Father John's blog

So, already -- are you reading Matthew's Gospel?
 I'm guessing that at least a few of you may have been discouraged by the opening verses of chapter one. I can hear you now, "Give me a break! '…Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, …and …and …and…'. Shades of Ancestry.com!
 Slow down a bit a look at the names. [Yeah, yeah, you say, there you go again. "What were their names?"] Matthew is telling us something very special in this first part. The genealogy of Jesus shows why he has a claim to the human side of the Messiahship. Through Joseph who marries Mary, his mother, Jesus is related back through 14 generations to King David and 14 more generations to Abraham. And further more, that at key points in the list of ancestors, mostly father to son, there are occasional entries that add: "by Tamar," "by Ruth," "by the wife of Uriah," and so on. When God was working through the people of Israel, surprising people were called by God to carry it forward.
 The surprising story of Tamar in Genesis 38:11-30 or the great story of Ruth, the Moabite woman in the short book of Ruth ["Where you go, I will go…"], who became the Great-grandmother of King David and is important to remember because she was an immigrant. And there is the story of "the wife of Uriah, the Hittite" in 2 Samuel 11:1 through 2 Samuel 12:24 -- it's the David and Bathsheba story. Do you wonder why Matthew refers to her as the wife of Uriah? This is one of the first places that the people that Matthew is writing to are familiar with the Hebrew Bible. I am not even bringing up the surprising story of the Babylonian exile.
 Matthew is calling us to look for surprising people to do surprising things. How are you being called to do surprising things for God?
 

Hello All!
For many years I served on the Standing Commission on Clerical Compensation (fondly known as "Clergy Comp" ) and one of the members of the committee who served with us was Ron Sheay, the husband of Canon Virgina Sheay and son-in-law of Edna Westcott.  Ron spent many years working for the state as a Forester.  His sense of humor infected our proceedings.  His wife was one the first women to be ordained in the diocese of NJ and it was Fr. Elmer "Pat" Sullivan who led the fight to ordain women in this diocese.  Many in this diocese remember him only as a curmudgeon, offering nitpicking canonical changes at diocesan convention, but in his day "Pat" was a progressive Anglo-catholic who gave his parish [he was rector of St.Luke's, Ewing] leadership in calling a woman rector: Virginia Sheay.

I never met Edna Westcott, but because of all these people: Virginia, Ron, Pat, the congregation at St. Luke's, the Clergy Comp Commission, the State Forestry folks -- they all were touched in one way or another by Edna.  Now isn't that the way God works?
 

Edna Westcott, mother of the Rev. Canon Dr. Virginia M. Sheay, died April 25

at the age of 101.

Last night, at the end of a wonderfully delicious Shrove Tuesday Pancake supper, with Bob Garder's light flapjacks and Hatfield sausages that folks raved about (thanks, Rick!), we burned the palms from last year's Palm Sunday so that we would have ashes for Ash Wednesday.

What! You think we use ashtrays?  Come on!

As I was sifting the ashes this morning I thought about my father-in-law's ashes as they put them in the ground on Sunday.  Our son, Gordon and his wife, Linda, were pouring the ashes into the hole dug in the Memorial Garden.  They were so light grey against the dark loam of the garden soil.

As we were going back into the Parish Hall, Linda leaned over and half whispered, "I didn't know if I was supposed to reach into the jar and take handsful of the ashes out..."  And I giggled, "And your hand would be covered with Duard.  What would you do then?"

Well, tonight my thumb will be covered with ashes.  Our foreheads will be covered with a mark that is made to say we are dust -- mortal -- headed back to that dark brown earth.  What kind of pilgrimage will you and I make as we head back to the dust?

What does it mean to be an Episcopalian?

Most groups are usually pretty well defined: “We are this, but not that.”  Even to the point of the definition coming before belonging becomes the necessary entry into the group.

“Ya’ gatta be this or that.”  Belonging to a group is as much exclusion as it is inclusion.  In the church that has been our history over and over.  If you do not sign on to a particular confessional doctrine in one form or another, you are out of the body of the faithful (nd maybe into the fires of heresy! Ouch!)

And yet, God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you” - Jeremiah 1:5.

I read this and say to myself, “Self, how can we go round excluding folks for this reason and that when God says,  ‘I know  this one  and  this one  and  this  one...’”

I guess it means if God loves you it is enough.

Peace,

J+