Posted by stpauls on June 30, 2011 under Labyrinth, Webmaster Blog | 
Friday, July 8, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
An open walk for peace
Friday, July 29, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
A walk during Pride weekend, open to all
Friday, August 12, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
An open walk for peace
Friday, August 26, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
An open walk
Friday, September 9, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Walking the Labyrinth from the Outside In
Often, we walk the Labyrinth as a retreat from the outside world. In this guided workshop, we’ll connecting with the landscape around St. Paul’s and seeing what happens when we intentionally carry the world with us as we walk. Facilitated by Coll Thrush.
Friday, September 30, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Walking to Celtic harp and flute by Judy Hendry
Friday, October 14, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
An open walk for peace
Friday, October 28, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Walking to cello and voice by Kira Van Deusen
Wednesday, November 2, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
All Souls
A St. Paul’s Labyrinth tradition celebrating life and transition: bring photos and other mementos of those who have passed on, and walk in their memory.
Friday, November 11, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Kirtan Chanting and Walking for Peace on Remembrance Day
With Sandra Leigh and friends from Give Peace a Chant
Friday, November 25, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Walking to solo clarinet by Johanna Hauser
Friday, December 9, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
An open walk for peace
December 31 and January 1
New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day programming – watch this space for details!
Posted by stpauls on June 26, 2011 under Sermons |
[This sermon was written by Presiding Priest Ruth Monette and delivered on June 26, 2011.]
This is easily the fourth version of a sermon I began this week. The reading from Genesis is… euphemistically-speaking… challenging. It presents us with an image of God that is counter to our notions of Love. It leaves us with more questions than answers. This sermon deals more with the aftermath of the story than the story itself. The story picks up themes of trauma and loss. It contains a description of a barbaric practice (human sacrifice, specifically child sacrifice). This sermon does not seek to unpack why God would command Abraham as he does. It simply accepts this story as part of our Sacred Story and asks questions about how we move forward, how we heal, how we grow in light of this story, in light of traumas in our own lives.
Of all the post-riot round ups that I have read in the last week and a half, one that stood out for me was a public apology from a UBC student that lapsed into excuses and justifications. She was slammed online for those excuses and justifications (and eventually replaced her apology with a less involved one), but the excuses and justifications were what I found most interesting. Of course, in the cold light of day, sober, and away from a worked-up crowd, she was apologetic. I wanted to know and understand how an otherwise law-abiding, smart, civically minded young woman found herself engaged in looting and rioting. And I was thrilled to see one attempt to articulate any part of it – no expert speaking from outside the mayhem, but one who was there and participating. Was it the “reptilian brain” or the “mob mentality” that allowed this young woman to act so outside her normal character? How was she making sense of her experience? The truth, as far as I can tell, was with excuses and justifications. Because she couldn’t make sense of it. There was no rational explanation.
I cannot help but think about that in light of the conversation Isaac and Abraham might have had on their return trip from Isaac’s near sacrifice. How could Abraham have explained what happened? I am pretty sure there is no rational explanation for raising a knife to sacrifice your son. How would their relationship have changed? How did they move forward? How did it shape the rest of Isaac’s life? The rest of Abraham’s? What changed between both of them and God?
As the poem, “The Invitation” puts it: “I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair/weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done…” In other words: What do we do on the other side of tragedy, the other side of loss? How do we go on? In the Abraham and Isaac story, we have limited textual evidence. The story simply does not include much detail. In the commentaries I read this week, however, there were two ideas worth noting.
The first is a literary approach. Jack Miles in his God: A Biography reads this story from the perspective of God and suggests that the near-sacrifice of Isaac changes the relationship between Abraham and God. He notes that the story shifts from events driven by the commands and conversations between the two to events in which neither Abraham nor God is the principal actor. He also notes that only after this event does Abraham describe his relationship to God. It is, he suggests, as if the shared experience of almost losing Isaac creates a stronger bond than anything else that has happened between Abraham and God. The “test” is successful in increasing the faith and trust between them.
Although it’s hard to do, let’s leave aside the question of if the ends (this closer relationship) justify the means (the command to sacrifice Isaac) here. What is really interesting to me here is the idea that everyone in the encounter (Isaac, Abraham, and God) are changed by it. In each case, one can envision a sense of identity having been shifted, and particularly their identity to one another shifting. Abraham names his relationship to God after this event. After tragedy and loss we often are named and name ourselves differently. We become widows and widowers, divorcees and orphans. Perhaps even more challenging we know our identity shifts in ways without socially acceptable labels. That UBC student who self-described as previously “law-abiding” may never be able to make that claim without the caveat of “except once, during a riot when I stole from a store being looted.” Others of us may – at least for a time – live with the new identity of being from “that city that rioted when they lost the Stanley Cup.” And sometimes after trauma or tragedy, our identity in relationship to God shifts as well – we become believers or unbelievers. Our faith grows or our anger with God overwhelms us.
The second approach to the question of what happens to Isaac and Abraham after the sacrifice is rooted in the idea of God’s promises to Abraham. In this reading, the story is about the passing of the promises from Abraham to Isaac. The relationship between Abraham and God – at least the recorded relationship that Genesis shares with us – is marked by promises from God. Abraham is to be led to the land God will show him. Abraham is to be the father of the nations with offspring more numerous than the stars. And yet, by the time God commands the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham is still living as a foreigner in the land and Isaac is his only son. For some reason – or maybe for no particular reason – the promises will not be fulfilled in Abraham’s lifetime. Instead, God reaffirms the promises with Abraham and Isaac.
In considering this point of view, I am struck by the fact that Abraham’s experience with God is marked by responding to outrageous and risky commands. Their relationship – at least their recorded relationship – begins with God’s command “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” For us, particularly those of us who trace our own heritage to immigrants, this idea of picking up, leaving our families and our homes to find the “promised land” is familiar. And may even be normalized; the odd-balls are the ones who do not pick up and leave home. But in a society that is structured around kinship circles, where who you are is intimately locked to who your family is, it is a very risky action Abraham takes. He is stepping out into the wilderness. Literally and metaphorically. It required a deep trust in God – that God would indeed provide the land that is promised.
Perhaps that kind of deep trust can only come out of following an outrageous and risky command. And perhaps Isaac needed to experience an event of following such a command in order to be able to take on the role of being the one to whom God promised so much. I’d like to believe that God could have found another way to test that rather than commanding the sacrifice of a young man and I can not explain why another way was not found.
In a way, this reading of the story reinforces that adage that some lessons are ones we have to learn for ourselves. We have to learn that our actions have consequences. We have to learn to take responsibility for our actions. We have to learn that riots are not fun events where we smash stuff and steal without lasting impact in our lives. We have to learn what loss and tragedy and trauma feel like. We have to learn to have faith, to trust God for ourselves. Simply being near someone else’s pain and loss may not be enough. Simply being near someone else’s faith may not be enough.
I’ve used the riots from a week and a half ago as our example this morning in part because members of this congregation have partnered with Christ Church Cathedral to offer a time to share our emotions and begin considering how we move on from that event. That opportunity for Vancouver residents to meet and debrief their thoughts and feelings about life in the city after the riots happens this afternoon from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Cathedral. It will be followed by a Walk for Peace at 2:30 p.m., where participants will walk from Christ Church down Georgia Street, site of the riots, to Larwill Park at Cambie & Georgia where two police cruisers were burned. You are, of course, welcomed and encouraged to attend.
Trauma, tragedy, grief, loss impacts all our lives at some points. My hope is that having read the story of Abraham and Isaac as I have this morning, I’ve invited you to consider (however imperfectly) how you move forward from tragedy and loss. How you can “get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done;” how you “can live with failure – yours and mine [and ours] – and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’” How we stand, confident in our faith in a loving God in the midst of violence.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Matthew 10:40-42 ~ Gospel Reading for June 26, 2011
Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple– truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Genesis 22:1-14 ~ Bible Reading for June 26, 2011
God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”
Posted by stpauls on June 21, 2011 under Contributors, Webmaster Blog |
Where do we go from here?
A community forum at Christ Church Cathedral
When: Sunday, June 26 12:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
In consultation with friends from St. Paul’s, Christ Church Cathedral will be holding a Community Forum this coming Sunday. This will be a time for conversation and reflection following last Wednesday’s Stanley Cup riots.
This is rather short notice, but given the extent and impact of this disturbing and sad experience in our own downtown, it’s important for the Christian community to come together to seek the guidance of the Spirit and begin conversations regarding how we might respond.
Community Forum Proposed Agenda
12:30 p.m. Welcome, purpose of the time together, opening prayer.
12:40 p.m. Perspectives: Brief presentations from invited speakers
1:00 p.m. Small group discussion with facilitators – responding to the presentations.
1:45 p.m. Larger group plenary – assembling our thoughts and discerning possible next steps.
2:15 p.m. Time for reflection, prayer, music
Peter Elliot posted these comments on CCC’s website last Thursday and he will convene the conversation on Sunday in this context: Riots in our Pacific City – By Peter Elliott
Counsellor Tim Stevenson and other speakers will give brief presentations to provide a framework for discussion.
Clergy and congregations of many denominations in the area have all also been invited.
All at St. Paul’s are welcome. If you have questions please ask Ross Bliss or Alex Wilson.
Posted by stpauls on June 19, 2011 under Sermons |
Creator God,
from you every family in heaven and earth takes its name.
You have rooted and grounded us
in your covenant love,
and empowered us by your Spirit
to speak the truth in love,
and to walk in your way towards justice and wholeness.
Mercifully grant that your people,
journeying together in partnership,
may be strengthened and guided
to help one another to grow into the full stature of Christ,
who is our light and our life. Amen
(This is the prayer recommended by the Anglican Church
of Canada in honour of National Aboriginal Day.)
This morning, we hear Paul offer a very familiar benediction to the people of Corinth in today’s reading: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
Love, grace, and communion. Add that to the other ways we speak of the Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer or Sanctifier. Grace and love and presence. Builder, shaker, mover. Everywhere, Somewhere, and Here. Creator, Healer, Inspirer. One who creates, saves, and breathes within us. Lover, Beloved, and Love. Three-personed God. Or if you want to be more formal about it, there’s the language of the Athanasian creed:
And the Christian Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. … And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other; none is greater, or less than another; But the whole three Persons are co-eternal together and co-equal.
Traditionally this is the Catholic Faith using Catholic
in the sense of universal. This translation of the Creed
is from page 864 of The Book of Common Prayer
authorized for use by the Episcopal Church (USA).
One of the ways of speaking of the Trinity that I’ve been exploring recently is to say that the Trinity tells us that God is beyond us, God is with us, and God is within us when we gather.
When we talk of God as Father or Creator we recognize the transcendent God – the God who is bigger than we can fully grasp. This is the God we place in our cosmic ordering as outside the world, before the world begins. When we talk of God as Son or Christ, we recognize the God whose presence was made real in the person of Jesus, in the Incarnation of the Divine Word. This is the God who shed tears in human grief and drank wine and broke bread with friends. When we talk of God as the Holy Spirit we recognize the God who moves in and among and through us, particularly when we gather as a community of Christians. This is the God who whispers our name in quiet moments, whose presence is that near palpable feeling we get when the holiness of an experience nearly overwhelms us.
This formula might risk too heavy a focus on the modes or functions of God over the Persons of the Trinity (and that’s a path to heresy…). I find it useful – even if risky – because it speaks to who I experience God to be and who I long for God to be. I believe God is big enough to make sense of the insanity of our world, a God complex enough to hold perpetrators of violence in the same compassionate embrace as victims of violence. I experience God as wholly Other, a transcendence that takes my breath away at the vastness of the cosmos and the intricacies of the social lives of bees. I know God as One who grieves with us and celebrates with us, who meets us in table fellowship – at the altar and at the pub. I trust in an Incarnate God who affirms the material reality of my life – good, bad, beautiful, and ugly. I believe in an active God – one who is still speaking, still whispering, still nudging us. I experience God as nearer even than my breath, to paraphrase a father in the faith, a God who knows me more intimately than I even know myself. And somehow does that for 7 billion people. Which is why God is transcendentally Other.
That God is these things – beyond us, with us, and within us – is the faith we proclaim as the Good News of Christ. It is the faith to which we return when our world tilts a little off its axis. God is will be with us, will be within us. God is bigger than this. It is the comfort we wrap around ourselves in grief and loss. God is will be with us, will be within us. God is bigger than this. It is the prayer we offer when all we can do is pray. God, please be with us, within us.
It is faith in this Triune God, Lover, Beloved, and Love, Builder, Shaker, and Mover into which we are called to be disciples and to make disciples.
As I have thought about this section we read from Matthew this morning, which we often call the Great Commission, I have tried to align that to our understanding of the Trinity.
I tried to find a way into this next bit that was gentle, but I’m just going to say it. The Great Commission is tricky for me. It’s tricky for me because we have not always been very Christian in how we’ve gone about fulfilling the that task. We have not always brought Grace, Love, and Communion.
In reading the Gospel aloud this morning at 8:00 a.m., I was struck by the fact that Jesus gives this instruction despite the fact that some of the disciples doubted. Some where unsure about worshipping Jesus, unsure about the nature of God he had been teaching them all along. And that gives me hope and courage, for if Jesus felt even doubting disciples were worthy of this great challenge, then surely we too – in all our imperfections – can find a way to live into the task of making more disciples.
I was also struck by the fact that what Jesus commands the disciples to do is to form disciples in the practice of their way of life. Jesus isn’t giving a command for his followers to go out and get others to agree to a set of doctrines. This isn’t about uniform agreement on the tenets of belief. This is about a way of life, a patterning of your days.
And so, I invite you to consider two questions in light of all this. The first is: how does the Triune God – Beyond, With, and Within Us – shape the pattern of your life? And the second is how are you making disciples to that way of life that the Triune God – Beyond, With, and Within Us, Lover, Beloved, and Love – has taught you?
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Matthew 28:16-20 ~ Gospel Reading for June 19, 2011
The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
2 Corinthians 13:11-13 ~ Bible Reading for June 19, 2011
Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
Posted by stpauls on June 12, 2011 under Sermons |
For the last few weeks, the Vancouver Sun has been celebrating Vancouver’s 125th birthday with a series of articles and editorials. In last Monday’s feature, the Vancouver Sun’s Douglas Todd looked at the demographics of our beloved city, particularly at its linguistic and ethnic make-up. Entitled “Changing Faces,” the article revealed that already at the last census, “[f]ifty one per cent of residents now speak something other than English as their first language.” And of course with a continued influx of immigrants these numbers continue to change – shaping our city. Already city hall offers services in a number of languages, but the ultimate goal for the city’s new 311 referral services is “to provide interpreters who can handle more than 100 languages.” And one of the most successful CBC-programs on air right now is “Hockey Night in Canada” … in Punjabi.
While there might be challenges ahead and while we still have to accomplish much to combat racism, this is a great opportunity. And it says something both about who we are in this city and what it is we value. Ultimately, though, the changing face of our city and the affirmation of this change by the populace and by those in power celebrate our interconnectedness as human beings, regardless of colour, language, or ethnic background. Furthermore, the changing face – our changing faces – celebrate that the diversity of the human race is not an accident or a result of our fallen state. Rather the diversity of humanity is beautiful and wonderful and it is part of the created order.
Of course, there are some, who bemoan the disappearance of a homogeneous culture. There are those who fear that we will lose our identity, whatever that identity might be, and there are those who fear an alien take-over that will force us to be different. Of course, some of the very same people, who fear the change, have no problem in exercising cultural imperialism themselves and our First Nations’ sisters and brothers can tell us how it feels to be on the receiving end of this cultural oppression.
In a similar manner, some of our Anglican sisters and brothers fear the death of their respective congregations, which they attribute to “all those Chinese and Indians” moving into “their” neighbourhoods. This is a weird justification for decline and it always surprises me: Do we really think that Christianity in general and Anglicanism in particular have nothing to offer to these of our neighbours? Do we forget that God calls “saints from every tribe and language and people and nation?”[1] Do we really think that only certain cultures have exclusive rights to the prophetic, life-giving, and healing insights of the Anglican tradition? Is our ministry and mission restricted, constrained, and suffocated by our own cultural biases and prejudices? Are we like those in the Gospel according to Luke[2], who walk by the beaten-up and robbed traveller left on the side of the road for dead, or are we like the Samaritan who breaks through cultural norms and violates ethnic boundaries to help someone in need, whoever he is? There is a part of me who wants to drag these fellow Anglicans into a Sunday morning service at St. Paul’s. Yes, we still have a long way to go and lots to learn, but take a look around and see the image of God reflected back at you by faces as diverse as the colours of the rainbow!
Of course, the issue at the heart of these objections to “Changing face” is fear: Fear of those who are different; fear of change; fear of the future; fear of what we perceive will threaten life itself.
Yet, fear makes us get stuck in the same place. Fear hides us from the outside. Fear keeps us locked in our comfort zone. Fear doesn’t allow us to move forward. Fear stops us in our tracks. And of course, this is the recipe for our demise. Yes, at times we must find refuge and seek secure places because of a danger to life and limb and soul. But when we don’t move at all anymore, when we are halted for good on the journey, then death will settle in.
And, of course, this is exactly where the apostles found themselves at the beginning of today’s text from Acts. For some strange reason, after everything they had experienced, after witnessing how death had been conquered in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and after being told that they would not be orphaned and that they should not be afraid, anxiety had once more settled in… and once again they had locked themselves behind closed doors. Fear had taken hold of them and fear held them captives. They had gathered as a small, exclusive group. Insiders only welcome. They all spoke the same language. They all came from the same cultural, religious, and sociological background. And they all spoke of the same events they had witnessed – spoke of these events to each other, and to each other only.
Yes, the space in which they had assembled was a safe place that locked out any danger to themselves and that shut out any threat to the cohesiveness of the group and to the cohesiveness of their experience. But staying behind high walls protected from those “out there” also meant that they were imprisoned by fear, which had in turn become a threat, a threat to their very existence, a threat much greater than any perceived threat from the outside. Fear had turned the homogeneity of the group into an exclusivity that disconnected them from the needs of their sisters and brothers, whoever they were. Fear threatened the deep, life-giving, and darkness-piercing truth revealed in the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Fear seemed to have suffocated the hope offered to them and to the entire cosmos by the risen and ascended Christ.
And God needed to nip this in the bud – right then and there.
And what better way to do so than to send the Holy Spirit, God’s way among us as life-giver, healer, and restorer? What better way to do so than to blow down the closed doors with a violent wind and burn down the walls of fear with flames from heaven?
This is when and how the disciples found their own distinct voices, discovered their true identity, and were able to claim the beauty that God had intended for each one of them ever since God loved them into being. The Spirit of God broke down the barriers between them and the world outside – and finally the resurrection was able to take hold of them in ways that were life-giving to themselves and life-giving to the cosmos.
It is remarkable that the Spirit of God finds us and meets us where we are. Over our fear and into our darkness, as personal as they may be, God speaks words of death-defying love in our own language, so that we can hear and understand and so that we can claim life-abundant and life – each and every one of us. The Spirit will not turn us into a homogeneous group, where we all look the same, worship the same, speak the same language, or claim the same cultural traditions. But the Spirit affirms the diversity of God’s creation. And we are free to celebrate in ways that best befit us, how the Resurrection has liberated each one of us from death and fear. The Spirit invites us to sing along in God’s love-song in the language or culture most dear to our hearts. The Spirit urges us to use words fitting to who we were created to be, whether we are “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs”[3]; or whether we are Korean, Haitian, Irish, Ndi, Dutch, Russian, Hispanic, Nepalese, Canadian, US-American, British, or German; or whether we use loud speech, sign language, or esophageal speech; or whether we “speak” Anglican or Lutheran.
Ten years ago, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada entered into an agreement of full communion. We fully recognised each other as equal members of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. However, we did not try to turn each other into the same, but we celebrated that our diversity in worship and theology enriches the Church universal, allows for the Good News to be heard in a multitude of ways, and acknowledges that the Spirit is present in diverse ways in creation.
Our diverse ways of God-talk are all part of how God reaches out to us in our diversity – and it is all part of how we respond in diverse ways to the Spirit nipping us in the butt and pushing us into the world to become healers of “every tribe and language and people and nation.”
[The Reverend Markus Dünzkofer delivered this sermon at Pentecost.]
[1] Rev. 5:9 (& also Rev. 14:6)
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Acts 2:1-21 ~ Bible Reading for Pentecost, June 12, 2011
When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs– in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ ”
