September 2015
St. Mark’s News Volume 19/Issue 8
From the Rector As I write this, families are posting photos of their children on their first day of school on Facebook. I love seeing how these children have grown and are growing and I must admit to a bit of nostalgia that we are now past those years of back-to-school shopping for clothes and school supplies since our daughter has grown. I am thankful that I can, however, shop for back-to-school supplies for Austin children who are in need of those supplies to begin their new school year. I am always thankful for the generosity of St. Mark’s parishioners throughout the course of a year. I love seasons of new beginnings – especially September and January. Every Tuesday at St. Mark’s, during the program year, we have a noon Bible Study. We usually work our way rather systematically through various books of the Bible. In 2015-2016 we have decided to study Luke, Jeremiah, and Lamentations. September 8 will be a day for this new beginning for Bible Study. Not everyone is free to join us midweek at noon, but each one of us can embark on a new beginning of Bible Study this September.
In this Issue
On August 14 there was a helpful article written for The Living Church by Bishop Daniel Martins entitled “Top 10 Rules for Reading the Bible.” Bishop Martins prefaces his “rules” with this reminder: “For Christians, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the foundational text of our faith, both the ultimate source of illumination in our relationship with God and the ultimate tether in our speculation about God and God’s ways.” Here is a summary of that article/of those rules:
From the Rector......................... 1 Vestry Highlights........................ 2 Parish Life.................................. 4 Outreach .................................... 6 Christian Formation ................... 7 Parishioner Highlights .............. 10 Caffeine Ministry ...................... 11 Celebrations ............................ 11 ROTA....................................... 12
1. The Bible is the Church’s book. The texts of sacred scripture arose organically out of the dynamic life of a community of people – first the community of ancient Israel, then the community of the earliest Church. The only way reading the Bible can be an “eye-opening experience” is when one reads it as an insider, as a member of the community which is its natural home. 2. The Bible is many books – it is a collection of astonishingly diverse documents ranging in length from the one-page brevity of Philemon to the enormous batch of poetry known as the Psalms. Each of these documents has its own integrity, its own “voice.” 3. The Bible is one book, which is the bookend to #2 – both are essential and need to be held in dynamic tension. Both the diversity and the essential unity of this array of documents must be honored at the same time. 4. The Bible is God-breathed. We are not bound to accept a sort of crude dictation understanding of the inspiration of Holy Scripture; the process was more artful and organic, working with and through the natural proclivities of the various human authors. Nevertheless, the result is canonical – i.e. it stands as a measuring stick, a rule of faith.
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