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  • St. John's Episcopal Church
  • Welcome!
    • New Here?
    • Get in Touch
    • Map and Directions
    • St. John's History
    • Clergy, Staff, Vestry
    • Links
  • Worship
    • Baptisms, Weddings, Funerals
    • Choir
    • Acolytes, Chalice Bearers and Lectors
    • Altar Guild
    • Greeters and Ushers
  • Serving Our Neighbors
    • Peace Meal
    • Winter Outreach
    • Episcopal City Mission
    • Isaiah 58 Ministries
    • Tower Grove Pride Festival
  • Education
    • Children and Youth Christian Education
    • Adult Christian Education
  • St. John's as a Community
    • Coffee Hour
    • Young Adult Group
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    • Pastoral Care
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St. John's Episcopal Church Blog

11/28/2020 0 Comments

The Sunday Sermon: Forgiveness

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"Voting line" by US Department of State is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
by the Reverend Kevin McGrane
Deacon Kevin delivered this sermon on November 8, 2020.
​As many of you may know, there was a political election last Tuesday. If you didn’t know that, well, it’s too late to vote.
​I have been following the news regarding the election results, as well as the thoughts and opinions of many of my family and friends on social media, and I see a couple of overarching themes among them. 
​Most people are disappointed in the results, whether their chosen candidates or propositions won or lost. You would think that, if someone’s candidate or proposition won, they’d be happy...but lots of folks aren’t. They seem to be just as disappointed as the person whose candidate or prop lost the election.  
​It seems like they can’t be happy about the results because they did not get something else that they were hoping for, perhaps even more than winning.  And that is the satisfaction of repudiation.

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11/28/2020 0 Comments

The Sunday Sermon: The Sheep & Goats Revisited

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Barry Lewis, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
by The Reverend Dr. Warren Crews
For the last three Sundays we have been listening to parables from the 25th chapter of Matthew, dealing with the theme of judgment.  Three weeks ago, we had the Parable of the Five Wise and Five Foolish Virgins, who responded differently when the bridegroom finally arrived. Last week it was the Parable of the Talents.  Three slaves of a very rich man are left with great sums of their master’s money.  They were judged on how they handled his money, which differed greatly.  In today’s gospel, which you just heard, is the famous Parable of the Great Judgment, better known as the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.  On Judgment Day the judge, who is Christ returned, will separate all the people of all the nations into two groups, just as a shepherd separates his flock into sheep and goats.  The criteria for the separation are a set of actions: feeding the hungry, giving the thirsty a drink, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, and visiting those in prison.  Those who did those things are rewarded with eternal life, and those who didn’t are condemned to the fires of Hell. 

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9/22/2020 0 Comments

The Sunday Sermon: Seventy-Seven Times

By the Reverend Kevin McGrane
Picture
"forgiveness" by Taston is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
Editor's note: Deacon Kevin gave this sermon on September 13; we're just now getting it published. We're grateful for your patience!
​Today’s gospel lesson is about Jesus’ concepts of forgiveness which is a very generous understanding of forgiveness. 
​The parable we hear today is meant to open up our understanding of the question, “How many times should I forgive someone?” And the answer from Jesus is, “You forgive them a lot.”

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9/7/2020 0 Comments

The Sunday Sermon: Commandment Offsets

Carbon Offsetting"Carbon Offsetting" by elizaIO is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

By the Reverend Dr. Warren Crews
 One of my favorite op-ed columnists is Tom Friedman of the New York Times.  He usually writes very serious articles about political topics.  However, I remember a number of years ago, when he wrote about a serious topic—carbon emission offsets—in a very humorous fashion.  Now, carbon emission offsets are mostly an effort to enable companies to make up for their own excessive carbon emissions by funding green projects elsewhere.  Friedman and some dinner companions had thought of a great idea to promote even more green projects: offsets for the Ten Commandments!  

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9/1/2020 0 Comments

The Sunday Sermon: I'm Not the Messiah You Were Expecting

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Get Behind Me, Satan!, Ilya Repin / Public domain
By the Reverend Kevin McGrane, Sr.
If today’s Gospel passage had a title, it could be, “I’m not the Messiah you were expecting.”
​Let me explain that.
​The passage we read a bit ago starts with the words “From that time on…”, telling us that, with this incident, the ministry of Jesus and his apostles changes.  It changes because this is the first time in Matthew that Jesus predicts his death and resurrection. 
​Peter and his fellow apostles are shocked. At this time, they don’t know a thing about this.  Peter says, “God forbid!”, and Jesus immediately turns on him and chastises Peter, calling him “Satan” for saying such a thing. Jesus’s death and resurrection is the very reason why he is here. Peter is challenging the very reason-of-being for Jesus’ incarnation.

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8/23/2020 0 Comments

The Sunday Children's Sermon: Caesarea Philippi

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By the Reverend Sally S. Weaver
​In the Gospel reading we just heard it says that Jesus and the disciples are near Caesarea Philippi.
So above is a map that shows all of Israel.  You can see where Jerusalem is, that’s where Jesus dies and rises from the dead.  Jesus is from north of there, from a region called Galilee.  Here’s a larger map of that region, which shows you Nazareth where Jesus grew up and the Sea of Galilee.  In this story Jesus and the disciples are 25 miles north in the town of Caesarea Philippi.  Today the town is called Banias.

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8/17/2020 0 Comments

The Sunday Sermon: Gospel Crumbs

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Pietro del Po, The Canaanite (or Syrophoenician) woman asks Christ to cure. Source
By the Reverend Dr. Warren Crews
In contemporary thinking about preaching, the focus today is on how biblical stories provide us with metaphors that have the power to open up spiritual meaning that can then draw us in and shape our thinking and acting.  A key metaphor in a biblical story can bridge the gap between then and now, and let it frame the sermon.  In today’s gospel lesson, the metaphor that keeps jumping out at me comes from this passage is, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” I want to explore with you the metaphor of crumbs.  That sentence is a key turning point in today’s gospel story.  Before that, Jesus and his disciples seem to be spurning the woman who wants Jesus to rid her daughter of the demon that is tormenting her.  The disciples are rejecting her because she is not a Jew, she is a Gentile.  Even Jesus says that their mission is only to feed the children of Israel, not to throw the food of salvation to the dogs—in other words, to Gentiles, like this woman and her daughter.   Now—was Jesus really saying that God’s grace is restricted only to Jews?  Or was Jesus just grumpy because she was interrupting his vacation up in beautiful Lebanon?  What is going on here?

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8/11/2020 0 Comments

The Sunday Sermon: Water Walking

By the Reverend Sally S. Weaver
​It’s been a long day for Jesus and the disciples.  Jesus has cured dozens of sick people and fed a crowd of 5,000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish.  As evening falls Jesus makes sure the disciples are securely loaded into a boat while he retreats to be alone in prayer.  It’s a blustery night on the Sea of Galilee.  The wind and the waves are strong and the disciple’s boat is being tossed further and further away from land, into the middle of the lake.

​It’s between 3 and 6 a.m., the 4th watch of the night, when the disciples spot a figure walking to them across the waves.  They cry out in fear and Jesus reassures them.  “Ego eimi,” he tells them, which translates from the Greek as, “I am.”  Jesus reassures the disciples in the words that God spoke to Moses at the burning bush, “I am.”  “Take heart, be not afraid.”  The great “I am” is with you.

​Peter, intrigued by Jesus’ water walking, asks Jesus to enable him to do it too.  “Come,” says Jesus.  So Peter gets out of the boat and walks toward Jesus, skimming the top of the waves.  And then Peter realizes that he’s doing the impossible.  His rational mind tells his physical body that he cannot be walking on top of water.  He notices that the wind is fierce and the waves are high.  He gets scared, he starts to sink, and he implores Jesus’ help.  Jesus reaches out, grasps Peter by the hand, and rescues him.
Picture
James Tissot / Public domain

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7/19/2020 0 Comments

The Sunday Sermon: The Search for Truth

By the Reverend Dr. Warren Crews
My wife Mary Jane and I enjoy listening to Rachel Maddow’s daily evening program on the MSNBC channel. To us, she sounds so convincing in all her opinions on the latest controversies that it is hard for us to imagine anyone thinking otherwise. "Isn’t she just laying out the obvious facts?" we think. However, we have friends, including extended family members, who think otherwise because they listen to nothing but commentators on FOX News.  For them, those commentators sound so convincing on all the latest controversies that it is hard for them to imagine anyone thinking otherwise.  “Aren’t they simply laying out the obvious facts?” our friends ask.  Uh, ohh!  How can this be?  Competing obvious facts!  How can we be sure that we are the ones who know the real obvious facts?!  How can an earnest seeker of the truth sort things out when there is no universally agreed upon and trustworthy source of facts or wise interpreters of them?  

​Although the words “fake news” and “fake media” are new to us, cynicism about statements claiming to be true is not new.  When Jesus told Pontius Pilate that he, Jesus, is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Pilate responded by sneering, “What is truth?”  He was standing in a long skeptical and cynical tradition that believed that all truth claims are simply power moves.  The tradition is still around and is warning us to beware of anyone claiming to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth!  But, then, how then can we Christians, who believe that indeed Jesus is the embodiment of God’s truth, navigate competing truth claims, especially those dealing with racial injustice?  What light might today’s lessons shine on all of this?
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"Jacob's ladder, Milton Parish Church, Cambridge" by TheRevSteve is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

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7/5/2020 0 Comments

The Sunday Sermon: His Truth Marches On

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Ricethin / CC BY-SA
By the Reverend Dr. Warren Crews
  
Today we are using the special lessons for Independence Day.  Given all that is going on in our country, it seems like something important for us to do.  On this weekend it is traditional to recall all of the ideals our country was founded upon.  Yet, this year we are being forced to look back at some of the things about our founding fathers that were not very ideal—like their accepting slavery and often owning slaves.  They spoke often about liberty and justice for all — except for African slaves (whom the Constitution counted as only 3/5ths human beings) and Native Americans (whom they dismissed as mere savages).  So, now there is a movement to remove all the statues, portraits, and names of buildings and streets honoring those involved in oppressing people of color.  And, finally, this year most of our traditional parades and concerts have been cancelled because of the virus.  This is one strange Fourth of July weekend! 


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    Various members of the St. John's congregation contribute to this blog. For editorial suggestions, contact Jeff McIntire-Strasburg at jeff.strasburg1968@gmail.com

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St. John's Episcopal Church
3664 Arsenal St.
St. Louis, MO 63116

(314) 772-3970

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