The Message March 2023

The Message this month:

Contributors:

Christ Church Staff:

The Rev. Patrick Gahan, Rector

The Rev. Scott Kitayama, Associate Rector

The Rev. Brien Koehler, Associate Rector for Mission and Formation

The Rev. Justin Lindstrom, Associate Rector for Community Formation

Karen Von Der Bruegge, Director of Vocational Discernment and Pastoral Care

Halleta Heinrich, Director of Family Ministry

Catherine deMarigny, Coordinator of Orange Curriculum

Lily Fenton, Nursery Director

Front cover photo: Gretchen Duggan

CEC Youth making pancakes for Shrove Tuesday

Back Cover photo: Susannah

Kitayama

Acolytes before the service

Editor: Gretchen Duggan

Worship Services:

Sundays 7:30 a.m. - Rite I

9 & 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. - Rite II

*9 & 11 a.m are live streamed

Sunday School 10:00 a.m.

Christian Education for Children, Youth, and Adults

Wednesdays

11 a.m. - Eucharist with Anointing and Healing Prayers. *The service is also live streamed

Saturdays

8:30 a.m. - Eucharist on the Outreach Pavilion lawn

* www.cecsa.org/live-stream

Visit us on-line at www.cecsa.org

Follow us: facebook.com/ChristChurchSATX @christchurchsatx

Avery Moran, Youth Minister

Susan Lindstrom, Director of College Ministry

Joshua Benninger, Music Minister & Organist

Jennifer Holloway, Assistant Music Director, Children’s Music Director & Social Media Manager

Charissa Fenton, Receptionist

Robert Hanley, Director of Campus Operations

Darla Nelson, Office Manager

Donna Franco, Financial Manager

Gretchen Comuzzi Duggan, Director of Communications

Monica Elliott, Executive Assistant to the Rector

Elizabeth Martinez, Kitchen Manager

Robert Vallejo, Facilities Manager

Rudy Segovia, Hospitality Manager

Joe Garcia, Sexton

2023 Vestry

Lisa Miller, Senior Warden

Doug Daniel, Junior Warden

Rick Foster

Garry Schnelzer

Garnett Wietbrock

Spencer Hill

Julianne Reeves

Scott Rose

Thomas Duesing

Alison Sawyer

Patrick Tobin

Heather Yun

AVERY MORAN

PATRICK GAHAN

HALLETA HEINRICH

BARRY BRAKE

FERNE BURNEY

by Patrick Gahan

For two years, I was lulled to sleep by the greetings, responses, and droll comebacks from Norm, Woody, Cliff, Carla, Diane, Frasier, Lilith, Coach, and Sam. Clay, our oldest son, had a nightly routine during his sophomore and junior years in high school that included a second supper of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, a sleeve of Nabisco Premium Saltines, and an hour’s viewing of reruns of Cheers. Only two layers of sheet rock separated the den from our bedroom, so the sitcom’s repeated rhythm of repartee seeded my early evening’s dreams. I had never watched an episode of Cheers, and yet the familiar patrons encircling the Boston bar gave me a degree of somnolent comfort.

Thirty years later and watching the same reruns on Hulu, I realize my subconscious conjuring was not far off, and I understand why Clay’s nocturnal ritual included Norm, Cliff, Carla, and the gang. To imagine there was a place, albeit a basement in faraway Boston, where people knew each other and expectantly awaited their company every night was Shangri-la

to a sixteen-year-old growing up in the age of letter bombs, Rodney King, and David Koresh. Sectarian violence, economic uncertainty, and the onset of America’s ceaseless War on Terror would reshape us into a distrusting, impersonal nation. Perhaps older folks can come to accept such a world—but younger hearts cannot.

The friends on Cheers paint a very different picture than the one Clay inherited from us. Those sitting around the bar are not only dramatically different from one another, they are also measurably disappointing by our world’s standards. Sam no longer pitches in the big leagues, Norm is a failed accountant turned house painter, Diane is an intellectual without a degree, Carla is a single mom in a dead-end job, Cliff is a know-it-all with no depth, Coach is drifting into early dementia, and Frasier is a psychiatrist prig. Night after night they meet in the basement bar where true friendship is shared and happiness is experienced because a real community has formed.

A Matter of Life & Death

Belonging is what our sixteen-year-old son was seeking, and that desire to belong to others is what drew Clay to Cheers night after night. I suppose amidst the wreckage of the Coronavirus, I wanted to belong,

too. None are surprised that a boy at mid-adolescence would feel isolated, but a pastor in his late sixties feeling that way borders on pitiable. The fact that Doc Martin, Call the Midwife, and now Cheers top my nightly television rotation tells a different story. Those brief tales, digitally streamed onto our flatscreens, project familiar characters – all flawed – yet belonging to one another. We watch and wonder whether we fit into others’ lives in that way.

We are tempted to remonstrate, “I belong to my spouse.” “I matter to my children.” “My Mahjong group would miss me if I were absent.” Not to be cruel but to state the obvious: Spouses die, adult children become entrenched in their own lives, and purely social groups exercise little fidelity beyond the occasional diversions they provide. We were fashioned to share our lives with others to a much greater degree than we are experiencing. To that end, I am mystified that as many of us grow older, we leave the very groups where we worked together in significant ways and shared our lives while doing so. “I’ve done my part,” we say. But what happens when we abandon the routine of meaningful interaction with others?

A startling answer may come from the decades-long “Nun Study,” recounted in

From our rector...

David Snowdon’s book, Aging with Grace

The extensive physiological examinations of the 678 School Sisters of Notre Dame revealed than a good proportion of them had brains riddled with plaques and neuron tangles, both which predict dementia. Miraculously, several of the worst affected nuns were able to continue productive roles in their religious order until their deaths. While Snowdon does not definitively diagnose how these nuns overcame their grim pathological sentences, he persuasively theorizes that their continuing sense of duty and belonging helped them carry on with purposeful, fulfilling lives. We not only need one another emotionally; we need each other physiologically. Belonging, quite frankly, is life and death matter.

Therefore, our overall health has been at greatest risk during and after our Covid quarantines. Some have been afraid to reestablish communion with others, and some have become resistant to enter any circle beyond immediate family. This voluntary isolation is so pervasive across the U.S. that in the first week of January the New York Times encouraged readers to prioritize resolutions to reconnect with friends. The paper’s recommendations included: “Commit to make at least one 8-minute phone call to someone;” “Sign up for a yoga class;” “Join an in-person book club;” “Attend a family dinner at a relative’s home;” and so on. As I perused these suggestions proffered for a sophisticated adult readership in the most cosmopolitan city in the world, I couldn’t help but compare them to my mother’s urgings on my first day of grade school, “Just try to make one friend today, Pat.” “Don’t be afraid to join the other kids on the swing set or sliding board.”

We’re in a bad way, so much so that all the cajoling from the Times or the The Wall Street Journal may not move us off dead center. What’s needed are not more

arguments or incentives, but rather a new vision of what human life is supposed to be. And if the goal of life is not solitary self-preservation but belonging with others, how do we take hold of that? Curiously, the word that comes to my mind is “pilgrimage,” our life is to be a pilgrimage, a journey undertaken with others.

Pilgrims’ Progress

A pilgrim, of course, is entirely different from the intrepid goit-alone traveler, whose sagas have captivated me from boyhood. For Americans, Walden stands out as the lone brave soul striking out into nature. “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude,” writes Henry David Thoreau in his classic text. Thoreau from the first page to the last of Walden, exults in escaping others and alone confronts the vicissitudes of life.

Our conception of the pilgrim goes much deeper. The Canterbury Tales, perhaps the first novel written in English, is an unrestrained, profligate, but exuberant account of a group of pilgrims who travel from London to Canterbury to venerate the shrine of Thomas Becket. The pilgrims, to the reader’s astonishment, are not pious or restrained. The “Pardoner” offers forgiveness of sins for the right price. The “Miller” exerts a heavy thumb on the scales to cheat his rube customers. The “Wife of Bath” uses sexual pleasure as a bludgeon and bargaining tool. Only the “Knight” and the “Narrator” withstand temptation and remain faithful to a higher calling.

Reading The Canterbury Tales as a sophomore in high school, I snickered and laughed uproariously. The comical avarice and sexual peccadilloes Geoffrey Chaucer threaded throughout his travelogue proved to be irresistible forbidden fruit for my adolescent mind. Fifty-three years later, I realize Chaucer was telling us that

Christian pilgrims are not muscular moral standouts but rank and file people like Norm, Cliff, Carla…and all the rest of us.

Fittingly, I am writing this essay while on a pilgrimage – not to Canterbury – but to the Holy Land. No sinners as auspicious as the Pardoner, Miller, or the Wife of Bath are amongst us, but no exemplar such as the Knight has joined us either. We’re a smorgasbord of people, walking, riding, learning, and praying our way through Israel and the West Bank. Much like Chaucer’s menagerie of flawed and not-as-flawed individuals making their way to Becket’s shrine, we, too are a band of imperfect souls making our way along the Via Dolorosa to Christ’s tomb. On this particular morning, the morning of our final pilgrimage, we are leaving our warm rooms at St. George’s Anglican Cathedral at 5 a.m. to plod our way through the dark streets of East Jerusalem. The early departure is necessary to beat the teeming crowds of Christians from every nation who are desperate to make this journey after months of Covid restraint. For our group, I think it is fitting that our concluding trek in the Holy Land precedes the sunrise, for my mind keeps rehearsing Isaiah’s words, ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. On those who lived in great darkness, on them the light has shone’ (Isaiah 9:2).

During the previous seven days, we crisscrossed this small, divided land

“And iF the goAl oF liFe is not solitAry selF-preservAtion but belonging with others, how do we tAke hold oF thAt?...our liFe is to be A pilgrimAge, A journey undertAken with others. ”

The Pardoner in the Ellesmere manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, ca. 1405-1410

From our rector...

along lines that resemble the silken threads of a spider’s web. We have avoided a systematic, orderly path to better experience Christ’s unpredictable peripatetic life disclosed in the four Gospel accounts in the New Testament. Constantly passing through military checkpoints dividing Israel and the West Bank, we’re keenly aware of entering Palestinian Restricted Area’s “A, B, & C.” The day we arrive in Bethlehem, we find the city confined behind Israel’s mammoth concrete walls. No matter, it is Orthodox Christmas Eve. Parades of Palestinian Boys and Girls Scouts march into the city heralding the birth of our Lord by sounding scores of bagpipes, no less. No tightly choreographed Washington, D.C. inauguration could compete with the euphoric joy painted on the faces of these young Christians, even as they trooped through the frigid rain and in the cold knowledge of their uncertain future.

Later in Nazareth, all 29 of us were the guests of the Nazarene Sisters, whose spotless guesthouse is purported to stand directly over the ancient home of the Holy Family. Today, Nazareth, which has the fortune of being on the “right” side of the wall, is a high-tech hub in Israel. How appropriate that the city is the nexus of new creativity because he who orchestrated all creation – ‘through whom all things were made’ – grew up here (Colossians 1:16). With Nazareth as our axis, it is an easy bus ride to Capernaum, the Mount of the Beatitudes, the hillside where Jesus fed the 5,000, the Sea of Galilee, where he calmed the storm – all the places where Jesus called people into his new creation. Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news’ (Mark 1:14-15).

The entire time we 29 pilgrims are basking on the sunlit shore of the Sea of Galilee, reading Scripture, and imagining the joy of those first disciples, our eyes are continually drawn to Mt. Tabor rising towards the clouds as an ensign of both

hope and warning. The steep, roundtopped summit is better known as the Mount of Transfiguration, the place where the luminance of Jesus’ divinity is disclosed to Peter, James, and John. But it is also the place where Jesus begins his final walk to Jerusalem with his own band of flawed pilgrims. Those sunny days in Galilee, where Christ, taught, healed, and delivered the possessed are now shadowed by the journey they must make to Calvary. I do not say “over-shadowed,” lest I degrade Christ’s ministry as having little or no value except as a preamble to the cross. On the contrary, Jesus’ hard words from the Sermon on the Mount, the miracle of lavishly changing washing water into delectable wine, his freeing the man of

deforming demons in the middle of synagogue worship – all come to a greater light through his crucifixion. How telling it is that Jesus insists his disciples meet him in Galilee – not Jerusalem – after his resurrection (Matthew 28:10; Mark 16:7). True, Christ saves us through the grace of his sacrifice, and he delivers us from death through the power of his resurrection. Nevertheless, we daily experience the grace of our salvation by obeying Christ’s teaching, receiving his healing, and accepting his deliverance. That’s precisely why pilgrimages are so important for Christians. We re-learn that the “saved” life is to walk with others in the blessed assurance of his sacrifice and in the light of his example.

This bipartite truth was impressed on me on the day our company headed back to Jerusalem. The weather, so sunny and mild in Galilee that we shed our coats and caps, turned wet and cold as we climbed to the higher altitude of the Holy City. We were happy for the steep walk down the Mount of Olives just to generate a modicum of body heat. At Gethsemane, we huddled close together and were shivering.

Choosing conviction over comfort, Kay and I knelt in the garden where Jesus was arrested and kissed the icy rock where he had prayed before Herod’s soldiers marched him away. The discomfiting chill helped us encounter the agony of our Savior in that place: Going a little further, he fell facedown and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will’ (Matthew 26:39).

Walking the Way of the Cross

The next morning, that final day of our pilgrimage, we gathered in the courtyard of St. George’s Cathedral at 5 a.m. to walk the Via Dolorosa before it teemed with crowds. We walked in the inky darkness from the cathedral through eerily quiet East Jerusalem. We passed through the usually bustling markets filled with bright succulent produce, spices, fish, steaming kebabs, and vivid textiles. Yet at this early hour their colorful and aromatic stalls were covered over with plastic tarpaulins, the proprietors stealing one more hour of blessed sleep. We entered the Damascus Gate which leads into David’s City. The entrance was empty save for a few Palestinian day laborers seeking work, while a few others knelt on their Turkish rugs praying.

To walk the Via Dolorosa, “the Way of Grief,” with others is to experience a pilgrimage within a pilgrimage. In the days leading to this last walk, our group of 29 had followed the path of Jesus from Caesarea Philippi all the way to Jericho, keeping the Jordan River to the east of us. For eight days and nights, we had trod the way of Jesus, yet when we set out on that last morning, we walked the way of the cross – our pilgrimage within a pilgrimage. In so doing, we were repeating a procession of Christian pilgrims wending through 1,600 years of history. Egeria, an indefatigable woman, was the first to walk in Jesus’ footsteps to Calvary. This was during the reign of Theodosius I (379-395), the last emperor to reign over both the western and eastern empires – Rome and Constantinople. In less than a hundred years, Rome would fall to a succession of invaders. The Byzantine

“... we dAily experience the grAce oF our sAlvAtion by obeying christ’s teAching, receiving his heAling, And Accepting his deliverAnce. ”

From our rector...

Empire would eventually lose their hold on Jerusalem to the ascendant Muslims in 636. Five centuries later in 1099, the First Crusade would retake Jerusalem and keep it until 1291 – nearly 200 years – until it fell again to the Islamic army led by Sultan Baibars.

Christian pilgrimages persisted, however, which was due in no small part to St. Francis’s two sojourns in the Holy Land in 1219 and 1220. Francis’s deep devotion, joy, and humility touched the sultan far more than his austere, jubilant piety affected the Europeans held up behind the wall of Jerusalem. Thus, after the Islamic army’s victory, Francis’s order of monks, the Franciscans, were allowed to remain in Jerusalem. Their presence paved the way for a stream of European pilgrims to risk passage across the Mediterranean, be met at the Palestinian coast by Francis’s monks and be led the thirty-nine miles to Jerusalem by donkey.

During that same time in the latter Middle Ages, Christian groups who could not make the journey to Jerusalem, began walking the fourteen “Stations of the Cross” in their parish churches. This practice of self-examination and purposeful repentance was accelerated all across Europe during and after the 100 Years War (1337-1453) and the Black Death (1346-1353), during which

time 103 million people died, about half of Europe’s total population. Living amidst destruction, death, and fear, the Stations of the Cross was undertaken with frequency and urgency.

From these Christian ancestors, we have inherited the fourteen Stations of the Cross. Nine of the stations are taken directly from the Gospels and five from our European forebears’ imagination. The other five include Jesus’ three falls while carrying his cross to Calvary, Veronica wiping his face just before he falls a second time, and Jesus meeting his mother as He wends his painful way on the Via Dolorosa. While these five stations are extra-Biblical, they are certainly plausible.

My own sense of urgency has been heightened by the aftershocks of Covid-19, the reemergence of Soviet-era aggression by Vladimir Putin, the revival of bigbrother Maoism in China instituted by Xi Jinping, selfish fabrications by our own national leaders, and, most pressing of all, the extensive isolation being experienced across the age spectrum in the U.S. Add to that my personal need for confession and repentance, and I was walking through the 5 a.m. cold darkness of Jerusalem with resolve. I took comfort that I was walking with others. We are a collection of people with different backgrounds, different needs, different disappointments,

and different shortcomings. We’re Norm, Frasier, Carla, and Cliff, sitting on barstools and needing companions more than a drink. We’re the Pardoner, Miller, and the Wife of Bath stumbling toward Canterbury, making our confessions to one another along the way. Unexpectedly, the truth breaks through the darkness of the gray, cold, morning: We’re priests for one another: ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’ (John 20:23).

By confessing, listening, encouraging, challenging, cajoling, and loving one another, the most important work was done before we stepped foot on the Via Dolorosa. It’s as Jesus said, ‘By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’ (John 13:35). Our Lord is not just saying that loving one another will be an attractive advertisement for outsiders; but, more importantly, Jesus is declaring that by expressing love to our brother and sister pilgrims and receiving their love is how we realize the blessed assurance of being Christ’s disciples. Our life in Christ is not a head trip or mystical escape. No, to be Christ’s disciple is a full-body experience, where we need to love and be loved by others.

The Super Brawl

Returning from our travels around the Mediterranean, Kay and I were back at home in time for the Super Bowl. I was stupefied to learn that the fiercest fight of this 57th professional football world championship was not on the field but afterwards between Christians. The conflict is over two expensive advertisements aired by a Christian group during the contest. One depicts a series of black and white newsreel photos of Americans screaming and threatening one another – pictures that have become far too familiar in the last few years. The montage ends with the arresting message, “Jesus loves those we hate.” The second ad portrays a collage of children helping other children, one child wiping the tears from the eyes of a weeping man on the TV screen, and another child listening to the heart of a towering Great Dane

Pilgrims from the Christ Church pilgrimage to the Holy Land heading up Wadi Qelt for a sunrise Eucharist.

Photo by Pam Kittrell

From our rector...

with a stethoscope. The collage ends with two toddlers – one white, the other black – running to each and embracing. The caption that follows is “Jesus did not want us to act like adults.” Both commercials add the tagline, “He gets us. He gets all of us. Jesus.”

The fact 113 million people (10 million more than died in Europe’s 100 Years Ward and Black Plague) viewed these highly creative, deeply evocative spots thrilled me. But I was not surprised that the messages did not thrill everyone else. The ardent secularists decried the messages as out-of-place and unAmerican, in an effort to denude the Super Bowl of all spiritual content as they have done with Christmas. Another discrediting pundit complained, “Just think how many people could be fed with that money.” I doubt the critic realized that he was picking up Judas’s keynote line (John 12:4-6).

I was taken aback, however, by the deluge of Christian antipathy showered upon the ads. They raged that Jesus was depicted as a “Marxist, “radically inclusive,” and “proimmigration.” My first reaction to this was to wonder why Christians would take this moment to attack one another. The whole misdirected melee reminds me of the western Crusaders sacking Constantinople in April 1204. Are we Christians so influenced by the culture that we must immediately draw lines across God’s Kingdom and take sides? I don’t quite see where the “Marxist” ingredient was drawn from the ads, but let’s face the fact that Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (pub. 1776), and Karl Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party (Pub. 1848) follow Jesus by as many years as Abraham precedes him. I’m afraid, however, that if push comes to shove, Jesus probably would have had more affinity for socialism than capitalism (See Acts 2:43-47). Jesus “radically inclusive?” I praise God that he is, or I would be stranded on the sidelines of salvation. Jesus repeatedly extended his grace to those considered unacceptable (See John 4:7-30; Matthew 15:21-28 & Matthew 8:5-13). “Pro-immigration?”

The Bible which Jesus read was

uncomfortably explicit on this matter (See Leviticus 19:34).

Those debates and others like them are brushfires compared with the bonfire those two ads have lit. First, let’s remember that the Super Bowl is likely the most hedonistic four hours in the American calendar. We take it as an unofficial holiday that gives us a pass to revel in an Americanized version of Bacchanalia, where we engorge ourselves with arterial choking foods, and guzzle a fountain of intoxicating inebriants – such that 16.1 million people called in sick on Monday, February 13, the day after the Super Bowl. That’s 10% of America’s total workforce. Add to that, the halftime diva descending from the roof of the dome like some sort of pagan goddess. Jesus, the compassionate, giving, loving, inviting One, appears on the screen in stark contrast to our idolatries.

What’s more, those Christian combatants miss the more urgent message of the ads. Taken together, the two ads appear like one of Jesus’ parables. I remind you of what I have written in these pages before: Parable is taken from the Greek parabolē, which is a compound word meaning bolē – throw + para – alongside. A parable is a story Jesus throws alongside us to make us examine ourselves in the face of Christ. Very often Jesus’ parables present us with stark contrasts between the person we are versus the one we can become. Seen in that light, are we becoming Lazarus or the rich man (Luke 16:19-31)? Are we the one who builds our house on the rock or on the sand (Mathew 7:24-27)? Are we the father of the Prodigal Son or his older brother (Luke 15:11-32)? Are we one of the five wise bridesmaids or one of the five foolish ones (Matthew 25:1-13)? And so it goes. Jesus is so bitingly honest about the human condition that we wince when the full force of the parable hits home. Those two ads taken together issue a challenge to the believer as well as the unbeliever, “Are we one of those screaming, fist-raising, threat-issuing human beings, or are we one of the toddlers running toward the other one. The first dredges up scenes of the crowd shouting “Crucify him.

Crucify him” (Luke 23:21; John 19:6), but the second of the father running out to embrace his prodigal son (Luke 15:20). The ads press Jesus’ unsettling statement home, ‘Truly, I tell you, anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall never enter it’ (Mark 10:15). Every good thing, every one, we have received from God – our life, our spouse, our children, our salvation, our walk with Christ – all of them are gifts. We can’t crow about any of it because we don’t deserve any of it. Yet Christ lavished his love on us anyway. So, the childlike thing to do is run towards the other person – even one much different from me – instead of wrenching people apart. It’s also the Christ-like thing. Every person is one whom Christ loves and for whom he died.

We’d rather ‘strain the gnats’ out of other Christian’s faith expressions (Matthew 23:24) than catch sight of the bigger picture ‘to walk in love as Christ loved us’ (Ephesians 5:2). It’s so, so much easier to cast stones at another child of God than to make the critical renovations in our own life (John 8:7). That’s why I watch an episode of Cheers every night before bed. My place is to sit on the barstool beside another sinner, one who is my companion on the Way and a pilgrim who will pick me up when I fall.

developing christiAn chArActer

youth ministry

by Avery Moran

For the past few months at our Middle School bible study, we’ve been doing Character Studies of some biblical people. Peter, Moses, Paul, Thomas, and a few others as well. I think due to how far apart we live from these historic and great figures, we can often forget that they are also people, just like us. They have qualities that we look at and want to

inherit, and they have problems that they want to sweep under the rug.

As people, it can be really easy for us to compartmentalize our lives, I’m guilty of it myself. It’s easy to put on our Christian hat when we’re at church, or when we feel that it will play out well for us, it can be much harder to put it on in places where it may be less convenient. We can see this with Peter. He denies Jesus three times, he was afraid to put on the “Christian hat,” and he had a pretty real reason to be afraid. For us, it might not always look like life or death. It might look like the difference

between comfort and confrontation.

Being Christian doesn’t mean we have to wear a name tag that tells the people around us we are Christian, but I think it does mean simple things like exercising patience in situations where it might be difficult, or passing up on an opportunity that might sound like what we want to do, even if it is something we know we shouldn’t.

To get involved with Youth Ministry, contact Avery Moran at 210-736-3132 or averym@cecsa.org.

hymns: tAking A closer look

music ministry

by Barry Brake

Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. – Psalm 96: 1

A few days ago, at a funeral, one of the hymns was “Alleluia, alleluia, give thanks to the risen Lord.” Hymn number 178. There’s a reason it’s a standby, right? Energizing, classic-yet-fresh, singable.

But there’s something else. Next time we sing it in church, look at the fine print:

Donald Fishel (b. 1950)

Just think. When The Hymnal 1982 was published, Donald Fishel was 32. He wrote the hymn when he was 21 years old, still an undergrad at the University of Michigan.

I’ve been thinking about this recently. Something struck me about ages, dates,

and people, and I decided to find out about the composers and lyricists in that hymnal. How many were born in the 20th century? How old were they? How many still living in ’82?

It took me a while, but I crunched the numbers. The Hymnal 1982 has music by 70 living people: 130 songs in total. That’s nearly a fifth of the hymnal, by people untested by the years, crammed right up there with Wesley and Watts and the other great hymn writers. Remarkable!

Some were long-lived: twelve were in their

60s and 70s when the hymnal came out. Twenty-two were in their 50s. Thirtytwo were in their 30s and 40s. And four, Donald Fishel among them, were in their 20s.

Now consider this. If you were on the national committee putting together a new hymnal, how much space would you give to Millennials — kids born in the 90s?

Well, if you were on the Standing Commission on Church Music back in the late 70s, you did give space to members of a new generation, along with an abundance of living composers and lyricists. I’m thankful for that kind of openness and a church exhibiting it in San Antonio in 2023.

Here’s to a church that hears its sons and daughters speak and can see the visions of its young people that dream.

Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things; – Psalm 98: 1

welcome to chApel lucy

cec FAmily ministry

by Halleta Heinrich

The CEC Family Ministry is delighted to welcome our new chapel music leader Lucy Warner!

Lucy Warner comes to us from New York City, so now Broadway comes to Christ Church. Lucy is an accomplished musician, performer, composer, and writer. We are so blessed to have her in both 9:00 and 11:00 Chapels each Sunday to accompany us in song and teach us some of her own creations. If your children are coming home singing “Un Milagro” (miracle in Spanish), it’s because Lucy has been sharing a song from her musical about the miracle of the Virgin of Guadalupe. My daughter Bethany and I were fortunate to be able to view a short preview of this musical when we were in New York a few years ago. Lucy is putting the final touches on this work and plans

for it to premier in San Antonio. We will all see this miracle of a musical when it opens.

Lucy currently teaches at the Acorn School for preschoolers. She is also the author of Zap! Boom! Pow! , a series of books for children that teaches about the great composers as Super Heroes of Music. Bach, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky are only a few of these heroes. What an ingenious way to get kids into the

appreciation of great music! Lucy Warner comes to us after serving as the Chair of the Music Department at The Browning School in New York City. Come to Chapel and meet Lucy! I think we have a very creative future ahead with Lucy as our Chapel Music Director.

PS.. Lucy Warner is the sister of our very creative and dynamic Ruth Berg. Genius must run in the family!

We are in the initial stages of forming a Special Needs Ministry for children and their parents. We want all children at Christ Church to feel welcomed, safe, and supported no matter what their need. We want all our parents to be supported in the challenges of raising their children. Three women - Rebecca Mc Mains, Carlisle O’Brien, and Hilarie Blanco - have come forward to spearhead a ministry that will guarantee a sense of inclusiveness and support for all children and parents at Christ Church. The experience of these three ladies varies as far as their life experience with the challenges of raising a child with special needs. They also represent the voice of parents who need support for their own needs and challenges.

cec outreAch

CEC Outreach Committee

The CEC Outreach Committee’s Judith Rodriguez (Liaison to Christian Assistance Ministries AKA CAM) is teaming up with Halleta and the younger grades of CEC Sunday School for a Lenten Book Drive for the children of CAM’s clients.

CAM serves the needy on the east side of downtown. Judith got the idea because “While I was volunteering at CAM one day, a man and his little girl (about 4 or 5) came in. They were living in his car. While the father looked through donated clothes, I took the little girl to another room and helped her pick out three books for herself. She ran back excitedly to show her father, and when he saw her and the books, he burst into tears. This made me realize that this is something Christ Church can easily help with.”

The Outreach Committee is very excited to partner with the Sunday School for this

Rebecca McMains got the ball rolling in the formation of this ministry when she recommended the book The Life We Never Expected by Andrew and Rachel Wilson, who are the parents of two children with autism. Rebecca told me that it was the best and most helpful book she had read in dealing with children with special needs. I ordered several of these books to share with others and started reading the book myself. It is amazingly honest and based in Christ as the most important support we can have no matter what our or our children’s special needs are. As I read the book, I came to the realization that everyone should read the book. We all have particular needs and challenges in life for which Christ and faith in Him is the only help. The life we have is never what we expected. Often it

is hard. We need Christ to get us through and need to pass on our faith to our children and others as they meet life.

If you would like to be part of the formation of this ministry, please contact Halleta, Rebecca, Carlisle, or Hilarie. We want your input and guidance, especially if you have a special needs child. We want to know what would be most helpful for you and your children. We also need to know who might be called to be part of the team to love and guide our special needs kids. Please pray for this ministry and be open to God’s calling to be part of the team.

Love in Christ, Halleta

A speciAl needs ministry is Forming teAming up For lenten book drive

very special Lenten Discipline.

New and gently used children’s books are being collected as the offering in Children’s Chapel throughout Lent. These

books will be distributed to children in need who are helped by CAM. Jesus tells us, “Love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:34-35) Let’s show love to our brothers and sisters in Christ at CAM.

Judith Rodriguez in chapel with the children

Are you reAdy to go?

greAt commission society

by Ferne Burney

Is it April again ALREADY? It’s springtime, and a wise person’s thoughts turn to taxes.

Many will remember to give to the church because, as a 501(c)3, it enables them to deduct that donation and lower their tax liability. It is also the right thing to do – supporting God’s community and furthering the mission of our congregation. But let’s move for a second beyond the heartfelt determination and delve into the IRS and its involvement in our finances.

The tax law has changed over the last couple of years, and it will continue to change. The ability to deduct charity donations is one place impacted significantly. The temporary deduction for charitable cash contributions for taxpayers who do not itemize their tax returns has expired and is no longer available. Your deduction for charitable contributions generally can’t be more than 60% of your AGI, but in some cases 20%, 30%, or 50% limits may apply. Your tax professional will be the best source of information concerning your individual limits.

But, with that in mind, let’s consider one big implication for those “more mature” members of the congregation. Those of us who have reached the age of 72 and who have contributed to those wonderful IRAs find ourselves being required to take at least a minimum distribution annually from those tax-free accounts. The distributions are not tax-free. They are considered part of your annual income. Many would rather not take those distributions, and perhaps we have found a less painful way to achieve what you desire.

When you write a check to the church for your tithe, pledge, or simple contribution;

that money goes out of your bank account. You receive your receipt from the church, and you prepare to deduct the amount on your IRS return for that year. Do you get all of that money removed from your annual gross income? No. The amount removed is dependent on the amount or percentage that you are allowed to deduct.

If, however, you make a distribution directly from your IRA to the church, the ENTIRE amount is reduced because it does not count as income, it counts toward your Required Minimum Distribution, and your bank account balance does not change. This can be done with the help of your financial advisor who manages your fund. Distributions must be made to a qualified account (the church is one), and to count as part of your RMD, it must be done prior to taking a distribution for yourself. A Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) is any distribution from a Traditional or Roth made directly by the IRA trustee to a qualified charitable organization when the IRA owner is age 70 ½ or older. A QCD may satisfy the client’s RMD. Note: QCDs are available at age 70 ½. The SECURE Act raised the RMD age to 72

as of January 1, 2020, but did not increase the QCD age.

Does this sound intriguing? We will unravel this and other topics of importance at our now quarterly presentation of “Are You Ready to Go?” The program and discussion will take place in the Parish Hall on March 11 at 9:00 a.m. I will be leading the discussion and will be assisted by Patrick Gahan to help you ensure that you have all of the documents you need to make your end of life less chaotic.

Please make a reservation to attend by calling the church office.

Ferne is the Chair of the Great Commission Society and the Vestry’s Planned Giving Committee

image by Rawpixel

pAge turners – From the rector’s book stAck

Traveling to Kenya and back takes no less than sixty hours. Sandwiched in the rear of the aircraft amongst the teeming horde of snoring souls, the journey seems much longer. Kay and I have made the trek twice to teach pastors and their spouses from the Samburu tribal region of the north and to witness the progress of a health clinic established in the most impoverished neighborhood imaginable. To endure the sixty hours, I chose two books which would captivate me going and coming. During this past November’s passage, I read Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese, an American physician born to Indian Christian parents in Ethiopia. The novel chronicles the story of Marion and Shiva Stone, twin boys who are raised by a colorful cast of characters in a convent mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Both are drawn to medicine, to Ethiopia, and, tragically, to the same woman. While Marion loses himself practicing trauma surgery in an underfunded, Roman Catholic hospital in New York City, Shiva remains in Ethiopia at the mission hospital to become a leading world expert in gynecological surgery. Initially conjoined at birth, the two can never be completely dissected from one another, and the novel races to its breathless denouement at their reunion. Verghese’s prose is so poetically descriptive that I felt as if I were running through the gardens and halls of the medical mission in Addis Ababa, even though I was careening through the air at 30,000 feet. I thank Dr. Mary Arno for recommending this novel to me on the day before Kay and I departed.

Scott Kitayama has started reading theology books like some people read crime novels. His last foray was to unravel the mysteries of the Trinity, which had him lecturing

Justin and me on heresies Einstein couldn’t unravel. Now Scott has moved on to defining challenging terms in the New Testament. I think the man has morphed into Thomas Aquinas! Taking this new edition of himself seriously, he tossed a book at me the afternoon before I began my 36-hour trek to Kenya. The book, 15 New Testament Words of Life, by Nijay K. Gupta mercifully absorbed my attention while crossing both the Atlantic and the Sahara. Gupta, Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Illinois, chooses some of the words Christians frequently banter about but are unable to define, such as Righteousness and Holiness, and words we have diluted of power, like Grace, Hope, and Life, and words that we simply ignore, including Forgiveness, Witness, and Fellowship. Each chapter introduces one of the 15 words with an absorbing anecdote, followed by the word’s Old Testament understanding, while the centerpiece of the chapter is the New Testament book that best illustrates the term. Each chapter concludes with the word’s relevance for Christians today. I made notes on every page of Gupta’s book and plan to teach the text to the Frost Bible Study and later to the Tri-Point group. No telling what Scott will come up with next!

In my most treasured books, I put a small, light pencil dots beside lines or paragraphs I find particularly memorable or beautifully expressed. In my Library of America edition of Mr. Lincoln’s Army by Bruce Catton, I counted over one hundred graphite dots. Catton’s profound understanding of America’s Civil War, coupled with his clear artistic prose, elevates this book to a place alongside Carl Sandburg’s six volumes on Abraham Lincoln and Douglas Southall Freeman’s four volumes on Robert E. Lee. Both won the Pulitzer Prize. Catton’s Civil War trilogy, of which Mr. Lincoln’s Army is the first volume, won both the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award for Non-Fiction. The trilogy’s greatest acclaim

in the Lone Star State is that in the late 1950’s and 1960’s, Catton’s work served as the textbooks for Civil War History at the University of Texas.

Catton (1899-1978) spent his childhood in a small town in Michigan, where the aging Union veterans were regularly celebrated as heroes. For his part, Catton eagerly listened to their stories of glory and pain. He later became a successful journalist yet felt an inexorable call to write about the Civil War, about the common men who fought and died across Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Georgia, along the Atlantic coast, and on the Mississippi River. Catton’s prose is as rich as Homer’s Iliad making it altogether mesmerizing. The intricate details he renders about each battle may be too complex for late night reading. But it his understanding of the leaders and everyday soldiers in both blue and gray that draw the reader into the most perilous years of our young nation. Nevertheless, I must add that Mr. Lincoln’s War could more accurately be titled General McClellan’s War. George B. McClellan, Commander of the Army of the Potomac, twice could have ended this most terrible conflict in its first year. His timidity, coupled with his profound love for the soldiers under his command, paralyzed him, throwing the divided nation into three more years of hellish struggle. Thus, my last pencil dot mark’s Catton’s lament at the conclusion of the text after McClellan failed to end the war at Antietam, the bloodiest day in our nation’s history:

The romance was gone from the war now. They had left it behind them, with the lemonade and the fried chicken of the ladies’ committees at the railway stations, with the brightness of the uniforms that had never known mud or smoke, with the lighthearted consequence of those early days when it seemed as if the war might be half a lark, when the sky was bright with wonder and the chance of death was only a challenge to set vibrant nerves tingling.

Thomas Wolfe’s editor coined the overused sentiment, “You can’t go home again,” by entitling Wolfe’s 1940 posthumous novel with that name. Overused or not, the

pAge turners – continued

sentiment seems to be true; although, it does not keep many of us from trying. In Leopard at the Door, by Jennifer McVeigh, eighteen-year-old Rachel Fullsmith returns home to the highlands of Kenya after six years in England. Her head is swimming with childhood nostalgia of radiant sun, verdant fields, horseback riding, and native playmates. Her wistfulness is vanquished once she arrives home to find her father living with Sara, a strident, bigoted, intolerant woman, who has moved her browbeaten adult son into Rachel’s room; thus, relegating Rachel to the guest’ quarters. The domestic unease merely foreshadows the growing restlessness of the indigenous Kikuyu people, who are withering under Britain’s oppressive rule, an oppression personified by the Nazi-like Colonel Steven Lockhart. Repulsed by the treatment of the Kikuyus, to whom she is devoted, and silenced by her father and Sara, Rachel begins an illicit love affair. The injudicious romance coupled with the lethal civil strife pushes the novel’s plot forward, reveals the tragedy of African colonization, and provides a gripping bedtime read.

In an eleventhhour pre-travel dash to Barnes & Nobles, I pulled Can We Talk about Israel: A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted by Daniel Sokatch from the History Section. True to its title, Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund, begins his book with the question, “Why do we avoid discussing Israel in polite company?” Sokatch is right, of course, even in San Antonio, 7,227 comfortable miles from Jerusalem. We San Antonians can hardly sidestep the conversation, as Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI) is the largest pro-Israel non-profit in the world,

numbering 10 million members, who have donated over 100 million dollars to Israeli institutions.

America, by far, is Israel’s greatest ally and supporter, contributing 3 billion annually to a country the size of New Jersey. I am amongst the majority of Americans who encourage our fidelity to Israel for both strategic and religious reasons. However, after a twenty-three-year absence, Kay and I were shocked by the inconceivable changes across the Holy Land. Carving up landscape and cityscape like slashes of a butcher knife are towering cement walls and menacing electrical fences. Nowhere are the walls more frightening than the shadows they cast over Bethlehem. We were fortunate to celebrate Orthodox Christmas Eve in the city of Jesus’ birth with two dozen Boys’ and Girls’ Scout marching bands escorting the Greek, Assyrian, and Armenian Patriarchs to the Church of the Nativity in preparation for the midnight celebration of our Savior’s birth. The dark backdrop to the bright celebration is that those same Palestinian Christians cannot travel freely anywhere outside those towering concrete walls without securing a hard-won Israeli permit.

The sheer number of those who are kept behind those walls is staggering –2,750,000, a number which includes the Holy Land’s Christians as well as Muslims. Note, too, that while unemployment in Israel is 7.2%, it is a whopping 40% in the West Bank. If denied a work permit to daily travel the few miles into Israel, most Palestinians are consigned to penury. At the same time, even after being warned repeatedly by the U.S. and the United Nations, Israel has built 670,000 illegal homes for Jewish settlers in the disputed territory of the West Bank. The settlers are given unimpeded water supply and unencumbered travel into Israel, while Palestinian Christians and Muslims are given water only three to four days per week and prohibited free travel without a permit.

Israel’s security concerns and poor Palestinian leadership certainly complicate this 53-year-old stalemate – or better

stated – powder keg, as hostilities are once again breaking out on both sides of the barriers. A pressing question for Israel is whether they have herded Palestinians into ghettos in much the same way as they were corralled in Eastern Europe in those years preceding WWII. True, terrorist bombings have decreased markedly with the building of the extensive walls and fences, but at what expense. Among other costs, Christians in the Holy Land are fleeing the region in great numbers, such that our faith’s greatest shrines and landmarks could soon only be frequented by out-of-town tourists. Sokatch covers all this ground clearly and even-handedly. He doesn’t, however, direct the reader to read the Hebrew prophets, who have much to say about the present state of Israel.

The sixty-six books of the Bible are Spiritinspired revelations from God to man – a veritable library of revelations. That fact alone should let us know that the content can, in places, be a Gordian Knot of challenges. The added facts that the Bible is divided into two Testaments, written by at least two score of authors, covers some 4,500 years of history, and has been translated into 2,000 languages make the Bible more challenging still. Karen Armstrong, in her book, The Bible: A Biography, concisely and clearly unknots the content and history of the Bible from start to finish. Beginning with the Torah and ending with Modernity, she sequentially laces the reader through the Old and New Testaments, the succession of ages that impacted its interpretation, enduring ways of reading the Scripture, and the struggles throughout its history to control the text and thereby the people who define and order their lives by the written Word. Her chapters covering the Medieval period and the Reformation are particularly strong. Armstrong, Oxford educated and a former professed monastic of the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, was catapulted to fame with her book, A History of God: Judaism,

continued....

continued....

Christianity & Islam, which cemented her fame as a leading authority on the three great monotheistic religions, as well as their sacred texts. While Armstrong professes a belief in God, she does not consider herself a Christian. I read her books for the valuable and accessible scholarship they render but with the understanding that she and I are walking different paths.

photo Album

EPISCOPAL

Christ Episcopal Church

510 Belknap Place San Antonio, TX 78212 www.cecsa.org

The Message (USPS 471-710) is published bi-monthly by Christ Episcopal Church, 510 Belknap Place, San Antonio, TX 78212. Periodical postage paid in San Antonio, TX. Postmaster: Please send address changes to Christ Episcopal Church, 510 Belknap Place, San Antonio, TX 78212. Volume 25, Number 2.