November 10, 2011
Service Times: 8 am Highlands Chapel; 10:00 am St. Dunstan's Church
In This Issue
Next Sunday's ReadingsOnce again this Sunday we will read a very challenging parable from Matthew’s Gospel. In the parable of the talents, a man leaves three servants with money to manage while he is away. Two of the servants invest the money, but the third hides the money and just keeps it safe until the master returns. Now, in some parables, the master is clearly God, but in this one, that just doesn’t feel right. Something else seems to be going on here. I suspect that the key to understanding this parable is to look at the actions of the three servants, and at what motivates their actions.Click here to see this coming Sunday’s Readings. Last Sunday's Sermon: It's Your Turn
Today we honor the saints in our lives that have died. They allowed God to work through them. Now it’s your turn. God is working through you. You are called the children of God, and as children of God, you will bring God’s love to the world. For the Love of our Saints
Dear Friends, Youth News
Sunday November 13
Saints Are Us
Agricultural festivals come to us from antiquity, and are found in many religions. In the Jewish tradition, the three pilgrimage feasts: Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles; each have an agricultural significanse. Medieval Christianity also developed a number of such observances, none of which were incorporated into the Book of Common Prayer. |
Why Does Gratitude Matter? In Luke’s Gospel there is a curious event (Luke 17:11-19). Ten lepers see Jesus passing by and they call out to him. “Have mercy on us”, they cry. Jesus responds, “Go and present yourselves to the priests.” He says this because it is the priests who have the authority to declare a leper to be clean. If the priests say that a leper is clean then the leper can rejoin society. But Jesus is not brushing them off. He is not passing them off to the priests to deal with. As the 10 lepers turn to go to the priests they realized that they have been healed! One of the lepers, a Samaritan, turns back, falls to his knees and praises God. He gives thanks for his healing, thanking God and thanking Jesus.Jesus has healed a lot of people by this point, and the healings themselves are not the point of this story. Jesus does not make a big deal out of the healings. Instead he asks, “Were there not 10 lepers that were healed? Was only this one, this foreigner, found to give thanks to God?” Why does gratitude matter so much to Jesus? He is not interested personally in the lepers’ gratitude, but he cares deeply about their gratitude to God. But why? You have probably had the experience of visiting a married couple in their home. Maybe you were invited for dinner or perhaps you were just visiting. Going to a couple’s home and seeing them interact with each other can be very revealing. Sometimes you wonder, how did these two end up together? They don’t even seem to like each other! Or maybe you find yourself trying to figure out their relationship. They seem to have completely separate lives: separate friends, separate hobbies, separate bank accounts, and even separate vacations! Other times you see a couple interact and their tenderness for each other is just beautiful. What makes one marriage beautiful and another marriage a dry negotiation of schedules and needs? There was an interesting study I read about in a book called, “Blink”, by Malcolm Gladwell. A group of psychologists set out to study relationships by interviewing couples. This was a long-term study over years and the researchers were trying to understand what makes one marriage last when another fails. To their surprise, they fairly quickly realized that they could predict the marriages that were going to last and the marriages that would fail, and over time their predictions were strikingly accurate. In fact, the researchers found that they could predict a doomed marriage by simply watching a few minutes of video footage without even listening to the sound! The researchers then began to study themselves to figure out just how they were able to predict doomed relationships so accurately. The predictor, the visual clue, that predicted divorce was contempt. If, in watching a couple interact, one or both of them, showed expressions of contempt for their partner, the researchers knew that the marriage would fail. Contempt is the opposite of gratitude. Just think about what is in your heart when you express gratitude to another. That is nothing like contempt. When we show our gratitude to God we are putting ourselves into a particular kind, or posture, of relationship. Gratitude opens our heart to love, to cherish, and to trust. Gratitude opens our heart to love God and to know that God loves us. Maybe that is why Jesus was so concerned that nine of the lepers did not turn back and thank God for their healing. Gratitude to God is transformational. If you want to understand what it means to be saved, look at what happens when we are grateful to God. In loving relationship with God, grief is transformed into peace, fear is transformed into love, scarcity is transformed into abundance, and suffering is transformed into beauty, meaning and purpose. Where suffering meets love we find salvation. We find peace. And we find gratitude. So we are Feasting on Gratitude this stewardship season because God’s love has touched our hearts. God’s love has transformed our lives and inspires our ministries. Each of the past three Sundays we have heard stories about how the ministries and prayers of our congregation have touched peoples lives, and we have given thanks, not because God needs our thanks, but because in giving thanks, we are saved. This Sunday we will hear two more people give witness to the ways God is working in and through St. Dunstan's Church. A week from this Sunday we will gather after our worship services are done to share an actual feast. This will not be a “pot-luck” feast. We will feed you. What we ask is that you bring non-perishable food items to give to the Greenwood Food Bank. We will feast, give thanks to God, and then pass on the abundance and love that God has so generously given us by loading all the food donations into a truck and driving them to the Food Bank! Yours in Christ, Fr. David Click here to respond to this post at Fr. David’s Blog. Community EngagementGreenwood Food Bank continues to need food donations. In the spirit of our Stewardship campaing "Feasting on Gratitude" please plan to continue to bring donations as supporters of the Greenwood Food Bank. The next Volunteer Night is tonight from 6-8 pm. We hope to see you there!
Tent City Meal Team will meet Tuesday, November 15 at 3 pm in the kitchen. If you are interested in helping out, please come and join us. Donations are accepted at any time for the purchase of proteins. These may be left in the jug at the door to the Narthex.
All gifts must be donated on or before Sunday, December 4th. If you have any questions, please call Kathy Newman @206-365-0677. Upcoming EventsSt. Agnes Guild presents:
Canterbury Faire - Saturday, November 12, 9:30 am- 3:00 pm
Please see our website @ http://sdchp.org/blog/a-canterbury-faire-at-st-dunstans/under "News and Events". This message is a special invitation to the entire congregation to attend our annual Canterbury Faire/Holiday Bazaar on Saturday, November 12 from 9:30 am to 3:00 pm. We have new vendors and a variety of items for your pre-Christmas shopping. Items include jewelry, candy, jams, homemade scarfs and bags, cards, the St. Agnes Cookbook and more! Even the Vestry has their own table of items. There will be a wonderful Coffee Bar and a homemade Soup Luncheon, accompanied by live bell music. How can you pass that up? Invite your neighbors and plan a date! All proceeds from this function allow St. Agnes Guild to support outreach projects. Thank you from St. Agnes Guild Vestry CornerDear Friends,At the recent meeting between the Vestry of St. Dunstan's Church and members of our congregation, the question was raised as to whether or not we could use the profits from the sale of our reinvestments of some of our Endowment funds. This can be a confusing issue, and so on behalf of the vestry, I contacted David Myre, the attorney who has worked with us for a very long time and knows the background of how those funds were set up. Yesterday, I received an opinion from him with the following quote: "As we discussed last week, based upon our understanding of the parameters of the endowment, the Church was allowed to use the gain for general church purposes."
Please be assured that your Vestry and our Endowment Committee are committed to managing any and all financial assets that we have at St. Dunstan's. Our endowment funds are intact and the principle amount that is in them has not been touched. Through the diligence of both the Vestry and the Endowment Committee, we will continue to manage these funds in a way that is in the best interest of our church. Greetings! Have you felt the energy at St. Dunstans this week? There has been a flurry of activity and the e-mails have been flying. In fact, we have a big event coming this weekend: our annual Canterbury Faire. The Faire is a St. Agnes event, which is their major annual fund raiser supporting all of their outreach programs. They always have a wide variety of outside vendors with an array of arts and crafts. The guild also sells, donated items in the treasures, stuff, and book rooms, as well as a homemade soup lunch. The last several years I have helped to organize the book sale room for the Faire, and it has become something I look forward to each year. I did not start on this project because it was something I had thought about; I simply started one year when there was a void that needed to be filled. The book room mostly runs itself, as it is one of the traditional parts of the Faire. We accept books that are dropped off throughout the year, as well as CDs, DVDs, books on tape, puzzles, and games. A few weeks before the Faire, we try to organize our donations to make them "shopper friendly." Anything that is not sold is kept for next year, or bagged up and taken to Third Place Books. Unpacking the books each year is kind of like unpacking treasures. It is interesting to see the books that others have donated, which makes me consider the different interests of those who have donated them. While we always have a good selection of romance and mystery books, we also get things like collections of sports books, travel books, business philosophy, and even cook books. As Forest Gump is known for saying, it is"kind of like a box of chocolates and you don't know what you will get next". I always have lots of help with the book room, and this year have been assisted by my mom, and Danielle and Karen Williams.  There was a group of us working at church this past Tuesday, and I am sure there will be people hard at work on the Faire all week. There is much to accomplish before Saturday. While we worked on the book room, Josef built a display of the donated spices for sale; Dean was orgainizing her stuff room; and Joan Mackie and Shirley were also busy. I am sure there will be many others working on the Faire throughout the week. This year St. Agnes has also given the vestry a table and we will have everything from aprons, pet beds, vegetable gardens, and I think even a rocking chair for sale to benefit our church. Please come and support the Faire, and spread the word to all your friends and neighbors.Working on the Canturbury Faire reminds me again of all the wonderful people we have at St. Dunstans and the sense of community we all share. Saturday will be here and gone quickly. When the Faire is over, we will turn our attention to our Stewardship campaign. Please return your pledge cards, as we will be blessing them at the altar on Nov. 20th before our 'Feast' brunch. Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday, Liz Hinkofer |
St. Dunstan's Church will once again be delivering Christmas gifts for the children and mothers served by the Matthew House in Monroe. If you would like to participate in this outreach project, please purchase a gift and place it in the box marked "Christmas Outreach" located in the Narthex. You may also make a cash donation. Checks should be made out to "St. Dunstan's Church" and mark "Christmas Outreach" in the memo line. Cash donations will be used to purchase gift cards for the teenagers. As a guideline for purchasing gifts, please note:
