Welcome to St. John’s
We invite you to get to know us and discover your place here among us. We are a welcoming, inclusive community that looks to the life and ministry of Jesus to better understand and enter into the heart of God. Jesus spoke out against injustice and poverty, Jesus healed friend and foe, Jesus broke bread with the rich and poor, Jesus points to the wideness of God’s compassion.
The Season of Pentecost
Pentecost is the great festival that marks the birth of the Christian church by the power of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost means “fiftieth day” and is celebrated fifty days after Easter Sunday. The Day of Pentecost is one of the seven principal feasts of the church year in the Episcopal Church (BCP, p. 15).
The season after Pentecost, according to the calendar of the church year (BCP, p. 32), begins on the Monday following Pentecost (19 May), and continues to 24 November. It may include as many as twenty-eight Sundays, depending on the date of Easter. This includes Trinity Sunday which is the First Sunday after Pentecost. This period is also understood by some as “ordinary time,” a period of the church year not dedicated to a particular season or observance.
Ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven, the twelve apostles, Jesus’ mother and family, and many other of His disciples gathered together in Jerusalem for the Jewish harvest festival that was celebrated on the fiftieth day after Passover. While they were indoors praying, a sound like that of a rushing wind filled the house and tongues of fire descended and rested over each of their heads. Hence the wearing of red on Pentecost Sunday. This was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on human flesh promised by God. The disciples were suddenly empowered to proclaim the gospel of the risen Christ. They went out into the streets of Jerusalem and began preaching to the crowds gathered for the festival. Not only did the disciples preach with boldness and vigor, but by a miracle of the Holy Spirit they spoke in the native languages of the people present, many of whom had come from all corners of the Roman Empire. The apostle Peter seized the moment and addressed the crowd, preaching to them about Jesus’ death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins. The result was that about three thousand converts were baptized that day. The account can be found in the Acts of the Apostles 2:1-41.
Sharpening the Saw
The late Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, talked a lot about “sharpening the saw.” After you have put good habits in place to become effective in the way you go about your goals in life, you still need to “keep the saw sharp”, or no matter how hard you strive toward you goals, you’ll be no more accurate or effective than a carpenter cutting with a dull blade. That should be obvious, but for me it was a turning point. And after a . . . → Read More: Rector’s Reflections April 2013
