The Message November 2019

NOVEMBER 2019 • Volume 21, Number 6

Take a Journey with Patrick: 3 Prayers: 8 Advent Challenge: 9 The BIG Idea: 10

The Message this month: Contents:

Contributors:

Christ Church Staff: The Rev. Patrick Gahan, Rector

From Our Rector ..............................3

The Rev. Scott Kitayama, Associate Rector

Music Ministry ................................8 Youth Ministry..................................9

The Rev. Brien Koehler, Associate Rector for Mission and Formation

Family Ministry .............................10

The Rev. Justin Lindstrom, Associate Rector for Community Formation

Our Church Life .............................11

PATRICK GAHAN

Carol Miller, Pastoral Care Administrator

Great Commission...........................12

Halleta Heinrich, Director of Family Ministry

Page Turners...................................13

Lily Fenton, Nursery Director Amy Case, Youth Minister

Photo Album...................................15 JOSH BENNINGER

Cover photo: Susanna Kitayama Back Cover photo: Gretchen Duggan Editor: Gretchen Duggan

Susan Lindstrom, Director of College Ministry Joshua Benninger, Music Minister & Organist Charissa Fenton, Director of Children’s Music & Receptionist Robert Hanley, Director of Campus Operations Darla Nelson, Office Manager

Sunday Services:

Donna Franco, Financial Manager

AMY CASE

Gretchen Comuzzi Duggan, Director of Communications

7:30 a.m.

Holy Eucharist, Rite 1

Monica Elliott, Executive Assistant to the Rector

9:00 a.m.

Family-friendly Communion Service with Music

Elizabeth Martinez, Kitchen Manager HALLETA HEINRICH

Robert Vallejo, Facilities Manager

10:00 a.m.

Christian Education for Children, Youth, and Adults

Rudy Segovia, Hospitality Manager

11:00 a.m.

Choral Eucharist, Rite 2

2019 Vestry:

6:00 p.m.

Holy Eucharist, Rite 2

Joe Garcia, Sexton

Darrell Jones, Senior Warden

NANCY TORGERSON

Matt Markette, Junior Warden

Visit us on-line at www.cecsa.org

MARTHE CURRY

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Andy Anderson

Sudie Holshouser

Barbara Black

Andy Kerr

Lisa Blonkvist

Paul McSween

Meagan Desbrow

Lou Miller

Tobin Hays

Robert Rogers

Intrepid Journey: The Courage to Be Christian

by Patrick Gahan

Author’s Note: On October 2, I turned 65. With that significant passage at hand, I pause to consider my life of faith and the convictions which underpin it.

When I was eight, school days

enchanted me. Miss Trawick, appareled in her gray A-line skirt, white blouse, and a blue sweater that was draped in perfect symmetry over her shoulders, would lead us back to our classroom on the second floor of Edgewood Elementary, primly perch herself atop her desk, adjust her reading glasses, and open the book. I would hold my breath to hear every syllable of the first sentence of the chapter. I wanted to quickly lose myself on the mysterious serpentine Mississippi with Huck and Jim. Though Miss Trawick eschewed any form of sentimentality or affection, I loved her, and I love her still for entrusting scruffy second graders with every word of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

When she completed Tom Sawyer at the end of the first semester, I badgered my mother to help me get a library card until she relented, for if books could set a boy astride with Tom, Joe Harper, Amy Lawrence, and Becky Thatcher, I wanted nothing more than to read. I could not imagine any story so engrossing as Tom’s, but that was before I made a better acquaintance with Tom’s friend Huck in Miss Trawick’s upstairs classroom.

His adventure down the Mississippi with Jim, a runaway slave and his dearest companion, was the most intoxicating undertaking I could imagine. I wish I could host a reunion with the thirty of us from that 1962-1963 second grade classroom to see how many of us became lifelong readers. I hazard that most of us, now in our mid-sixties, are never far from a book. Today, however, I presume Miss Trawick would be quickly dismissed for making children feel unsafe, daring

to speak in a 19th century black dialect, and for stepping out of the state’s prescribed, unimaginative, vanilla curriculum.

Little did I know at the time that Miss Trawick was entrusting a room full of seven and eight-year-olds with America’s epic. Ancient Greece has the Iliad and Odyssey; Rome, the Aeneid; Britain Le Morte d’Arthur, and Israel the Exodus and the Deuteronomistic Histories of Joshua through Kings; but America has Huckleberry Finn. Set upon the artery of our land, Twain tells us that the essence, the blood flow, of the American experience is risk and adventure. Should one decide to step into the fomenting current of this experience, then anything is possible, even a thrilling sojourn with one whose race previously separated you. I wonder what would happen Huckleberry Finn and Jim, on their raft, by E.W. Kemble today if citizens desisted their from the 1884 edition of Huckleberry Finn posturing and finger-pointing and, amongst our fractured on the crisp blue water of the Galilean communities took a recess from the rancor Sea, but upon the foreboding chocolate and read Twain’s masterpiece? Maybe we current of the Mississippi (Matthew would quit yelling and start talking again.

14:28-33). Christ’s siren call draws me into the unfolding unknown and into a life As a Christian, Huckleberry Finn of fascinating uncertainty. To remain on illustrates not only my American the shore is to become the most pitiable. experience, but also my gospel journey.

I have found the Christian life to be a The Lord set me upon a raft on an circuitous voyage filled with breathtaking immense, perilous river, where I am vistas, heart-stopping turbulence, and terrified and exhilarated at the same time. surprises awaiting me at every bend in the Like Peter, I fearfully step out, but not great river.

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From Our Rector...

Departures and Returns

his grace and pulled me into the authentic adventure. Besotted with my short memory, I cannot recount the number of times I have again hit my knees begging Christ to steer me away from the River Styx and back upon His river of life.

Huck and Jim are called out onto the water by necessity. Staying in the confines of the town, their place of comfort and, in truth, the only place either of them had My life in Christ is best conceived as ever known, imprisonment and perhaps an epic journey, not in the sense of the even death awaited them. At times, I take elaborately the temperature of my life, to discover Only God is ultimate, only He is worthy furnished Queen Mary that I, too, must strike of our ultimate concern, and He is not departing for out or be swamped anxious about our comfort nearly as a grand tour in death. I have of Europe, enthroned myself much as He insists that we join him on but more as god and elevated His intrepid journey. in line with comfort, sensation, a hastily and homeostasis as constructed raft launched upon a river, sacraments. Paul Tillich (1886-1965), the whose opposite bank cannot be seen. I refugee theologian from Nazi Germany, insisted that every person has an “ultimate am the Prodigal Son, who sets out lavishly outfitted with devil-may-care intentions, concern,” some thing or person to which only to return to the Father ragged and we give our ultimate allegiance. The humiliated by my errant diversions. bottom line for many of us is that we Against all predictions, the Father receives furiously pursue our ultimate concern me back – again – and re-clothes me as to protect our uninterrupted well-being. his son (Luke 15:11-24). St. Paul writes That, at the base level, is why so many of at the end of his first missionary journey Tillich’s countrymen worshiped the Third in 48 AD, ‘Do you not know that all who are Reich. The problem, of course, is that neither the self nor the country is ultimate, baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ’ (Galatians 3:27)? I wonder if and we have put our faith in dust and the great apostle realized in those heady ashes – for every person and empire, no matter how lauded in their time, has faded days that his trek with Christ would become perilously steep and fraught with or will fade from history. Only God is ultimate, only He is worthy of our ultimate injury? Paul’s four letters penned from an Ephesian prison eight years later reveal concern, and He is not anxious about our the deep scars of his crucible, such that comfort nearly as much as He insists that the celebrated apostle becomes every we join him on His intrepid journey. That Christian, man or woman, who returns necessitates a passage of epic proportions to the waters of refreshment bruised comparable to that of Aeneas, Odysseus, and disconsolate, in desperate need of Arthur, Moses, Joshua, Jim, and Huck. forgiveness, and restoration: My own embarkation commenced on a I consider everything a loss because of the February Wednesday in a bleak college surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus dorm room. My cleverness no longer my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all enchanted me and my ceaseless march things. I consider them garbage, that I may seeking sensation had left me empty rather gain Christ and be found in him, not having than satisfied. I did not like myself nor a righteousness of my own that comes from my life. I was not cast upon an adventure the law, but that which is through faith in but stuck in a miasmic bog of my own Christ—the righteousness that comes from God making. Hitting my knees in desperation, on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ— I called out to Christ, whom I did not yes, to know the power of his resurrection and know but who knew me, and begged for participation in his sufferings, becoming like forgiveness and new life. Immediately, the him in his death. Philippians 3:8-10 Lord baptized me in the broad river of 4

Arriving before the Father so bedraggled and utterly spent from our sin, He must wash and dress us Himself. Better the Prodigal with all his scars than the older son, who neglects the intrepid journey to become consumed with self and stew in his saccharine sanctimony (Luke 15:2530).

My life in Christ has been a series of departures and returns, no less than that of Israel walking out of Egypt towards the Promised Land, or Jacob sullenly departing the tents of Isaac and Rebekah, or Matthew getting up from the tax collector’s table, or Mary Magdalene arising from her heap of despair, or Jesus himself stepping out of the Jordan and heading for the wilderness. I’ve come to know Christ through these ceaseless departures and returns, for that is how my faith has matured. Remaining on the riverbank spells death for the Spirit. I only have to recall King David’s precipitous fall to remind myself of how important it is to, again, shove off for the next leg of the intrepid journey. One of the most ominous lines in the entire Bible reads, ‘In the spring, when kings lead their armies in war, David remained in Jerusalem’ (2 Samuel 11:1).

From there, the great king’s graceful life becomes unraveled in adultery, duplicity, conspiracy, and murder. The beasts unleashed by his trespass he will never be able to completely outrun, and yet the boy shepherd, still alive in the middle-aged David, recalls him to his Lord: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Psalm 51:1-3 Reared in the predictable household of the Episcopal Church, I memorized ‘Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, well before my age hit double figures (Matthew 11:28-30).

The solemn Jesus peered down at me from the stained glass of Grace Church, Birmingham where I would be led to join my mother after Sunday School. The

From Our Rector... gaping wounds on his two hands and feet moved me to believe that Jesus was altogether serious about saving me. I have harbored my doubts about God from time to time, but never have I doubted His existence, His holiness, and His invitation when I have been mired in sin. At those times when I have become abominable to myself, I have known, deep down in the recesses of myself, that I was still beloved

by God – even though I had, once again, broken His heart of love. Like Odysseus returning to Ithaca or Arthur to Camelot or Moses to the land of his fathers, the Christian life is a voyage in which we are constantly returning to the Father. ‘Father, I have sinned against God and against you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ (Luke 15:19) A State of Being I find it staggering that the wretched Prodigal returns and not only receives a bath, clean clothes, and a sumptuous repast, but also receives his father’s ring.

The sinner is forgiven and received back into the home from which he earlier absconded for the supposed “good life.”

The giving of the signet ring, however, confers the father’s status on the boy.

Now he must step out and act himself as the one who selflessly liberated him and lovingly embraced him upon his disgraceful return. I wear the signet ring too, but Lord knows, like the Prodigal, I do not deserve it or, much of the time, even want it. Wearing it reminds me that being a Christian is not a state of mind but a state of being. When I arose from the linoleum floor in that college dorm room forty-five years ago, I imagined the deed was done. I’d come clean with God, He’d forgiven me, set me back on my feet, and I was good to go for another 100,000 miles.

The bubble of that fantasy was burst some months afterward when a mature Christian mentor asked me, “What are you going to do?” He could have just as easily said, “How are you going to live?”

Recall in the Gospel of John when Jesus encounters Andrew and his companion who will become his first disciples. Seeing Jesus walking by, the two run up behind him: Turning around, Jesus saw them following

and asked, “What do you want? ‘They said, “Rabbi’ (which means ‘Teacher’), ‘where are you staying? He replied, ‘Come and see’ (John 1:3839). With those three words, “Come and see,” Jesus issues our living instructions.

To experience the saved life, I must seek to be with Jesus, but I have found it so easy to slip into a counterfeit existence.

Like Huck, docking outside of town and donning a dress and bonnet to impersonate Sarah Mary Williams, I am uncomfortable in my bogus clothes, but if I wear them long enough, they lose their itch. I can settle into a façade of the saved life and stay moored there for extended periods of time. Misery eventually drives me to break away, ditch the fake identity, and seek home. Occasionally at these frequent about-faces in my life, I feel like the curious adolescent Jesus escaping the crowd at Passover in Jerusalem. Frantic, Joseph and Mary search for him in the teeming city, only to eventually find him settled comfortably in the Temple amongst the rabbis. Jesus tersely responds to his parents’ rebuke, ‘Why were you searching for me. Did you not know I would be in my Father’s house’ (Luke 2:49)? Jesus feels no

The only place a Christian can really live is in the Father’s house. “Being saved” is merely semantic gymnastics masquerading as life if we do not live in communion with

God.

need to equivocate with his parents and certainly not with me. The only place a Christian can really live is in the Father’s house. “Being saved” is merely semantic gymnastics masquerading as life if we do not live in communion with God. I have found this much harder than the act of seeking forgiveness. Being in relationship with the author of the universe is daunting.

For 2,000 years, Christian sages have sought various avenues in order to seek consistent communion with the Father.

Anthony (251-356 – Yes, 105 years) pursued persistent solitude, Francis (1182-1226)

extreme poverty, Dominic (1170-1221) enlightened wisdom, Bernard (10901153) heroic rigor, as well as John Wycliffe’s (1330-1384) Lollards who practiced sacrificial egalitarianism and fearless evangelism. Benedict (480-547), the champion of our Episcopal way of life, sought balance, and it’s his sensible voice that has led me into a closer and more faithful relationship with God. He forged his lay community and created his pragmatic and sustainable Rule for them in the throes of Rome’s fall and moral dissolution. Benedict’s Rule summons me from across the ages to discover the Lord in all the mundane byways of my daily life.

The Rule’s first words, while appearing archaic, have proved consistently relevant in my life: Listen, my son, to your master’s precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father’s advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you have departed by the sloth of disobedience… And first of all, whatever work you begin to do, beg of Him with most earnest prayer to perfect it, that He who has deigned to count us among His sons may not be grieved by our evil deeds. Let us arise, then, at last, for the Scripture stirs us up, saying, ‘Now is the hour for us to rise from sleep’ Romans 13:11 I have done my share of “sleep-walking” throughout my six decades. At my worst during those “slothful” times, I have overtly sinned against God in word and deed as the Prayer Book denotes. All sin, of course is directed against God. I sin when I act, speak, or think in ways that oppose His will and His holiness. My sin has no place in His house. When God again awakens me, as He did my brother Prodigal before me, I realize that the grace of His salvation defeats sin. St. Paul, in his magnum opus, wrote, ‘For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace’ (Romans 6:14). For Paul, the law represents our own striving, which is woefully insufficient against the seductive power of sin. Yet for the grace that floods from Christ’s cross, sin is but a puny, wholly unworthy adversary. I was not only forgiven when I collapsed on that 5

From our Rector... hard linoleum floor at Trinity University but made holy, set aside for life in God’s house. The aged Zechariah speaks for me, too. When he learns that his son, John-theBaptist, will prepare the way for the long awaited One, he rapturously prophesies that through the coming of Christ people will be able ‘to serve God without fear and live in holiness and righteousness all of our days’ (Luke 1:75). Christ has separated me aside for God, for that is what “holy” literally means. I am not to live like I did as a pagan, nor retain any vestige of that former life. Grace alone has made me holy – set me aside. Grace alone has made me righteous – acceptable to God. If Zechariah’s two promises are true, why do I occasionally forget and deny my rebirth?

I need to be re-awakened and “arise,” as Benedict declares in his Rule.

Only then can He make something of my enfeebled fits and starts. Third, each day much include serious study of a nature that will challenge me. Finally, each day consists of repasts and communion with others. The four quadrants of Benedict’s day comprise the body, mind, spirit, and relationships. Through practice of the rule, I arise from my slumber, I am directed to intimacy with God, my mundane tasks are transformed into sacred endeavors, my intellect is stirred, and my relationships are strengthened.

The Next Adventure

The Daily Grind To awaken from sin, I must see through its alluring veneer. Recall the “Duke and the Dauphin (King)” in the latter chapters of Huckleberry Finn. Both Jim and Huck are enamored by their appearance, accent, and manner, so that they become entangled in the faux royals’ corrupt schemes. When they are finally awakened to the two’s malevolent designs, it is almost too late, for Jim has been captured and is facing execution. Then Huck “awakens” and writes his old friend Tom Sawyer, and asks him to beg Miss Watson to come to the aid of her old slave. I, like Huck and Jim, am perfectly capable of being enticed by sin. I can fall for anger that masquerades as righteous indignation, greed that feigns sensibility, gluttony that pretends to be celebration, and so it goes.

When I get caught up with these or any of the Big Seven, my day nosedives into ashes. Benedict contends the only remedy for me is to undertake a daily discipline, a six-day routine amended only by the Sunday Sabbath. Simply stated, the four rudiments of the Benedictine day go like this: First, each day must be bookended in prayer. Kay and I begin and end the day in prayer, and I practice quiet contemplation and journaling in the early morning. Second, my work, no matter how mundane, must be consecrated to God. 6

truth of my salvation, I do not emulate the society surrounding me but the Father who saves me and makes me his child and heir.

St. Paul states this truth unambiguously: ‘The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory’ (Romans 8:16-17). Nevertheless, it is equally true that this faith bequeathed to you and me must be awakened each morning and quickened throughout the day. To imagine this happens without my participation is illusory, and to forsake a defined daily discipline, abandons me to lifeless inertia.

St. Benedict, British Museum MS 16979

Reflecting on this, I am reminded of St. James’s controversial statement, ‘For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also’ (James 2:26).

By trial and a truckload of error, I have discovered that to live in communion with God and according to His holy purposes is a daily thing. The writer of Lamentations averred, ‘The steadfast love and mercy of the Lord are new every morning’ (Lamentations 3:22-23), and he was writing in the midst of an Armageddon in Jerusalem commensurate with the firebombing of Dresden. If I do not avail myself of this discipline, I quite easily fall into the enticing lassitude of the culture where I am set. The polite societies where most of us conduct our lives are attractive, if not as winning as Huck’s Duke and Dauphin, and we will be lulled to sleep within their counterfeit enticements. But I must remember, as you must, that we have been utterly transformed and set aside as holy by the One who is Holy. I have been made acceptable and righteous to God through the trustworthiness of Christ alone. Because of that deep humbling

Looking back, I recall another reason Huckleberry Finn continued to captivate me well after Miss Trawick read the last lines of the book in the lengthening days of May 1963. At the end of the novel, Huck, who, with Tom Sawyer, garners Jim’s freedom, also obtains his own. Rather than accept doting Aunt Sally’s offer to adopt him, Huck “lights out for the territories” in the West, and in so doing, secures his immortal place as the American Ulysses, or better still, the American Moses, pointing us to the Promised Land. Huck is the imperfect icon of my own Christian odyssey, as well, for I have learned in Christ there is always more, always another adventure of the Spirit awaiting me where the setting sun leads.

The very fact that I am at Christ Church sharing life with you astounds me. When I was eighteen years-old, preparing to graduate with my tiny class of twenty-nine from our unheralded church boarding school, I received a letter from Coach Warren Woodson inviting me to play football at Trinity University. Named a Wilkin’s Scholar at Sewanee, I turned down their full scholarship offer in order to come to a state and a city utterly foreign to me.

A handful of years later, my orders for Ft. Lewis, Washington were abruptly reissued by the Department of the Army, and I was directed to Ft. Hood, not a change I wanted, for sure. However, while serving

From our Rector... in the 1/41st Infantry in the Second Armored Division, I met Bishop Maurice “Ben” Benitez, and two weeks before my ordination in Alabama some eight years later, he asked that I “light out,” yet again, to Texas. The bishop of Alabama was only too happy to comply! That was thirtyone years ago. Like Huck, I have been

consistently drawn to the West and, at the same time, drawn into deeper romance with God, albeit in fits and starts. Sadly, we’ve become inured to the oft repeated saying, “It’s the journey and not the destination,” but the words are true. God is intent on making more of you and me and to do so, He will keep us moving until

our great reunion with Him in the New Jerusalem.

Dear friends, we are children of God now.

What we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3:2

Annual Parish Christmas Dinner

Wednesday, December 4 6 - 8 p.m.

in the Parish Hall RSVP to www.cecsa.org/parish-christmas-dinner

Christmas Services

December 24 3 pm Child Friendly Communion Celebration

5 pm Family Service with Junior Choirs

8 & 11 pm Rite II Eucharist with Brass and Choir

December 25 10 AM

Life After Loss Beginning January 2020 Life After Loss is a six-week program designed to benefit and support those who have lost a loved one. Beginning Monday, January 20. Classes run from 12:30 - 2 p.m. in the Conference Room. RSVP to Carol Miller at 210-736-3132.

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Prayers: Part II

CEC Music Ministry

by Josh Benninger

I have been asked to share my Sunday

morning prayers with you yet again. I believe this is a great idea, but not because my prayers are anything special. Since I offer up these prayers publicly only at the 11 a.m. service, a substantial portion of the Christ Church congregation never gets to hear them.

I won’t bog you down with any supposed wisdom concerning these prayers. I desire only to highlight three things. First, I begin the prayers by giving thanks or praise.

Second, I’ve made it a habit to write one prayer every week, usually on Sunday or Monday morning prior to doing anything else. Finally, writing these prayers opened my eyes to the amazing power of gratitude more than anything else I’ve experienced in my life.

X

X

X

X

X

Almighty God, we thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ; for he closed the chasm separating us from you. Help us to confidently move our feet so we may plant them firmly in your Kingdom. Be with us in our daily walk and assist us in resisting the corrupting forces of greed and power.

As we worship you, give us eyes to see the eternal life to which we are called; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Lord God, our heavenly Father, we rejoice that you are the true shepherd. For when we stray from your ways like lost sheep, you seek us out. When we become distracted by the false kingdoms of this world, you are always there, joyfully, to receive us when we turn back to you. Help us to be less angry, less anxious, and less 8

doubtful. Instead, mold us to be more caring, more loving, and more thoughtful.

Grant us all these things, O Lord, through your Son Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Almighty God, we give thanks to you for your steadfast love and your faithfulness.

Even though we live in a world that is often dark, evil, and self-serving, we take comfort in knowing that when the hour comes, you will return and make all things new. The ungodly, the unholy, and the unrighteous will not have the final word.

For you are the Lord of lords and the King of kings. Amen.

Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for the peace only you can give. Your peace frees us from anxiety and doubt. Your peace calms and quiets our minds, so we may hear your voice. Help us to realize this peace, and through it, come to know your Son more fully. For in knowing the Son we know the Father, Lord God. Amen.

Almighty Father, thank you for being the foundation on which all our hope is founded. We take comfort in knowing that you are with us at all times and places.

Trusting in your grace and love, help us to strip away our earthly pride, so we may follow you more closely. Quiet our minds so we may hear you more clearly. Grant us eyes to see, appreciate, and affirm where and how you are working to advance your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Lord and maker of mankind, we give you thanks for all the gifts you have bestowed on us, especially the gift of Christ Church and its people. Thank you for all the teachers you place before us, for they are central to showing us how to walk in love, as your Son loved us and gave himself up for us. As we pray, Lord God, help us to hear you voice and know your will. Help us to know what good work you are calling

us to do; through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Amen.

Almighty God, thank you for always being in a relationship with us. No matter how many times we go off track, you are always there, pursuing us. We give thanks for your steadfast love, even though we don’t deserve it. We proclaim the wonders of your grace, though we don’t deserve it. As sons and daughters in your kingdom, help us to silence our minds so we may hear what it is you require from us. What is the good to which we are being called? We ask that you continue to orient our hearts to your will, for the advancement of your heavenly kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

God of the universe, we rejoice that the Lord is King, and that righteousness and justice are the foundations of his kingdom. O heavenly Father, we ask that you remove all false gods from our lives.

For you are the Lord, most high over all the earth, and you are exalted far above all gods. And you love those who reject evil, for your light has sprung up for the righteous, and joyful gladness for those who are truehearted. We rejoice in you Lord and give thanks to your holy name.

Amen - Derived from Psalm 97 Almighty God, the heavens declare your glory. For holy is the Lord of hosts; and the whole earth is full of his glory. Your glory shouts at us from expansive starfilled skies. Your glory yells at us from the tallest snow-capped mountains. Your glory begs our attention in the multitude of beautiful streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans.

Help us remove the blindfolds from our eyes so we may bask in the wonder of your creation. Help us to see the light of Christ present in our everyday lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Advent Challenge

CEC Youth Ministry

by Amy Case

Advent is a time of anticipation as

we await the birth of the Christ child.

We expect our hearts to feel filled with the Holy Spirit, but instead it can be a very stressful time for families. Looming deadlines for school projects and exams, performances, family obligations, giftbuying, and even endless parties can bring on exhaustion and conflict.

One way to stay connected to the God who is always with us, even and especially as we build up to Christmas, is to turn our focus outward. The following Advent Challenge is a guide to help youth and families turn their eyes to others and to God, and see how bringing joy and hope to those around us helps us find that peace and warmth we seek.

There are 28 acts for the 28 days of Advent. Each item can be checked off when complete and you can challenge your family members (and yourself !) to complete as many items as possible. I am excited to try this challenge with my family and see how it bring us closer to Jesus this Advent.

oo Do a chore for a family member without being asked (load the dishwasher, bring up the trashcan, do your own laundry, etc.) oo Send a letter to your grandparents or other family member who would love to hear from you oo Bring coffee or an unexpected treat to a friend oo Pray for someone at school who you don’t know well oo Leave a nice comment for someone on social media oo Let others go in front of you all day oo Make cookies or bring flowers to a neighbor oo Give 3 compliments at school and/ or home today oo Find at least 3 items from your closet to donate oo Smile all day oo Thank a police officer or other person in uniform oo Offer to make dinner for your family and clean up afterward oo Write a thank you note oo Take someone else’s shopping cart inside or to the cart corral oo Put a neighbor’s trash can away or take their newspaper to their door

oo Bake cookies or make a care package for the local fire station – ask a friend to help you oo Hold the door open for as many people as possible oo Tell one of your teachers they are doing a great job or what you like about their class oo Put your phone away for an entire evening so your family and studies have your full attention oo Play a board game with your family oo Make a donation to the church offering plate oo Tell or text your parents why you are thankful for them oo Begin reading a book for pleasure oo Organize an area of your room or bathroom oo Volunteer at a church or school event oo Make eye contact and say hello to at least 10 people today (hallways/ passing periods, grocery store, mall) oo Do something nice for a sibling or other family member oo Find your favorite verse in the Bible and write it down in your school notebook or calendar

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CEC Family Ministry

by Halleta Heinrich

As we approach Advent, I am reminded

of a recurring teaching of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd – “Little is BIG!” This idea is found in the parables of Jesus including the Parable of the Mustard Seed, The Leaven, The Merchant and the Pearl, and many others. Out of something so small can come something so big and important – all Kingdom Parables. The most important teaching of this concept is not a parable, but a real occurrence - the birth of Jesus 2000 plus years ago. This tiny baby Jesus born so humbly was God come to earth as a human to save us and all creation. Someone so tiny is something so BIG! The children wonder at this amazing Truth as they hold the small baby Jesus figure from the class nativity scene in their hands.

Recently this concept of “Little is Big” was brought home to me at a conference I attended in Washington DC sponsored

by The Center for Children and Theology.

The Keynote Speaker was Jennifer Morgan, a theologian who has studied with scientists at Princeton University in order to meld Biblical and scientific truth. She has written three children’s books on the beginning of the universe, the beginning of life on Earth, and the beginning of man – all supported 10

Little is BIG! respectfully by scripture and science.

Each book is written as a letter to children explaining these huge concepts and referenced at the back of the books by the latest scientific knowledge. These books are mind boggling and fascinating!

One of the most awesome ideas presented in the books is that the universe began as a tiny dot or seed as theorized by astrophysicists. Little became BIG! Everything needed for the universe and life was contained in that tiny dot. It always was, but what was it? I had been given a hint of this concept from a children’s book I bought in New York a year ago. It was beautiful and expressed such an interesting concept of creation – The Stuff of Stars

by Marion Dane Bauer. The book shares that we are made of the “stuff of stars” or as the Bible teaches in Genesis – the dust of the earth. The book shows a tiny dot of light in the beginning before the creation of the stars. I shared this book with the children in Chapel, curious to see what they would think. I asked, “What could this tiny dot, that began it all and always was, be?” Without hesitation, one child answered Love and the others agreed. I knew the children would have an answer, and I believe they were right – God is Love as the Bible teaches. There is no greater power! The little ones are BIG in their understanding. God speaks through them often, and they teach me a lot!

Something else I discovered at the

conference that emphasizes the “Little is BIG” idea is the book The Spiritual Child – The New Science of Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving by Lisa Miller, PH.D. The book is a New York Times Bestseller, and Ms. Miller is a clinical psychologist who teaches at the Teachers College at Columbia University.

Her research proves that children who are raised with spiritual underpinnings from infancy through 10 years are much more likely to thrive in adolescence and young adulthood. This spirituality is defined by Miller as a strong personal relationship with a higher power. Lisa Miller is a Christian but opens the door to other religions. We as Christians call this vital spirituality a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” our Lord and Savior. Our “Little Ones are BIG” in their ability to absorb our Christian faith. If taught about and exposed to the Love of Christ, it will stay with them no matter what life brings.

It is crucial that our children be exposed to this faith of love and hope at home and in the Church. It will give them purpose and can help save them from defeat. It will help them be successful in the eyes of God which is the only true success. Faith is the key to resiliency!

Thank you, my Christ Church Family, for sending me to this conference. I learned a lot, my mind and spirit were stretched, and my faith and call to ministry was affirmed.

I am little, and you are BIG as the Body of Christ!

Healing Old Wounds CEC World Mission

by Marthe Curry

Several weeks ago, Terry and Brien

Koehler did a “Look and Learn” tour of the Navajoland campuses in southern Utah. They were particularly intrigued

by St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church located outside Bluff, a tiny, but lovely village and center for art, religion, and history. They met and visited with staff and vestry at St. Christopher’s whose campus of 157 acres is highlighted by breathtaking formations that have stood for thousands of years. (For more about St. Christopher’s, read Boil My Heart for Me

by Harold Baxter Liebler.)

Over two years ago, Bp. Dave Bailey of Navajoland visited our diocese and was a guest at Council telling us about the needs and opportunities in the Episcopal Church of Navajoland (a mission diocese).

Among the challenges are the past forcible removal of children to boarding schools to encourage assimilation; the Long Walk when Navajos were taken from their homes to Ft. Defiance where many starved or died of disease; the Livestock Management Policies that destroyed half their sheep herds; and the devastation

caused by coal and uranium mining on the reservation. Just a few of the abuses have resulted in alcoholism, substance abuse, extreme poverty and unemployment (up to 90%), and domestic violence.

But all that means there is an amazing opportunity for the Body of Christ (read members of Christ Church) to share the Good News that Jesus proclaimed in his first sermon: The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free… (Luke 4:18). This is our opportunity to be healers, reconcilers, teachers, and sharers, all while enjoying fellowship in one of the most beautiful spots in our country.

with a focus on developing trusting, loving relationships, the very center of mission work. No special skills are needed— just a love for Jesus and his children, a commitment to his Great Commission and Great Commandment, and a prayer for healing. We need pray-ers, givers, and go-ers as we explore how God is calling us to walk with the Navajos. If you’d like to learn more, talk to Terry or Brien Koehler, Justin Lindstrom, or Marthe Curry. We’d love to tell you about this new opportunity.

A number of teams from all over the States have already gone to do construction, gardening, and teaching ministries 11

Returning what is already His Great Commission Society

by Nancy Torgerson

When Torgie and I married in 1974, we

did not have a church home. I was raised in the Baptist church and he was raised at St. Luke’s, but was attending a group at Christ Episcopal Church where Bishop John MacNaughton was then Rector.

It was very important to us to attend church together - and John had asked us to visit a number of times – so we did, and immediately felt we had found our church home. So, in 1980, I became an Episcopalian, and we became members of Christ Church.

Over the years I have served in a number of different ways – I chaired the Parish Hall decorations committee, co-lead Path of Life Bible study with Torgie, served as President of Daughters of the King three times along with various offices and committees, have participated in Bible study for over 30 years and was a Bible study leader. I have filled in as church 12

secretary when Bishop MacNaughton’s secretary was on vacation, I completed the Stephen Ministries series, served on the garden committee, the stewardship committee, the food pantry and have been a kitchen volunteer, and Torgie and I have been greeters. I currently serve on the altar flower delivery and Snack Pak committees.

One of my fondest memories was making palm crosses before Easter. Ada Allen Hall, Larry Hall’s mother, got many of us involved with Daughters of the King and through the Daughters we made the crosses - and you never, ever said “no” to Ada Allen – who always brought her split pea soup! (I never told her I hated peas!) But she was one of the ladies I most admired, along with Claire Levingston, and others, who inspired me with their love of the Lord and dedication to this church.

While in the hill country, we attended Grace Episcopal in Llano where Torgie served as a LEM – and the Rector there tried a number of times to get us to transfer our letter – but, we love Christ Church and there was no other place we wanted to be.

Recently, I had a new will drawn and in my will have left the majority of my estate to Christ Church. Whatever I have is not mine – it was given by God and should go back to God for His purposes. A scripture I have tried to live by for much of my life is Luke 12:48b – as Jesus said, ‘From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.’

A Bible commentary tell us, “the more resources, talents and understanding we have, the more we are responsible to use them effectively.” I cannot think of a more effective way to use what God has given me than to return to Him what is already His – and that is through my church.

When Torgie passed away, this church – my church - the clergy – my clergy surrounded me with their love – their love for me and their love for Torgie. I know I am also carrying out Torgie’s wishes for the church that he also loved.

My wish is for Christ Church to continue to grow while staying true to God’s Word and that I would be an inspiration to others as I have loved and been loved and inspired by those who came before me.

PAGE TURNERS – From the Rector’s Book Stack Sheldon, an octogenarian Marine sniper and a Serbian orphan boy, whom Sheldon dubs “Paul”, find each other in Norway, a country alien to both of them.

The man, in a last gasp attempt to save a life that he has foolishly destroyed, rescues the boy from a Kosovo mob and travels across the cities, oceans, lakes, and forests of a land where neither of them knows one word of the language and without a solitary Krone in their pockets. Norwegian By Night, by Derek B. Miller is aptly named, and the unusual plot set in a most unfamiliar setting draws the reader down the streets of Oslo, across the fiords, and into the dark woods of that Scandinavian land.

To classify the novel as a crime thriller is saying too little. Miller, a Bostonian, who by day works for the United Nations in Oslo, and writes by night, is able to capture the regrets we harbor and carry into our golden years – “those things done and left undone.” Specifically, Sheldon’s recalcitrant pride alienates his only son, who subsequently dies in Vietnam, and thereby he lives as a stranger to his wife until she dies. Paul, the silent, traumatized immigrant boy, gives Sheldon a last chance at redemption. Further intensifying the novel, Sheldon falls into interior dialogues with his long dead friend, Bill, and with his deceased son’s Navy comrades. The reader cannot discern whether Sheldon is descending into dementia or being illuminated by revelation. In retrospect, Miller himself admits, “I am not sure how much of this book was written by me and how much was written by Sheldon himself.

So, I extend, here, my thanks to him for all his assistance. Which isn’t to say he was easy to work with…”

After the book arrived in the mail, my countenance fell. I did not know when I ordered A Pastoral Rule for Today from IVP Academic Publishers that

the book was composed by three authors. Writing by committee seemed a surefire way to destroy a promising book. I put aside my prejudice and began reading the volume by John P. Burgess, Jerry Andrews, and Joseph D. Small during my morning meditations. I was hooked from the first page of the Introduction.

To be clear, all three men are intellectual lights in the Presbyterian U.S.A. denomination. Furthermore, each chapter is penned by just one of the authors, which keeps the prose lively, engaging, and convincing.

The authors cover the pastoral rules of Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John Calvin, John Wesley, John Henry Newman, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer – all of them giants in my pantheon of saints. For my part, I ordered the book to assist me in my own daily disciplines. I needed to add some of their STP to my spiritual gas tank. The daily disciplines I have formed and re-formed over the years have not only kept me healthy but have fashioned me to be much more present to those God has placed in my path — to include my wife, adult children, and grandchildren.

Nevertheless, I needed a tune-up, and I never imagined the two entirely different voices of Pope Gregory the Great and Reformer John Calvin would inspire me to go deeper – but they have. Frankly, if one characteristic binds all of these luminaries together it is that they knew deep down that they needed others. Christian community was the elixir for their spiritual creativity, fidelity, and perseverance. To that end, in one of Bonhoeffer’s final letters from prison, mere days before he was executed as one of Hitler’s last acts of terror, he confessed: There is hardly anything that can make one feel happier that to sense that one can be somethings for other people. Indeed, the most important thing in life are human relationships; even the high achiever cannot

change that; but neither can the demigods or lunatics who know nothing about human relationships. God allows us to be served by us in all that is human.

“How the other half lives,” is a quip I pull out often to imagine the dayto-day routines of the extraordinarily rich. If we take account of our American middleclass blessings, most everyone reading these lines has staggering wealth, not just in the estimation of the world, but in the eyes of a “half ” or more of our countrymen. Acknowledging this truth, I eagerly read Maid, by Stephanie Land. The memoir was loaned to Kay and me by Frances Harrison, who reads voluminously, to include a good many challenging titles. Maid was a selection of her book club.

“My daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter,” Land begins. Only 28 years old and unwed, the author gave birth to her daughter, Mia. Land committed herself to live with the father, but at the end of a string of rages, where he slammed both fists through the wall of their rented mobile home, she had to flee. Land’s mother, newly married and trekking through Europe, and Land’s father, broken and in a state of near penury, both refused to assist their daughter and newborn grandchild. The parents deftly shelve their daughter’s “imposition” in the cellar of their consciousness.

Land, with no fall back or safety net, begins cleaning homes, some of which are more than an hour’s drive from one another. The reader accompanies this young, precocious mother on her hands and knees scrubbing other people’s toilets and as she traverses the welfare system in order to feed, house, and acquire daycare cont’d on page 14

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Book Stack Cont’d.... for Mia. Approaching the checkout line at the grocery store with her Food Stamp card, she receives the grunts and corrosive comments of others. “You’re welcome, lady,” scolds one burly man.

In the face of her neighbors’ disdain, Land hauntingly reflects, “I’d become a nameless ghost.” This book, like Barbara Ehrenreich’s inside, discomfiting study, Nickel and Dimed, informs the comfortable, middle-class reader that the American dream is an exhausting, humiliating journey for so many that make up “the other half.”

Halleta Heinrich first urged me to read The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Henri Nouwen. I raced through the volume at her behest some four years ago in the arrogant assumption that I had progressed beyond Nouwen’s introspective, self-referencing works.

This summer, however, I interrupted my morning reading and picked up the work again. Faced with disappointments over which I had no control, my arrogance descended into humility, and I needed to return to the Father.

The book is borne out of Nouwen’s late-in-life fascination with Rembrandt’s painting by that same name. In fact, Nouwen makes a pilgrimage to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he sat in front of the painting for six hours at a time. The painting opened a window into the writer’s heart, which shed light on a nest of darkness that Nouwen had carefully kept hidden. We all have places within our inner selves that we have kept closeted, whose pain or anger or remorse remerge unexpectedly. Who better to paint such a penetrating work than Rembrandt, who buried all four of his children, his wife, and the sweetheart of his later life?

Rembrandt, the master painter of the Golden Age of Art, died penniless. All of 14

his possessions, as well as his extensive art collection, were auctioned off to satisfy his creditors, and the master himself was buried in an unmarked grave.

At the same time, who better to write about the “return” to the Father and to our real self than Nouwen, another Dutch master. Encircled by the adulation of his readers, serving as a full professor at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, and the best known Roman Catholic priest in America – Nouwen confesses his well-camouflaged self-loathing and loneliness. His muse, the broken Rembrandt, leads him back to the Father. Nouwen realizes that all of us Christians must, over time, see ourselves first as the unfaithful, roguish younger son, then as the sanctimonious, condemnatory older son, and eventually as the Father himself. All three stops are necessary for our return.

The title of Jon Meacham’s most recent history, The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels, is a direct reference to Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address in 1861.

Confronting an angry, divided nation, he charitably offered, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.

Though passion may have strained (our relationships) it must not break our bonds of affection.” And you can almost hear the raspy, understated voice of our sixteenth president raise a note of hope by insisting that surely this nation would “again be touched by the better angels of our nature.”

These “better angels” rise up repeatedly in Meacham’s examination of the American presidency, when some of those men who have occupied that office rise to a level far beyond what their backgrounds would have predicted.

For Meacham, biographer of Jefferson, Jackson, George H. Bush, and others, the presidency demands that men ascend

above their station, biases, and previous histories to vie for the good of the entire country and be a light to other nations around the world. Some unlikely heroes appear in Meacham’s examination, to include Grant, Wilson, Truman, Eisenhower, and LBJ. Regarding the latter, my favorite LBJ quote occurred just five days after his predecessor, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Late on that November 27 evening, Johnson’s advisors were imploring him to drop the Civil Rights Bill on which Kennedy could gain no traction. Rising up from his chair to his full 6’3.5” (only ½ shorter than Lincoln, our tallest president), LBJ thundered, “Well, what the Hell is the presidency for!”

On the other hand, the “second coming” of the Ku Klux Klan and the near deification of Joseph McCarthy are explicated by the author in order to warn us that the insidious draw of these movements are merely latent in America, not entirely dead. The president calls the nation to combat xenophobic fears by letting the light of freedom shine through us, as Ronald Regan reminded us in his Farewell Address in January 1989: “And America is still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from lost places who are hurtling through the darkness toward home.”

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Thanks, once again, to Susanna Kitayama for the fabulous Trunk or Treat photos

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Photo Album

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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 6.

Father Shark with some baby sharks gets us ready for Consecration Sunday