We had a cooler overcast Sunday with 30 in attendance. Hostas were blooming in the front of the church and a channel appeared in the river:
Johnny was our lector in leading Morning Prayer and Kimberly the acolyte. Catherine was away on vacation.
The service had a mission theme, including the sermon, since the mission team to Staten Island departs Aug 22. As we said in Suffrage A this morning "Let not the needy, O Lord Be Forgotten." The last hymn "We are All One in Mission" is apropos with the Episcopal Church helping the Moravian Church in clothes distribution this week. Stanza 2 reads
"We all are called for service
To witness in God’s name;
Our ministries are different,
Our purpose is the same:
To touch the lives of others
With God’s surprising grace
So ev’ry folk and nation
May feel God’s warm embrace."
Elizabeth, our preacher today, spoke in her sermon about mission first citing the Psalm ("Turn from Evil and Do Good"), Ephesians ("giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything") and the Gospel ("I am the Living Bread that comes down from Heaven").
She described the missionary role of St. Peter’s in our mission statement, "Christ centered, Biblically Based, Spirit Filled, Caring". "It seems to me that this building is itself an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace of this congregation." She provided examples of the work on the building – cleaning the grave stones this summer in the graveyard and the erection of the bell tower 2009-2010 with its stronger cross.
"The cross is indeed the crux of what we as Christians are called to do. The cross is the crux of what we believe (It is interesting that crux is a Latin word. In Latin it just means cross, but in English crux means the heart of the matter, the essence)."
Finally she relayed a story from her father’s side who was a missionary in the early 19th century, a Baptist who went on to help found Wake Forest seminary in NC. In between they suffered impressment from a British ship and a near drowning of his young baby.