Saint John's Episcopal Church
Mount Washington

A Member of the World Wide Anglican Communion

1700 South Road, Mount Washington, Maryland 21209
410-367-7287

410-367-8158 (fax)

www.saintjohns.ang-md.org

Regular Sunday Services are held at 10:30 a.m. Please join us!

"A life of communion is not for the benefit of the Church but for the sake of the world."
The Most Reverend Frank Griswold

Kalendar

Mark your calendars.THE ANNUAL SUMMER PICNIC will be Sunday, June 16th at St. Timothy’s School on Stevenson, MD. Eucharist begins at 11:00 a.m. in St. Michael’s Chapel and we fire up the grills at noon. Tennis courts and swimming pool will open at noon. St. John’s Vestry will provide hamburgers, hotdogs and soft drinks. Bring salads and desserts to share. BYOB. Frisbees are encouraged, pets are not.

TREASURE ALLEY, is accepting donations of gently used jewelry, pictures, kitchen things, knick-knacks, etc. BUT NO CLOTHES, PRINTERS, TV's or COMPUTERS. The Women of St. John's and other volunteers take great care in organizing, displaying, cleaning and maintaining the Treasure Alley space in our church undercroft. Proceeds from the sales at Treasure Alley go to a variety of missions: Joseph Richey Hospice, Meals on Wheels, Paul's Place and various needs in the St. John's Parish. Additional volunteers are always welcome. Contact us at 410-367-7287.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE MORE INVOLVED AT ST. JOHN’S? The next schedule for lay readers, ushers, acolytes, chalicists, & coffee hour hosts will be coming out soon. Please help us by volunteering for these very important and worthy parts of our worship on Sundays. It would be nice to see some new faces at the door, on the altar, or in the kitchen. Please call the church office (410) 367-7287 to express your interest or email Debra.

Each month, St. John’s Altar Guild replaces the candles on the altar and in the sanctuary. The altar guild also has flowers delivered to the church to decorate the altar for Sunday service. These are mentioned in Sunday bulletins as dedications to friends and family members as requested. It is a very nice way to honor someone during a special occasion (birthday, anniversary, remembrance of someone or just in thanksgiving). If you would like to request a time to dedicate flowers or candles, please call Barbara Yarlott. The cost for the flowers is $25.00 per week (these are yours to take home after the service) and the candles are $1 per week (4 or 5 dollars per month).

DIOCESAN PEACE SERVICE

At the request of many American church leaders, faith communities throughout the nation have been asked to conduct regular services of prayer for peace and justice in the Middle East. The Diocese of Maryland gathers on the 22nd of each month at 7:30 p.m. For questions or more information, contact the Rev. Charles Cloughen. See you there!

GODLY PLAY- CHRISTIAN EDUCATION FOR KIDS

Godly Play is held in the Children's Sanctuary, just one flight up from the main church. Godly Play is designed for kids aged 2-12, but children of all ages are welcome to join us. If you would like childcare while you attend the regular service, please come up to see us. If nobody is in the room, just ask downstairs for Elizabeth.

DAUGHTERS OF THE KING

The Daughters of the King is an Order for Women in the Episcopal Church with Chapters in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and in the Evangelical Lutheran Churches in America. Daughters are dedicated to prayer, service, and evangelism For Christ's Sake. Fellow parishioners are warmly welcome to join us (carpooling from SJ). Please see one of our members for more information: Dea Sue Bell, Barbara Yarlott, Martha Montgomery, Jay Williams, Mary Katherine Pechulis, Vivian Kreller, Kathleen Snyder, Elizabeth Grove, Phyllis Moore, Susan Wirth, and Rose Kurz-Cringle.

Please be sure to contact the church office if you have a family member who is attending school and/or residing away from homel. The parish office wishes to stay in touch and we can update our records with their address.

Call the office 410.367.7287 or email saintjohn@charm.net with the latest contact information.

Saint John’s has began hosting the newly formed Kol HaLev congregation in our Great Hall on one Friday evening and one Saturday morning per month. The congregation, under the direction of Rabbi Geoff Basik, is hopeful of establishing a permanent presence in the Mount Washington area. Recently, Kol Halev made local news in an article in "The Jewish Times", and the interest in this congregation is growing. Contact Rabbi Geoff Basik by email at gbasik@comcast.net.

Epistle Deadline

If you have any information that you would like to be considered for the JUNE Epistle, please submit it to the church office by May 26th. Thanks!

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There is something decidedly bizarre yet at the same time thrilling about the post -resurrection stories of our Lord as we listen to the Gospel lessons after Easter Day. We are asked to put aside all that we know about our bodies (and their limitations), and put it all in a different light. We are asked to suspend what may be a well-founded belief and see things in an unfamiliar perspective.

We are asked – no, told – that dying and dead bodies live again in ways that are otherwise unimaginable.

A homely and somewhat sad example of what I mean by that is a rather personal story. As many of you know, my mother suffered from dementia and was later institutionalized because of it. On occasion Margy and the girls and I would take her out to lunch in Sykesville. And Mother tried to keep a grip on things, to focus, to converse, actually to be a hostess. She was struggling because (for her) all the rules were somehow different; she was terribly confused, and would sometimes act as though her granddaughters were the waitresses. It was eerie. It was like visiting the ghost of someone we had once known.

Now to return to the bewildered apostles in Saint Luke’s Gospel for this morning; their moment was eerie as well. They were sitting around a table, as we had done in Sykesville, but they thought they were sitting with a real ghost: someone who had already died. In fact, it was the ghost of Jesus of Nazareth … but this ghost was different He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t lost, he wasn’t ephemeral, not at all. This ghost had mind and body and form and substance to him.

This ghost had a body that was not corrupted, had dinner, and then talked and taught. There was the living Jesus in their midst, active and very much alive; yet he had been dead only a short while ago.

Now as I mentioned earlier, as mortal women and men, we are experts on the nature of the human body. If we get cut, or pierced, we bleed, and more often than not, it hurts. These wounds, if not attended to, can cause death, an irrevocable condition, such as Jesus’.

I can posit that there was some serious restructuring going on in the minds of the disciples at this point. I would go back to the illustration of my addled mother, only now I am the one who is confused. How can these things be happening?

Am I the one who doesn’t understand what is going on? How can they change the rules like this? Like a person with dementia, I can’t quite understand that the world has turned upside down.

But that’s what happened. What these men experienced at that meal on the way to Emmaus was mind-boggling: they saw that death was in no way an impediment to life: because of the resurrection of Jesus.

So to carry that message to its logical conclusion, our bodies as well as our spirits will survive, healed and turned into something immutable.

Let me digress for a moment here. I’ve always had a little trouble with bodily resurrection, personally, that is. I still can’t figure out exactly what that means, exactly.

But, on the other hand, I’m willing to trade this body in for one six feet tall, with curly hair, a wicked grin, and no colitis. So, I’m not sure what bodily resurrection is, but I do know this.

We are the only major religion that celebrates bodies as well as spirits, for in the Christian religion, body and spirit are inextricably entwined. Christ came back to us embodied with flesh as well as spirit.

In biblical thought we are bodies, not just incarcerated souls, as eastern religions often decree. Our bodies are not just excess baggage, or a cocoon that houses a spiritual entity. The Book of Genesis teaches us that body and soul are one.

Try laughing, crying, loving (yes, you know exactly what I mean) without using your body. Try eating a crab cake, or kissing your daughters on the forehead without using your body. Try doing coffee hour next week without a body.

The message of the resurrection is simple: as we understand our being, so will they be transformed into something we can understand even better after our physical demise.

We will be transformed, as was Christ. To return back to the illustration I began with, I now know, as we learn it again and again, that Caroline Gifford had to leave that corrupted body and mind to become finally alive again.

Beyond death, our Lord lives in body as well as spirit, and so shall we. That is the promise of Easter.