficient way of using up rich ingredients such as eggs, milk, and sugar before Lent when only the plainest foodstuffs would be eaten.

Emmanuel Attends 116th Annual Diocesan Council Meeting in Williamsburg

The 116th Annual Meeting of the Diocesan Council for the Diocese of Southern Virginia was held in Williamsburg on February 1st through the 3rd. Emmanuel's representative to Council was Janet Turner and Richard Camp was the alternate. Dr. David Smith, Pastoral Vicar, also attended the Council meeting and reports that,

"The mood of the gathering was upbeat and hopeful. I was most impressed with the dignity and efficiency with which business was dispatched.  It was a great opportunity to meet people, make new friends, and get word on the ecclesiastical street that all is well at Emmanuel in Chatham."

Attending the Council Meeting from Emmanuel were (Left to right):
Janet Turner, Richard Camp, Jeanne Reynolds, and Betty Camp.

Left to right: Dr. and Mrs. Smith with Bishop and Mrs. Buchanan
at the gathering before the Annual Dinner.
(Courtesy of Carlyle Gravely of The Jamestown Cross)

Click here for more photos.

Click here to read Interim Bishop John Buchanan's Address to the 2008 Annual Council Meeting.

A full report on this year’s Council Meeting will be published in the March issue of The Pruden Parish Press.

The Diocesan Council, composed of all Episcopal clergy resident in the Diocese as well as various Diocesan officers and lay representatives from each parish, is the principal policy making body for the Diocese.

Homily for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany - Moment on the Mountain

The Gospel - Matthew 17:1-9 

Homily by the Rev. Dr. David Smith

Moment on the Mountain

At first, the readings of the text for the Transfiguration seem a strange choice for a Sunday in Epiphany. Yet Epiphany means the manifestation or the showing of God. When God is revealed in our lives, it is earth-shattering, paradigm-scattering, transforming.

The verb for the Transfiguration is like our word metamorphose - to be changed. It is like the caterpillar that is changed into a beautiful monarch butterfly. It is like the Hans Christian Andersen story where the ugly duckling, grown up, is revealed as a beautiful swan.

Transfiguration is an upside down turning, somersault flipping, darkness into Light experience. And the Light of Christ, the Light of the Epiphany star that the wise ones followed, can indeed change and transform our very ordinary lives into the Glory of God.

In our Old Testament reading with Moses upon the mountain of God, this manifestation of God in the Shekinah of God's Glory is seen as thunder rumbling, smoke erupting, cataclysmic, foundation shaking, all encompassing flaming power. It was a heart stopping, knee trembling, breath grasping experience. To see God is to die.

And indeed, truly, is it not the same for us? For does not to "be in Christ" mean to die? The heart and soul of our own Baptism means to die in Christ, to live in Christ...to be transfigured.