Tag Archives: Palm Sunday

This Sunday (March 29, 2015) at St. John’s

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This Sunday is Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday.  In other words, we’ll be on an emotional roller coaster.  We start in the courtyard, weather permitting.  The snow has melted and the daffodils surrounding St. Francis are beautiful.  We’ll bless our palms and wave them in joyous procession into the church, which will be cleaned and spruced up on Saturday.  We remember Jesus’ coming to Jerusalem, greeted by shouting and supportive crowds.

But just that quickly, the adoration fades and we hear of Jesus’ last days:  his trial, torture and crucifixion.  We leave him buried in the tomb.

Yet, we keep going….  We celebrate the Eucharist, Christ with us.  We remember ourselves in the crowds of Palm Sunday and in the crowds of the crucifixion.  Even in the midst of the sobering and awful story, we cling to the hope and certain knowledge of resurrection and the love of God and of Jesus Christ.

Blessings as you finish your week!

Love, Rebecca+

Plan a Holy and Sacred week with these important opportunities:

Schedule for Holy Week and Easter Services – Monday, March 30 – Friday, April 3

Monday & Tuesday, March 30 & 31, 7pm, Evening Prayer
Wednesday, April 1, 7:00pm – Stations of the Cross
Thursday, April 2, 7:00pm – Maundy Thursday Service with Eucharist, Washing of the Feet, and Stripping of the Altar
Thursday, April 2, 8:30pm – Friday, April 3, 6:00am – Prayer Garden Vigil
Friday, April 3, 6:00am – Morning Prayer
Friday, April 3, 7:00pm – Good Friday with Adoration of the Cross
Saturday, April 4, 1:00-3:00pm – Holy Saturday and decorate the church
7:00pm, Easter Vigil followed by Champagne and Chocolate Reception
Sunday, April 5, 11:00am, Easter Day Celebration, followed by Easter Egg Hunt for the Children

Southeast Kentucky Ministerial Alliance (SEKMA) Holy Week Services.

Lunch will be served at 11:30am and the service will begin at 12:15pm, at the following locations each day: 

Monday, March 30-Corbin Presbyterian
Tuesday, March 31 – Christian Care Communities
Wednesday, April 1 – Sacred Heart Catholic
Thursday, April 2 – Grace on the Hill, Methodist
Friday, April 3 – First Baptist Church (Corbin)

Schedule: Rebecca will be at St. John’s through Holy Week.  Her Sabbath day will be Monday.  You can get a message to Rebecca by calling the church office at 606-528-1659 or priest-in-charge@stjohnscorbin.org.

Pot Luck Sunday:  This Sunday, following Holy Eucharist, is our monthly pot luck meal.  Bring your appetite and a desire for fellowship.  All are welcome so please join us for fellowship and good food!

Easter Flowers: Donations are being accepted until this Sunday for flowers to decorate the church for Easter.  Use the donation envelopes and indicate whether the donation is “in honor of/in memory” of a loved one or a special occasion.  Donations in any amount will be accepted.

Pray Through the Night (Maundy Thursday into Good Friday):  Sign-up for a 1-hour slot to come to the church and pray.  We will be holding vigil right after the Maundy Thursday service, approximately 8pm through 6am Friday morning.  Bruce Cory will be at the church the entire time.  Morning Prayer will follow at 6am

2015 Goals:  The Vestry is considering adopting 3-5 goals for 2015 to reflect our mission statement.  Ideas include sacristy renovation; support of LGBT people, possibly through a chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) or ongoing support of Union College’s Gay/Straight Alliance; Support for people dealing with addictions and their families; opening up the amphitheater and park to church bands; providing our parish hall to other religious groups; more ecumenical church services.  What do you think we should be doing to put our mission statement into action?

Make a Covenant with St. John’s:  God has made unconditional covenants with us that God will always be with us, always be our God.  Likewise, through our annual pledge, we state our promise and obligation to the mission and work of the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church.  Our mission and work not only includes our worship, Grow Appalachia, and family game nights, but also God’s work in our region through our Diocese and in our nation and world through The Episcopal Church and The Anglican Communion.  If you’d like to make a covenant with St. John’s through a pledge, please see Rebecca or Gay Nell Conley.

Christian Care Communities Eucharist:  Join Rebecca as she celebrates Holy Eucharist at Christian Care Communities.  Elmer Parlier will be playing the guitar.  The service begins at 2:30pm and is 30-45 minutes and the residents would appreciate your attendance.

Church Parlor Space: The Vestry is considering how best to use the space that is now our Parlor.  Various ideas have included using the space as a welcome and information place, where information is available about St. John’s, our various ministries, and our members.  Another idea is to have a prayer space with candles that can be lit for specific prayer intentions.  If you have comments or other ideas, please see a member of Vestry or Rebecca.  

Belk Charity Sales Day:  Belk department store will be running a Charity Sales Day on Saturday, May 2, 6am – 10am.  Buy tickets for $5.00 to get into this special sale.   The church keeps the money and you get $5.00 off an item for each ticket you have.  The church will be selling tickets at Belk on Friday afternoon, April 3.

All the City Shook (Sermon) Southeast Kentucky Ministerial Alliance Palm Sunday Service, April 13, 2014

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Sermon – April 13, 2014
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, CSW
Southeast Kentucky Ministerial Alliance Joint Service
Grace on the Hill, Corbin, KY
The Sunday of the Passion:  Palm Sunday

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred…. Matthew 21:10

Please be seated

First of all, I truly believe our gathering must make God happy.  As denominations, we have our different ways to worship and truly, the unity when we come together at times like these, representing the oneness of God, makes for blessed times and times of great honor to God.  And you will have more times to be in such a place as we go through Holy Week with weekday noontime services at churches here in Corbin and a Good Friday evening service in Williamsburg.  Take advantage of this holy time and these holy gatherings.  

Have you ever been in an earthquake?  I remember the first time I truly felt an earthquake.  I was in San Francisco for a conference, staying on the 18th floor of a hotel.  The quake wasn’t even a 2 on the Richter Scale and was not centered in San Francisco, but there was no mistaking what was happening.  AND there was no warning.  By the time I realized the whole building was moving back and forth, the quake was over, so there was no time to even move to the bathroom like you’re told.  And forget running down 18 flights of stairs and out of the building.  That quenched my desire to move to California, I have to tell you!

In 2011, when many of you felt the earthquake centered in Virginia, I was riding in a car, so didn’t feel the movement, but I saw what it could do.  Prior to leaving for Seminary, the Washington National Cathedral was my church and after the 2011 earthquake, seeing the beautiful, vaulted ceiling with netting underneath it, was sad.  

During the summer of 2012, I was a seminary intern at the Cathedral.  Outside my office lay huge pieces of stone that had fallen off the roof during the quake.  On the 1-year anniversary, I was able to celebrate some of the repairs by climbing to the top of one of the towers, where a floor had been constructed for the stone masons doing the repair.  We celebrated the repair of part of the stonework, which had been accomplished by recycling a piece of stone that had fallen during the quake.  Yet, much remained to repair and I have a photo of me standing by one of the pinnacles, where a long piece of stone was still buckled and you could stick your hand through the space created.  

Even a mighty building of strong stone buckled under the shaking of the earth.

In our Gospel today, Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem is like an earthquake.  In fact the Greek Word used in Matthew is seio and we get our English word seismic from that same Greek root.  

And isn’t that how Jesus comes to us in our own lives?  Jesus shakes everything up.  Jesus moves even the strongest of us off the comfortable foundations we’ve built for our lives.  Jesus turns everything upside down.  Because that’s what unconditional love does.  It is so strong.  It breaks down and breaks in everywhere we think we know what’s going on.  It asks us to love stronger and deeper. 

And here we all are in this region of Southeast Kentucky.  We are called by Jesus to love deeper.  We are called to be the body of Christ here in this place.  We are called to be Christ’s hands and feet and heart and arms.  We are called to be the earthquake…the shaking and the stirring in our community.

It’s a tall order.  We all know how Jesus continually taught about justice, freeing people from oppression, caring for the “least of these.”  We are continually challenged by Jesus’ command to the young man, rich young man or ruler, depending upon which Gospel you read, to go sell all of his possessions and give the money to the poor.  Make no mistake, Jesus loved the outcasts and downtrodden of his time…those without voice and without power.  We are called to do the same.

I was looking at some of the statistics for our region.  In our region, there is hunger, poverty, unemployment and lack of housing.  

  • 60% of school age children are eligible for free lunch, which is 25% higher than Kentucky as a whole and 15% higher than the United States as a whole.
  • 27% of the population lives in poverty, which is 40% higher than the Kentucky statistic and 70% higher than the United States as a whole.
  • 54% of renters in our region cannot afford the fair market rent for a 2 bedroom rental unit.

These are just some of the basic essentials for life.  If you don’t have food, you don’t do well in school or you become ill.  Poverty creates extreme stress according to recent studies.  A lack of housing leads to a host of other problems like increases in child abuse and domestic violence.  

Jesus enters and the region shakes.  Stones are thrown down to the ground like little pebbles!

And we have made efforts in addressing the challenges in our region.  We have a backpack program preparing backpacks of food every week so children will have something to eat over the weekend.  We have sites for feeding programs during the summer when the children are out of school.  Many of our churches have food pantries.  Canned food will be collected this week at each of the noonday services, as well as the Good Friday service.  Many of our churches prepare meals for all who are hungry.

We have shelters for people who are homeless and organizations that build affordable housing.  The Southeast Kentucky Ministerial Alliance, through your offerings at our joint services, including those this week, provides emergency assistance to people needing help with basic needs, as well as other agencies and ministries in town.  The Shaping Our Appalachian Region or SOAR efforts are finding creative ways to energize our region economically.  Creative and innovative people see the strength in the beauty of the region and the beauty of life here and are working to make it sustainable.  

And Jesus continues to shake us…continues the quake…continues the earthquake of love that demands we love our neighbor as ourselves.  Jesus asks us to examine our efforts…to strengthen them.  Failure to do so through complacency and neglect invites God to break our resistance just like those huge stones that toppled in an instant during the earthquake.  

Jesus has entered Jerusalem and the city will never be the same.  Jesus has entered our Southeast Kentucky region, moving us, shaking us, and catapulting us into action.

Amen

 

 

Facing the Inevitable (Sermon) April 13, 2014

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Sermon – April 13, 2014
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, CSW
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Corbin, KY
The Sunday of the Passion:  Palm Sunday

My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want. Matthew 26:39

Please be seated.

One of the most challenging things in my life occurred when my father was diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease.  The disease is a neurological disorder that attacks the brain.  Over 10-20 years, the person continues to lose body functions.  It is especially noticeable in the beginning with lack of balance in walking and jerkiness of movement in the arms and legs.  There is no cure.  So, once my father was diagnosed at the age of 68, I knew I would watch the slow decline towards death.

Eight years after his diagnosis, I wrote this poem:

Huntington’s
By Rebecca Myers
4/11/08

It’s in the little things
Now you have called me
Because you cannot remember
Your ATM PIN number

I knew some of what was coming with my father, because his mother had died of the disease also.  I was my father’s daughter and had told him when I was just a child that I would take care of him.  When my father was diagnosed, I prepared myself for the task of caring for him.  Now, I was extremely fortunate, because my father, who was a lawyer and judge, took great care in planning for he and for my mother’s care.  They decided they’d go into a nursing home and chose the place they’d go.  They had the resources to pay for this care and to provide some extra care in addition.  For the most part, my role was making sure everything got paid. 

While a recurrence of kidney cancer ultimately caused his death ten years after his diagnosis in January of 2011, the quality of his life was dramatically altered by the Huntington’s at that time.  I could not have a conversation with him.  Any questions I asked had to require only a yes/no or one-word response.  In some ways, we were blessed by not having to watch the toll of the Huntington’s disease. 

Yet, as I remember all of this, I am acutely aware that somewhere lurking deeply was the prayer that a cure would be found to help my father.  I had to settle for the newer medications that controlled the involuntary movements, so I was spared seeing my father become like his mother, my grandmother, who literally shook to death.

And my involvement with this disease is not over.  My father’s sister had the disease and died last year and my younger brother is dying from the disease now, in a nursing home in Northwest Pennsylvania.  While my youngest brother and I will not get the disease – we’ve been tested – and none of my children or descendants will get the disease, there are a number of people in my family who have not been tested.

How I would have given anything to have this inevitable outcome for my father removed. 

Not only in our Gospel today, but in the passages immediately preceding, Jesus makes it clear he knows what’s coming.  The outcome is inevitable.  In Luke, it says, he set his face to go to Jerusalem…. (Luke 9:51)  There is no turning back…no changing what is to come. 

While I have my particular stories, haven’t there been times in your life when you know something hard, difficult and challenging is coming?  I think Jesus provides us with ways to face the inevitable difficult times.  What does Jesus do?

  1.  Pray.  Time and again, we read how Jesus withdrew to a place to pray.  Here he is, facing betrayal by the ones he loved, and he goes to this beautiful olive grove and prays.  And he pours his heart out to God…maybe even pleading or arguing with God – isn’t there another way?  He tells God exactly how he’s feeling.  We can get hung up on the right way to pray, but Jesus has given us the Lord’s Prayer and also this prayer in the garden – just tell God what is in your heart, no matter what.
  2. Surround yourself with people who love you.  Now, this community Jesus was with certainly had its flaws and especially during this time in his life.  Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him, one of them cut off the ear of the High Priest’s slave.  The three who came with Jesus to the garden couldn’t keep awake! No, they weren’t perfect.  And it was Jesus’ followers who stood at the foot of the cross.  It was Jesus’ followers who took down his body and prepared it for the grave.  It was His followers who came that morning to find him in the tomb.  It was his followers who told the story over and over, even when they faced terrible deaths, so that we today know the story.  Though our friends and family may not be perfect and sometimes feel like they do more damage than good, overall, we need this human community and these relationships, especially during the tough times.
  3. Trust your soul to God.  Jesus ends his plea with, “not what I want, but what you want.” He trusted his soul and his very life to God.  What Jesus went through was awful.  He probably could have fought against the people who tortured him.  Maybe he could have pleaded with Pilate or made a great argument to sway Pilate.  But he did not do that.  He relied upon God.  He kept his calm, even refusing to speak.  “But Jesus was silent,” the Word says.  Jesus knew who he was and whose he was.  Jesus relied on God.  He knew no human could fully understand what was happening.  There were no words that could be heard by humans.  He knew that no human beings could take away his dignity, nor separate him from the love of God.

One thing we know about this life…the hard, difficult times will come.  And sometimes we surely see them coming and can do nothing to stop them.  You may see other things in how Jesus lived during these last days that will help you during those times.  Prayer, community and trusting in God may not stop the inevitable; and prayer, community and trusting in God, do give us a way through. 

Amen.