Februaary 4, 2024
Epiphany 5B – George Yandell
Community organizing is just about the hardest work people can do. Fishing for a living is harder. When Simon Peter and his partners met the finest community organizer in Galilee, the fishing got harder still.
The formula for successful grassroots community organizing is simple. Immerse yourself in the community. Study its history. Learn how people relate to one another. Meet individually with all the people you’re interested in getting to know. Listen for their passions. Ask questions that agitate people around their passions- it moves them off dead center. Hold small public meetings with people of passion to raise up the problems that confront folks in their daily places. Challenge those people to break down the problems into manageable public actions. Teach them to agitate others around their mutual self-interest. Confront them to make them accountable for changing the community. Act publicly in large meetings to hold the powerbrokers accountable for changing the community. Get what the community says it wants through negotiation and repeated, determined public presence. When you accomplish a major action, reflect on your successes and failures and give the people credit for their accomplishments. Begin to work on the next problem the people raise up. Continue the cycle until the community leaders act for the common good, and all the people treat one another with mutual self-respect. Then go on to the next community. That’s a brief synopsis of Jesus’ actions in this first part of Mark’s gospel.
February 1, 2024
The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple – George Yandell
40 days after He was born, Luke tells us Jesus was presented in the temple by Mary and Joseph. “Every 1st born male shall be designated as holy to the Lord.” This event harkened back to the law of Moses in Leviticus (12:6 ff): “When the days after the [ritual] purification are completed, whether for a son or a daughter, [the mother] shall bring to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting a lamb in its first year for a burnt offering, and a pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering. He shall offer it to the Lord and make atonement on her behalf…. If she cannot afford a sheep, she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering, and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she shall be clean.”
The rules for purification after birth were different for the mother if a female child was born- then it stretched twice as long- to 74 days- emphasizing that a male child didn’t occasion the lengthier time of separation from the clan before she presented her child. Luke’s point is that Mary and Joseph presented the minimum offering- they couldn’t afford the lamb.
The real depth of the gospel’s lengthy narrative is the songs and prophecies that Simeon and then Anna spoke. They were both guided by the Holy Spirit- Simeon intercepted the Holy Family,
January 28, 2024
Epiphany 4 – The Rector’s Annual Report – George Yandell
In my annual reports over the past thirteen years, I have said these words, and I’ll say them again: This is your parish. I serve God with you, guided by the Spirit of Jesus. I want to tell what I perceive God has done, is doing, and what God may be leading us to do together.
Our parish has done remarkably well considering all the changes we’ve lived through. If the parish is the bridge for us in living into our baptisms in the company of Jesus, you have been resilient and devoted in serving Christ. Where is the parish headed? That’s what the newly reconstituted vestry will continue to discern after they start their work in the meeting after this all-parish meeting.
We are now into our 38th year as a parish- the founding parents are almost gone. New members are finding Holy Family and becoming part of the ministering body. The results of our pledge campaign have surprised me and made me most grateful.
We added new 4 members in 2023. 6 members transferred out. Our total active membership now is 253. There was 1 Marriage, noBaptisms and 6 Burials in 2023. We’ll remember the faithful departed by name in the annual meeting. Our average Sunday attendance in 2019 was 169. In 2020, our average attendance before we began worshipping outside and online was 146. It was tailing off by early February.
January 21, 2024
Epiphany 3 – George Yandell
We hear today of a succession- a succession of leadership in Galilee. While John the baptizer appears in all four gospels, only Mark and Matthew note his arrest as a catalyst for Jesus’ public ministry. And it’s only in the Markan passage today that Jesus is not specifically singled out by John himself as the one who is to come after him.
Matthew states that John had been baptizing for repentance because, as he said, “The kingdom of heaven has come near- prepare the way of the Lord!” When Jesus came to be baptized, John said, “I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?” Jesus replied, “Let it go for now. After all, in this way we are doing what is fitting and right.” Then John deferred to Jesus. [Translation from The Five Gospels by the Jesus Seminar, p. 132.] It’s not clear if anyone if anyone else besides Jesus sees the heavens opened and the hears the voice from above, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”
In Luke’s gospel John’s father Zechariah had a vision in the temple that told him he was to name his son John and that his son would live as a Nazarite, not drinking wine or strong drink, like Samson generations before him. John’s diet of locusts and wild honey might have derived from his Nazarite tradition.
John doesn’t seem much of an organization builder.