the The Newsletter for Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church April 2018
2
A Letter From The Rector the
Music Ministry
4
Farmers Market
5
Sr. Warden's Corner
6
Women of Saint Michael
9
General Convention
10
Parish Calendar and Overview
13
Stewardship
14
Pastoral Care
16 18
Youth Ministry
Children and Family Ministry
Volume 30 No. 4
We have traveled a great journey of Lent together, one that took us through 40 days of preaching and fish pudding that fed the body and the soul! Now we are in the Great Fifty Days of Easter, a period when the church celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This Easter season is one that I look forward to every year. The winter is over, the sun is shining and the earth is being reborn. And just like the flowers and the trees are reborn, we are reborn into a new life in Christ. Easter comes along every year, so if we aren’t careful, we might not be able to appreciate what Easter really means. Easter Sunday is a delight with all its wonderful festivity: the gorgeous flowers, children in their new outfits, and herald music. I even love all the peripheral Easter stuff like bunnies, eggs, candy, and that messy fake grass. Easter can feel like a day, but Easter is really a way of life. In other words, as Christians, we are defined by the resurrection, inspired by new life, a true Easter people. We began our celebration with the Easter Vigil, where we were told and retold the story of our history with God and heard what God wants from us now. During our vigil service on Saturday night, in what I believe is one of the most profound moments of the year, we heard a series of stories from the Bible that remind us of the great arc of salvation, the great love story of God and humanity. Every year, I listen
to those stories of great courage and conviction. I listen to the stories of faithful men and women who chose to follow God’s lead, to truly do what God created them to do. And every year I feel some sense of shame. I hear those stories and realize that there is so much I have failed to do, so much left undone. I recall all the ways I fell short of living the way God created me to live. If we are honest with ourselves, we all carry a sense of shame about things we have done or things we have left undone. Our human nature causes us to make mistakes and to drift away from the person we were created to be. We naturally stumble and fall, over and over again. But we also hope for something more. We yearn for a more profound way of life, a more whole, complete, sacred life that connects us to one another and to God. That desire is at the core of us. That nugget of God-ness is at our very center, calling us and compelling us to want the good, to want a new life. Since the beginning of time, God has had a hand in the world, calling and guiding people in every generation. Put simply, our Bible is a collection of stories about how God has worked in the world through so many people, ultimately becoming incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. It is an amazing story, but too often, it is treated superstitiously and becomes nothing more than a fairytale. Believe me, it is no fairytale. The story of God is real and profound, and that great story was and is for you! continued on page 19