A Welcoming Church Community in New Milford, CT
We’re planning an online Coffee Hour for Palm Sunday morning. Find out how to “attend” and more ways to keep in touch with your friends at St. John’s in the latest issue of our newsletter St. John’s Connects.
Here are some options to stay spiritually connected during these unusual times. We hope this is helpful.
Sunday Morning Prayer: Pastor Jack will continue to tape and upload to the internet Morning Prayer on Sundays. You can see these prayer sessions on the St. John’s Facebook page and on our website.
ECCT Daily Morning Prayer/Compline: During the weekdays, the ECCT is providing Morning Prayer and Compline via the online meeting site ZOOM. Morning prayer is at 7:30 a.m. Compline is at 8:30 p.m. Here’s a link to the conference calls.
Please click HERE for meetings, cancelations, updates and more news across the ECCT along with important self-care resources!
Northwest Region Daily Prayers: Morning Prayer and Compline. Morning Prayer is at 7:30 a.m. Compline is at 8:30 p.m. To join the conference calls click this link or dial 929-205-6099. The meeting ID is 489 161 8328.
They will be using the readings and collects each day provided by the Mission of St. Clare, found here.
NW Region Tuesday Afternoon Bible Study
Rev. Martha Tucker will lead a NW Region Bible Study on Tuesdays at 4PM! We will be looking at the Gospel of John! The zoom link is below. Please contact Dylan Mello with any questions at dmello@episcopalct.org.https://episcopalct.zoom.us/j/836528308
https://episcopalct.zoom.us/j/786414686
Phone:646-558-8656 Meeting ID: 786 414 686
NW Region Bible Study Thursday Mornings: St. John’s in Pine Meadow is offering Dwelling in the Word on Thursday mornings at 10:30 AM. They will look at the Gospel for the coming Sunday! Please contact Dylan Mello at dmello@episcopalct.org for log-in information.
NW Region Wednesday Healing Services:
10:00, Rev. Joe Shepley of St. Paul’s in Brookfield will offer a Morning Prayer with a litany of healing with prayer requests. This will be done over Facebook Live.
12:30 p.m., Rev. Tara Shepley of St. George’s in Middlebury will offer noonday prayer with a litany of healing with prayer requests. This service also can be found on Facebook Live,
National Cathedral: You can view the live stream of the Sunday morning service at the cathedral here or here. Or watch on Facebook, The service is at 11:15 a.m. See the weekly schedule of online services at the cathedral by clicking here.
The Bible App for Kids: It’s available for both Android and iOS, and is a free app that offers illustrated and interactive games for children ages four and older. (We saw this in an article on CNET. Pretty sure it’s non-denominational but you may want to test it out before you let your kids have a look.)
A Special Prayer: Jen Pollock Michael of Christianity Today composed a prayer addressing the concerns of this trying time. You can see that here.
Please join us for Morning Prayer by clicking here. https://www.facebook.com/SJNewMilford/videos/554136915217632/?t=26
Prelude – Laurel Larsen, Music Director
Officiant – The Rev. Jack Gilpin
Postlude – Laurel Larsen, piano, Jens Larsen, trumpet, Gabe Larsen, trumpet
In the absence of Sunday Eucharist due to the coronavirus Pastor Jack has recorded a Morning Prayer service to watch online. You can watch it here.https://www.facebook.com/SJNewMilford/videos/556098661696734/
March 14, 2020
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,
I am writing to tell you that, at the recommendation of our bishops in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are suspending public worship services at St. John’s for at least the next two Sundays.
Bishop Ian and Bishop Laura have been in touch with the clergy in the diocese several times this week concerning the growing crisis. The last communication was a pastoral letter, yesterday afternoon, to everyone in the ECCT. To quote from that letter:
“Our primary advice and counsel are that we should do all in our power to mitigate the speed of COVID-19….Medical and health=professionals, epidemiologists, and government officials all agreethat the best way to [do that] is to reduce human contact and practice “social distancing”. To that end we strongly encourage the clergy and lay leadership of ECCT parishes to decide against holding public worship for at least the next two weeks….”
I firmly agree with this recommendation; and we have to be prepared for the possibility that it’s going to be a good bit more than two weeks. The coronavirus is spreading across the whole country, and though we don’t know how many it will infect (that’s part of the problem), we do know that it can be lethal and that it is ten times as lethal as standard influenza. We need to do everything we can – all of us – to slow its spread. This is truly a matter of loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Churches throughout the ECCT will, electronically, be providing liturgical worship experiences of various kinds during this period. We at St. John’s will begin tomorrow with a video recording of the service of Morning Prayer, which you can access through the church website (stjohnsepiscopal-newmilford.org).
I encourage you to do so, not only for the service itself, but some wonderful excerpts from the Bishops’ pastoral letter which I include. You are also invited to join our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, in celebrating the Eucharist at the National Cathedral (which has suspended worship as well.) Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUGZLwnLhUU
We will get through this. Our neighbors, our community, our country, and our world need us to act in this difficult time as the Body of Christ, witnessing to the power of God’s love. Keep in prayer; and remember that God is always with us, and God will strengthen us. May God bless us all.
Faithfully,
Jack
To see our latest edition of St. John’s Connects please click here. https://conta.cc/38FgKUr
The Episcopal Church in Connecticut announced Thursday that “all major upcoming diocesan events” have been canceled in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
To see the status of specific events, click here and then scroll down the page just a bit.
We are sad to announce that we have canceled the St Patrick’s Day Dinner that was scheduled for this Saturday, March 14th at 6.00pm.
Acting out of an abundance of caution, we want to do all we can do to try to keep everyone safe.
,If you have confirmed your attendance via sign up sheet or through the church office, please email Kim Polhemus at polhemus.kim@gmail.com (if you haven’t already done so) so she knows that you are aware of the cancelation.
3/8/20
(Genesis 12:1-4a; Ps. 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17)
Our two older children had the same kindergarten teacher. Her name was Blanche Reid, and if you saw the movie “Mrs. Doubtfire”, that was her. English, in her 60’s, shortish and roundish, hair in a bun, print dress, granny glasses; kind, gentle, and soft-spoken – that was Mrs. Reid. I had many opportunities to see her in a classroom; and I’ve never known any other teacher who so consistently got the kind of instant rapt attention from her students that she did. Whenever Mrs. Reid had something to say kids stopped what they were doing, turned to her, and listened.
And it was easy to see why: they knew that she loved them. They knew that she knew them, each one of them, and valued each for who they were, and was speaking to each of them where they were, in the course of their education and their growth. And because of all of that, they knew that whatever she had to say was going to be something they’d want to hear, something that would be good for them: something new about this world they were growing up in that would be worth knowing, even if they didn’t fully understand it at first. So they listened to her, and tried their best to follow her, and do what she said.
That’s faith. And it’s no different for us in our lives of faith, in our relationship with God, each one of us. Gods meets each of us where we are, God values each of us for who we are. The hard times are when we don’t feel God’s presence; or when we don’t understand what God seems to be asking of us; or don’t understand why. Those are the times God calls on our faith: calls us to remember to trust God, remember that God keeps God’s promises.
That’s the position Abraham is in, in today’s Old Testament reading. And in this very brief passage we see why St. Paul holds up Abraham as the supreme example of a person of faith. These verses are at the very beginning of the story of Abraham, which takes up about a third of the book of Genesis. We know almost nothing about him at this point. But evidently God knows something about his faith, because God calls on it right off the bat: asks Abraham to do something most people would reject instantly, or not hear it as the word of God. As we heard, the first words God says to Abraham are, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
So he lets Abraham know how much is being asked of him all at once, right up front: Go from your country: your country that you know: where you are comfortable; where everyone speaks the same language you do, looks and dresses as you do, and behaves according to the same rules. Go from your country and your kindred – your blood relations, the people to whom you have the strongest kinds of ties, that you’ve always lived among, a group that includes several generations, and cousins and in-laws, who help define who you are, whose births and weddings and funerals have been the milestones of your life. Go from your country, and your kindred, and your father’s house: the only home you’ve ever known, the one place you’ve always been guaranteed food and shelter; as the poet Robert Frost put it, the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Say goodbye to all of that, God says; and go to the land that I will show you.
And God doesn’t say anything at all about this new land: nothing to recommend it, nothing that might make Abraham at all enthusiastic about going there. God puts it purely on the level of faith: Do this – go to the land that I will show you – and, God says: “I will bless you, and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you,..and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
That’s five times that the language of blessing occurs in this passage. God’s blessing is a gift of God in this world: something through which God creates goodness and well-being. God says, If you put your trust in me, good things will happen. And if you put all your trust in me, things will happen that are good beyond your wildest dreams. We see this in the concluding blessing, which is the most farthest-reaching: “…in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” So in the very beginning of the story of Abraham, God commissions him as the first and most important step in God’s work of salvation: the redemption of all creation to the peace and joy that were God’s original intent.
God cannot accomplish God’s purposes in this world without us. Very few of us have Abraham’s faith. But we do each have our own. And God comes to each of us where we are.
We have an excellent example of this in the story of Nicodemus, in the gospel of John. And I’m not talking about the famous story from chapter 3 that we heard today. Nicodemus shows up two more times in this gospel; and taken together, these three appearances fit the classic definition of a story: something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
In this first appearance, John tells us that Nicodemus is a leader of the Jews – so we know he’s got power – and that he comes to Jesus by night. So something about Jesus has hooked him – he can feel that God is up to something in this man – but he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s there, he can’t afford being seen consorting with this renegade. And he shows only befuddlement at what Jesus has to say to him: “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” “How can these things be?” Jesus has more to say, but Nicodemus disappears from the story.
But we know something’s sunk in, and something’s happened in the man, because of the second time we see him near the middle of the gospel. By this time the chief priests and Pharisees are really fed up with Jesus and want to arrest him; and up pops Nicodemus, who sticks up for Jesus to a point: he says, Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it? So by this point he has come to a place where he feels moved openly to defend Jesus to his class, his peers, all of whom just want to throw Jesus in jail and who have no suspicion that Nicodemus feels any differently. And we hear that it does cost Nicodemus something to speak as he does, because they answer him, You’re not from Galilee too, are you? They start to turn on him. We see that Nicodemus has changed: his faith has grown.
And the third and final appearance of Nicodemus is at the foot of the cross, right after Jesus’ death. Joseph of Arimathea has taken Jesus’ body down, and it is Nicodemus who appears with a mixture of myrrh and aloes, for embalming and fragrance: this was what was proper at the time of death. It was also a load which, according to John, weighed about a hundred pounds, which takes some physical effort. So by this third appearance Nicodemus is treating Jesus like a member of his family. And let us not fail to note that, in so doing, Nicodemus plays a pivotal role in the story of the resurrection. This is how far – through faith – God’s original blessing to Abraham extends: on down to us here, now, and infinitely into the future.
God comes to each of us where we are. God in Christ says to each of us, Who do you say that I am? And what are you going to do about that? May God always increase our faith, that we always be ready to answer.