The Message March 2019

MARCH 2019 • Volume 21, Number 2

Famous Amos: 2 Pascha Nostrum: 7 Preparing for Joy: 9 A Primer on Lent: 10

FROM

In this issue:

Prophet Motive: Amos

Music Ministry ...................... 7

Author’s Note: This is the second essay in a series I will offer on the Hebrew prophets. Kay asked me to write this series, and, as she is both my muse and editor, I dedicate every line to her.

Youth Ministry....................... 8 Family Ministry .................... 9 Our Church Life .................10 Page Turners.......................12 Great Commission..............13 Photo Album........................14 Calendar of Events.............15

Sunday Services: 7:30 a.m.

Holy Eucharist, Rite 1 9:00 a.m.

Family-friendly Communion Service with Music 10:00 a.m.

Christian Education for Children, Youth, and Adults 11:00 a.m.

Choral Eucharist, Rite 2 6:00 p.m.

Holy Eucharist, Rite 2 Visit us on-line at www.cecsa.org

Cover photos by Amy Case Editor Gretchen Duggan

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nce I was haunted by monograms. Fluid monograms sewn PATRICK GAHAN into sweaters, Rector pockets, and patrickg@ cuffs in perfect cecsa.org Pinyon script. In 1967, I entered Homewood Junior High School, a foreign land for me. Girls and boys strode through the hallways sporting navy blue, yellow, and burgundy sweaters embossed with stately white and sky-blue initials that I thought only belonged on the President’s bath towels. “If clothes make the man,” they can certainly unmake him as well. My loyal cadre of elementary school friends defected in droves, as my K-Mart slacks and passé print shirts relegated me to the great unwashed. Fifty years later, those junior high monogram shirts and sweaters still menace my consciousness as a badge of exclusion, a mark of a leisured class of which I could never be a part. No doubt that is why Jay Gatsby’s dramatic unveiling of his dress shirts to Nick and Daisy looms as the most pronounced scene in Fitzgerald’s classic American novel, The Great Gatsby. Caught in a rainstorm, Gatsby tours the two through his expansive mansion. Stopping in his bedroom, he opens his two “hulking cabinets” and explains: “I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”

Gatsby took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in a many-colored disarray.

While we admired, he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher — shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and applegreen and lavender and faint orange,

and monograms of Indian blue.

Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.”1 Gatsby, impelled by his poverty to accumulate style, wealth, toys, heroism, and a new name, lives within the confines of an invented history.

The tragedy of Gatsby is his newfound notoriety is contingent on him imitating a class of which he can never be a part.

To this, African-American novelist and professor Jesmyn Ward wrote in a New York Times book review, “The very social class that embodied the dream Gatsby wanted for himself was predicated on exclusion. Gatsby was doomed from the start. He’d been born on the outside; he would die on the outside.”2 An Unlikely Prophet Like Gatsby, the railing prophet Amos will remain on the outside of the prosperous, grossly affluent society of Samaria, the opulent capital of the northern kingdom, Israel. Yet unlike Gatsby, Amos does not feign solidarity with the rich. He fears for their lives, because he realizes that he is walking amongst the condemned. A mere generation after Amos departs from Samaria, Assyria will dash their ivory inlaid palaces into shards, the rulers will be slaughtered, the people deported, and the lineage of the northern ten tribes of Israel will be erased from history.

If Amos does not belong in Samaria’s rarefied company, why is he determined F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribner, 1925), Chapter 5 2 Ward, Jesmyn, “Jay Gatsby: A Dreamer to Be Excluded,” New York Times, 18 Nov. 1

2018, p. 10

From Our Rector... to consort with those drinking and feasting up until mere months before their dreadful demise? The short answer is that Yahweh, God, told him to do so. The great twentieth century rabbinic scholar, Abraham Heschel, describes Amos’s call, “He did not hear a whisper, ‘a still small voice,’ but a voice like a lion’s roaring that drives shepherd and flock into panic.”3 God roars from Zion,

shouts from Jerusalem!

The thunderclap voice withers the pastures tended by shepherds,

shrivels Mount Carmel’s proud peak. Amos 1:2 Yahweh bellows into Amos five private visions of the judgment He has placed upon Israel (7:1-9; 8:1-3; 9:1-4). Until his encounter with God, Amos has no thought of taking on a prophet’s role.

He is content and prosperous as a land owner and farmer in Judah, the southern kingdom, a separate nation for 150 years by that time. More specifically, the prophet hails from Tekoa, which is a two-hour walk south of Bethlehem.

Contented with his station in life, Amos has no designs whatsoever in leaving his comfortable rural surroundings and becoming a prophet. His reluctance to serve in his new role is clearly seen when King Jeroboam II’s court prophet Amaziah insists that Amos return home to Judah where he belongs: Then Amaziah confronted Amos: ‘Seer, be on your way! Get out of here and go back to Judah where you came from! Hang out there. Do your preaching there. But no more preaching at Bethel! Don’t show your face here again. This is the king’s chapel. This is a royal shrine.’

But Amos stood up to Amaziah: ‘I never set up to be a preacher, never had plans to be a preacher. I raised cattle and I pruned trees. Then God took me off the farm and said, ‘Go preach to my people Israel.’ 7:13-15 Message Yahweh “takes Amos off the farm” so that he may confront Jeroboam’s religious and civic leaders along with the emerging self-satisfied leisure class Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1955), 29 3

supporting them. During Jeroboam II’s long reign from 786-746 BC, Israel had burgeoned due to three factors.

For one, the monolithic powers surrounding the small nation on the south and north, Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria, were fraught during that time with internal dissension and economic demise. Second, Jeroboam is able to take advantage of this intermission in the great powers’ aggression and expand Israel’s boundaries. And, third, during this expansion, the king enters into numerous favorable alliances and trade agreements. These alliances and the attendant prosperity it provided are the seeds of Israel’s demise. Like Solomon before him, Jeroboam will mollify his new economic partners with syncretic worship. In other words, Israel will worship other deities as equals alongside Yahweh. They compromise their sole devotion of Yahweh, the One who had compassion and delivered them from despotic Pharaoh into the lush promised land they now inhabit.

The rising elite of Israel act as if such stalwart fidelity to Yahweh is part of their parents’ passé, unenlightened faith, and so they also dispense with scrupulous adherence to God’s law. The result is the forfeiture of compassion and justice riven throughout the law, so that Israel’s upper classes treat the poor with unconcealed impunity.

Structure and Message of the Book While the very first verse of the book declares that Amos is called off the farm in order to level a message against Israel, the prophet’s initial words are surprisingly directed elsewhere. The first two chapters, in fact, are prophesies against the nations surrounding Israel. After that warm-up, chapters 3-6 are fiery denunciations against Israel’s leaders and their supporters. Chapters 7-9 disclose Amos’s five visions regarding Israel and conclude with a brief promise of divine reprieve. Amos is an ideal book to begin a study of the prophets. Not only is Amos the first of the latter Jewish prophets chronologically, the book is short and structured clearly enough that a beginning Bible reader will not get so easily lost in Amos’s rich prophetic concoction of poetry, visions, denunciations, and symbolism.

Amos was the first Old Testament book

I carefully studied from start to finish during my initial year of seminary, and its words continue to move and disturb me. A word of warning is needed here: Do not get discouraged with Amos’s abrupt changes of subject, tenor, and style. This is prophetic poetry, after all.

(Have you given T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland a read-through lately?) Amos is not spinning a story but spilling the judgment of God as he receives and understands it. His words are not neat and tidy but urgent like those of a witness at a crime scene.

The crime scene opens with Chapters 1 and 2. Amos condemns the nations surrounding Israel because of the inhumanity of their acts. He rants against Damascus, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Gaza, and Judah for their treachery, pitilessness, bellicosity, and genocidal acts. Most horrifyingly, Yahweh denounces the Ammonites, who inhabited present-day Jordan, for ‘ripping babies from the bellies of pregnant women so that Ammon may more easily expand its borders,’ a graphic censure that should give moderns pause (1:13).

At the same time, Amos’s opening outburst against these seven nations are symbolic in nature. The prophet draws a couple of word pictures for his hearers. For one, Amos is declaring that Yahweh is Lord of all nations and not just of the Jews. Yahweh’s law and justice are to govern the entire earth, and nations who ignore or thwart the divine intention are actively sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Second, the seven named nations are mapped like a constricting circle surrounding Israel, much like a dartboard. God is just getting warmed up. The nation of Israel sits in the bullseye and is the real target. I can imagine the people gathered at one of Jerusalem’s city gates or in Jeroboam’s royal courtyard breathing a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness this feral prophet is talking about those other guys.”

They will not breathe easily for long, for at the end of Amos’s roll call of the seven sinister nations, the prophet shows his hand and previews Yahweh’s incendiary case against Israel. They brutalize the poor by denying them any economic or civic rights. The rich

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From Our Rector... revel in their shrewd business dealings rather than repent over their blatant sin against God and their debasement of His people. Israel’s ribald hootenanny is coming to a screeching halt, and the remaining seven chapters will show them why in lurid detail.

From the very beginning, Israel had received a special calling from God. Thirteen centuries earlier, that special calling was issued to Abraham before he undertook his journey from Mesopotamia to Canaan, ‘I will make you a great nation and bless you. All the nations of the Earth will be blessed through you’ (Genesis 12:2-3).

chairs and the broken leg of a table will be left at most’ (Amos 3:12).

Chapter 4 dispels any notion that Amos is finished with his tirade against Israel or that the prophet’s indictments are directed only at men. Citing the wealthy women of Samaria, he addresses them ‘Because of the three great sins of with the mortifying and unforgettable Israel moniker, ‘Cows of Bashan, who order —make that four— their husbands to I’m not putting up bring them more with them any longer. wine.’ Amos declares They buy and sell that Yahweh’s upstanding people. punishment of them People for them are will fit the crime, for only things—ways of they will be marched making money. into exile with cattle They’d sell a poor prods (Amos 4:1-3). man for a pair of Just as these women shoes. have made a mockery They’d sell their own of righteousness, grandmother!

Israel’s public They grind the worship itself is penniless into the entirely empty. dirt, Striking a sarcastic shove the luckless pose, Amos mimics into the ditch. the call to worship by Everyone and his a priest, ‘Come along brother sleeps with to Bethel,’ cries the the ‘sacred whore’— clergy, yet instead a sacrilege against continuing ‘and my Holy Name. worship,’ the priest Stuff they’ve extorted invites, ‘and sin’ from the poor (Amos 4:4). Amos is piled up at the calls down Israel for shrine of their god, putting on a show of While they sit around worshiping Yahweh drinking wine when their daily lives they’ve conned from are rife with overt sin Amos with shepherd’s staff and horn, 12th century Park Abbey Bible their victims.’ Amos and callous disregard 2:6-8 The Message for the underclasses.

They are humoring Pain, Threat & Invitation The irony of Amos’s words would not be themselves and infuriating God with lost on Israel’s rulers. God called them their duplicity. True worship reflects the As Chapter 3 opens, the pathos, if to be a blessing to the myriad nations obedient lives of the people. In the face not the pain, of God is exposed, ‘Of surrounding them. Instead, they are of their apostasy, Amos reminds Israel all the families on Earth, I picked you. oppressing those in their very own that Yahweh has tried everything from Therefore, because of your special backyard. Jesus will take up Amos’s drought, famine, plagues, earthquake, calling, I’m holding you responsible standard seven centuries later when and fire to get their attention. for all your sins’ (Amos 3:2). Imagine he declares that ‘Whoever is faithful Amos standing in Jeroboam’s palace with little will be faithful with much, Then, as I have forewarned, Amos’s courtyard and sharing these words but whoever is dishonest with little will prophecy makes a quick, unexpected that Yahweh has implanted within do the same with much’ (Luke 16:10). detour. Admitting that none of those him. Amos’s “message from God is Israel has run the gamut of their greed, five drastic actions have moved Israel not an impersonal accusation, but the and Yahweh is putting an end to their to repent, Yahweh announces through utterance of a Redeemer who is pained rapacious reign of terror. Yahweh’s Amos that He will try a new thing. If by the misdeeds, the thanklessness of instrument will be Assyria, whom He God’s chastisement has failed, He must those whom he has redeemed.”4 All the is rousing into action. By the time King take a different avenue. Yahweh will people would know Amos’s meaning. Sargon II ravages the chic mansions and plan a rendezvous with Israel. palaces of Samaria, only ‘a couple of old 4

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Abraham Heschel, 32

From our Rector...

‘All this I have done to you, Israel, and this is why I have done it.

Time’s up, O Israel!

Prepare to meet your God!’ Amos 4:12 The Message This untimely message of hope hangs on the Hebrew word likrath “to meet.”

It does not mean to prepare for defeat or depredation. No, the word means to either go to a place to meet another or to meet at an appointed place for battle. The former seems to be Amos’s meaning here. The Lord, ‘who brings everything out of nothing, like dawn out of darkness’ (Amos 4:13), plans to engage Israel and enlighten her. As Heschel succinctly states, “Israel has failed to seek Him, so He will go out to meet Israel.”5 That seems to have a familiar ring to it – ‘He came to his own home, and his own people received him not’ (John 1:11).

Just as quickly, of course, Amos switches tracks on his discourse, so that Chapter 5 begins with the prophet’s assurance that ‘Israel has fallen flat on her face and will never get up again’ (5:1). Israel’s crippling malady is, again, pointed out to be her empty worship. Here in particular, Amos decries Israel’s ecstatic ejaculations at worship yearning for God’s Judgment Day to arrive. Resembling a bunch of twenty-first century, tight-fisted, self-absorbed suburbanites at an auditorium praise service beseeching “Jesus to return,” Israel is in lousy spiritual shape to request an audience with the Almighty. Instead of going from one giddy worship experience at the shrine at Bethel and then racing off to Beersheba’s shrine, and next to the Gilgal shrine, and then circling back to Bethel again, Amos repeats, ‘Seek Yahweh and live,’ really seek the Lord and righteousness and live (Amos 5:47). The prophet continues with the portentous warning that when Yahweh really does show up, Israel will not like it, for it will be like ‘a man running from a lion into the jaws of a bear’ (5:18-20).

Further escalating the urgency of his message, the most repeated quote from Amos is pronounced, ‘Let justice roll on like a river and righteousness like a never-failing stream’ (Amos 5:24).

Eugene Peterson’s Message recasts the language in such a way that we can hear 5

Abraham Heschel, 37.

it with a renewed awareness of dread: I can’t stand your religious meetings.

I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.

I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals…

I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.

When was the last time you sang to me?

Do you know what I want?

I want justice—oceans of it.

I want fairness—rivers of it.

Amos 5:21-24 The Message Five Visions & a Funeral In all likelihood, Amos was driven from his predictable life amongst the empty, quiet fields in Tekoa to the bustling, vulgar streets of Samaria because Yahweh roared five haunting, inescapable visions into his psyche. The prelude to the visions occurs in Chapter 6, where Amos recasts his indictment that Israel is neither righteous or just. To be righteous is to reflect the character of Yahweh. Hence, the righteous person or nation assiduously undertakes the commandments of God. Following on the heels of righteousness is justice, which is the fruit of righteousness. Rabbi Heschel contends that justice is “not only a covenant of mutual concern but a relationship of mutual concern.”6 In other words, there is nothing plastic or perfunctory about a living relationship with God, for it is lived out daily in flesh and blood. Recall how St. John tersely stated, ‘Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen’ (I John 4:20). Israel has diluted its fidelity and conformity to Yahweh and his commandments; therefore, their narcissistic, ego-driven, destructive lives are farcical: Do you hold a horse race in a field of rocks?

Do you plow the sea with oxen?

You’d cripple the horses and drown the oxen.

And yet you’ve made a shambles of justice, a bloated corpse of righteousness.

Amos 6:12-13 The Message 6

Abraham Heschel, 32.

The bloated northern kingdom has construed a farce of religion and thereby grossly retarded its relationship to Yahweh and His people. Therefore, Amos recites five frightening visions to the people gathered within the gates of the capital city, which are recorded in succession in Chapters 7-9. The first two are omens of destruction.

The entirety of Israel’s food crops will be consumed by locusts or consumed by fire. In response to both visions, Amos pleads, ‘What will happen to Jacob (Israel), he is so small’ (Amos 7:1-6). In both instances, Yahweh gives in to Amos’s intercession and relents.

In the third vision, however, Yahweh eschews any call for clemency. This third vision, perhaps the most wellknown in Amos, portrays a wall with a plumb line dropped alongside it. The wall represents the leadership of Israel and it is far too crooked to straighten out. The verdict is that the entire house of Israel and its religious shrines will be utterly destroyed (Amos 7:7-9).

Chapter 8 begins with a query from Yahweh directed to Amos: ‘What do you see, Amos?’ The prophet answered the Lord, ‘A bowl of fresh, ripe fruit.’ To this, the Lord affirms Amos’s answer and insists the time is “ripe” to no longer spare Israel from punishment (Amos 8:1-2). What fuels this fourth vision is a Hebrew world play. The term for “ripe fruit” is qāyis, whereas the word for “the time is ripe” is the homonym qēs.

This type of word play is prevalent in Hebrew poetry and prophecy. I always get the impression that these carefully placed homonyms gave hearers a good belly laugh – even though the message here is hardly humorous.

The fifth and final vision begins in Chapter 9. Only in this vision does Amos reveal that he ‘sees the Lord and He is standing by the altar’ in the shrine at Bethel. What appears to be a judgment against Israel’s syncretic, egocentric worship, is actually judgment directed at the entire northern kingdom, which makes perfect sense.

We are accustomed to spouting off, “You are what you eat’; nevertheless, it is far more accurate to admit, “You are what you worship.” If we worship our comfort, our station in life, our right to take more than is ours, our convenient

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From our Rector... inventions of morality, our selective assessment of who is worthy to live or not – our destiny is forged in the religion we have contrived. Standing within Israel’s most magnificently appointed shrine, Yahweh’s anger will not be restrained. He commands: ‘Hit the tops of the shrine’s pillars, make the floor shake.

The roof’s about to fall on the heads of the people, and whoever’s still alive, I’ll kill.

No one will get away, no runaways will make it.

If they dig their way down into the underworld, I’ll find them and bring them up.

If they climb to the stars, I’ll find them and bring them down.’

Amos 9:1-4 The Message Reading the lines of the last vision are like watching a horror film at a drivein movie theater. You almost want to hide your eyes from all the chasing, crashing, and burying. Israelites are running across the screen, but their legs won’t carry them fast enough to escape the doom pursuing them. And then, the lights come back on when against all predictions, Amos adds, ‘But also on that judgment day, I will restore David’s house that has fallen to pieces’ (Amos 9:11). What? No, mention has been previously made of Judah, the southern kingdom, from which the north, Israel, seceded a century and a half before. Now, however, the prophet assures them that the kingdoms will be reunited. God’s Promised Land will be restored, and those nations who sought to destroy Israel will be added to the newly reunited kingdom (Amos 9:12).

Amos offers this adieu to Israel as he packs up to make his journey home south to Tekoa – ‘You’ll plant vineyards and drink good wine. You’ll work in your gardens and eat fresh vegetables.

The Lord will plant you, He will plant you on your own land. And you will never again be uprooted from the land I’ve given you’ (Amos 9:14-15). Just the kind of goodbye you’d expect to hear from a displaced farmer.

What Can We Learn from Amos?

Not surprisingly, modern Bible readers get frustrated with Amos, and, for that matter, with all the Hebrew prophets.

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neighbors in the city. If we withhold grace from those in our immediate circles and families, our faith is a sham. The late John Stott (1921-2011), warned modern Christians on this accord by declaring that a “main concern for the church everywhere is that we often do not look like what we are talking about. We make great claims for Christ, but there is often a credibility gap between our words and our actions.” Perhaps no greater crisis confronts the Church than this one – we must be what we say we are. Third, worship of God is foundational for the person of faith and not an accessory. Humanity is fashioned by God to be in relationship with Him and worship Him in the company of other faithful Amos preaching, 13th century Prayerbook of Elizabeth of York people. Amos denounces Israel, not because they Their messages are shrouded in antique worship, but because their language, their predictions severe, and worship is void of any real love for the so often their works are like trudging Lord or for those God has put on their through dense passages of stream- path. Just as a sustained romance with of-consciousness like that of James your sweetheart would falter without Joyce in Ulysses. So why bother? For spending intentional, intimate time one, Amos, as with all of the Hebrew with one another, to imagine we can prophets, lived with an immediate love and serve God without regularly sense of the transcendent. Rather than worshiping Him is absurd. wading through their daily activities at work and home, as we most often do, Finally, we read Amos like Jay Gatsby with only occasional encounters with experiences the opulent enclaves of God, they swim in the ocean of the Long Island. He is an outsider, yet divine. Their encounters in the world through his eyes we see the bleak are soaked with the reality of heaven. bankruptcy of the contrived way of They know that the realm of God is life there. He should let Daisy and what is really real and not the other Tom Buchanan have the lot of it. In way around. To this, Abraham Heschel the same way, Amos leads us to see notes, “The prophet is not a mouthpiece, ourselves – material-minded, grasping, but a person; not an instrument, but indifferent, comfort-addicted American a partner, an associate of God.”7 Like Christians, and what we see through John of the Revelation, the prophet is him should make a lasting, ineradicable summoned to heaven and personally impression… much like a monogram moved to share his vision with stitched on the heart. plodding human beings like you and me. Second, Amos knows that our Your brother, 8 faith in God must be experienced by those closest to us. The pious men Patrick U and women of Samaria are denounced

by Amos for their exploitation of their images from Bibelwissenschaft.de 7 Abraham Heschel, 25.

MINISTRY

P

ascha nostrum literally translates as “Our Passover.”

It is a canticle of the church and was originally the first song of praise in the Anglican rite for JOSH BENNINGER Easter Day in Director of Music and Worship the 1549 Book of joshb@cecsa.org Common Prayer.

The text is derived from several scripture verses: 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, Romans 6:9-11, and 1 Corinthians 15:20-22. The 1982 Hymnal has a handful of musical settings for the Pascha nostrum. However, these settings are primarily in chant form and don’t lend themselves well to modernday congregational singing.

Several months ago, Patrick Gahan commissioned me to set the words to a new musical setting. We both envisioned a more hymn-like structure, and music that would firmly convey the message that Christ was raised from the dead, that he will never die again, and that even though we die, through Christ we shall all be made alive.

Starting in the Easter season we will begin singing this new version. In the meantime, I encourage you to get a head start and preview the music below. To help you further, the choir is working on a recording of them singing the piece. Once it is completed, a link will be posted on the CEC website (www. cecsa.org).

Josh Benninger

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MINISTRY Love In Action Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

--Romans 12:9-13

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his school year, the team of AMY CASE adults planning Youth Minister youth amycase@gmail.com our program decided to make the book of Romans our year-long study in the Carriage House on Sunday mornings.

When I mentioned this to Patrick, he warned me that Romans is one of the most complex books of the Bible that many theologians spend a lifetime trying to understand. But we had feedback from many of our youth that they felt they needed to know the Bible more deeply, and this book had a profound impact on the faith formation of two of our best adult teachers in the youth program – Jennifer Berg and Stephen Archer. So, we decided to go for it and each week we have tackled this rich and deep text, doing our best to help our youth see it as an instruction manual to their faith just as Paul hoped for the Romans when he shared this message almost 2,000 years ago.

Some weeks have been more daunting than others, for example, the first chapter of Romans covers some of the most controversial topics in society today! We have studied topics such as sin, obedience, grace, righteousness, salvation, election, sacrifice – huge, hard topics!

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This week, the wonderful Jennifer Berg taught Romans 12 and it became clear why Paul spends time laying the groundwork for the practical lessons that he shares in this chapter. If you go back and read the scripture at the top of this article, you will see it is such a powerful message for our youth, and all of us, to find a life of fulfillment in the difficult world we navigate. How do we handle someone who is mean/ difficult without seeming fake? What do we do when our faith seems boring?

How should we treat all people? How do we handle our pain and suffering and the pain and suffering of loved ones?

Is prayer that important – doesn’t God know what I need? Jennifer shared real life examples of how this verse answers all of these questions and puts us on a path of peace.

As we complete the last four chapters of Romans this spring, all of us on the youth team pray that learning an entire book of the Bible, like Romans, from beginning to end, will give our youth great hope. As they face the many situations and circumstances of their lives, they will know that God leads them.

Amy

MINISTRY

Relentless Love – A Note

I

was very impressed with a recent sermon

by Patrick, where he shared the nightly blessing Eugene Peterson gave to his sons from childhood to HALLETA adulthood – “God HEINRICH Loves you. He’s Director of on your side. He’s Family Ministries coming to get you. halletah@cecsa.org He’s relentless.” At the door of the church on the way out that Sunday, I told Patrick what a great sermon it was, and that Peterson’s blessing is everything I believe. It did contain everything I believe. It confirmed what I believe to be the main focus of my calling as a minister to children and families. We are loved unconditionally by God who is love as personified in Jesus Christ. Eugene Peterson, this well-known interpreter of the Bible, author, preacher and

A Time

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he following are some joyous events coming for our children and families as we approach Easter: Children’s Palm Procession on Palm Sunday, April 14, at the beginning of both the 9 and 11 a.m. services.

What would Palm Sunday be without the happy children waving their palms in celebration of the beginning of Holy Week. Children who arrive at the front steps of the church first before each service get the biggest palms!

Family Seder Dinner on Good Friday, April 19, at 6 p.m., led by Justin Lindstrom Jesus’ Last Supper was a Seder/ Passover Meal. Families will reenact this meal together as we form a connection between the Jewish Passover and the act of Jesus on the cross which is our Great Passover from Death to Life.

Children’s Easter Egg Hunt and Family Liturgy of Light on Saturday, April 20, at 10 a.m.

to

Parents

and

A Note

teacher, thinks just like me! Can you imagine? I must be on the right track!

At Eugene Peterson’s funeral, his son Leif shared that his Dad had fooled everyone. He only had one sermon and it could be summarized in the blessing of his children each night when he would whisper this message of God’s unconditional love.

I believe in everything we do, and say, and teach, this same message should come across to our children. I know in our Catechesis of the Good Shepherd classes, Jesus as Our Good Shepherd forms the foundation. The Good Shepherd cares for His sheep, knows them by name, follows them relentlessly if they are lost until they are found, and protects them. He lays down His own life for them. The Good Shepherd is relentless, and the Good Shepherd is Jesus Christ come to earth to teach us about this kind of love that has no conditions, and to give up his own life to save us so we can dwell with him for eternity. Peterson’s blessing contains

of Joy is

Coming

as

to

All God’s Children

all the elements of Jesus’ proclamation that He is the Good Shepherd and we are His beloved children.

A few years ago, Mark Gregston, noted Youth Minister and author of books aimed to help parents of teens, visited us and stated in a memorable quote this same message of unconditional love.

Tell your teen daily – “There’s nothing you can ever do to make me love you less and nothing you can do to make me love you more.” That’s how God loves all of us, and that’s how we should love our kids, no matter what. With that foundation, even though we may be lost, we will be found by our loving creator and so will our children. The Good Shepherd will never stop calling us and our children to Him because He is that Love from which nothing can separate us. He loves us. He’s on our side. He’s coming after us, and His love is relentless!

Love Always,

Halleta

We Near Easter

Family members receive the Light of Christ as a symbol of the Risen Life of Christ we receive through His Resurrection. The Easter Egg Hunt for children of all ages follows on the church lawns. This is a Big Hunt which could get bigger with our new campus expansion.

Children’s Flowering of the Cross Procession on Easter Sunday, April 21 at the beginning of 9 and 11 a.m. services.

How beautiful it is to see our children process with flowers, then bring an empty cross to life through their gifts. This is a beautiful symbol of the Resurrection that is a long held Christ Church Easter tradition.

Children’s Communion Celebration during the 11 a.m. service on Sunday, April 28.

This year’s Communion Class will be honored as they are called forward to the altar as the priests prepare the elements of the Eucharist and then receive Holy Communion with their parents. All are invited to come to a Communion Celebration Reception on the lawn after the service.

Mark Your Calendars Now! Christ Church Vacation Bible School June 10 – 13

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Why Do We Do All

H

JUSTIN LINDSTROM Associate Rector for Community Formation justinl@cecsa.org

ave you often wondered why we do what we do during Lent?

From time to time, people have asked me why do we do all this stuff during Lent.

So here are some thoughts as to why…

Shrove Tuesday Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. It is known as a day to eat pancakes or “gorge” before we fast on Ash Wednesday.

The day has been made famous, if you will, by the Mardi Gras parties around the world. All are designed as celebrations prior to a solemn and penitential season. Shrove comes from the word “shrive” which means absolve.

Beyond pancakes, we are called upon on Shrove Tuesday to ponder the sins and wrongs the we need to repent of, and what areas of our spiritual life we need God’s help and strength. I have found that taking some time on this day to get ready for the Season of Lent is helpful. Decide and write down what you will give up, what you will take on, and why these things are important, what they represent, and what is hindering you from a right relationship with God.

this

Stuff During Lent?

need for God in Christ Jesus to forgive, renew and restore us. The ashes are commonly prepared from burning the dried palm branches of the previous year’s Palm Sunday. Again, this tradition points back to our need for Christ to enter into our lives more fully.

Give Up Something Many people will give up something for Lent as a form of making a sacrifice, making room for the love of Christ and our need for Jesus in our lives. We have all developed habits in our life that draw us away from knowing, understanding, and connecting to God’s love, grace, peace, and joy. Giving up “that thing” that gets more of our attention than God’s love does in our faith journey could deepen our relationship to Jesus.

something that creates better health allows us to be more fully aware of how to follow God’s Will.

40 Days of Outreach During Lent, the Outreach Committee in partnership with Sidewalk Saturday and the Hospitality Food Pantry, are inviting everyone to do the 40 Days of Outreach. A list will be provided that will give suggestions for each day of Lent to set aside an item, new or used, for someone in need that can be lovingly given to those we serve on Saturdays.

This is not just about the items. We are inviting folks to pray each day for those who will receive these items. Lists will be available to download from the church website, and lists with bags will be available at church.

Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday is a day of prayer, fasting, and repentance and is the first day of the Season of Lent. We, at Christ Church, will have three worship services throughout the day (7 a.m., Noon, and 6:30 p.m.). All of these are opportunities for you to begin Lent with the right mindset, posture and attentiveness to how God is at work in your life and where you need God to be more present. On Ash Wednesday it is our custom to have an ash cross marked on your forehead symbolizing our mortality, our sinfulness, and our

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Lenten Program on Wednesday Evenings On Wednesday evenings during Lent, we will have dinner and a program. Instead of multiple studies and classes happening all at once, we will have one class for all of us to be together for the season. For five Wednesdays we will learn how to be disciples of Jesus Christ, hear testimonials from our fellow parishioners (Darrell Jones, Garnett Wietbrock, Matt Markette, and Tina Scott), and we will have conversation.

We will also learn about how God has gifted each of us for ministry. Come and learn, come and share, come and listen, come and deepen your relationship with Christ and one another.

–Ecclesiastes 3:20

Giving something up can rid us of an old habit and help us create new ones. I have always encouraged people to give up something they would be willing to give up permanently…ridding ourselves of something forever that has hindered our right relationship with Christ.

Take Something On Some will not only give something up, but will take something on. We might pray not just in the morning, but also at night. We might join a Bible Study, we might decide to exercise more, or sleep an extra hour a night. Anything we take on would be a way for us to deepen our relationship with Christ and be more effective in following Jesus. Taking care of ourselves - physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually - adding

Ministry Fair A Ministry Fair on Palm Sunday will culminate our discipleship classes during Lent. That morning different ministries will have tables/booths set up for us to learn more about what they do and to sign up to join in. Brunch will be served throughout the morning at the various tables. It will be a festive way for us to connect to God, each other, and to ministry.

Palm Sunday On Palm Sunday, we process with palms to recount the festive entrance of

Our Church Life...

... Lent Cont’d Jesus into Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week. This is a Biblicallybased celebration that brings into the emotion and juxtaposition of the week.

Jesus enters the city hailed and praised as a king and is crucified just five days later.

Maundy Thursday Maundy Thursday is the day of Holy Week in which we commemorate the Last Supper, share in foot washing, and Holy Eucharist. Maundy comes from the word mandate. We are reminded that Jesus tells us in the Last Supper to “do this in remembrance of me.” We gather in worship to wash feet and share communion because Jesus mandates that we do so.

Good Friday Good Friday is the day we remember that Jesus was captured, tried, tortured, and crucified as he was a threat to the common order, the politics, and the way of life of the day. He suffers on

the cross and dies there for us to more fully know how much God loves us. And for us to realize more fully how much we need God as our sinfulness gets in the way of a right relationship with God. We need a savior. We need one who forgives. We need renewal. We need our brokenness restored. We need Jesus.

Easter The Season of Lent culminates and ends with the beginning of the Season of Easter. On Easter Sunday ,we gather to celebrate the Lord’s resurrection from the dead. Easter Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet, James Madox Brown, Sunday is not a day to take back up 1852-56, Tate Gallery , London all the habits we gave up for Lent, Christ with a fresh set of habits, a new but a day for us to celebrate our new life in Christ, restored, renewed, way to look at being disciples of Jesus, forgiven! We have hope for eternal and a pathway to serving in ministry. life since Jesus defeats evil, death and the grave, rising again so that all may May we have a blessed Lent! be saved. Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The In God’s Peace, Justin+ Lord is Risen indeed! And we rise with

Embroidery Success - Romelia Five years ago, Romelia had a baby that lived only a few days. So, she was very depressed when she found out she was expecting a baby again, for fear that the same thing would happen. Christ Church members were able to provide vitamins and eventually a c-section so that this baby girl was born healthy.

Her name is Meylin.

R

omelia Portillo lives in a remote, rural village in Departmento Copán, Honduras. She is 38-years-old and the mother of two children. Romelia has Esotropia (one eye turns in) which has caused her to lose most of the sight in one eye.

Romelia is a VERY TALENTED embroiderer. She does beautiful work and is helping her sister teach others (especially teenagers) in her village to embroider. When she was recently suffering from headaches, she told her doctor that she would NOT GIVE UP DOING EMBROIDERY for anything! She is always faithful to give a tithe to her church.

At our embroidery workshop in Honduras, each participant was asked what they were able to do with the money they had earned from embroidery. Romelia got up to tell the whole group her story. She saved and

saved her money and bought a calf for 10,000 Lempiras ($416.00). She didn’t have a place to feed or keep the calf, so for 400 Lempiras ($17.00) she put the calf in a man’s fenced property, so it could eat and eat. When that pasture ran out, she found another place for $17.00 for her calf to eat. Now, her calf has grown and has had a calf of its own, and she has a place to keep them. She said she has gotten milk, and even made cheese for her family. She was SO happy, and so proud that she was able to purchase something that could greatly benefit her family, all with money that she earned from her embroidery.

Romelia, her sister, and many of the ladies said doing embroidery is very relaxing, almost therapeutic. AND, most especially, they are happy to receive income.

Teri Koehler 11

Our Church Life..

PAGE TURNERS – From

O

f all the areas Christians feel the most inadequate, prayer leads the list.

We don’t know how to start our prayers, construct them, or sustain them while swimming in our ocean of worries, distractions, and tasks that we imagine are more important than praying. Yet, Jesus stepped away from the enormous demands on his life to do what he knew was essential – pray (Mark 1:35; Matthew 14:23; Luke 6:12; Luke 22:32; Luke 22:41-44; Luke 23:34; John 11:4142; John 12:27-28; Hebrews 5:7).

Realizing Jesus’ example, we want to lead a life replete with prayer. We merely need someone to teach us. Gordon T. Smith, President of Ambrose University and Seminary in Calgary, Alberta and author of a library full of books concerned with pursing Christian maturity, has written the best book I’ve read on prayer in ten years or more.

Only 108 pages in length, Smith’s Teach Us to Pray is a substantive primer on how to begin praying and keep praying. Smith concentrates on three primary characteristics of Christian prayer – Thanksgiving, Confession, and Discernment. However, he does so by emphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding our prayers and the inbreaking of the kingdom of God, which adds urgency and immediacy to our prayers. Finally, Smith offers a simple, clear structure for our private prayers, which will move us beyond our inaction. Without prayer, Smith believes we will be left unaware that God is already at work in our lives, in the lives of those we love, and in the very life of the world. That experiential knowledge should lead us to live out our days on higher ground: Without doubt, the circumstances of our lives will inform our prayers. But perhaps what should be happening is that our prayers would inform our lives, that our praying would alter

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the

Rector’s Book Stack

our living, that our prayers would shape the contours and content of daily experience.

On August 9, 2002, Shannon Fowler was swimming in the turquoise waters off the coast of Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand, when her fiancé Sean Reilly, was stung by the box jellyfish known as Chironex fleckeri, the most venomous creature on the planet. Sean died, face down in the sand just moments later. He was 25 years old, and he would be the first of a procession of those who died, ages five to forty-five, in grotesque like manner. Shannon Fowler’s memoir, Traveling with Ghosts, is an account of how she not only came to grips with her incalculable loss but also how she mustered the courage to set foot in the ocean again. As Fowler is a Ph.D. marine biologist, her journey through her sorrow and fear is further intensified.

“Journey” is the best term for Fowler’s crucible. Unable to heal either at Sean’s home in Australia or in her own home in Santa Cruz, Fowler takes off to Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Bosnia, and Poland.

In 2002, those Eastern European lands were akin to Fowler’s heart – broken, fearful, barren, and in great need of any sign of hope. While spending time in besieged, pockmarked, ashen Sarajevo, Fowler catches a glimpse of light in the people there which she concludes is wholly improbable. Their brave hope thrusts her forward. Eventually, she will even take to the sea again.

Young love, betrayal, fear, faith, and courage are all elements of Graham Greene’s very first novel, The Man Within.

To be honest, I chose the novel to see how the author became one of the most

unique religious voices in twentieth century fiction. Two of his works, The Quiet American and The Power and the Glory, walk the halls of my memory to this day. (Who could forget Laurence Olivier as “the Whiskey Priest” being pursued by Police Lieutenant George C. Scott in the 1961 film presentation of The Power and the Glory!) Eleven years before that novel’s publication, however, the seeds of Greene’s creative and religious genius would spring forth in his inaugural novel.

In full disclosure, The Man Within bears the mark of a young writer. Greene was only 25 when he published the book, and the work is overly sentimental in content. Nevertheless, the religious turmoil that besets the protagonist, Francis Andrews, is universal in scope.

Acting on parental pain inflicted upon him in childhood, Andrews’s selfishly motivated actions wreak destruction all along his life’s path. Eventually his dark path crosses the threshold of young Elizabeth’s home, where he is not only loved but pressed to rectify his actions.

Through Elizabeth’s grace, Andrews becomes, at the very last, the man he aspired to be.

I should add here how I found this oft overlooked novel in the first place.

Recently, I added a new, innovative, easy-to-use App to my mobile phone – Libby. This app connects with our public library and makes it very easy to peruse the “stacks” for every electronic book in circulation, including audio books. If all copies of the book are out, you can add your name to the waiting list. If you can’t quite finish the book in the allotted time, you can renew the book on the site, as well. The books are delivered to your phone or your Kindle.

All one needs to activate Libby is a City of San Antonio Library Card, for no financial payment is required.

Each year I think long and hard about what book I will give to outgoing Vestry members. I want them to leave

Our Church Life...

Book Stack Cont’d.... their sacrificial three-year service with a meaningful reminder of our gratitude, but also with a book that will lead them on a deeper walk with Christ. This January, I gave them The Magnificent Journey, by James Bryan Smith.

Accordingly, my mother adjured me to never give a book to another that I had not read myself. To that end, I slowly read Smith’s volume during December and January mornings – often rereading sections to gather every crumb of the author’s wisdom. Smith, Professor

of Theology at Friends University in Wichita, KS, constructs his book in two equal parts, Living Deep Within the Kingdom and Developing Kingdom Virtues. In the first part, Smith leads his readers down the path of surrender, grace, and listening. In the second, he invites the reader to take on the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love, and punctuate that new virtuous way of life by embracing joy – even when personal happiness is fleeting.

Smith, in fact, ends his book with a

penetrating truth about Christian joy: Joy is like a thick wall that prevents temptation from getting through…

When I live deeply in the kingdom of God on this magnificent journey, I find I am joyful. And when I am joyful, I am nearly invincible to all kinds of temptations. Sin seems silly when you are joyful.

Taking on Smith’s version of joy, we can stand back and laugh at the devil!

SOCIETY

How Sweet

the

Sound! An Interview

with

were under the leadership of Tim Smith from Christ Church. By that time, we were living in a house Spence built on the banks of the Medina River and when the One Hundred Year Flood came we had four feet of water in the house, and the next day I think almost every member of St. Francis, including Rector Joe Miller, came out to help us clean out the silt and the rest of the crud. A year or so later we lost our choir Director and the new one was so bad that we decided to transfer to Christ Church.

Gordon & Pat Spencer, Memorial Day 2015

T

he following is a 2019 interview by the Great Commission Society with Pat Spencer, longtime, faithful, and beloved member of Christ Church.

Editor: When did your husband Spence and you first start attending Christ Church, and what brought you here?

I believe it was 1979. We moved back to San Antonio from Oregon in 1972 and joined St. Francis church on Bluemel, because it was closest. Before long we were singing in the sevenvoice choir, and when we consecrated a new Bishop we volunteered to sing at the service. It was a large choir of more than a hundred, as I remember.

Serendipitously, the combined choirs

Editor: What are some of your most vivid memories of the church?

I think the most positive was always to see the church occupied with lots of people. We loved that it was not a Sunday-only place. The choir brought us to many other activities. Spence loved woodworking almost as much as singing, so he was soon building risers, scenery, furniture and many other things. He was also tapped to be the head of the Tape Ministry to record the sermons and Bible Studies. We both studied and taught Education for Ministry for four years. I got interested in Stephen’s Ministry and taught and managed that program for several years. I also spent a year as head of the Simply Delicious Luncheon committee.

Then, thanks to another choir member, Lynn Amos, I became a volunteer for

Pat Spencer clerical work and was at church doing whatever was available as an unpaid volunteer for several years, during which I made many new friends and learned a number of new skills.

When Tim Smith went on to other places, we got John Wright. We all loved John, and he gave us a sweeter sound, I think. His wife, Ann, was a music teacher at Hawthorne School, and together she and I started the tutoring program. Just look how it has progressed now and how much it has contributed to our Outreach. When John and Ann moved to California, we got Owen Duggan. We are all so proud of Owen’s original music and so glad to have Gretchen with us every day. Now we have Josh Benninger and, though I don’t know him personally, I am most impressed, not only with his music, but also with the spirituality he shows in his pictures.

Editor: The choir has always been a special part of your and Spence’s lives.

Why is that?

Spence was born and grew up in New York City. His first choir experience was at age seven when he sang in one of the many choirs at the consecration of St John the Divine, as the Cathedral of the Diocese of New York. He could never remember how many times they

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Our Church Life...

Pat Spencer sang “Crown Him with Many Crowns” just to get in the church. After that, he attended St. Thomas Choir School, was a member of the Harvard Glee Club, and sang in the many military bases where he was stationed - be it Episcopal, Anglican, or Ecumenical. I had no voice training but joined him in the choir at St. Francis because the children were grown, and I wanted to spend more time with him.

cont’d...

eat, clean up the kitchen together, and then went upstairs to sing.

Also, we had that wonderful Choir Trip to sing in Anglican churches and cathedrals in Great Britain. Tim Smith organized the whole thing, and even John and Shirley MacNaughton joined us. Kathleen and Roger Fry got engaged on that trip, and a great time was had by all.

Editor: Can you recall some tough times or some especially joyful occasions at Christ Church during your time here?

Editor: You now have three more generations of your family at Christ Church. What do you hope they will experience?

Some of the best times were the weekly choir dinners. We would come to dinner,

I hope they will all be led (by the Holy Spirit, I think) from one piece of God’s

ALBUM

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works to another, and I hope they grow in love and understanding just as we have.

Editor: You have surprised us all with your decision to leave a bequest to the Christ Church Endowment for the support of our Music Ministry. What moved you to do so?

This was Spence’s wish before he died and so, of course, I wanted to honor it.

We had 67 wonderful years working together and this is a monument to a great guy. Spence was always engaged in the joy of music, and insistent that it leads to the expansion and the knitting together of the Church.

OF EVENTS March 1:

Ellison Scholarship Applications due Read Across America, 9 a.m., James Madison Elementary

Christ Church Staff: The Rev. Patrick Gahan, Rector patrickg@cecsa.org

March 1 - 3:

Happening #142

March 3:

Jazz Mass, 11 a.m., Sanctuary Gumbo Lunch, 12:30 p.m., Parish Hall

March 5:

Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, 6 p.m., Parish Hall

March 6:

Ash Wednesday Services at 7 a.m., 12 p.m., and 6:30 p.m.

March 9:

Are You Ready to Go? Seminar, 9 a.m., Parish Hall

March 13:

Lenten Series Speaker Darrell Jones, 6:30 p.m., Parish Hall

March 20:

Lenten Series Speaker Tina Scott, 6:30 p.m., Parish Hall

Halleta Heinrich, Director of Family Ministry, halletah@cecsa.org

March 22:

Dial Down the Drama Parenting Seminar part I, 6 p.m., Parish Hall

Lily Fenton, Nursery Director lilyf@cecsa.org

March 23:

Dial Down the Drama Parenting Seminar part II, 9 a.m., Parish Hall The Well Bike and Brunch, 9 a.m.

Amy Case, Youth Minister amycase@gmail.com

The Rev. Scott Kitayama, Associate Rector, scottk@cecsa.org The Rev. Brien Koehler, Associate Rector for Mission and Formation, brienk@cecsa.org The Rev. Justin Lindstrom, Associate Rector for Community Formation, justinl@cecsa.org Carol Miller, Pastoral Care Administrator, carolm@cecsa.org

March 24:

Youth Pizza and Movie Night, 5 - 8 p.m., off-campus

Susan Lindstrom, Assistant Youth Minister, susanl@cecsa.org

March 27:

Lenten Series Speaker Matt Markette, 6:30 p.m., Parish Hall

Joshua Benninger, Music Minister & Organist, joshb@cecsa.org

March 29 & 30:

Youth Confirmation Retreat

April 3:

Lenten Series Speaker Garnett Wietbrock, 6:30 p.m., Parish Hall

April 7:

Youth Confirmation, 11 a.m.

Robert Hanley, Parish Administrator parishadmin@cecsa.org

April 10:

Lenten Discipleship Series, 6:30 p.m., Parish Hall

Darla Nelson, Office Manager darlan@cecsa.org

April 14:

Palm Sunday Ministry Fair, 10 a.m., Outreach Pavilion

Donna Franco, Financial Manager donnaf@cecsa.org

April 18:

Maundy Thursday, 6:30 p.m.

April 19:

Good Friday Service at 12 p.m.

Seder Dinner, 6:30 p.m. in the Outreach Pavilion

Gretchen Comuzzi Duggan, Director of Communications, gretchend@cecsa.org

Charissa Fenton, Director of Children’s Music & Receptionist charissaf@cecsa.org

Monica Elliott, Executive Assistant to the Rector, monicae@cecsa.org

April 20:

Easter Egg Hunt, 10 a.m.

Easter Vigil and Baptism, 6 p.m.

Elizabeth Martinez, Kitchen Manager elizabethm@cecsa.org

April 21:

Easter Sunday Services at 7:30, 9 & 11 a.m.

Robert Vallejo, Facilities Manager robertv@cecsa.org

April 27:

Children’s Communion Retreat, 10 a.m.

Rudy Segovia, Hospitality Manager rudys@cecsa.org

April 28:

Children’s Communion Celebration, 11 a.m.

May 5:

Children’s Musical, 9 & 11 a.m.

Joe Garcia, Sexton joeg@cecsa.org

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Christ Episcopal Church 510 Belknap Place San Antonio, TX 78212 www.cecsa.org

The Message (USPS 471-710) is published bi-monthly by Christ Episcopal Church, 510 Belknap Place, San Antonio, TX 78212. Periodical postage paid in San Antonio, TX. Postmaster: Please send address changes to Christ Episcopal Church, 510 Belknap Place, San Antonio, TX 78212. Volume 21, Number 2.

Youth “Equipped� retreat - on the ice in SA